DISCLAIMER: All My Hero Aca characters mentioned and used in this fictional work will forever be the property of Horikoshi-sensei. They are not mine and are only being used to share my love for this franchise, its story, and characters to everyone in the lovely place called the internet. The only other characters you are not familiar with, are mine or owned by friends.
While this story generally follows all major plot points of My Hero Aca and eventually lead up to Shinsou joining the hero classes, this will have major canon divergence in the future so be warned. It's still a long way from this chapter, so just enjoy and feel free to review and criticize my work to make it better.
This is not beta tested, so there will be some typos and grammar mistakes that my eyes has missed. I'll go through them slowly, but for some reason they never completely end. Because of this, I'll have short updates on what has changed, or hasn't changed in pre-notes to inform returning readers. Nonetheless - Enjoy!
Hitoshi Shinsou had always dreamed of being a hero.
At two years old, Hitoshi imagined himself fighting villains in a ridiculous hero suit. At four years, he religiously watched the morning hero cartoons like every other child would. He cheered for the heroes in the evening news as they knocked out villain after villain even though he's not supposed to because of the violence. To put it simply, every waking hour of Hitoshi's young life was dedicated to worshiping heroes that gave him his dream.
It was no ones fault really.
The world had simply evolved into one that was filled with heroes. Everyone, both young and old couldn't stop looking up at them, and to be them.
Hitoshi grew up in the Golden Age of Heroes. Heroes were rising in popularity all over the world and just choosing one to idolize was like picking one candy from hundreds. He grew up looking up to household names like Yellow Bee, Miraculous Red, Cat Noir, Crimson Riot, and so on. They were all respectable heroes but Hitoshi only saw one. The strongest and bravest hero that ever lived, the world's number one, and it's only Symbol of Peace - All Might.
With such a decorated namesake, Hitoshi looked up to All Might like a god.
Every time All Might appeared, Hitoshi's world faded out of mind. Wide eyes filled with childish wonder couldn't pry themselves from the American hero's pearly white grin. All Might never frowned nor showed anger; all he had was a smile filled with hope. Together with his warm, booming laughter, his smile blanketed everyone with safety.
Hitoshi wanted to do that too. He wanted to be a hero, but not just any hero, he wanted to be exactly like All Might. Young as he was, Hitoshi was allowed to hope and to imagine his future without limits. He was simply allowed to believe. To a child, the word impossible didn't exist.
However, life has never been fair to anyone, not even to a child. For Hitoshi, that started when he turned five and he was labelled a villain.
It was a regular day in preschool. One of the kids thought it was funny to steal his new limited edition All Might figurine and threaten to destroy it. They did, completely by accident of course, but his toy still ended up in pieces, and Hitoshi shook furiously.
He pounced on the other kid, screaming at the top of his lungs, and told one of them to "go eat a rock".
No one expected the boy actually pick up a rock no bigger than his own hand. The boy chomped off a large portion and cried as he continued to obediently chip off more with his shattered and bleeding molars.
It terrified everyone, Hitoshi most of all.
Once his quirk was confirmed, his classmates, even those he considered friends, avoided him. They shied away from him, stopped talking whenever he entered a room, and moved away whenever he took a seat. They were all too afraid to talk to him. They were to afraid respond to him.
No one wanted to be friends with a kid that can make them do anything he wanted them to.
Hitoshi knew that what he did was wrong. He was angry and scared so he followed what his instincts told him to do. He cried, screamed, and cursed them the only way he knew how. How could any of them blame him? He was a child spurred by emotion. He never meant anything by it. It was just a bunch of empty threats. He had no control over what happened and it wasn't his fault his quirk manifested at the worst time. It wasn't his fault his quirk ended up as something like this.
He tried to make his case, but no one would believe the monster they painted him as. His quirk, his fault. No one listened to him so Hitoshi promised to keep his mouth shut. He tried to change himself to appease them, just so he can belong again. Even then, he was ignored, shunned, and bullied. They called him many things, but the one that hurt most was being called a villain.
Only a villain would do that, they whispered. Villain this, villain that. It made him seethe in anger.
Hitoshi loathed how everyone got to antagonize his life solely based on his quirk when other kids had worse. It was different and scary, yes. He also hurt someone, but not on purpose. Everyone had accidents when their quirks first manifested. How was his case any different?
