Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

206. Chapter 206: Origin

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 206:

In Shiketsu High's Class 1, much of the faculty had gathered and were seated in extra chairs in the back of the room. There were too many of them actually that some teachers and Norasaki all had to stand, while Principal Memuria who had even showed up was seated next to this class's homeroom teacher who just sat down himself after calling up his student. Hazano glanced next to him at the principal who had shown up without giving an explanation, then he looked back ahead and got his clipboard ready for his notes that he would take on his student's report. He's finally going to tell us what it is.

The third years in the hero course had to present their reports they had been working on through the third term to all of their classmates. The reports were long enough that they started presenting in early March to be able to get through everyone's by the end of the school year, as only a couple of students could go a day, if more than one. They still had to keep up with all their other subjects, after all, while they were working on their reports and presenting them and editing them into final versions. Teachers were also allowed to show up for the students' presentations, and a few of the teachers in the room had come to other presentations but so far only one at a time, and mainly for students who they had worked closely with over the past three years or specifically on the report.

Muoko Kimi turned her head to the left with a sharp glance back towards some of her teachers who did not show this much interest in her report that she presented the day before. Her eyes shifted back towards Zach's desk though where her classmate just got up from his seat. He walked towards the front of the room without any paper or notes, though he did have a storage drive that he plugged into the computer on the teacher's desk. Zach grabbed the remote off the desk and he walked for the middle of the room in front of where the screen would appear on the blackboard.

Zach's eyes scanned his classroom. The others who already went look annoyed. Some who were more against me yesterday seem to pity me more right now instead. Himazuri and Kotsumura might have done some stuff for me behind my back. I'm glad. Zach analyzed their frustrated expressions as mainly focused on the fact that he had brought more attention from the faculty for his report. Then again, even the ones who were pissed at him for getting this much attention despite his report topic being unknown, were still interested themselves in finally figuring out what it was Zach had spent so much time on. He had even given it to them as excuses before when they asked what he was doing when people had died the day before, shocking his classmates that he would admit that though some suspected he may have been lying those times.

His expression was serious as he faced his classmates and teachers. He held the remote down at his right side and took in a deep though steady breath to prepare himself. Here we go. Focus. Be convincing. Change their minds. "My report title," Zach began without further ado. He clicked a button on the remote and stepped to the side to allow the first slide to appear on the screen that he did not look back at. "Is: The Origin of Quirks, and the Relation of Death to the Understanding of Human History."

What did he just say? Dendo repeated it in his head as he read off the title on the screen, but the topic caught him too off guard to close his mouth quickly.

Zach did not pause at all though after introducing his report topic. "Can anyone tell me what caused the emergence of Quirks?" Zach wondered to the classroom. "The simple explanation you know. Anyone?" He asked quicker and rose his tone telling someone to work along with him here.

Kotsumura spoke up, "Evolution."

"Good," Zach said with a nod at his blond friend whose response was one he was expecting. "What else? Anything more specific?" Zach added.

Flugeru decided to play along too and he said loudly what he knew, "Genetics."

"Yeah," Zach agreed again with another nod. "Those are the answers. The simple answers we all know. Global understanding of Quirks indicates that the existence of Quirks is likely the next stage in human evolution. And we back that up because it is genetics that determine the Quirks that most people receive. We use the fact that inheritance of Quirks work similarly to other traits of the human body, to back up the theory that Quirks are inherently a genetic trait."

Zach paused and he flipped to the next slide that showed a giraffe with a short neck and one with a long neck reaching for leaves on a tree. "The existence of Quirks is more complex than that however. Lamarck's theory of evolution was that organisms that changed during life would pass down traits to offspring. Giraffes with short necks stretched them to reach treetops, and they passed down that trait to their offspring. Lamarck was wrong though, as we all know. Giraffes did not stretch their necks. Instead, imagine a selection of ten thousand giraffes. All with different length necks, and the trees are all just as tall as the tallest giraffe, but the shorter ones can still reach some of the leaves too."

What is he talking about here? Enorma was feeling like she would have been losing interest and thinking that her student was trailing off on a strange rant, if it was anyone but Sazaki. Instead she just leaned forward in her seat and looked closer at the teen who continued in a steady tone to all the people watching him explain evolution.

"The giraffes who were born with the genetic trait of having longer necks, would be able to eat all of the leaves on all the trees. The ones born with traits for shorter necks would only be able to eat the leaves of the lower branches they could reach. Thus, when the next generation of giraffes came around, the ones who were stronger and better fed and better fit for their environment would reproduce more. More giraffes with longer necks would be born and fewer with shorter would. This was Charles Darwin's theory, one that is widely accepted across the world as the correct Theory of Evolution. It suggests that natural selection determines which traits pass on because the animals that are born with better chances of survival will reproduce more, and that it has nothing to do with them changing after birth. Survival of the fittest, therefore, determines evolution."

Zach paused and then continued with his tone raising up in intonation, "So how then, did humanity come to reach nearly 85 percent of Quirk holders in a few hundred years since the emergence of Quirks?" He posed the question and flipped the slide again to continue without giving much time for anyone to ponder it. "Many people believe that Quirks are the next stage in human evolution. Yet we know, or at least we think we know, that evolution take millions of years to work like this. For a single genetic mutation to be passed on to offspring, and those offspring to reproduce more and expand and spread across the world, ultimately out-surviving the other members of the population who did not have that genetic trait. Yet this was not a process that took a million years. Or even one that took a thousand years. What's even stranger about that, is that humanity has one of the lowest reproduction rates of any species on Earth, suggesting that any evolution from mutation would take far longer than it would for other species that could have hundreds of generations in a couple years. That's why in studying Quirks and trying to learn more about them, scientists did things like experimenting on mice, to be able to study multiple generations over shorter periods of time."

A lot of the people in the classroom opened their eyes wide at what Zach just said as a casual mention in his report. Zach made sure to touch on it, "These experiments were condemned and shut down for their cruelty. They have been every time scientists go too far, and that is a good thing, but it leaves us still very much in the dark as to the origin of Quirks. What they really are, if they can't just be accepted as another random mutation that was passed down to offspring. And that, is something that Quirks could not be, if that glowing child really was the first to have a Quirk."

Zach flipped to the next slide which showed a picture of the glowing baby he was referring to that everyone in the room already knew about. "This Liang Wei, born in Qingqing City, is believed to have been the first recorded instance of a Quirk emerging in a human. This is a wrong assumption that we continue to make in the present, but that we make because this was the time that scientists first dubbed the word 'Quirk.' Quirks existed before this child, however."

"Sazaki," Kimona sensei started, interrupting the report as he spoke up towards his student. Zach looked to the man who hesitated at the expression his student made in his direction, but he shook his head and then said, "This is sounding like a conspiracy theory more than a report on facts."

"Darwin's revolutionary theory was nothing more than conspiracy to the people of his time," Zach replied in a calm voice to his teacher who opened his eyes much wider at the teen who said that in a completely serious voice like what he was going to continue with would be just as groundbreaking. It made him lean back and just stare at his student who continued, "Most scientists we look back on as a geniuses, were considered heretics and idiots by the people of their times, because those other people believed in other ideas that those scientists countered with new theories. It is the well-accepted facts that when challenged, make the challengers appear as fools. Yet I am right, and I do have evidence to back up my theories, which counter the accepted truth."

He can't be serious.

Is he really going to try and counter the theory of evolution?

Zach thinks he knows the origin of Quirks? I mean, he's strong but that's- that's outside his realm…

Sazaki… Has an extensive knowledge of this world, Memuria kept her focus on the teen whose presentation she was glad she came to witness. This is far more than I expected though.

Zach continued after Kimona's interruption. "The main reason Quirks cannot just be explained by the simple 'genetics' answer, is that after the emergence of that first child with his Quirk, they appeared all over the world rapidly. Now there have been explanations to fit this occurrence into the current theory. Something changed in the atmosphere. Climate change has been going on for thousands of years, and it is possible that chemicals that had never been in the atmosphere before were introduced due to human industrial production or radiation caused by our activities, which increased the potential for this specific mutation in places all over the world. Scientists have yet to find any proof to back that up, however it is one of the few explanations for how this mutation could have become so widespread in such a short time that it now covers every corner of the planet. That is not proof. Proof is not just the explanation to back up your theory. It cannot just be an excuse to give for why your theory does not work perfectly. And it is why the common explanations on the origin of Quirks is still just considered a theory in the scientific community, just like evolution, even if both are taught more as straight facts in school."

"There are other explanations though. Explanations that may be considered more far-fetched. Some would call them conspiracies, but to try and figure out the true origin of Quirks one has to look into all the possibilities. That is what I did." Zach paused and he let out a heavy breath, then took it back in in an intense way as he looked around his classroom, "It was something I put off for a long time. Something I knew, was off. That our shared belief on what Quirks were was flawed. I knew it, but…" Others in the classroom started staring at their classmate with wider eyes as he sounded like he was admitting something to them here. "I focused on other things, because this scared me more. The idea that, we were all wrong. And yet I had proof we were, and I saw the flaws in the reasoning behind our science, but I never really focused on looking into it because I did not think it was the most important thing to be doing at the time. Then this report came around, and I needed to come up with a topic to look into and research, and I knew that this was something I pushed so far from my mind but was something that I knew more about than most. And I also know, just how important educating and spreading knowledge on Quirks is." Zach finished that in a darker voice, even regretful as he said it.

He rose his gaze and continued in a strong voice, "But in the generations following Wei's birth, Quirks emerged at a rate too rapidly to explain away with genetic mutation and inheritance of traits by offspring. Unless! Quirks had already existed before Wei," Zach paused and he flipped to the next slide that showed a bar graph with the middle section of it missing. On the bottom of the graph were dates, years going by 20s and a huge section of the graph was just empty while only a few bars existed at the start, and a lot were at the end of it. "This data over the past several hundred years is nonexistent for a lot of it, due to the chaotic times that occurred because of the emergence of Quirks. In the beginning though, as Quirks were just starting to pop up all over the place, these are the age distributions for when people discovered their Quirks."

On the graph that the whole class was looking at, the bars in the very beginning were all high up on the y axis that was labeled 'Age.' The bars showing the average age that people discovered their Quirks was up in the twenties and thirties for the first few bars before the data suddenly cut off for a couple hundred years, then reemerged in recent history when the data started being kept again. In the recent history section though, it was much more obvious the difference in Quirk revelations, as the average age of Quirk discovery was under 5 years old across every data point.

"There are a few explanations as to why this happened," Zach said in reference to why the red bars were suddenly shorter in the past hundred years compared to the initial emergence of Quirks before the chaos. "During the years where global data is impossible to acquire because of how few areas in the world remained stable in the chaos, there could have been a gradual decline in the age when people started showing signs that they had Quirks. That is the assumption to be made and one could easily fill in the graph like this," Zach pressed a button that created a set of bars all a shade of blue instead of red going across the middle of the graph and gradually getting lower for a few hundred years with some variation but just a steady decline until it reached the bars of today.

