Actually read this AN please. This chapter is basically Hans talking about MHA society problems. If you don't agree, please don't immediately click out of the fic. The point of this chapter is for Hans to do something that might not actually be correct.

It's also a lot of dialogue.

-SpiritOfErebus

Hugging his father's back, the Andersen family mobile crawled its way through the bike traffic. Their electric bike occasionally made the heart wrenching creak of unbalanced bike seats, or slightly rusty wheels, but it was still functional, and that was what mattered.

"Are you sure you shouldn't be resting?" his father said, slowly swerving past a particularly loud motorbike, even louder than their squeaking.

"I'll rest when I'm done with this mess." Hans grumbled. "Seeing those villains at the USJ acting like idiots… has really erased all respect I had for this society."

"Well, as long as you won't get arrested for it." his father said dubiously.

"What am I going to get arrested for? Shouting? Slandering? I'm making a viable socioeconomic argument that can be backed with the rarest resource of all: common sense."

"Whatever you say." his father said. "Well, just remember not to get angry, and-"

"Hey!" a teenager shouted, speeding past on the sidewalk with a fancy new sports bike. "Where'd you get that bike, old man? The last century?"

"As a matter of fact, yes!" Hans's father shouted. "And you'd do well to graduate high school you delinquent!"

Hans snickered.

"What? Are you dismissive of the bike too?"

"Nah." Hans said, suppressing another chuckle. "Nothing, nothing. Just a bit of smoke."

…

Quickly, the reason for congestion became increasingly obvious.

"Fucking villains!" somebody shouted, throwing a fast food container at the protestors, who huddled together, using their food-stained signs as shields.

"Your advocacy is what caused that invasion at the USJ!" a woman screamed.

"Get out of here!"

"Yeah, you villains!"

Hans took in the sharp divide between the two crowds. Ironically, the side calling the other side the villains were more violent than the ones supposedly breaking the system.

"Ah, yes." Hans breathed in the atmosphere. "Good old hypocrisy."

"So… are you going to do anything to stop it?" his father said, parking his bike. "Because I don't want to wreck this bike… And we really don't have enough money to fix it."

"Don't worry." Hans said. "I'll just walk in on my own."

Hans inched through the crowd like a knife would go through steel. The constant agitation and boiling of the crowd going in and out of the front lines of the protests were like a concrete wall keeping Hans out of the action.

"Oh, really?" Hans sighed. "The one time I decide to be proactive, and it ends up like this?"

Hans unzipped his bag, before bringing out a trusty megaphone.

"Everybody, everybody! Stop!" Hans shouted, just as somebody actually brought out bricks and got ready to throw them.

There were murmurs as people looked about.

"Is that a hero?"

"Did a hero finally show up to stop those villains?"

"It's coming from behind us! Make way!"

Now, shouting at the bunch of mindless sheep hypnotized by the divide created by mainstream media, Hans was able to cut through the crowd like a megaphone through an echo chamber.

Slowly and deliberately, he walked to the divide of the line, looking around at the crowd. What he saw… were normal, everyday people. People just going about their day until somebody disturbed their carefully maintained status quo.

In reality? This society was a powder keg, where everybody could explode at any moment… provided they had a suitably dangerous quirk.

"Is that a UA student?"

"Yeah, I can see the uniform."

From a building overlooking the protest, a certain businessman with a long nose looked down at the blue-haired child crossing the crowd with slight shock.

"Some of you…" Hans said. "May recognize me from the various news reports infringing upon the privacy of a fifteen year old without asking for permission for a parent or guardian first. Yes, I am Hans Christian Andersen."

There was muttering in the crowd.

"Then you must be with us, then!" the guy carrying the bricks said, his muscles bulging. "Those villains almost killed you guys yesterday!"

The crowd of protestors tensed, as the situation slowly gravitated towards collapsing once more.

"No, no." Hans said, shaking his head. "I'm here to back those protesters. You all really have been blinded by all that hero news you guys watch. It's no wonder you're all ideologically copy-pasted."