No one could give him the answer he wanted so Hitoshi kept on clinging to his dream instead. They may see him as a villain, but to himself, he would always be a hero, and heroes never gave up.
It didn't take long for Hitoshi to realize that hero society, for all its advancements, remained discriminatory against quirks like his. People with non-flamboyant and flashy quirks didn't get to be heroes. They worked minimum wage and lived off store bought microwave meals until they die. If that was the fate of people with lesser quirks, what was in store for someone with a quirk that could steal people's free will?
Hitoshi didn't know, and no hero would give him an answer either. No hero had a quirk buried deep in a morally grey area. Most of them were villains, or vigilantes trying to be heroes at best.
When he realized this, Hitoshi started to hate his quirk to the point that being born quirkless seemed like a better existence than having one and being labelled a villain. To add insult to injury, Hitoshi's mother never took his side. She thought it best to hide him and transferred him to a different school the moment she got the chance.
It was for his protection, she said; but Hitoshi knew the truth. She wanted to keep them safe from him.
Out of denial, she took him to another doctor for a second opinion. She wanted to know how he came to have such powers. The doctor's explained that quirks can be passed down from one offspring to the next without any changes, and how, under right circumstance, evolve. These mutations can express themselves in strange and hard to predict ways, sometimes turning a quirk far more destructive than initially intended. Hitoshi's quirk was latter.
His mother's quirk Intuition allowed her to access the human psyche by knowing the difference between a truth and a lie just by staring at persons eyes for five seconds. His father's Charm could disperse a scent from his skin that would trigger the release of dopamine in the brain after a request of his was completed by another; like a happy drug. Together, their access to the neurological system morphed into Brainwashing, a quirk that enabled Hitoshi to access and control another's mind and motor functions.
It took his mother time to accept the implications of raising a child with such a quirk, and God knows she's tried. However, she fumbled around more than she achieved. Despite her best efforts and intentions, Hitoshi read her intentions as the complete opposite.
"There are so many ways you can do to get out of a situation, and even without it you can do so many things!"
"Being a kind person and smiling through it all can help you become a hero. You don't have to tell them what to do. Just smile and be polite, and kind, like All Might. Do you understand me, Hitoshi? You can be whatever you want to be as long as you remember that."
She might have realized too late, but her words, while meant to protect, only re-assured Hitoshi of what he had been told since the very beginning. His quirk was evil and was meant to be hidden.
In the end, however, Hitoshi couldn't heed his mother's words. He wanted to belong and have friends but he also didn't want to deny what had been given to him. He continued to explore his quirk. Not because he wanted people to be afraid of him, nor did he want the villain name to persist, but because he wanted them to understand that he will never be one.
He was going to be a hero, and he wouldn't make it there if he didn't learn his own quirk.
Hitoshi managed to make few friends in his new school. Half the class were still apprehensive, a lot were suspicious, but some were amazed by it. They wanted to be heroes too, and they all agreed to help each other explore their quirks. He never made anyone do something they didn't want to, nor do something dangerous, but when the others that didn't like found out, they threatened to tell the teachers.
Then one day a fight broke out.
Hitoshi kept his head low, but couldn't resist punching back when someone clocked him on the face. The teachers intervened before it could've escalated any further. The bullies all pointed their fingers at him even though he didn't do anything. Their homeroom teacher didn't even try to defend Hitoshi; he was sanctioned and blamed for everything.
His friends still tried to defend him when their parents were called, but the adults didn't believe him. Everything went spiraling then and he was once again labelled as the problematic child that was just one step away from becoming a villain.
Hitoshi could stomach being blamed for the actions of others, for being the butt of a joke, but he'll be damned if they accused him of doing something a villain would. He wasn't a villain. He wanted to be a hero.
They called his parents in for a conference, and he prayed to whoever was listening that his mother would defend him. Unfortunately, she only knelt and lowered her head as close to ground as possible and apologized. It was pathetic. He got the other end of the stick on their walk home. She berated him for using his quirk when she specifically told him not to. He cried and apologized without pause, promising that he would never use it again.
That promise got him nowhere, because Hitoshi kept using it to defend other children. As such, his relationship with his mother turned sour as he got into more fights. He never even used his quirk on them. Hitoshi refused to give them that satisfaction. Instead he spoke with his fists. That way they couldn't blame him his quirk.