"However," Zach continued and he made those bars disappear off the screen again. "That child who we believe to be the first to show a Quirk came out of the womb glowing. So we know that back then there were children who showed off their Quirks, and yet after the initial discovery, adults started popping up all over showing off that they had Quirks too. These older people with Quirks, I believe, had their Quirks since they were children as well. In our time we know that once a person hits a certain age it is unlikely to impossible for them to show signs of a Quirk later in life. Doctors declare children Quirkless if they don't show it off early enough, like I was declared before my Quirk revealed itself at age seven."

Everyone stared with wider eyes at their classmate who said in a lower voice, "When I accidentally killed my mother." He paused and then continued in a stronger though still low-pitched voice, "Which occurred because of the lack of understanding of Quirks. The lack of knowledge, and the fact that people are willing to accept the easy explanations rather than push the boundaries and find the truth." At this point, no one in the room questioned Zach's reasoning for his topic choice anymore. They stared at their classmate who stood before them broad-shouldered, talking with a purpose far beyond the grade he was looking for on their term paper.

"If my theory is correct," Zach continued, back on track more and with the full attention of his classmates and teachers more willing to listen to him after he made it personal like that. "Then those people were hiding their Quirks in fear before the 'first' child was born with one. They hid them because there was no explanation for the powers they had until scientists declared that Wei's glow was not dangerous. They said that there was nothing wrong with the boy, except that he glowed. And they declared that his special trait was just a 'Quirk,' or a unique trait specific to him likely from a combination of two of his parents' alleles and a mutation that had not existed beforehand. This scientific explanation gave these other people a chance. The child had just been born, so there was no way he had gotten his power through witchcraft, and he had not done anything wrong to be cursed, though at the time some people still did believe maybe the parents did something wrong to incur that glow in their child. Yet because the glow was not dangerous, even the people who blamed the parents considered that it was more likely the mother had come in contact with radioactive material during her pregnancy rather than she had been a witch herself."

"A witch?" Kotsumura asked, as it was the second time Zach mentioned the word without explaining why he was talking about witches here.

"If," Zach began loudly in a suggesting tone to his class. "We accept that there is the possibility that those adults who appeared to have Quirks after Liang Wei, had their Quirks since they were children when we know Quirks manifest, we have to question why they were in hiding. And the answer to that is simple. They were afraid. Up through the nineteenth, twentieth, and even into the twenty-first centuries there were trials for witches in certain parts of the globe. Anyone who showed a strange power or did something unGodly were considered heretics and witches, and even though in the 1900s and 2000s science and logic started to reign supreme, people still feared the unknown and what they could not control. If governments saw people showing off strange powers that were beyond their control, they would have taken these people and experimented on them. Dissected them to figure out what gave them power so that those governments could obtain the powers for themselves and weaponize them, as people at the time did with every technological advancement."

"Are you saying Quirks existed all the way back during those witch trials?" Memuria questioned her student, getting a lot of the others looking back to their principal who was watching him closely to see if that was what he was suggesting.

"I am," Zach replied. She did not respond afterwards, but Zach gave a longer rebuttal anyway, "And yes, I do believe there was a mix of mass hysteria that caused many people without any powers at all to be considered witches and burned and hanged. Yet we look back on the past from a modern perspective and we say, 'Witches could not have existed.' And why do we say that?" Zach wondered with a raise of his eyebrows and a look around his classroom. "We hear legends about monsters and local folklore talking about demons and strange occurrences throughout history, and yet we say that those things are just myth. We say that those things could not have happened. Books were written of men who could walk on water, or bring lightning down from the sky, and we say that they could not have existed. We don't include any of these stories in history. No matter how much record there was, no matter how many people claimed to see these things, at a certain point historians determined that those stories could not have existed. And this point, was in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries when our modern-day history books were written. When the history we now accept was written by men who knew those stories were impossible."

Zach watched a couple sets of eyes in the room widening, though most people were still just staring at him in confusion and waiting for him to explain more as they were lost as to what he was suggesting. "In the 1900s, religion started to take less importance as science and logic took over as the strongest beliefs in the world. In that time, the men and women who wrote the course of human history into books determined what was and was not real. And the later it got, the more they left out because of lack of proof. They determined, that because they did not see these things in their time, that they had never existed. And everyone else around the world hears these 'facts' that witches were not real, and that it was only mass hysteria that caused people of the past to kill their neighbors and families. People accepted those explanations, because they had never seen witchcraft either. They had never seen strange powers and abilities, and so when smart people told them that those things were impossible, they believed it. And people believed less and less in the strange stories even in their ancient religious texts, if those texts mentioned abilities that they knew in the present never could have and never will exist…"

"But what if that few hundred year period was the anomaly? What if that small period of so few signs of Quirks, was the one time in our history when those powers really did not exist? Or, that the people who still had those Quirks went into hiding because of what they had seen done to people like them over the past millennia of executions by the church?"

He flipped to another slide, with a dozen pictures pasted onto it showing inquisitions, and witch burnings, and mass hangings for blasphemy. "Throughout the West, from the time of the dark ages until around the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church was the strongest single power in the world. Priests and bishops and the pope had more power than kings and their lords in many places. People put their religion and faith before everything else in their lives." Zach paused and he clicked a button on his remote that circled figures in each of the images who had not been focused on by his classmates looking closer at the victims when Zach initially put up the slide.

In each one of the pictures, the inquisitors had crosses on their armor, and the judges at the witch trials were wearing religious garb. Zach explained in a simple tone, "And when people emerged with powers that could challenge their hierarchy, challenge the idea that Jesus was alone in his having strange powers, it was declared blasphemy. They got their power from the devil. They were witches who practiced witchcraft… And when there was a common understanding that to have these powers meant being a witch, someone being born with them might step into that path as they see they have a power and understand that they must be a witch if they have one. Then the church finds people like that in the woods doing the stereotypical latin readings and then using their powers, and they say that they're witches, and those people believe that they're witches, and everyone around sees that this was not hysteria and that there really are witches around they have to be panicked about, causing the hysteria itself."

Zach took in a breath as he spoke fast there, but he flipped right on to the next slide without stopping. "This is why if Quirks had emerged before our understanding of the 'first' emergence, they did not become as widespread as quickly as they did after the modern day emergence. Those who showed strange powers were executed for heresy and for witchcraft and for associating with the devil. Because the people of these times did not have the understanding of science to explain these powers as anything else but magic and devil worship... Or, that the ones showing the powers were gods. But those who would appear with their powers and start getting worshipped would have been even quicker to be attacked by armies of the church, executed with their whole families to cut out the bloodlines and make sure that no one else around them could appear with these strange powers. And though they did not understand the science behind it, what they were doing really was cutting Quirks out. They were succeeding, as those with powers were killed over and over for hundreds of years in stories well recorded not just in the West but across the world. Yutas here in Japan were beheaded for their spiritual rituals, and in every country I researched there were recordings of people executed by governments and mobs for using strange supernatural powers. Powers that those in the 1900s and 2000s determined were falsely recorded, due to their modern day understanding of what was and what was not possible."

"But today if you heard that a man walked on water, would you be surprised?" Zach asked his class. "If you heard a man turned water into wine. If you heard that someone split a sea, or a man created lightning with is hands, or that a kappa looking like a human with a shell on his back appeared," Zach looked towards Kameko who lowered his bottom lip as Zach called him a kappa. "Would you think twice about it being real? No! Because we all understand that it's completely possible that someone like those people I described could exist. And yet we believe that it could not have existed before the initial emergence of Quirks?"

"Why?"

"It's because people for a two hundred year span, give or take another hundred years, declared that those kind of things were impossible. So when they started happening, we believed that they just started happening as before then they could not have. And the fact that after Liang Wei was born, people all over the world at all different ages started showing off strange powers shows either one of two options, both of which back up the idea that Quirks existed long before Wei."

"One option, is that all those people were in hiding or just never attempted to use abilities and just discovered them after Wei's birth. They saw that science backed up that power as nothing strange or without a logical explanation, and so they felt safer to reveal that they also had their powers which were then also declared as Quirks by the scientific community. All different kinds of powers, somehow considered to be the same trait because it was the logical explanation at the time. The second option, is that Quirks can just emerge out of nowhere in people scattered around the world, which would mean that the origin of Quirks has far less a genetic reasoning behind it that we believe. It is impossible otherwise for Quirks to have spread so far so rapidly. I know that Quirks did not just randomly appear at this time though, and all those stories of the past were not all fake and folklore and myth. The fact is, most of history was passed down orally until the last thousand years or so, and even then much of the written history of any story that had a supernatural aspect was turned into just a fake legend during the time that logic reigned supreme. The logic that supernatural abilities were impossible for humans to have. A logic that we now know to be far from the truth, and yet something that we still base our entire history off of because we have not gone back to the stories of the past that were considered fake by historians who did not know what they were talking about. If they saw our world today they would not be able to wrap their minds around our current world much less than people farther in the past would, though those people would probably consider us all as gods if they saw us today."

"Sazaki," Hazano began. Zach nodded back towards his homeroom teacher who continued, "You've posed some interesting theories here, but do you have any proof to back them up? Most of what you're suggesting sounds like speculation, and unless you have proof then your research-"

"Most of what we currently believe is speculation," Zach countered right back at his homeroom teacher. "Because there is little to back up our current explanations of the origin of Quirks, but there is much more evidence to suggest my reasoning is better than our current theory." Zach flipped past several slides with a rapid click of the next button on his remote, showing his slideshow was already longer than most of his classmates who had gone before him. The title of the page he flipped to suggested he had just moved onto a different chapter of his report, quieting down his sensei who felt more like he was watching the presentation of a college thesis, or of the results of a scientific grant. "The cause of the chaotic period following the emergence of Quirks was not solely because of villains," Zach started to the class before him who stared at the slide titled 'Fear And Chaos.'

"'The mob fears what it doesn't understand.'" Zach stated in a low voice. "That was a quote from Philosophy on the Origin of Quirks, a book I read as a child that led me to fear my Quirk even more than I already did. No one understood my Quirk. People feared the power that Death was. The ability to take a life instantly, or to bring life, it was beyond the normal scope of Quirks and it scared people." Zach paused and he continued in a dark voice but steady to his classmates and faculty, "It was something I had feared happening from the time I was seven. I was terrified of the world finding out my Quirk, and I wore a glove just to cover up a contagious hand-fungus and pretended to be Quirkless until I was in high school in fear of what people would do if they found out. I lived in fear that they would call me a monster and put me on trial, because I was afraid, that they would fear me. And then as I stood there in front of the judge, he told me that the Quirk Death, was too dangerous a Quirk. All the other reasons I was up there on trial, faded from my mind. As I realized what I was doing there. As I thought about the way people had looked at me since hearing the name of my Quirk. It was exactly what I thought would happen when it was finally revealed to the world what my power was."

