"Hmm…This feels a bit weird…" Sora looked down at the ground below him and cringed slightly. He wasn't adverse of any heights or the sort, but using his own quirk to levitate him above the ground made his stomach tumble and spin around in circles. The normal human body just wasn't created to support this kind of thing.

Unless one had a specialised quirk of course.

Aside from the strangeness of the entire thing, he considered this test a success. He could now lift as much weight as his own body, more if the shape was different. He couldn't fly just yet, and he doubted he'd ever manage that any time soon, but just being able to lift him off the ground slightly was an incredible feat, especially for some 5 year old boy.

A year had gone by since he first woke his quirk, and every day since then had been filled with him training his quirk to improve his limits. It was quite fun actually, even more so with the bubbly Mei training and playing together with him.

His adventures in surveying his brain had made quite some advancements as well. He'd been able to activate specific parts of it, increasing the brain's natural ability two fold or so. It still wouldn't hold a candle against IQ or intelligence based quirks, but it was still something.

He also considered training his body, before throwing away the idea. Trying to build muscles at such a young age would only damage his body's muscular growth. Better let his body grow and adapt first before he even began to do so, if he decided that was. He still wasn't sure if he even needed to train his physical strength.

Deciding to spare my stomach for the rest of the day, I gently floated back down onto the floor below. With my feet back on the ground, the queasy feeling in my stomach settled and I sighed in relief.

Well, time for lunch.

Kindergarten was the same as before. He didn't even think about it.

A year and two months had gone by since he first woke his quirk, and he was now faced with an important dilemma.

Milk chocolate or vanilla. Which taste would suit a cake better, and which would Mei like more? In truth, he didn't really know. Mei seemed to enjoy both, but he couldn't simply ask his mother to buy both cakes. He wasn't some rich kid.

So, with discretion, he asked Hatsume's parents about which she would like more for her birthday cake, but they didn't give him a clear answer either. "I'm sure she'll like whatever you pick." Mei's mother had said cheekily, and he could only sigh. In the end, in hopes that he could deepen their relationship over a mutual liking of milky chocolate, they bought a milky chocolate cake for the little Mei.

Later that evening, he showed the cake together with his and the Hatsume family, and Mei had all but cried in happiness at the sight. Swiftly, he cut out a piece of the cake and gave it over to her. As she slowly dug in, apprehension built in his heart. What if she liked vanilla better?

Thankfully, it seemed like fate had given him the golden ticket, and Mei turned out to be another lover of the taste of milky chocolate.

Later on, he'd find that she didn't mind any taste, as long as it came from him. He sagged a bit at the realization.

"Woah, this feels really weird!"

"You'll get used to it." Sora said simply as he levitated them both into the air, his quirk now able to lift them both into the air. It's actually quite comfortable after one gets used to the queasy feeling from levitating, as his body didn't get overly burdened by the pull of the earth's gravity.

Two months had gone by since Mei's birthday, which meant that she was now 6 years old, four months older than him. They were currently relaxing at the Hatsume household, enjoying the weekend much like they've done for the past year now.

Just as he'd made improvements in his quirk, so had she. Her Zoom allowed her to clearly view objects over 50 miles away, over triple of what a normal human's eye could do. If the target was mobile, then the resolution would drop to only 35 miles away, which was still over twice the normal human's vision limit.

What was more interesting however was the incredible precision her quirk had built, so much so that she'd begun losing track of time occasionally. Her parents were understandably worried that something was wrong, but that news brought incredible amounts of excitement to him.

Because that meant that her eyes had made her eyesight so precise and accurate that the brain began to slow down its perception of time to take in a larger amount of information. How and why did this development occur? Well, he didn't know, but he chalked it up to her quirk simply evolving past its previous limits.

But that wasn't what he was planning for today.

Mei's father had an old taser he kept around from years past, and he decided to borrow it from him. Not to taze someone or something, he wasn't that stupid, but he wanted to test out something. Telekinesis allowed him to take hold of something and then move it according to his will. If so, could he move electricity?

So, lowering both he and Mei down, he lifted up the taser he'd placed a meter away. He clicked it open using his quirk, and as the taser began to buzz with thousands of volts, he reached in to grasp it.

And he felt something, much to his surprise. He felt this...strange thing snapping back and forth, and in his confusion he realised that he was feeling energy, he was feeling the snapping of the electricity from the heads of the taser. Just as the human body wasn't normally configured for flight, the brain wasn't created with the normal capability to make sense of energy through a new sixth sense.