There was absolute silence now. Nobody believed what they were seeing. Only the sounds of traffic and cars honking in the background permeated the streets.

"For you see…" Hans said. "Many of you may not actually know the whole story. The radio show that tried to broadcast it had to take that particular podcast episode down from their website, you know? But now? The Hero Commission can do nothing to silence the truth!"

"The Hero Commission protects us!" the man carrying bricks shouted, to the many agreeing murmurs from the protestors. "That podcast must have said something that would-"

"Disturb the status quo?" Hans said casually. "Because, in the end, we were saved by villains. Ironic, considering how that works, right?"

…

"Can we run damage control on this?" A shady executive watching a professionally filmed video feed said, adjusting their glasses.

"...We obviously can't assassinate him, now that he's accused us in his message." Another person said, pacing around the room.

"So what do we do? He's even in the UA hero course."

"...Let's see what he has to say." The pacing, suited man said. "He's a fifteen-year-old. At that age, people can barely write essays."

…

"You lie!"

"Why would I have any motivation to lie?" Hans said, shrugging. "After all, the hero system is cleverly made to be self-perpetuating."

"Heroes stop villains!"

"Down with you, you fake UA student!"

"He's an imposter!"

A tomato flew at his face. From the ground, a tree sprouted, blocking the projectile before the red juice could have stained his coat.

"Can you all just stop and listen to me talk…" Hans sighed. "For five minutes? You're literally brutally attacking a fifteen year old. Who's the villain now, huh? Am I breaking laws shouting here? Am I inciting violence by defending the people that saved me from villains?"

"The people that saved you were other villains!"

"Indeed." Hans said. "Villains that were denied jobs even though they had college degrees, just because they happened to look a bit too much like Frankenstien. Villains that any of you could be if you were born with facial disfigurations, or mutant quirks, or… anything, really."

"And let me spill the beans." Hans said, grinning savagely. "There is nothing heroic about heroism."

Silence once more dominated the streets.

"It's true." Hans said, pacing around. "Heroes are just glorified police officers that take care of criminals."

"They're called villains!"

"And why are they called villains?" Hans said, pointing at the woman who shouted it.

"Because they use the quirk to break the law!"

"And how is that different from using a knife to break a law? I have a classmate that can make anything with her quirk. What if she makes a knife with her quirk, then proceeds to rob somebody with it? Is it any different from a thug pulling out a knife from his pocket and mugging me with it?"

"One person used a quirk!"

"And because of that, they'll receive more prison time, right?" Hans said. "But what's different in the nature of their crime? Just because somebody used a quirk, they immediately get degraded to a villain instead of a common criminal?"

"There are dangerous quirks-"

"And what if I told you, that faraway, in the land of America, there are objects that everybody can use to kill another person with a twitch of a finger?"

"That's totally untrue! With the great hero, Stars and Stripes, guarding America, it is one of the safest countries in the world."

"It's called a gun, you numbskull!" Hans said. "Is your quirk more dangerous than a gun? Something that can kill another person with a twitch of a finger?"

"Well, no." the man said, rubbing his neck.

"But using the gun to kill somebody still makes them a criminal, not a villain, right? After all, no quirk has been used. Then why distinguish villains and criminals at all, then? If ninety nine percent of the population doesn't have a quirk deadlier than a gun? Why have a separate hero system in the first place?"

"Heroes can use their quirks, and the police can't." the same lady from before said. "I'm a lawyer. I know this simple stuff. Heroes can use their quirk because they've received a license to do so. The police aren't certified."

"And why not?"

"Because they aren't trained to use their quirks!"

"And is there anything particularly different from criminals and villains? If they're both able to acquire tools of mass destruction, either through misuse of their power or misuse of a common kitchen knife or gun from the black market?"

"T-that's just how it is, okay?" the lady shouted back, truly frustrated now. "Heroes have always been heroes, since the start of quirks! The police aren't as effective against villains, so unofficial heroes did their jobs better to contain these villains."