He shook his head and then continued while raising his voice, "Fear, causes people to turn on each other. And my power was- is terrifying. I myself was so afraid of it that I call the dark form I have 'Nightmare,' because for years I refused to believe it existed. I was so afraid of that dark monster that I convinced myself that it was just a nightmare each time I had seen it. For most of my life, I lived in terror of my own Quirk." Zach shook his head in a disappointed way, "And the cause for this is a lack of education. People don't know enough about Quirks, and so not enough is taught about Quirks in school, and children are just told not to use them because it's not safe, but of course they're going to use their superpowers. They all want to be heroes, and yet between kindergarten and high school there is no training, no education courses personalized for children to deeper explain their Quirks to them, and because of this there are kids who are born with 'cursed' Quirks that in many cases turn them into villains. Such as someone like Twice, who split himself into a hundred different versions and went mad as all the versions of himself killed each other leaving him insane as he did not know if he was the real Twice or not."

Porrolo's eyes bulged in front of Zach at the sound of that. Zach continued, "Or even, Shigaraki Tomura." Zach watched as a lot of looks in the room got a lot darker, some even warning him to stop here before he kept going. He went on though, "I know Shigaraki massacred his family with his Quirk when it manifested." He said it and ground his teeth but continued in a pained way, "I know he did because it's what I did. We say that we understand Quirks more now. We say that we live in a logical time still and we consider Quirks as just part of science, but there are people who show Quirks that have nothing to do with their parents' Quirks. My own parents, had the Quirks of Titanium, and Healing Tears. Now I could see that maybe my mom's ability to heal people by crying on them, could be related to me maybe bringing back the dead, but that is a far stretch from what her Quirk was. No one understood why I had that Quirk. People are born Quirkless when both parents had Quirks, and people are born with Quirks when both parents did not have them. And we don't understand. And people who show off dangerous Quirks, ones that scare us and are too creepy, are often shunned and treated badly- And don't think I am justifying Shigaraki Tomura!" Zach snapped into his classroom full of judgmental looks. "He massacred my loved ones in front of me and carved this scar into my face," Zach rose his right hand and pointed at the scar under his right eye that erased all those expressions from his classroom.

"But!" Zach called out, frustration in his voice as he said it so his classmates saw how hard it was to actually get this out. "But I still see what happened to him as a tragedy, and something that could have been avoided if our society treated Quirks differently. If we understood them more… And Shigaraki's not even the worst-"

Zach grit his teeth, shaking his head again in a frustrated way with a more pained expression. "My best friend. He, messed with his own mind as a child. He was experimenting with his Quirk because no one knew the dangers and no one explained to him the dangers of using his electricity on his own mind."

People in the class started opening their eyes wide, each one of them freezing and tensing up at what Zach was saying to them so angrily and yet so sad at the same time. "He was just a kid, and he isolated a part of his mind that only cared about winning, and he gave that part full control… Kaminari, he didn't know what he was doing when he did it. He didn't know, that by giving that part of his mind full control he was giving it up forever, because the part of his mind that cares about winning would never give back control." Zach shook his head and closed his eyes for a second, "Of course it wouldn't, because it knows that the things it was blocking out in order to keep winning would come back and he might start losing. He- he was a little kid and he, he turned himself into the biggest monster in the world because, because no one explained to him the dangers of using his Quirk like that. No one knows the dangers enough, because we are still in the early stages of understanding what Quirks are and where they came from, and we're too afraid to teach everyone how to use and understand their Quirks because we believe that somewhere in the world is someone whose Quirk could have the potential to destroy the world. We are so afraid of that person emerging that we would rather stay in the dark about Quirks and tell everyone to just not use them until they're training to be heroes, and that has created more villains than anything else in the past centuries. It is that fear that creates villains and breeds chaos!"

"There is a saying that without the emergence of Quirks, mankind would be in the Space Age exploring the depths of the universe by now. I believe that. Because our world stagnated. Why? Because the appearance of Quirks created chaos. Mass chaos across the world that bad people took advantage of. Yes, it was Quirks themselves that created that chaos, but villains took advantage of the chaos to make it even worse. They took the fear people felt and amplified it, used the fear to gather followers and-"

"Sazaki," Norasaki started. He cut off the student as some of the teachers had been now, and he started to the boy giving all these baseless claims, "We do not have enough record from that time to say that what you are saying is-"

"It is fact," Zach responded without letting his teacher finish. "I'm not making these claims baselessly," Zach said with a stern look at the bald faculty member whose eyes widened a bit more at how firmly Sazaki was staring into his eyes and stating that. "If you want to know the truth, this topic has plagued me ever since I met a man who did not have a name for his Quirk." Zach paused and he took in a deep breath, before stating in a low voice to his classroom, "There are Quirks that allow people to live beyond the normal lifespan for humans. We accept that that is a possibility, don't we? That someone could live with a power that allows them to live for an extended amount of time compared to the rest of us? That someone in the world could have a Quirk that even allows them to be immortal?" Zach wondered it and glanced around the room at unnerved and disbelieving faces but not one straight out denying what he was saying.

"And this man I met, had lived for hundreds of years," Zach continued. He said it and continued with a shake of his head, "On our own world. He had lived for so long, that it scared me. I did not even want to think about the implications when he did not have a name for his Quirk, because at the time he was born they were not naming Quirks." Others stared at Zach with their eyes huge, and Zach continued in a darker voice, "And he was not the only one. Eziano Mozcaccio and I spoke once…" Everyone held their breaths at how Zach just started, keeping quiet now as their classmate continued, "…And he told me that many had tried to kill him over the past three hundred years. He wished me luck," Zach said it darkly and the room was completely silent with everyone staring at him with their eyes bulging at that sentence. "And every villain in this world who I met who knew of him, were terrified of this man. A person who had existed long before any of them. A Shadow Boss stronger than the rest, who was older than everyone, who was treated as a myth and a legend by heroes and villains alike."

"And All For One?" Zach wondered to his classroom. "We all know that he has the ability to take Quirks from people and give them to others. So no matter how rare a Quirk giving a longer life may be that we don't see any signs of them, All For One had the ability to take that immortality-type Quirk. And he did," Zach said firmly. "He did not just appear to lead the League of Villains. He was Shigaraki's master. He was the leader of the Underworld, known as the kingpin by all Japanese villains and respected and feared by most villains outside of Japan too."

"How do you know-"

"Because I dwelled in the Underworld! For years I have," Zach said with a dart of his eyes towards Dendo who started saying that towards him. Dendo's green eyes widened again as did some of the others', but Zach continued to them all quickly, "And I spent time with heroes, with villains, with vigilantes and anti-heroes. I have been across this world and have seen the underworld below the surface. It's how I know that people with Quirks that aren't easy to understand are the first to become villains! It's how I know that the chaos that occurs in the light is always taken advantage of by villains who exist in the shadows. Even if the root causes of that chaos were unavoidable and un-spurred by villains, villains use the chaos to become stronger."

"Take All For One as an example," Zach continued. "In a time when Quirks were just emerging, he appeared in the chaos. People were afraid of those with Quirks. Why didn't they have Quirks but their neighbors did? Why was it that their neighbors were suddenly so much more powerful than them, and there was nothing they could do to stop them? And that fear and jealousy led to hatred. When people fear something enough, and they gather together and discuss that fear, they get angry. It becomes a mob. As they realize that they don't have to fear because there are a lot of them who feel the same way." Zach paused and his voice was darker as he delved into the human mind and the creating of this mob mentality. "And when someone in that group who hates those with Quirks gets radical, they go out and kill a bunch of people who have Quirks because they feel they're right to do so. And then people with Quirks feel more isolated and afraid of those who don't have them again, but they have power to resist. And so they fight back. And some people without Quirks also side with them and call the other Quirkless who attacked them racists, and so even the Quirkless don't know who among them is on their side and who is not. Some people with Quirks hide them in fear. Others use them to fight back. Many try to find peace and come to a compromise, but villains abuse the fact that good people are too focused on fighting each other and they make their moves during civil wars and internal strife and when those cases of domestic terrorism are so high, and they just add even more to the chaos!"

Kotsumura was breathing faster, leaning forward over his seat. Himazuri read Zach's mind but it did not help as his thoughts were solely on everything he was saying, making more sweat form over her face like it was on many of her classmates' at the sound of what sounded like a history lesson of a time they had never learned much about. "And All For One emerged in that chaos," Zach said, lowering his voice again as he was starting to speak faster and louder there for a minute. "He appeared and took control of it, in the shadows. Taking Quirks from some and giving them to others who were jealous they did not have them. He gave Quirks to people who had been abused and who were afraid their whole lives because they did not have them, and those people pledged their lives to him. He stole the Quirk of someone who could live forever, or at least for a very, very long time. And he has been around from the dawn of Quirks," Zach said that in the darkest voice while everyone in his classroom just stared at him with dropped jaws and sweaty expressions. "Or at least, from what we know as the dawn of Quirks."

"But that chaos I described happened in a world that was already based on science and logic. Even though we accepted Quirks were a scientific discovery and not magic or religion, it still created that hatred and fear that it always had in the past. Even though we understood it more that it shouldn't have made us so afraid, as people fear the unknown more than anything! Despite all that, the world still descended into chaotic times for centuries before heroes got control over it. The majority of the time since Quirks emerged has been that chaotic period, but even though things have settled and calmed down, that fear still exists. People still are unsure about Quirks, so unsure that they would rather never use their own and most have not wanted anyone else to be using them either. Nearly our whole world is full of Quirks, and yet in our society barely anyone uses them, and that's because for the last several generations people still remembered that chaos too vividly."

"They knew that the peace of the current age was better than the chaos of the past, so they were willing to accept the negatives of the times today if it meant they could keep their peace. Change, scared them. Because change is what created all that unrest and chaos in the first place. A world on fire…" Zach slowed down and he flipped a slide again. And people looked at the picture on the screen of a teen in a courthouse looking back with a scary determined look on his face below his teary eyes. "I understood that fear from a very young age. And I believed I saw it that day. I believed at this moment," Zach motioned his head back at the screen where he had paused an old recording of his first trial on his own face. "That what I was faced with was a lynching mob coming after me because of my Quirk alone. Because they were so afraid of me. And even though I wanted to be a hero, and save people like my parents, what happened to me pushed me away from this society. I admit that my decisions were wrong, but they're the exact decisions that so many of our worst villains make and feel they were pushed into. Fear, creates villains. People afraid of what others would do to them, join others who they think understand their isolation from the rest of society. And when society would rather ignore certain rare cases, and treat some Quirks as 'unheroic' from the moment a kid develops it, and all that is told to that child is to never use their Quirk again? Of course it breeds villains."

"Because those people who feel isolated are taken advantage of by the villains who already exist," Zach continued softly. "That's why it was so easy for All For One in that time of chaos where so many people like that existed in a world that isolated people on all sides. Yet it was not much harder for Shigaraki," Zach said in a deep and dark tone. "I watched as he recruited people who were no more than low-level thugs, who he gave purpose. People who wanted to use their Quirks but society told they couldn't, because their Quirks were not 'hero-material' and so the only other place they could use them was with villains." Zach shook his head in regret and admitted, "I say this, through not just what I witnessed but what I experienced myself. I was used by villains, as much as I thought my choices were my own. I was an impressionable kid who heard that he could do whatever he wanted if he joined them. That I'd be allowed to use my Quirk however I liked, with villains."