Still, he reached in and tried to grasp it. The electricity stopped snapping, gathering into the one point he was trying to bring it all to,

Before it exploded, showering the grass with melted bits of the taser.

Sora slowly turned to look at Mei, and her to him. At that very moment, the same thought fluttered into their heads.

They were so screwed.

They were screwed, and got grounded for the week.

The idea never went away however, because just the thought of being able to manipulate energy with his quirk opened up far too many avenues and possibilities for him to ignore. So, a month passed, his grounding was lifted, and searched around for an unused electrical device.

And he did. At an old dumping site not too far from his house, he found an old electrical box which was sparking, snaps of electricity occasionally jumping in and out of the old thing. Taking a deep breath, he stretched his quirk forward, and again, he felt that strange sensation of energy coursing through his telekinesis.

Concentrating, he grasped the moving tide and slowly pulled it back. It was...hard, as he expected. It was almost like trying to pull back an extremely tight and taut string, with the string being a certain amount of electricity snapping from one location to another.

Of course, the actual descriptions were far more complex than simply 'pulling electricity using telekinesis'. Electricity is but one part of the combined force of electromagnetism, with electricity itself just being the movement of electrons. Through that allegory, he was trying to make the moving electrons change its direction and move somewhere else.

Obviously, incredibly hard, which wasn't helped by the fact that his sixth telekinetic sense was still too weak to feel the actual flow of electrons.

In the end, the same happened. The electricity knotted into one point before exploding, causing the electrical box to burn. Seeing as he failed, he swiftly ran away from the scene.

Still, a small smile tugged on his lips.

He'd continue to train this new possibility over the years.

Another month passed, and December arrived once again. His birthday was celebrated days ago, and it was now late evening, with him enjoying the night with his family.

It was on that night that he first saw the one called All Might, the strongest and most influential hero to have ever graced the earth defeat a villain live on the TV. He saw his momentous strength and his ever present smile. He saw him bring down the villain other heroes had been struggling against in mere seconds, and he saw the happiness that shined in the eyes of those he saved.

An amazing sight, an incredible one, and it shed some light as to why society had become what it is today. His amazing deeds spurred the rise of heroism, filling the hearts of children with the dreams of becoming like him, to become a hero that saved others with a smile.

He wasn't so easily swayed.

To save someone so frequently and to do so with an ever present smile wasn't normal. No human could possibly continue to do that without breaking. The way he lived was unfathomable to Sora, and he could only wonder what lies behind that ever-smiling mask he showed to the masses. Was he truly happy doing what he did? Was he pressured by something? Was he lonely?

That night, he went to sleep with questions brimming in his mind.

Time flew by as days rolled from one to another, and Sora found himself in a pattern. He'd wake up in the morning, head to his education, come home to either his house or Mei's, train and learn in the evening, then rest, before repeating it all over again. When the weekends rolled around, then training would take up the mornings, but the rest remained the same.

He learned more to aid his quirk, to find out different laws of reality he could use to better grasp his quirk's full potential. He learned more about his brain, building a pile of knowledge far bigger than any that existed at that moment. He deepened his understanding of physics through reading various published journals to make up for his lack of attention in school.

Sadly, as quirks had taken over the world, the field of astrophysics and astronomy had become much less prevalent, and there was hardly any material for him to learn from.

Which was an absolute blasphemy.

He trained his quirk, increasing his precision, his strength, and the overall control he had over his telekinetic powers. What went from him struggling to lift a single leaf grew to him being capable of lifting a large truck, if only for a short time.

What was more impressive to him however was his incredible spike in manipulating energy, something he found himself to be quite proficient at when he had the right tools to train with. The first few months he spent trying to even try and change the movement of electricity was hard, but as soon as he showed himself capable of even doing so, he asked his father to buy him a taser.

He did not buy him a taser.

He did however buy him a mock-prototype, one that would expend a much smaller current of electricity. That was fine, any tool was still better than none.

So he trained, and he quickly became capable of directing the flow of electrons using his telekinesis. It was quite amazing actually, as he could pretty much shoot bolts of lightning when the circumstances were right. Not that he would actually do that however, he wasn't going to go and cause fires.

On the note of fire, manipulating heat was a much harder endeavour, but something he soon managed to be able to do as well. He didn't quite have as easy of a time, but that was understandable. Electricity was the movement of electrons, something he managed to sense after training his sixth telekinetic sense, but heat was...well, heat. It wasn't as easy to adapt his sixth sense to be able to quantify it for some strange reason.