They wouldn't call him a villain.
His mother became a regular to the principal's office, and she always apologized; burying her pride further into the ground until she couldn't take it anymore. She stopped responding to the notices, and she rarely went home either. Whether it had any effect on Hitoshi's already low temperament or not, he became more irritable in school. His fights became more aggressive, and the label of villain-to-be was soon changed as attention-seeking-delinquent.
His drunk, and less than stellar father, reluctantly took the responsibility to attend to him in his mother's stead. The change had no difference, only this time, his father cared even less than his mother did. Hitoshi started to feel like his fights wasn't lead up to anything nor was he proving anything to anyone.
His dream hadn't changed but it was like fighting a war he'd already lost. Whatever he did, people only looked at it the way that made sense for their prejudice to remain. There was no child trying to redeem himself, only a soon-to-be villain lashing out on others. So, Hitoshi stopped fighting. He stopped caring about what they thought and just sauntered on in silence, keeping to himself.
He ignored their jeers the best he could, but when it got too much, Hitoshi used their own words against them. There was no kindness in his words, just cold hard spite. They all hated it, and they always had something to say against it. It was unbecoming of a hero to talk down on others but if Hitoshi wouldn't dare hurt them with his quirk or his fists, he'd hurt them with his words.
When people tried to get a rise out of him, Hitoshi would just send them away and avoid any fights before they could start. If they didn't leave him alone, he'd make them cry for making fun of him. He still got into trouble, but no one came to answer the schools summons.
His father was simply too drunk to care, after he lost his job and his mother was just... gone.
Hitoshi couldn't blame her for leaving really. After his father fell into alcohol, they argued every night, and sometimes kitchenware were about. She wasn't getting the life she deserved. Not with her son, and definitely not with her wife.
The divorce was inevitable so Hitoshi didn't cry nor apoligize for being left alone. She left with a kiss on his forehead, and marched on.
Life had never been fair to him before, so why would it be any different now?
Two months after the divorce, his father thought it best to transfer him to a cheaper school. The move was nothing new, and thanks to his previous school, Hitoshi knew how to redirect his new peers' attention from him. He proudly declared his quirk, and their reaction to it was a mixture of fear, jealousy, and curiosity.
He never made friends because he knew where that would lead. He kept them at arm's length and mostly kept to himself. Despite this, a few of them tried to push him out of his bubble. He couldn't remember what brought it on, but they called him arrogant and that he needed to be taught a lesson.
Come that afternoon, Hitoshi got himself in his first fight in middle school.
He landed a few punches but they landed more. After biding his time, Hitoshi got them, one insulting word at a time, to hit each other. They turned on each other, and Hitoshi escaped before they could remember him being there. He was still suspended for being a part of it though.
Hitoshi didn't feel bad about it. In fact, he was mildly delighted by it. It felt good to fight again, and that somehow, he managed to walk away without a single bruise on his body.
After a week passed, he returned to a class that remained indifferent to him. They sneaked glances towards him and continued to avoid him. Unfortunately, those self-serving pricks who got him suspended in the first place still had the nerve to still talk to him. Befriend him, even.
Hitoahi could see their plastic smiles from a mile away. He tried his best to get them to stop talking to him, but they were just as stubborn as he was. Hitoshi never found a way to successfully get rid of them despite using his quirk on them multiple times. More annoyingly, they never even tried to fight it. They simply played it off as something friends can acceptably do.
Not only did they act like they knew him, but they also violated his quirk by throwing in ideas that they would do if they had his quirk. Hitoshi could only laugh at the irony that he was the one labelled as a villain when people without power misused their socially acceptable quirks for various misdeeds.
They tried multiple times to rope Hitoshi into their misdeed but Hitoshi stayed firm; just as his dream to become a hero never faltered.
He knew it would be so much easier to make them stop with his quirk. All it took was one word and he could all miracolously wish this away, but a hero would never do that. At least, a hero with a choice wouldn't do that.
Hitoshi's quirk was all about taking away choices. That alone narrowed his already limited heroic path to lesser options. He didn't have to like it, but it didn't mean he had to curse it either. He knew that his quirk was better suited for a villain than a hero, but the heart couldn't choose what it yearns for. If he had to act like the villain to get people to respond to him, and in turn activate his quirk, he'd do it - all in the name of being a hero.