Zach's classmates stared at him in shock and awe as he admitted these things to them without holding anything back. "And I wanted to save lives," Zach continued. "So they let me, and I became even more disillusioned as villains let me save people and heroes wouldn't. I didn't understand it. And if I, as someone who was trying to be a double agent, secret anti-hero, could see how appealing it was to be one of them, then I see how easy it was for them to recruit so many others. Death, was a Quirk that was perfect for a villain. It was a Quirk so unstable and powerful that it terrified everyone, and it made villains see something they could take advantage of. And as I saw what happened in Terra, and across the rest of this world as I dwelled in the shadows that year I was gone, I could see what had happened to me happening to different people at all different stages. I could see the kids who were being bullied and who were afraid of their own powers that no one ever taught them to control or educated them about the dangers of. I could see teenagers being enticed by villains and dragged into their crimes after being shunned by others around them. As 'peaceful' as our society had become, it had become an oppressive system towards a portion of the population because of a 'rational' fear."

"Fear of that apocalyptic Quirk appearing has impacted law across the world for the past century. Bad people continue to take advantage of the fear and the oppressed, making even more bad people who I don't think ever had to become villains if things were just a little different. Yet it's because of these villains that people want things to stay the way they've been since heroes got the chaos under control, so that things don't revert to an even worse time. But that's where we're wrong. We have decided to give up on progress for the sake of security. People say that they don't want everyone training Quirks because that apocalyptic Quirk is bound to arise. How wrong is that though? We have superpowerswers and we've decided to live in a world where we don't use them to better our society, where instead we only allow the use of them to protect from those who use them illegally."

"The tech I use in my costume," Zach continued. "It was created through the use of Quirks in methods never before used but could be used now because of slight variations in law codes in certain parts of the world. My own arm, is only a result of Quirk-based technological advancement," Zach lifted his left arm and turned it with a grin rising on his face. "The most advanced technology in the world was all created by Quirk-assisted tools or with materials made by Quirks or energy that someone with a Quirk that had boundless amounts of it could create." The people in front of Zach stared at him in even more awe as he revealed more facts that most of them were completely unaware of before this.

"It's so easy to see how much the world has stagnated after having the sharpest rise in population growth back in the 1900s and 2000s. It was the biggest technological boom throughout all of history. Humans were always advancing before that. Centuries of advancements that led to the point where we were finally able to come up with a scientific response to Quirks instead of people just condemning them for being mutants or monsters or witches. And though that still did happen on a smaller scale and chaos rose across the world, logic and science won out in the end as we see today. We won, because we accepted that scary new idea of people with powers and adapted our society to it. We pushed forward into a world where those scary things would be accepted instead of just persecuting those with powers and killing the ones we're afraid of. The change wasn't inevitable. The world didn't have to adapt to Quirks. It could have done what it did for thousands of years before and just denied it, oppressed that change and killed those with Quirks, but this time the world was used to progress. We wanted to believe Quirks could make life better, but after the decades and centuries of chaos people lost that desire for advancement to rather search for any means of finding control and peace. People desired only one thing, and that was safety from a terrifying world, a safety heroes provided."

"History often leaves out the 'why' when people choose how to live. Why was it we decided to accept that the government could stop anyone from using their special abilities? Why was it that we accepted that only a small part of the population could use their Quirks? It was because we wanted to feel safe." Zach gave the answer as if it was simple, and it was sounding pretty simple after all he had just said. "Humans decided that security mattered above all else. But if we had thought that way back when that first Luminescent Baby showed itself, well, people would have killed that kid in order to keep to the status quo. Fear of the unknown, is the worst kind of fear. And when those Quirks appear that have consequences beyond what we're ready to face in our current system, people are afraid of that eventuality of apocalypse and want to postpone it by just having everybody except heroes to stop training or even studying their Quirks. Yet Quirks have changed our world completely, and we still live like they haven't! We pretend that it wasn't as impactful as it was, and we returned back to the way things were before Quirks existed for almost all of the population."

"This is the cornerstone of my report. The modern history of Quirks begins with that Luminescent Baby, Liang Wei, and all that has happened since has been what we look at as the entire history of Quirks. If we look at what happened before though and admit that the historians before Wei left out half of history because it did not fit with their acceptance of what was 'possible,' we see a trend that carried over millennia. We see stories of people with powers in every part of the world since the dawn of man. Since the first written words, that almost always described some sort of Godly figure and miraculous deeds that the people at the time could only attribute to being godly or monstrous because they understood nothing of science. During a few centuries of technological revolution however, all of these religions, stories, myths and legends alike, were all determined by the people of the time who for the first time became globalized, as nothing but fiction. The internet came to global consensus that denied local stories that even the locals were already iffy on, and who their children started to realize were just myths passed down by their ancestors because that's what everyone else in the world called them. And so the origin of Quirks became Liang Wei, because in the generations before him, the world had transformed each and every one of those stories into nothing more than fiction and legend. It is in that gap between when people started deciding that all those legends had to be fake, and the emergence of someone who could have shown that maybe the impossible was possible, that the world forgot that these impossible things were not new. They were not some brand new occurrence. It was just the first time that they were able to be recorded on videos, viewed across the world in seconds, and scientifically explained."

"But all our explanations of where Quirks come from are flawed. We scientifically explained them because that was the common belief of the time. The same reason those powers were explained away as works of Gods and of devils and witches, because those were the beliefs of the people of the times. We accept that Quirks have to be based on evolution and genetics despite the flaws in that logic, because we believe in science! We decided that the world is run by logic, a long time ago. And so we have fit this crazy existence of superpowerswers into our explanations of 'why' things are the way they are. Just as everyone else, throughout all of history has done."

"But then begs the question," Zach continued sternly and flipped to another slide to continue to his awed classmates and teachers watching him without interruption now. "Why is it that Quirks expanded exponentially now and not in the past? The biggest flaw in my reasoning that Quirks have existed throughout history in those scattered cases, is that when Quirks appeared this time they spread all over the place. And since they spread so rapidly too, why wouldn't they have spread so rapidly before that? And I think the answer to that is in the fact that for millennia, people who showed these kinds of powers were killed along with everyone associated with them. Massacred for defending friends and family who showed those strange powers, which cut off bloodlines at the source. But even considering the times when it didn't happen like that! Even when the people who showed off those powers were not considered as monsters and witches, we still see reasons why their bloodlines did not expand and their Quirks ended with them."

Zach's counters to his own reasonings seemed damning to his whole theory. Even with the witch trials he mentioned, the scale at which he was talking about this made it nearly impossible that Quirks could have been kept from spreading sooner. He continued though, "The ones who were not considered as monsters, weren't because they were Godly men and women. Anyone who showed off a power in the past and used it selfishly, used it for their own gain, they would be seen by the rest of society as heathens who needed to die. The only ones who could show off powers and be accepted instead of rejected, were those who believed that their powers were given by the Gods of their times. If we take Jesus Christ," Zach continued, "and we assume that he had a Quirk, then we understand why his Quirk did not get passed on. Because holy men like him chose paths of celibacy! Figures seen as Gods, often had no need for material possession, for desire, and it was because of their lack of these desires that people saw them as Godly and did not persecute but instead followed them! Yet if a man could do the things that Jesus could do, and he used them to seduce women, or to kill his enemies, people would have hunted him down as a monster and a demon whose power they feared rather than respected. It's only the ones who did not scare anybody who were able to withstand the oppressive society around them that normally rejects Quirks."

"However then comes the question of the strong," Zach continued right away. "What about the people who are feared by their societies, but who were strong enough to face off against all those who resisted them? Or even conquer them and rule over them as kings? They're the ones who I believe the stories are born from. Gods, and monsters, who were so powerful that the people of their time passed around stories of them and told their children, who told their children, who passed it down for generations and wrote it on paper in documents of old we consider nothing more than epic tales and religious texts. But I think what we fail to understand, as a species as a whole, is that 'religious texts' in those times were as much a recording of current events as what we record now. Things we believe now, could be looked back on in thousands of years by people who consider our beliefs and our writings on them as nothing more than our religious texts."

"You think," Memuria began, humoring Zach because of the thought he had put into it but also maintaining a sense of skepticism in her tone. "That the stories from thousands of years ago about Gods are as realistic as our current understandings of science, history-"

"We have a better understanding, yes," Zach countered her with a shake of his head. "But we also believe that their understandings were false, just because we cannot prove them in current times." He said it firmly and continued to his older principal, the oldest person in the room who had spent most of her life with a certain of beliefs that he was challenging. "We are doing the same thing the people in the twentieth century did when they determined that all those stories were fake, if we continue to believe that they're fake solely because those people determined it. They determined that all those stories were beyond just skeptical, and that they were absolutely impossible even though they did not have proof of that. They had an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. They were not able to prove that those things had never happened, and yet they determined that they were not true because they did not think they could be. Because their current science told them that those things were impossible. So why is it we still believe that? Why is it that now, even though we know that those things are possible! Why do we still think all those stories are so obviously fake that we never looked back as a species as a whole to wonder if maybe the stories and legends of the past had more truth in them than we thought?"

Zach wondered that and looked around at his classroom at people who were stunned to see him actually questioning them on this. "If you try to counter that should Quirks have existed for this long then they would have spread more, I'll counter you just as fast. Who else had Quirks? If we imagine that Quirks back then worked the same way they do now, there should be stories of those with powers passing them down to offspring, shouldn't there be?" Zach wondered it, then he tilted his head back and said, "Oh yeah, we do have those stories. Sons of Gods. Demigods. Demonkin."

Zach flipped past a couple of slides and showed pictures of legendary heroes he had pulled from the internet. "In Ancient Greece they wrote entire tales and epics about the sons and daughters of their Gods. And the reason these bloodlines stopped, is because the strong in those times went out on adventures. They died young, because they ran around fighting with their epic powers against too many enemies, traversing with ships that were not built very sturdy compared to modern ones, and when they got sick they died because they did not have medicine. And once those powerful people who were able to fend off their enemies with their Quirks died, their enemies went after their families. And everyone who felt threatened by their powers, and even their old friends who used to follow them, start to fear the others related to those in the stories who may be discovering powers of their own."

"The same goes for the Mandate of Heaven in China. Could someone with a Quirk have taken control of the country, and then passed down control to their children, and their children's children over generations because those people were the only ones with massive amounts of power who could lead armies because they were seen as servants from the heavens due to their amazing abilities? We saw it here in Japan and over in China, that when child emperors would emerge because their parents died too early, their advisors and people close to them would kill the child or use him to take power on their own. Perhaps because those figureheads seen as Gods would have become too powerful on their own if they trained their abilities."