However, after about a long year of toil, he finally managed it. He could manipulate heat with his telekinesis, just without as much control as his manipulation over electricity.

Mei's quirk had advanced quite amazingly as well. What started out as a simple quirk to zoom in on far objects turned into a quirk that gave her pin-point accuracy, allowing her to spot the most minute details from an extremely far distance. She'd basically turned her scoped-eyes into a sniper's scope.

But her quirk went beyond that. Her brain had become extremely receptive to the information coming from her scoped eyes, so much so that it would feel like time had slowed down as she activated her quirk.

In conclusion, they both had made leaps and bounds in their quirks.

In total, just about 4 years had passed since Sora first woke his quirk, and he was now a 3rd grader in elementary school. It still was a fairly uncomfortable thing, seeing as he could pretty much skip all the way to university at this point, but having Mei as his friend in school alleviated most of the annoyance throughout the day.

He was pretty sure they were both looked on as nerds, and that one or two would probably try and bully them or whatnot, but they were oddly left to their own devices.

Maybe it was because he'd accidentally showed that he could forcefully bring a speeding car to a halt if he wanted to?

Perhaps.

To give some context, a month or so ago, just as school had ended, he spotted one student fall over onto the road, with a speeding car quickly approaching from the distance. The car was too close to just slow down, and the kid was too shocked to do anything.

So he stepped in, activating his quirk and forcefully stopping the car's wheels from turning, grinding it to a loud halt. It didn't even take that much effort, seeing as stopping the wheels wasn't all that hard of a task. He quickly went up to the kid, asked if he was fine, and after helping him up immediately went on his way back home.

Honestly, he couldn't really remember the event all that well. All he remembered was stopping the car. The kid's appearance and name was basically lost to him.

"Hey, hey, So-kun, do you think this will work?" Sora heard Mei ask, and he turned to see her holding up a (poorly) drawn schematic of what seemed to be a glue gun.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why a glue gun?"

"Because it's cool!"

"Everything's cool to you." He deadpanned back, and Mei simply nodded. Sighing, he took the paper and squinted his eyes, doing his best to use his enhanced eyesight to see what Mei had attempted to draw.

...Huh. Surprisingly, the more he read on, the more possible the idea became. In fact, this might be the most complex thing he'd seen her design a schematic for. "This is...surprisingly intricate." He turned to her. "This almost looks professional. Is there a special occasion or something? Why put so much effort?"

At that, Mei smiled with excitement, her scoped eyes twinkling. "A hero asked my dad to design some gear, and he let me try and design one as well!"

"Really?" At her nod, he looked back at the paper, already thinking of ways to improve upon what she'd drawn. "This...This might actually work. You just need to…"

For the rest of the school day, he and Mei continued tweaking the design, much to the teachers' annoyance. They couldn't do much though, since they knew that they both could easily demolish through anything they tried to give them.

Two months had passed by since Mei submitted her edited design, and things hadn't changed all that much. They still spent most of their day training their quirks and learning general sciences, but Mei would occasionally show up with a design for hero gear, and when she did, Sora would spend most of his time refining the blueprint with Mei by his side.

Aside from that, he'd found a new obsession.

Freezing things.

Not by actually freezing it using a refrigerator, but using his quirk, and it was perhaps one of the most mesmerizing things he can currently do. As he slowly drained heat away from an area, spikes of ice would begin to form as the heat kept the air as gas disappeared, forcing the molecules together to form ice.

Then he'd direct that heat somewhere else, like an unused tire, and it'd catch on fire.

It was, as Mei eloquently put it, "Fucking awesome!"

She then got scolded for saying that, which led to him getting scolded for teaching such curse words to her.

But while freezing things and causing things to sudden combust into flames was quite fun on their own, he learned this for a much bigger reason.

He wanted to see if he could perform nuclear fission, or, in other words, could he build up enough energy to split an atom? It sounds like an insane idea, which it is, but if something like that can be done?

Well, the limit from there would only be his imagination.

So he kept learning, kept improving, kept adapting. He trained his quirk day and night, uncaring whether he was alone or accompanied, uncaring if it was his free time or if he was supposed to be learning in school. He had a goal, a dream, and he'll do anything to reach it, to advance past the limits of this hero-indulgent planet.

He'd bring humanity to the stars, and nothing will stop him.

For now however, he was still an earth-faring human. He'd have to be content with his life down here, for now.