After all, they mocked him for his quirk to begin with. What difference would it make if he did that to them, too?
With his mind made up, Hitoshi re-aligned his focus on his ultimate goal. He fueled his ambition with the pain and anger he'd bottled up all these years to prove them all wrong. He'd show them that he could become a hero in a world that relied heavily on battle oriented quirks. He'd show them that anyone with a "villainous" quirk could become a hero.
Hitoshi worked harder than anyone else in his school to achieve that. He studied harder than any student, stayed up for countless nights until he received the highest marks and praises - much to the indignation of his peers.
The biggest, and proudest, 'fuck you' he came up with happened when the result of Yuuei's exam arrived. Out of the eight applicants in his class, Hitoshi was the only one who passed the written exams, and consequently, allowed to take the practical test.
Yuuei was the school of his dreams.
It was the most prestigious hero school in the country, perhaps even, the world. It was where All Might started his journey, and Hitoshi, ever the faithful follower of his shadow, wanted to make his mark there. It wasn't going to be easy given the school's popularity and cullimg system, but he was going to show them that he could make it.
He couldn't stop himself from smirking like an actual villain when the news arrived. His classmates, who were all bark and no bite, fell off the ladder, while he remained on top.
And then - reality once again held him back.
Hitoshi fell to his knees as a loud explosion threw his focus into disarray. A student with a metal body roared as he demolished one robot after the other, taking in villain points without effort all the while Hitoshi pushed himself to runaway.
This is unfair, he thought. I've gotten this far and I can't even – A Venator slammed him to the side, and before he could retaliate, the robot exploded at hands of another examinee.
One point.
He couldn't even manage just a single point.
In place of the fallen Venator came another, its red orbed eyes flashed menacingly at Hitoshi as it approached for the kill. Hitoshi reached for a loose pipe nearby and held it close to defend himself.
The robot swung its metal arm and Hitoshi ducked under it. He tripped on shaky limbs and tried to stand tall. A searing hot energy blasted through the robot before he could stab his pipe on its unprotected wiring.
Hitoshi fell to his knees as the exposed wiring sizzled and sparked before his eyes. The longer he stared at the demolished robot before him, the more Hitoshi began to realize that there was no way he was going to pass this exam. This was the end of his journey, and he barely even reached the beginning.
The Venator's eyes started to abruptly blink, flashing in a way that meant trouble. People clamoured away, afraid of the incoming explosion but Hitoshi didn't care. He simply stayed there, ready to take the hit. If he couldn't make this, then there was nowhere else for him to go.
He had no friends, his father couldn't care less about him or what he did, and he was a failure. An attention-seeking-kid doomed to be a villain by his quirk.
This was for the best.
Hitoshi closed his eyes and let the robot's remaining electric power sift through his skin, prickling him with a sensation that at least made him feel alive.
Just before the robot exploded on his face, Hitoshi felt someone's heel jab his chest and kicked him away from the explosion. He rolled to a stop just in time to see a wall of light shield him from metallic debris. As the dust settled, a dark skinned teen with light blond hair grinned from the rubble.
"Phew! That was a close call."
He had one hand raised towards where Hitoshi and the other powerless examiners were thrown to avoid being hit by the self-destructing robot; while the other manuevered a large blade of light that stabbed the Venator on its head.
He flicked his hands and both light constructs melted away. While everyone seemed to go back to running away or desperately trying to beat a single robot, the dark skinned boy walked over to offer Hitoshi a hand.
Hitoshi stared at his hand like it was poison, and promptly swatted it away.
The boy retracted his hand, but didn't let Hitoshi off the hook that easily. "If you wanted to die, I suggest you do it elsewhere," the boy said without hesitation.
Hitoshi's heart stopped. Was that how his resignation to the fight looked like? Suicide?
Hitoshi must've taken his time to respond because the blond chuckled and grabbed him by the arm to get him back on his feet. "You came here to be a hero didn't you?" Hitoshi frowned, wondering why this stranger was helping him
"Then stop trying to do what you can't and focus on what you can do. Being paralyzed by fear and failure won't get you anywhere, and frankly its kind of stupid, just taking that hit like a bitch."