"All of that is just speculation-" Norasaki countered towards Sazaki with a firm statement as he did not think their histories were that skewed that this was even a possibility.

"It's what the people of their times believed!" Zach countered right back louder at the faculty member. "They believed their leaders to be Gods. Someone then determined that they weren't, in a distant future from that time where they looked back and said that people back then did not have superpowerswers. Because superpowerswers don't exist. Obviously," Zach said that sarcastically and shook his head towards Norasaki who stared back much more hesitantly at that response that he tried to think deeper on but was too hard for him to wrap his mind around.

Hazano noticed it too as he looked in front of the faculty seating into his actual class. They're finding it easier to accept, he realized in shock at the sight of the anxious smiles of his students. Some of them glanced around at each other excitedly even as they were hearing this, asking their classmates with their looks if they were all hearing the same things they were, or if they believed them too. Hazano lifted his gaze back to his newest student who had always amazed him since the first day of class, but had gone far beyond that in the past few minutes. He told me about cursed Quirks before. That friend of his who was once his enemy but who he trusted since the man had lived his life always oppressed because of his Quirk no one else understood. When he mentioned Raijin though, hearing him talk about his own friend like that made me pity that villain who just killed so many of our own. He made me feel for someone I did not think I could feel for…

"We are failing," Zach continued to the people in front of him. "Failing at educating ourselves and future generations by continuing to believe a history written by the people who might have known less than everyone else throughout our species' existence. We believe history as it was written by those who could not fathom what we are capable of now. Controlling the wind, reading minds, cloning oneself, and bringing back the dead?! These things were beyond impossible. They were the focus of stories and comics and movies, because they were that unrealistic."

"Zach," Muoko began to her classmate. She no longer felt annoyed in the least by the interest he had garnered in his presentation. She did still feel doubt though, unlike many of her fellow students around her she noticed were getting too drawn into his theories. "Even if Quirks had appeared a few times over history, and I admit after what you've been saying, I think it is likely there were others before Liang Wei who likely actually displayed precursors to Quirks. Even if that was true though, there is no way it could have been widespread enough for what you are suggesting happened in those early years after the Luminescent Baby's appearance. The average age Quirks manifested in people was older, it had to have been, because not that many people could have hidden their Quirks their entire lives only to reveal them after the glowing baby emerged."

"Why not?" Zach wondered at her.

"It's a crazy assumption to make," she said with a raise of her right palm. "You mentioned absence of evidence. Sure, there isn't evidence of absence, but there isn't evidence of proof either."

"'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true.' Arthur Conan Doyle," Zach quoted to his class rep. He shook his head at her and continued, "The thing is, I knew someone who was born before that Liang Wei. So I know that that child was not the first to appear with a Quirk, and I also know because of that, that it was not just a change in the atmosphere in that time period that changed human biology across the world. If that is impossible, then what remains is the truth we know that Quirks are passed down from parents to children. So if all those Quirks popped up all over the world at the same time, so often in adults who have never shown in recent history to just pop up with a Quirk after living their whole lives without one, we have to accept that those adults were just hiding the fact that they had Quirks back then. And then children started showing Quirks much more often too, because parents felt less of a need to keep them in hiding."

"That is what I believe must have occurred for hundreds of years in that gap time of Quirk suppression and technological advancement." Zach continued strongly and he looked around the back of the room at his teachers, "In the period where people determined that those abilities were nonexistent, they did so because they thought they had become smarter than everyone else who had ever been born before them. And yet that may have only been true in the most part for people who did still have those powers. As they finally realized after thousands of years of discrimination and horrible deaths at the hands of fearful governments and religious fanatics, that they should just hide their abilities rather than show them off. And that, is where survival of the fittest comes into play more than anywhere else."

A few of the faculty members in the back dropped their jaws as they realized what that suggestion meant. Zach continued to explain to everyone else confused by that, "An evolution in the people who had Quirks, if you imagine them as a different species altogether for the course of human history. The ones who knew to hide their Quirks did so while watching what happened to those who showed them off. They taught their children never to reveal that they had special abilities, and their children were educated on what happened to those who did reveal it. And I don't think this is some massive conspiracy. I don't think all the people with those Quirk precursors banded together and decided to keep their powers hidden. It's just simple to believe that there were those who hid their powers, when we look at the stories and records that exist in every country about their witches getting burned, paraded around streets and executed, beheaded, drawn-and-quartered… The most intelligent who had no intentions of using their Quirks, who would rather just live their lives in peace and have families and normal lives, would have kept their Quirks secret in order to protect those close to them."

"They would have passed down the warning their parents gave them, to their own children. And even as organized religion started to lose its power, those people would have still been afraid of any powerful group who if they revealed themselves, would likely come after them because their power was too threatening to the natural order. That is why I see the gap, and why after supernatural abilities were determined to be nothing more than a trait known as 'Quirks,' there was the immediate appearance of far more Quirks than could have just sprung up out of nowhere otherwise." Zach paused and gauged the reactions of the people around his classroom who all looked taken aback, shocked, amazed, and in disbelief as to what he was saying.

"The reason!" Zach continued firmly after seeing all those looks. "No one has considered this option seriously before, is because to consider it would be to most people to accept that there was some underground society of people with Quirks beforehand who decided to reveal themselves afterwards. But it's not that complex. It wasn't organized. Maybe there were some in that community who knew of others with powers and did stuff to keep each other secret, to help each other in those dark times where everyone like them were hunted. As a whole though, I think it was most likely inside the family that they determined it was better to keep it secret. It's how their ancestors survived. It's how they planned on surviving. But that kid's birth gave them the option of revealing themselves, in a time where they may finally be accepted even with their powers."

"The origin of Quirks, therefore," Zach went on. "Is something beyond our comprehension. I do not claim to have the answer for it. My report is on the origin of Quirks. That was what I decided on because I wanted to get a deeper understanding of it, and yet my deeper understanding is that we do not know what they are or where they come from. My studies were inconclusive, in that aspect. And yet the theories my research provided… theories that I already thought had some merit to them but had never considered too strongly before, have become more than just theories in my own mind. I see a world that for thousands of years decried Quirks, oppressed those with them, and kept that 'next stage' in our evolution from continuing as it could have. For thousands of years, the fear of these abilities kept them from spreading to the greater population. And as soon as humanity accepted them as a part of us, as a trait that some people would have, as much as people started considering women, minority races, homosexuals, all as equals! Only then did they spread."

"Yes, discrimination still exists. And yes! There are still problems here with Quirk discrimination too, but when Quirks were accepted as a fact of human life, we stepped into a stage that humanity had never reached before. We had reached a place where we were that unafraid of the unknown and of greater powers that we were willing to accept Quirks."

"I keep saying 'we' in the royal sense, as in 'us' as humanity as a whole. Because I do consider myself part of that 'we.' We are all part of that 'us.' And with that said I feel we can look back on what happened in the past and see the biggest failure of people throughout history to see all of 'us' as a part of that whole. More than any of those other minority groups, those with special powers have been oppressed throughout history worse than anyone else… Which is pretty impressive considering."

"Our failure at education in the present, is a continuation of that oppression. Our subjugation of Quirks as something we should ignore, something no one but heroes should use, is perpetuating the failures of mankind. Every system we have in place that keeps us from studying Quirks, training them and learning more about them because of the fear we feel of what could happen someday if we do it, is an oppressive system that has been creating monsters this whole time. And I, I think- I know there are children around the world right now who will face that kind of discrimination and hatred and be turned away because of their special abilities which are considered even more 'special' than regular superpowerswers which usually just means creepy, scary, or dangerous ones. I know that more kids will become villains because of our failure as a species to advance any farther than we have! And I have been doing everything I can-"

Zach grit his teeth and he curled his fists at his sides in frustration for an instant before calming immediately. He relaxed and said in a more uplifting tone, "Progress is being made. I won't deny it. And it does give me hope for what the future will look like. We are making strides quickly that are changing things for people with abilities faster than they have ever been changed before. Change to allow Quirks to be used in certain manufacturing and mining jobs. Quirks that are given special permissions for certain charities or jobs that never existed before. Laws have been passed to allow these things in countries now considered the most progressive for those values, and yet those countries have forced the progress to be made in other countries around them and their trading partners who need to keep up as they have an edge in economic competition."

"And it's clear that these changes have to happen in every country because they've started happening in a few. I know a man I met living on the streets here in Yutapu who was angry at me, because he had lost his job due to foreign countries expanding the use of Quirks to more of their people." Zach paused and he continued to smile despite what he just said. "We're friends now," he assured his classmates and teachers confused by his look. "But I understood why he was upset with me, and why even more people will likely be upset with me if they hear this new report. Yet there would also be those who are grateful if I can push that change quicker. I push it for our economic growth. For our safety and the assurance of safety in the future for everyone. And the change has been happening more rapidly already as popular opinion changed due to the edge that foreign progressive nations have gained over our own and over other large economic powers who see rivals emerging in nations they never expected to start pricing them out by using Quirks to lower production costs."

As Zach continued on the statistics of this progress he put up graphics showing production levels in different countries based on Quirk laws. Line graphs popped up that showed rapid rises and gradual declines of growth in countries that he described and then gave that proof to show why it was really happening. And then he took the nations with the declining bars and lines of production and public support for keeping the status quo, and he showed polling for more progressive leaders over a twelve month span where the popularity of those pro-Quirk-use figures had been skyrocketing.

"…Progressive leaders who vie for policies regarding law changes in regards to Quirk usage on a broader scale won more than eighty percent of elections last year, with the other twenty percent mainly coming from long-time incumbents who used to have their positions secured. Even many of those long-time decorated politicians were removed from office however, in exchange for newer, more progressive-thinking ones. We have almost hit the point where we have accepted that we can both maintain our security and allow widespread Quirk usage across the public."

"I say 'almost,' but that is not to say it is going to change immediately or even in the next couple of years. Democratic elections for representatives and heads of state take place at different times in different countries at different intervals. Some take place every 2 years, 3 years other places, 4 or 6 other places still." Zach held off and then added, "And even those who promise change often face walls in split legislatures, barriers in pre-existing regulations preventing easy change. This is a new movement in terms of its popularity that has gained ground so rapidly in two years, that the only reason the world has not completely flipped on its head yet is because a ton of older politicians are still in office who don't believe in the changes. Yet the trends are showing that they will more or less be voted out of office in the next year to three years as recent worldwide elections have shown that the majority of populations want changes made in Quirk laws to allow them to use their Quirks…"

Different graphs passed by on the screen behind Zach. Polls taken from across different countries, age distributions of conservative no-change politicians compared to the progressives, and polling over time in dozens of different countries showing popularity for conservative leaders dropping with progressives getting more popular. He ended on a graph showing Ippo's popularity over the past six years and then Nikko's that started later on in the line graph but shot up exponentially in comparison to many of the others Zach had shown. Zach ended on that one because it was the most relevant to them in Japan, and yet he also went past it after only a couple seconds of letting everyone see it as there were other reasons why Nikko got elected that he could not deny.