Another three years had passed, and in that time, both he and Mei had become an unofficial engineer duo, creating schematics for hero gear and even having some chances to try and make one on their own. Apparently, the gear they helped design worked so well that it garnered a lot of attention, and seeing nothing wrong with it, he decided to pass some of those requests to the two of them.

Mei did it mostly because she enjoyed toying around with this kind of things, while I was simply dragged in by the cheery girl.

That, and the money. Having more pocket money from fulfilling the requests was quite nice as well.

Of course, more attention brought with it negativity, and there was one time when the Hatsume household was about to be robbed by a wannabe villain, pulled in by the many rumors of the hero gear the family had produced.

Sadly, I was there, and without much effort bolted him out of the house. The man fell, I picked him up with telekinesis, and proceeded to carry him off to the police station to have him arrested.

He got scolded for doing so.

Which...was strange. Wouldn't they congratulate him for capturing a villain? Don't they all want people to become the heroes of the future generation?

He didn't want to think about it, so he left that question in the back of his mind.

That was about a year ago, when he was a 5th grader.

Sora was a 6th grader now, about to graduate from elementary school. It was the eve before graduation day, and he was spending it just like he'd always have for the past several years, sitting in the center of this abandoned construction site with a couple tons worth of metal beams hovering around him.

He could carry around more if he wanted, but he'd save that for another day.

Usually, Mei would be somewhere close, training the usage of her own quirk, but she had something special to do this afternoon, so she reluctantly left him to his lonesome.

It'd been a normal afternoon. He was on his own, left to his own devices as he trained, and there were no annoyances to bother him.

Until there was.

"W-Woah…" He heard someone whisper, which he easily caught with his enhanced hearing. Opening his eyes, he turned to the left and saw a boy standing by the entrance to this abandoned lot, his green eyes sparkling with amazement as he watched the heavy metal tubes spinning all around him.

He looks familiar…

Sora couldn't help but think, but he couldn't remember from where. It took the boy an entire minute before he realized that Sora was staring at him, and he immediately became a stuttering mess as he attempted to apologize.

Sora only rose his eyebrow in amusement, which the boy seemed to take as something worse.

"S-S-Sorry! I d-didn't mean to stare!"

Deciding to spare the boy, he gently let the metal tubes back down onto the dirt. "It's fine. No harm done." Sora replied, and the green-haired boy sagged in relief.

"Oh, t-that's good…" The boy sighed, before he looked at the metal tubes he let down. "U-Um, was that y-your quirk?"

"Obviously."

What else could it've been?

"S-Sorry!"

He couldn't help but smile slightly at the boy, and he seemed to curl up in shame, covering his reddening face with his hands.

Which caused his sleeves to fall, revealing what seemed to be a fairly recent burn, stretching over his left arm.

"You're hurt."

"H-Huh?"

Standing up, Sora walked over to him, grabbed his arm and pulled the sleeves down, showing the second degree burn on the side of the limb. "You're hurt." He repeated in emphasis, and the boy's eyes widened in surprise before he sagged, as if sad that he'd been found out.

That wasn't normal.

So, uncaring of his consent, he dragged him back to his house, called his mother, and then showed the burn that the boy had.

As expected, she immediately began interrogating the boy, trying to ask how and when he received such a burn. But, the boy remained silent on the matter, deflecting the question each time he was asked.

Seeing that he wasn't going to answer any time soon, his mother sighed and left to get some first aid, and it was then that he finally turned to Sora, his eyes slowly filling with tears.

"...why?" He whispered, confused.

Sora simply stared back. "What do you mean 'why'? Is it wrong to help someone when they're injured?"

The boy bit his lip, shaking, and with tears finally falling he spoke.

"B-But...I'm quirkless. A useless deku."

Oh.

So that was why.

He was one of those society had cast away, those that were deemed worthless simply because of a lack of quirks. He internally scoffed. Such a thing was stupid, foolish on every order of magnitude.

But then he remembered the burn he had, and it was clear that this boy was hurt, injured, beat down all because he lacked a quirk.

Sora scowled.

He was just a damn child.

He heard the boy whimper slightly, and Sora schooled his expression, dowsing that flame of anger with understanding. That was just how the world had become. The facets of heroism and villainy had shaped the world, and those who didn't fit to that mold were thrown away. The world's mindset had become irreversibly altered because of the appearance of quirks.

"So what?" He asked, and the boy's eyes snapped to him, surprised. "The men of the past didn't have quirks. They couldn't punch buildings to the ground or create buildings from nothing, yet they managed to build wondrous things. They could create castles, they could build towers that reached to the clouds, they discovered weaponry that could turn the tides of battle."