Hitoshi felt his vein pop at the underhanded words of reassurance. They didn't even know each other, and quite frankly, Hitoshi only saw everyone here as competition.
"I don't need your help," Hitoshi hissed as he pushed the shorter boy away, who held his hands up in surrender.
"All right boss, I'm sorry, you can't fight. No need to be an asshole about it to someone who just saved your life."
Hitoshi's eye twitched. He had more important things to worry about than this. Hitoshi typically wouldn't use his quirk for his own benefit, but he would make an exception for that boy.
"You know what," the boy said as he skipped into the air where light platforms formed beneath his foot. "I'll help you get started. If you pass, I hope you help me in the future. Call it an insurance, kay?"
The boy threw a Venator high up into the air and cut it in half with bright colored blades conducted by his hand. The pieces dropped to the ground, trapping people beneath the rubble.
Hitoshi stared wide eyed in horror at the people left to suffer under the fallen droid, then glared at the blond. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Nothing much, just helping you get those points. See ya, circles." Just like that, the boy ran off to eliminate more robots.
Hitoshi tore his attention away from the lunatic, and towards the mountain of metal that trapped a few examiners underneath its weight. He could hear them screaming for help, but everyone was too preoccupied with themselves to care.
Hitoshi reminded himself that he too needed to crunch in villain points, but the more he heard them screaming, the more he felt inclined to help them.
A hero is meant to save people, and that is exactly what he did. He used his quirk to calm down the people that were too terrified to work with him, and pulled out maybe eight or ten people underneath the rubble. He really lost count after that because the blond kept leaving the Venators he'd broken to immobilize others from moving.
Hitoshi was jut strung along the other kid's lack of sympathy for their competitors and picked up after him.
He realized this pattern a little late and before he could break away from the blond's war path, the siren finally went off. Present Mic's voice echoed through the speakers and officially declared the end of the exams.
The board flashed the highest points attained and Hitoshi clenched his fists bitterly. Those were numbers he could only ever dream of having. He looked around the people that thanked him for his help, but scowled. Saving people didn't matter. Not in this field. This was a test of strength not character, and he absolutely blew it.
The kid from earlier watched the screen flip through the anonymous scores from nearby and let out a hefty laugh. Hitoshi growled. That bastard probably made it in, all because of his quirk that enabled him to sharpen light. If only the faculty knew how many people he's hurt because he acted without thinking.
Hitoshi returned home with a sour look permanently glued on his face. He couldn't remember if he cried or if he was just too frustrated to shed a tear. Nevertheless, Hitoshi knew this was the end.
He had little to no motivation to do anything after that. He was so certain that he'd pass the hero test in Yuuei given his outstanding test scores, that he didn't apply to any other high school in the prefecture. This left him with nothing to look forward too, and the problem of which school to enroll in should he even want to.
His father certainly didn't care and left him on his lonesome.
Hitoshi barely ate, rarely got out of bed, nor did he bother to change clothes. He just laid in bed, twisting and rolling around in his depressive state. He was just starting to get used to his self-depreciative routine when a letter he didn't expect to arrive, arrived.
His father - looking the happiest he'd ever seen him since his mother left - was the first to break the news to him. He wanted to open the letter together, and Hitoshi, who suspected it to be just a courtesy letter telling him he didn't make the cut to be a hero, allowed it. He had very little in him to care anymore.
"Hitoshi Shinsou-" All Might said with that stupidly huge grin of his that never failed to give Hitoshi hope, "The limitations of your quirk may have hindered you from getting enough points to rank in the hero exams. But fear not, boy! We grade not only on the heroics young heroes show but the heart in which guides them to true heroism."
The message shifted into multiple shots of Hitoshi helping one applicant after another out of their trapped state before All Might returned. "RESCUE POINTS!" All Might shouted, followed by that booming laughter of his. "Your unbridled sense of compassion for others has earned you the approval of Yuuei's faculty! It is my honor... to welcome you as a new member of Yuuei Academy!"
Hitoshi couldn't remember when his father embraced him as he cried in joy and told him that he had never been more proud, nor could he remember when the letter stopped looping and he started crying. For the first time since he came to terms with his failure, Hitoshi told himself with enough conviction to make his younger self proud - he will become a hero.