"…Countries like Japan that have started late will need to catch up, and that is not a belief but a fact. Every nation that has allowed the use of Quirks in more fields of their workforce has seen a marked increase in productivity, and there are things to be said about employment rates and safety but this report is not on what is to come. My report is on history. It's easy to see why historically these changes were not popular though. However, generations alive today never lived through that time of complete chaos where everyone was using their Quirks, and vigilantes emerged to fight, as laws and governments couldn't keep up with all the chaos and mass murderers and influential villains taking power across the world. For decades the world had lived in a relative peace, and anyone born in that time who had only known that world had always wished they could use their Quirks but accepted that they couldn't because that was just the way things were. And the way they had to be… But now they've seen it doesn't have to be that way."

"Now we've seen an Age of Villains of our own," Zach continued steadily. "And instead of it being that rule of law that kept us all alive, everyone saw as people defended themselves from villains. People survived and stopped villains in places where laws had changed to allow citizens to do so. And we saw countries that changed laws like that to get quicker drops in villain rates than countries without those extra defenses." Zach paused and he rose his voice louder, "It didn't prove anything like a pointlessness of heroes, as heroes were the ones stopping villains more than anyone else! But it did show people that to disagree with the way things had been was not in itself actually a bad thing. To do so didn't mean they didn't like heroes or felt the system was broken, just that it could be advanced."

"We got the security we wanted and needed after that time of chaos, but now it's clear that changing things isn't necessarily going to bring back that chaos. That chaos can reappear on its own, so maybe the system wasn't perfect after all like we were led to believe. Maybe, it's time for the next step in how the world treats Quirks. For everyone to learn and understand their Quirks. To educate children about them instead of telling them never to use them and just how dangerous they are. We are going to see jobs change fundamentally. The world is going to advance more quickly than ever as technology using Quirk-imbued resources will skyrocket for the utility and cheap prices to create them…"

Zach's tone was more optimistic. He slowed down though and focused on summarizing a few key points, and his tone showed he was leading up to something. "…Possibility for change. The potential for laws regarding Quirk usage to completely turn over. Training of Quirks along with education from a young age. Acceptance of Quirks as a whole too, due to the education which will lead to less fear and discrimination as we come to understand Quirks we previously actively avoided talking about. However, as hopeful as I am, we need to be careful. As we can look back and see that there have been times of huge upheaval like this before which are almost always marred by times of chaos. There are forces at work attempting to create that chaos, destroy the chance at a peaceful progress, and that attempt will keep more people from wanting progress and instead choosing to revert. They will go against those who want to push forward, making even more chaos, so that even if the villains lose in the short-run, they have succeeded at their ultimate goal."

He paused and said with flat lips and a straight expression, "All those things I'm hopeful for have started in places around the world. At some level, the change has begun even here…. But we took too long." His voice rose and he said loudly, "We are in the generation of change. There has never been as much an upheaval in the rules of our society since the creation of the profession of heroes. Or even before that at the acceptance of Quirks as science and not magic. I want to speed up the change we are seeing now though, and I believe I can with this report. To show people their failure, all of our failure, so that we can end this cycle of creating more villains. We cannot fear the villains so much that it prevents us from making this change, because I know that these changes will do more to stop villains than heroes ever could."

"People keep asking me what I'm doing back here," Zach started. His tone was intense and everyone in the room was silent as they stared at their newest classmate, or student, whose speech was intensifying and resonating and yet still unbelievable at the same time. What he was saying now though had them leaning forward as it was something every person in that room had wondered to themselves or asked him about even. Zach continued firmly, "And I tell them I want to be a hero but it's more than that."

He took in a breath, then he said while staring out into a classroom of people with bulging eyes, "I want to stop villains."

Dendo's jaw dropped as Zach stated that while staring them all down, almost like a confession. Zach continued without pause to his class and faculty though, "It's why I haven't been tough on the Army of Death. Why I don't fully agree with how we have to consider them. Because as much as that 'stopping villains' line seems shallow on the surface, I agree with it." He shook his head at the few looks of disapproval he saw starting, and he explained, "Stopping villains isn't about just going after every villain everywhere with the intent of catching them all. If that was it, then yeah heroes have the moral high ground. As heroes we don't just fight villains. We're signs. Symbols for people to look to and feel safe at the knowledge that we're here for them. Heroes, don't tackle the root causes however. The things that create villains, are only fought by people who are not heroes, people who act in their own self-interests more often than heroes do."

"That statement Death made on the walls of Hatto's royal palace resonated inside me. Being a hero, means stopping the villains as they act. It's important! And yet prevention has always been the priority, even for heroes. But it's often the most overlooked because people tend to focus more on things that have already created damage." Zach held his right palm up and said, "They never knew what the bad things would have been if they were prevented, so they don't get much coverage. As it isn't really news. It didn't affect anyone, it just could have affected them."

"This isn't a good way of looking at it. If we all look at the big picture and imagine what created our own monsters, we can make it so our children don't have to face those very same monsters!" Zach called it out, and the others thought back on what he was saying about Shigaraki Tomura and Raijin, two of the most dangerous villains in the nation. The foundation of what his report was built on were not research purposes. He had a reason he chose this report, something they all saw him speaking so passionately on, and considering how much effort and time he had put into it not one of them could stick to their old beliefs strongly. Those beliefs were things they had never thought too deeply on to be able to be rooted in them. It resonated especially when they considered the amount of time that he must have put into this, hours upon hours where he could have been reviving people all over the country or the world, but he spent researching to make this report instead.

It's the bigger picture, Kotsumura thought with his bottom lip trembling in awe as it occurred to him. He, he thinks he'll save more people with this, than the individual lives he could have… What?! I can't even, begin to-

"And they will," Zach continued. "Our children will face the same monsters we face today, if nothing changes. Every generation has its villains and heroes, but what if we did something to stop the villains of the next generation in this one? If we can see what created our own villains and did something to change that! On a grand scale, across the whole world. If we change society inherently to prevent the damage I see has happened to so many because of a lack of education." Zach grit his teeth and then yelled out, "I should have become a villain years ago!" His shout startled his classmates by the raise in volume and content of what he said. But he continued in a frustrated voice to his classroom, "No one ever wanted me to be a hero. No one ever pushed me towards it. My heroes told me I couldn't be one!"

He shook his head and then continued in a steady, still upset, but also serious voice as this was a report and not a vent of his frustrations but something he needed to explain to justify the radical ideas he was suggesting. "They told me to stop trying, to give up, and villains invited me to be one of them. They treated me like one of their own, more than heroes ever had… I hate it, but I cared about them." Zach paused and he ground his teeth, but the shameful statement he made was not met by angry looks from his classmates. His pause only lasted a moment and then he continued strongly, "But I love this world. I hate what villains do to it. And yet I don't hate villains. I can't. Because I saw them care about things. About their beliefs, about each other… about me."

The last part came out softer, and his eyes lowered for a moment while the class in front of him gawked and stared with huge eyes at their classmate whose time with the League of Villains they knew close to nothing about except for his torture. "I saw them look betrayed, as betrayed as me and my friends looked when Kaminari turned on us." Zach clenched his teeth for a moment and then said softly, "I had seen those looks before from the villains I betrayed at the Villain Training Simulator. And seeing those looks confirmed everything I had been looking for in them during my time there so that I could try and change them. The fact, that deep inside… they were all just human."

"Monsters, who killed my family and friends and betrayed me and broke my mind and spirit. Tortured my body and carved me up! And yet I know that their existence was preventable. I know because I saw things around this world that showed me what happened here does not have to have to happen everywhere. I tested out solutions for these problems in different worlds!" Zach announced it in a voice frustrated that he knew so few people would listen to all his radical ideas even when he was so experienced and knew more than them. He continued strongly to the stunned forty people before him, "All I've wanted to do for so long, is make it so that other children like me are not given such easy routes to become villains. To make it so that other children with 'cursed' Quirks around the world don't have that outlet, and that there are things in the light, supports for them other than turning to villains! People who will help them, teach them about their Quirks no matter how dangerous or scary those Quirks are or how scary they could become."

"People were terrified of what Death could be," Zach continued back on a personal relationship with those 'cursed' children he was talking about. "More than what it was at the time, they didn't want to see what I'd be able to do if I trained it… And now I have the ability to save hundreds in a single day. Hundreds who no one else can save but me." He hesitated, then he continued with a single proud nod, "And I can't do that all the time, but I still think about those two hundred and six people I saved the other day. As much as saving them has damaged my image, and it's made people question 'why them, and why not me?' I still think about them." He said this softly and with his expression pained as much as he tried for a stronger voice there. His eyes were down instead of on his shocked classmates as he said, "I think about them living good lives, healthy, free from sickness, living with their grateful families who did not have to go through the loss of a loved one."

"I think about those people every day, and how if I had given up any of the days before then, those people would be dead right now." Zach paused and he admitted with his eyes raising to those watching him now, "I was given so many opportunities to give up, because Death to the rest of the world today, is as big a heresy as other Quirks were to people throughout history. And that's why I understand this, because I've understood it all my life." Zach locked his eyes on Bibi's in front of him to his left, "It's hard, not to fear something so powerful."

His eyes shifted over towards Trabo and then past onto Hisashi, "As I said before, the only ones in history who were not feared or rejected were those who were so solely good that people were not afraid of them." His eyes locked onto Dendo's, and he said to the future All Slice, "All Might had power unheard of, yet you never heard people questioning 'what would happen if All Might turned bad?' And that's because All Might was the Symbol of Peace and a solely good influence on the world. Never besmirched. Yet if he did have scandals? Or if maybe he was not a hero but still had that overwhelming power and we all knew about it? People would have been terrified of him. That kind of power, people don't trust it in the hands of someone they don't trust entirely."

Zach paused and then continued in an admitting tone, "And as much as people want to trust me, I've shown my power is far more than anyone expected when they released me from Tartaros. I've shown a kind of strength that scares people. I know what it will bring, I've always known," he said it acceptingly, and without question that what he was saying was true. History was repeating itself in his mind, and those in front of him who wondered every day if Zach knew the way people saw him or were treating him understood in this moment that Zach had always known. "It's why I'm so reluctant to use my Quirk all the time, because the more I use it the more people fear me and the more riled up they get about my strength…"

"The bigger the mob becomes."

Zach took in a deep breath then continued with a small lift of the corners of his lips, "I tell you this not because I'm afraid. I just know that I fit in with the historical importance I'm trying to get across. And if I can accept that objectively, without getting upset over it, I can do more to help people like me who could be born with similar Quirks that others look down on. That others are afraid of, which will ultimately lead them into attacking those they're afraid of as people have throughout all of history, and those attacks will ultimately turn more of those oppressed people into villains. And if those oppressed people were discriminated against in the first place because their Quirks were too strong or dangerous, and we turn them into villains because of our fear and hatred of them, then we are going to create the very apocalyptic Quirks everyone is so afraid of that we have this system in the first place!"