"Did they have quirks? No, they didn't. Did it stop them from accomplishing their goals?"

"I-It didn't."

Sora nodded, and the boy slowly looked up to him, eyes shining with a strange sort of desperation. "T-Then," With a quivering lip, he asked, "E-Even without a quirk, can I be a hero?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"...eh?" The boy looked to him again, confused. Sora closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"You don't have a quirk, but who says power can't be built?" He asked, and the boy's eyes lit up. "Our power to create things is the strongest gift we have. I'm not religious by any means, but the power to create is the biggest strength humanity was blessed with."

With a smile, Sora said his answer.

"So stand. Look past and build beyond your limit, and I'm sure you'll become a hero."

Midoriya Izuku was quirkless. That was the undisputed truth. His mother had cried apologies at it, his friend had beaten him down for it, and the world had shunned him for it, for being different. He'd built a shell around himself, thinking that if he recorded enough, learned enough about quirks, that he'd maybe be granted one of his own.

It was a vain dream. Nothing came that easily.

But he held on to that fever dream, desperately clawing for something, anything.

The end of his sixth year in elementary school was approaching, and still, despite what he's done, he still didn't have a quirk. He didn't have a power to call his own.

He couldn't become a hero.

He couldn't be like All Might.

He couldn't save others.

Then, at the eve of his graduation, he heard something. He heard the wafting of winds, and intrigued, he followed it to an abandoned plot of land.

There, sitting at the center was a boy, his jet black hair dancing in the winds as large metal tubes swirled around him, carried by some unseen force. Izuku had frozen in place, awed at the display. He knew Kacchan's quirk was strong, but he doubted he could do something of the same scale as that boy did.

It was then that he remembered who he was. Mikado Sora, a reserved genius, and his quirk was Telekinesis. The limits of his quirk was actually unknown, as he'd never actually used it at its max strength, and whenever quirk practice came around, he'd easily dominate any task that was given him. Kacchan had somewhat of a rivalry with him actually, but it was a one-sided one.

But what was more impressive was his intelligence. He dominated every subject, so much so that even the teachers weren't able to keep up with his explanations. The only one that seemed to be able to somewhat understand his teachings was Hatsume Mei, another genius that would usually stick around him for most of the day.

Of course, being the deku he was, he was spotted and immediately stuttered before him, something which seemed to only amuse the boy. Izuku cursed his own shyness, covering his face with his hands, when he heard him call out his injury. He realised a second too late that his sleeve had dropped, showing the burn Kacchan had caused, and he couldn't explain it before he was swiftly dragged away to Sora's house.

It was a fairly standard house, which surprised him slightly. He'd thought that someone as smart as him would have come from some rich family.

His mother had fretted over him, much like Izuku's mother would when she saw that he was hurt. Like he always had, he remained silent, not wanting to drag Kacchan into his mess, and seeing his reluctance to answer, the woman left to get first aid for him.

But Izuku was still oh so confused. No one had bothered being this nice to him. Why would someone bother with some quirkless deku like him?

So he asked, and Sora immediately answered.

"What do you mean 'why'? Is it wrong to help someone when they're injured?"

He was just a deku, a quirkless deku, he explained with a heavy heart, fearing for the disgust that would usually come his way.

But none came his way.

"So what?" Sora had asked, remnants of that scowl still present on his face.

"The men of the past didn't have quirks. They couldn't punch buildings to the ground or create buildings from nothing, yet they managed to build wondrous things. They could create castles, they could build towers that reached to the clouds, they discovered weaponry that could turn the tides of battle."

"Did they have quirks? No, they didn't. Did it stop them from accomplishing their goals?"

No, they didn't. Izuku had answered, a strange feeling slowly rising, something he thought he would never feel again. "T-Then, even without a quirk, can I be a hero?"

It was a foolish question. Most would answer no. Someone as weak as him wouldn't be able to become a hero. But Sora didn't do that. He explained that powers could be built, with a fire burning in those bright blue eyes of it, and at the end of it, he turned his eyes to him and smiled.

"So stand. Look past and build beyond your limit, and I'm sure you'll become a hero."

You can be a hero.

At that moment, Izuku didn't care that he cried. He didn't care that he'd broken down before someone who was essentially a stranger. He didn't care.

Because someone had trusted him.

And that was all that mattered.

Years later, Izuku would look back on that fateful day, and he wondered. Had he not met the one known as Sora, where would he be in that life?