Muoko's eyes snapped down to her desk behind her glasses though they barely fit behind the lenses now with how wide they were. The realization that what he just said sounded like common sense blew her mind, because it meant: This is a ticking time bomb! Her huge eyes snapped up fast as Zach started speaking again, and she was not going to miss a word.

"Our lack of understanding leads us to fear, our fear leads us to turn on people who have done nothing wrong but be born different, and that in turn creates the villains who currently plague our world and will continue to do so until we stop this current track. Lack of understanding is easily fixed. Start training kids in how to use their Quirks safely as soon as they're discovered to prevent accidents, to prevent the very things that turn those kids into outcasts and get them shunned by others because of the bad incidents that occurred in their childhoods that they were not responsible for. I spent most of my life in hiding and in fear because my parents did not know what my Quirk was. They did not know how to handle it. I killed my mother, and the scientists did not want to do much research on my Quirk after initial testing, rather they were just looking for ways to hide it forever." Zach shook his head, disappointedly and showing his clear frustration for the broken system that only sounded so broken to everyone else in front of him now that they were hearing it from his perspective.

"We could do nothing to slow the spread of Quirks across the world to a much higher percentage of the population," Zach started, his tone foreboding. "While population is now booming in a time of peace as it has been for decades since the end to the chaos. And if we continue to oppress people into becoming villains, in a world full of more Quirk-users than ever… the inevitable outcome is going to be the creation of a world-ending villain." Zach said it like he was talking about a time in the not-so-distant future. He declared it as 'inevitable,' but instead of feeling intense dread and fear, everyone just listened closer because their classmate sounded like he had the solutions and that this was not the future that needed to come.

"In a report I wrote my first year of high school I asked how many of the people who wanted to help fight villains and be heroes in their own ways would do so if they were allowed. Well in all those people there would also be someone to counter a world-ender. It's what I've believed for years." Zach said it like despite having thought so for years, nothing had changed his mind and rather right now he was more assured of it than ever. "It's much more important than I believed back my first year, though Principal Nezu knew it and asked me a question on it afterwards, and I regret never editing my report to add it in. Yet it is the most important thing I should have realized because it was Mr. Principal saying it."

He paused and then as everyone was listening as closely as possible, he stated, "World-ending Quirks, are just as likely to appear as world-saving ones, if everyone is trained. But because there are so many more of those who are good and want to do right than there are evil people in this world, I know that educating and training everyone would do more to save the world than end it." He smiled and he added, "And it would do more to make it so there are even less 'evil' people because that education would prevent so many villains from being created in the first place."

Zach kept his smile as he saw the people listening to him were hooked. They're convinced. And I have them, he rose his voice and his tone stayed optimistic as he changed speeds into what sounded like the start of a conclusion. "I never used to go into any of this: all my explanations for why I do these things or why I push them. I just talked about the things I felt most people could associate with, because that would be the easiest way to get people to agree. I think I underestimated everyone else before though considering I thought they would not believe all my reasons. I didn't want them to ignore all my fears and things that I believed could be conspiracies too, because I did not see many people talking about them. Yet I know people are willing to listen. I can see it now," Zach said as he stared into the eyes of those before him. "That it's not impossible if one does enough research and presents their ideas in a confident way not afraid of how others will look at them. Not caring how others might call them absurd, because I know it's much more absurd not to believe and that it's a disservice to the people of the world not to share my beliefs, especially when I think sharing those beliefs will save lives."

"We continue to make the same mistakes that humanity has made since the dawn of our creation." Zach shook his head and called out, "The Dark Ages. Hundreds of years of scientific and technological repression that occurred because those in power controlled those below them through the idea that the church and God and only the church and God could explain things in their world that were hard to understand. Science is just magic to those who don't understand it yet, and so the scholars and the inventors were shunned and executed, and intellectual advancement was stalled for so long. We finally reached a point where Quirks could be explained by science, but then we fell into the same pattern we always have. Quirks are just science? We decided that in a time where everything was understood scientifically, and so we fit the existence of Quirks into that current belief system, even though explaining them on a more specific level gets hard."

"We think the same allele controls skin pigmentation, horn number or appearance at all, fire control, telekinetic or telepathic abilities, or the power to control life and death itself? Do we really think guys like Mendel, and Punnett, and Darwin, knew enough about things they never knew would exist that we should still be trying to fit these superpowers into their limited theories?"

"Despite our current advancements, scientific and in the understanding of Quirks, we continue to do the same things just at a different scale and to a different group of people like we always have. I know this is happening. I can see it, just as easily as if I was looking back on a different history unfolding I'm watching our own unfold in the same way. So we need education on this history. We need to look deeper into it, to put more focus on the truth and the 'why' rather than putting all focus on heroes and stopping villains in the present. Progress and history should matter most, and law and order should just be in the background of our lives." Zach's expression straightened and he said in a firm and conclusive tone, "If we can get past this transitionary stage we'll be in the perfect time for it. And if we don't change anything, that peace we make won't last long. Just as the peace provided by All Might was flimsy, and reliant on his presence alone."

"I am not claiming that I have all the answers! Anyone who claims that has closed their mind to the prospect that they could be wrong, and that alone makes them wrong. We know, looking back on history, that no one has ever known the whole truth about what happened before them or what was happening in their own times. Yet we don't mention this because we tend to think that we're different. We're the most advanced we've ever been so maybe that means we're the ones who really know. That's naive. And we're making the same mistakes people who thought the same thing throughout history have made. And we make these mistakes because we don't know that they've already made them. Those people who could not accept that they were wrong or allow others to challenge without getting angry and fighting the change, created conflict and bad people took advantage of that conflict to turn it to chaos, and it will keep happening over and over and over. Because if we don't learn from history… we are doomed to repeat it."

"And we are repeating it now without even knowing, because our understanding of the history of Quirks, of discrimination, of our human history as a whole is all flawed, skewed, or just wrong. And I know that there is little way we can learn it. There are Quirks that can look into the future though so why not ones that can look into the past? To see the truth. Maybe people who could be able to travel through time." Zach suggested it and held up his left hand defensively but not retracting what he just said, "These abilities might sound insane, and yet just a couple hundred years ago all our powers sounded unbelievable. I see a future where we can know the past for certain. Where we could look back and learn from it all, but even before we can do it with certainty, we should still try. Try to figure out what really happened, and learn from the mistakes of the past to make our futures better."

"Death was only a 'cursed' Quirk, because it was a Quirk we did not understand. As much as anyone who showed a special ability had a 'cursed' Quirk in that first age of Quirk manifestation," Zach held up his fingers making air quotes as he emphasized it and how it was the same hundreds of years ago as it was today. "Because any Quirk in this room today would have been one of the very few in the vast minority of that world that barely understood them. Yet back then, even those first Quirks were nowhere near as 'cursed' as those who would have shown Quirks before that time when science had not yet reached the point where it could accept them."

"History does not have to be a cycle forever. We do not have to continue on the path, but to step off we need to look at our past closer. We need to accept that our version of the truth is not the only one there is. And when we can truly accept that those who wrote our history knew nothing of what is and is not impossible, when we admit to ourselves that our ignorance of Quirks far exceeds our understanding of them, only then can one start to look at the past with an open mind. A mind open enough to learn and accept different realities, impossible truths, and things that we could never before accept but have been right in front of us the whole time."

Zach exhaled a deep breath and then relaxed his shoulders and expression at once. He clicked the next button again on the remote, but the slideshow was over and the screen just turned black. Then he put his hands together down in front of his waist, and he said, "That was my presentation on the Origin of Quirks, and the Relation of Death to the Understanding of History. Thank you for listening." Zach bowed to his class after giving the generic closing lines of a presentation as all his classmates had done before him.

He came out of his bow and stood at the front of his classroom looking out at the people before him. Alright. Initial reactions. Gauge how difficult it would be for a greater scale on a less personal level. Each of them looks unable to speak yet. I left them speechless. That's because they believe me. They know me enough to understand the tone was serious. That every word I said was my true belief. Others who could just hear or read about it on their own would not be so convinced. They would not be as willing to listen. It has to be said in a certain kind of way, at least at first. Once ideas become more considered, it does not take as much to convince more people. These ideas came out of nowhere though. This is the first sample. A group of people who were unprepared to think about these things, who had never considered them on this level, and who have had far too much thrown at them in a single sitting.

But I like those looks. I knew if I could convince them, convince the old principal, I'd have a real shot at this. If I couldn't I would know that it was impossible. I should have known though. Nothing is impossible.

Manzo's heart was racing as fast as it ever had. She stared at the boy at the front of the classroom with spiky black hair who looked back out and made eye contact with her for a moment before continuing to scan his discerning gaze around the room. I think, I'm in love with this boy. The teenage girl with curly brick-red hair admitted it to herself and gulped nervously afterwards as she continued to stare in awe at him. Even now, it looks like he's thinking about what's next. This whole report… He wrote it to save children. And he wants to convince us because change can't come if he's the only one who knows those things. And, and!

Everything she had thought about Zach since he brought Sato back echoed into her head again. The doubt she felt because of his selfish actions, seemed like a misunderstanding to her now as she tried to wrap her head around all he had just said. The big picture. The long run. That's, what he's always been about. But still… is everything we knew, is it all really… He's not the symbol I imagined him as. I thought he let me down by bringing his friend back, but I've been putting him on way too high a pedestal. His strength and his ideals and ideas, while he's just a person who lost a friend and wanted to bring him back. And he's just one of those "cursed" kids he wants to save. But he's also, he's the voice of…

His report strayed off its main ideas, Hazano thought as he tried to come up with a critique as if this were just another one of the presentations he had to grade. The look on his student's face made those thoughts trail from his mind though. Was that Luminescent Child really not the first Quirk holder? He's convinced so many people here. And if he really knows someone, who had been alive for that long… All For One, is how old? Eziano Mozcaccio, and the friend of his he says is just as old as those villains. His world is so much wider than ours. I've known that, but I never thought he would go this far to try and broaden our understandings.

The homeroom teacher of Class 1 was usually the one to start after the presentations were over. He would ask a question or two of his own before opening up the floor. Most of the class were still just awestruck by his report though that seemed less like a presentation, or even a college lecture. Rather the speech almost seemed like a sermon, yet it was not religion Zach was preaching. It was an entirely different way to look at life, at history, and at what they as heroes should be doing most to help the world. Hisashi lowered his head and his huge eyes narrowed at the top of his desk in a sudden anger that welled inside him. Porrolo finally released a gasp of breath but then panted a few times too loudly that he had to stop himself as he noticed people glancing his way.

What are the most important things here? Hazano wondered while standing up from his seat. The biggest impacts. First of all, this isn't about his report. I'll just give him an A on that. What matters now is what he plans to do with it. He has power and he knows the responsibility that holds, but if no one challenges him then he'll go right along with his plans. Education of Quirks is necessary for Quirks like his and for others like his in order for them not to be shunned by society. I can get behind that. Education is a priority, and maybe that's also why he chose this environment as his first place to spread these ideas. He knows educators would be quickest to support the idea of broader education.

Students and administrators looked to Hazano and wondered what he was going to say. They were all shocked by every aspect of Zach's report, but they were nervous to even ask him questions as they felt he sounded so far beyond them with what he was seeing and talking about. The past, the future, the secrets of the world and what was really going on in the political and economic atmosphere. It's hard to keep up, but, Hazano took in a deep breath and then looked seriously ahead into his student's eyes. "New technology created using Quirks would almost surely take away many jobs. The greatest advancements in technology always do, but if this revolution of people using Quirks to create more efficient tech really does occur like you're saying it will, would we not face immediate problems with the rising population and shrinking job market?"

"New jobs we can't even imagine right now will be created by the incorporation of Quirks into the workforce," Zach countered. Most of the room were still staring at Hazano in surprise at his line of questioning considering all Zach had just talked about, but they spun back in as much surprise as Zach did not seem to get caught off guard by it and just responded normally. "It's not an idealistic approach either," Zach added to his teacher who seemed to dislike his simplistic answer. "We can already see it. This has happened in Pakistan, Gorran, Esquomalador, and Mexico in manufacturing jobs. In Mexico, steel and iron production is now assisted by workers using their Quirks. It is allowed only with strict regulation by the government, but it is still allowed. This allowance has cut the employment in these industries by almost a third in only a year. On the plus side, efficiency is up, wages of the more valuable workers are up, and the price of steel products leaving Mexico or being sold domestically have dropped. Those lower prices they are able to sell at will draw in more consumers abroad, and those foreign companies losing customers and profit will lobby their governments and push for similar allowances in Quirk usage."

"So with all of that," Zach continued right away to his class who were surprised by his vast wealth of knowledge to just have that as a case study at the ready only for answering a question after the report. They were not that surprised though. "You would expect that the unemployment rate in Mexico has gone up. The iron and steel industry is one of Mexico's largest. I don't have the graphs and data to show you, but that is not the case which you can look up and confirm easily on your phones if you want. Unemployment has stayed relatively the same despite the changes in these laws that allow fewer people to do the work that it took more people to do previously. One would ask how? First of all, if there are places where unemployment rises due to these shifts, it's only in foreign countries who lose work while also not gaining the same new jobs that Mexico and other countries like it have replaced some of those manufacturing jobs with."

"The tourism industry has risen dramatically in every nation that has allowed greater use of Quirks outside of the hero profession. People who never felt safe to use their Quirks or just did not want to break the law can travel abroad and use their Quirks freely in places foreign nations designate for them. Quirk Free beaches, which don't mean Quirk-free as in no Quirks allowed, but the opposite. Lifeguards working with heroes and authorities as supervision for these areas prevent accidents and allow people to come and enjoy themselves. When enough people show up constantly throughout the year, businesses sprout up around these areas selling Quirk safety gear, or selling food to travelers, opening up hotels and renting out their houses as bed-and-breakfasts to tourists. Entirely new industries sprout up too. Quirk sport leagues have gained popularity rapidly over the past few years."

Zach looked towards Roger Whitewood and nodded as he continued to a fan of American Quirkball, "The Quirkball league in America now rivals American football as their most popular sport. This means that advertisers need big ads to show during commercial breaks of their televised broadcasts, and organizers need to employ food stand workers at the stadiums, stadiums that need to be built- which the Americans have allowed in the spirit of Quirkball to be built by people also using Quirks. Construction of buildings using Quirks required fewer resources. When less resources need to be expended for construction, the building is made at a much lower cost to the public too. Instead of taxes going to a new highway over the course of a month, pay a single guy to pave roads with his Quirk in a day."

All of what Zach was describing sounded so cool, to most of his classmates. Muoko shook her head though and got an intense look on her face when Zach looked to her. "What will happen to the impoverished who cannot sustain themselves in a world where their jobs have become obsolete, and they can't just change to a new one?" Her hard question made some of her classmates look to her in surprise, though they were more amazed as she poked another hole. "Or the Quirkless," she continued. "Who will now surely be treated as second-class citizens when people with Quirks are given preferential treatment in jobs."

"I admit, there will be challenges," Zach started to her. "There always are when it comes to progress." He frowned back as she glared like that was not a counter to what she said. Then he continued to her with a small shake of his head, "There's no point in saying this to me as if asking what my plans are to stop it if I go through with it. I may be pushing it, but this is what I see coming in the next ten years, five years even. Other nations will need to respond to the changes of the ones who have already begun adjusting and are pulling ahead because of it. Public opinion will shift just as quickly as jobs will be lost faster by not changing than they will be by going with the flow." Zach paused and he continued more to everyone once he saw Muoko shifting her expression in less a confrontational way at him.

"It will be a rapid change unlike the world has seen before," Zach went on. "With everyone trying to rise above each other in a competitive environment where they don't have to fear villains because heroes are still there protecting them and villains are still at the lowest rates they've been in decades even with these new changes happening. I don't think this will be stopped, but sometimes you need to just put it all out there and look at everything beforehand. What I'm doing is not suggesting the future we should make but how we can guide the future that's already being made into one that we can be sure is better than our present. It's by understanding what's coming now that we'll be able to come up with countermeasures beforehand so people don't have to fall into poverty, or get discriminated against, before we admit that it is a problem that will occur. As you say it will be," Zach continued with an agreeing nod back at Muoko again. "And I agree that would probably happen if we don't address it early on, because it's what has happened in the past."

He continued with a look past Muoko to others behind her, "And there are ways we can address it now and see to it that those problems do not come to pass! With these advancements will come other gains as well. No need to worry about the poor going hungry, as there are charity groups currently terraforming deserts with special permissions from governments in the Middle East, Africa, North America, and in China and India. Various people with Quirks that can create grass, plant seeds, grow trees and forests, make it rain and fill lakes," Zach listed off amazing Quirks after amazing Quirks with a smile on his face and a hopeful tone full of optimism. "Those people are working to change huge swaths of land in projects that don't have much publicity but are working hard to bring excesses of food to places there haven't been before."

"What are these projects?" Kimona sensei questioned, confused at what sounded like something they all should have known about already if it was this big.

"They are not non-profit, but rather new, experimental 'charities.' Ones no one would have heard of before a year ago because that's when they were created. And since they are so new, it is hard to determine whether or not they will work yet so I don't see that it's strange it would not be considered 'news.'" Zach referenced his report and reaffirmed all he had said before linked in with this. "If these things do work though, and we all come to see that allowing Quirks in these ways saved so many people, change will come even more rapidly. An end to world hunger thanks to Quirks? Clean water everywhere? And an education system designed to prevent villains through Quirk training. World peace, that has already been achieved but in addition a drop in crime so low that the existence of organized villain groups would be put under question. A better world-"

How, can I best help the world? Hisashi thought it to his own distress and he brought his head up with wide eyes that filled with anger at the sight of Zach's smile. "What are you, talking about?" Hisashi asked, his voice starting out as a whisper but then raising in volume nearer to the end of it. Zach looked his way and Hisashi clenched his fists under his desk, before opening them just so he could curl his fingers down into his thighs. He had never before even considered all the things Zach had talked about, and now what Zach said resonated so much within him that… Does this, matter even more than fighting villains? "Fighting the League!" Hisashi said it, his voice loud and angry but also confused and frustrated while at the same time asking Zach a question.

Others looked to their classmate and as strange as it felt to them, they all understood what it was he was saying right there. Those feelings welled up inside them as well as they saw Hisashi staring at Zach in disbelief, "I, I don't know what I'm…" Hisashi continued it while Zach looked him back in the eyes unshaken. "What I should do as a hero. You make it all sound so trivial now. Everything…" I've ever worked for. What was it all for! What have I-

"Remember what I said before. We're in the generation of change," Zach reminded his class with a steady and intense look into Hisashi's eyes that grew huge while staring back at him. "We're in a transitionary period, but the transition can go one of two ways. If it goes the direction I am hoping for and discussed a future for, things could be better as I said. I am assuming a victory in this transition though before we even have to start a fight on any of those issues. Yet getting there is not easy."

He said that firmly and glared around in the most intense way at the others around the room, "There are those in this transitionary stage fighting against that change to a peaceful world where these things are possible. This stage has gone on for years now, and there were those attempting to descend the whole world back into chaos. I heard rumors out in the underworld that the League of Shadows intended to have nations fighting each other, so that they could take advantage of the focus heroes had on other heroes to plant their roots and breed chaos and evil across the world." Zach's voice rose louder and he snapped, "In the Age of Villains, the heroes succeeded at pushing the villains back down, but if they had failed then this whole world would have been fu- in trouble."

He paused for a moment and then said in a much darker and lower voice, "And yet I believe there's danger of a reemergence. A resurgence that could only happen in Japan." His eyes were so focused that some people almost missed what he just said that made each of their hearts beat faster and faster. "Where we have the most dangerous villains in the entire world. Ones who if we don't stop them, will make this transitionary period into one that transitions the world into a period of darkness. Four of the top ten? What happens if they get them all? All our strongest heroes? Who would protect us then?! And villains may push the same things I'm suggesting by allowing everyone with them to use their Quirks, but if they're able to recruit based solely off those principles then why not take that power away from them? It's easy if we give those people desperate enough to use Quirks that they'd join them a different option."

"Villains are considered such because they're people who use Quirks without being heroes, but we can take a chunk of them out just by changing the rules that they play by before they can change them first. And they would change the rules. Because if villains win, they would rule over chaos and crime and a world on fire. We need to do everything we can to stop them."

Zach looked straight into Hisashi's eyes after he finished all that, and he continued slower, "We can be heroes, and still accept things like allowing everyone to train their Quirks. Heroes can still keep control, can still maintain order, even in a world where everyone can use Quirks. It's not impossible. It's the only way we can continue progress. But Hisashi, if the League wins then that world I see can't happen. That world of safety, a world full of progress… and a world without villains, can't happen if we don't first stop the League of Villains."

His voice got softer near the end, but it was still serious despite what he just ended with. Principal Memuria stood up and she stared down her student who looked past all his classmates' faces and into her eyes. "Are you serious?" She wondered to the boy. Her arms crossed and she frowned at the teenager standing there in front of her. "A world without villains?"

Zach stared at his principal with his lips flattened. His posture did not falter at her skeptical question seemingly calling him naive with her tone and the wording alone. His intensity only got stronger though, his focus locked on hers, unshaken at the question. Zach gave her his most serious look, and in that moment he saw far more people than the forty in the room in front of him. A hundred faces appeared, on bodies covered in blood in dark uniforms but with their helmets off so Zach could see each of them. Then a blond girl's face appeared behind Memuria's sticking out from behind her head a bit to the left, blue eyes looking towards him with a straight expression waiting for him to finish. "I really do, believe in you. In all of it. You made me…" Her voice echoed in his mind as she stood there waiting for him to say what she had believed; what he had convinced her was possible as she told him at the end.

Zach looked into Memuria's eyes and replied to her skeptical question, "If that isn't the goal, I don't know what is."