"And why is heroism now a separate institution? If they're based on the same principles of justice and stopping crime, why not incorporate heroes into the police system as special operatives, or something?"

The lady fell silent.

"Your lawyer knowledge isn't cutting it now, huh?" Hans said, grinning. "This is because of one single word. Money."

…

"Oh, fuck." the shady executive said, ruffling his hair. "How the hell did this kid even get to that conclusion."

"Is it really that far of a reach, if it's true?"

…

"This is a self-perpetuating system, produced by the very terms that name the whole industry. Hero. AS children, we always imagine heroes as paragons of justice, and villains as people that just deserve to be sent to jail. Slowly, we get it into our minds that heroes should be famous and well known because they keep us all safe. But from what? Aren't the police doing the exact same job?"

"There have been supervillain incidents that require forces other than the police." the lady objected, raising a hand as if to punctuate her point.

"Those are the exception, not the rule. Does the existence of a couple monsters every year require the existence of a whole other system than the police force?" Hans said, crossing his arms with an unimpressed expression on his face.

"And because Japan is an extremely judgemental society that used to ridicule you for acne in high school, now that we have literal biological differences making everybody quite literally biologically different, can we still theoretically be the same under everybody's eyes?"

Hans paced around, looking at the people that were throwing bricks at the protesters.

"Can you, in good faith, say that you won't shy away from somebody that looks like a tentacle monster from a parental guidance meeting?"

The guy, noticing that by now several phones were recording, was obligated to ignore Hans, instead pretending that Hans was talking to the person behind him. Truly, Japan was a collectivist culture.

"I'll just take that as a no." Hans said. "Now, as Heroes continue to paint so-called villains as no-good delinquents that stay out of school and beat people up, what about the people that aren't lazy scumbags or murderous psychopathic people that are stained by association?"

"They… can't find jobs? And kids that look like bad things… are treated like bad things?"

"Good!" Hans said, smiling and looking back at the protester group. "Somebody's listening! So as more and more people are exposed at a young age that they look and resemble no-good scumbags, they'll eventually grow resentful of the crowd that has been bullying them for most of their lives, while people with supposed heroic quirks will continue to bask in their people's praise and view it as their duty to put down the poor, poor potential villains."

"But that's absurd! Why would a hero want to perpetuate societal evil? Why would the Hero Commission do this?" A salaryman said, almost stepping out of the crowd, before retreating back into the forest of people.

"Smart move." Hans thought. "If he ended up canceled, then he would probably lose his job and all of his social prospects."

There were many other voices after this, now that the salaryman had opened up the proverbial Pandora's box. Many insults and accusations came flying at Hans, but he shrugged them off. At least this wasn't criticism directed at his writing.

"It's obvious!" Hans shouted. "It's for money. As long as there are heroes, the Hero Commission will profit off of hero merch, fan clubs, even the taxes and revenue that having a hero means for the economy. And this perpetual flow of money requires that heroes continue to exist, which is why we still have a specialized branch of glorified police dealing with slightly more dangerous criminals."

"So what does this have to do with the protest you're protecting?" the lawyer lady shouted, clearly wanting to distract everybody from their unfinished argument. "Why should we be allowed to use our quirks in public?"

"Because quirks are literally no different from guns or knives in terms of danger level, but can bring much more productivity." Hans said. "We have literally evolved to have these abilities, and yet we almost never use them in our day to day life to enhance our quality of life. That… is a huge waste of resources. Should we stop using our hands just because it can be used to punch somebody?"

"That's just de-escalation! A quirk can literally kill somebody."

"So can the bricks one of you guys were planning on throwing. Or a good tomato-based allergy for the tomato you guys threw at me. Or anything, really. Those may not be the best example, but if somebody wants to be dangerous, it's inevitable for them to find a way. Of course, there should be some regulation, but a more attainable quirk license akin to a driver's license could maybe make the system more stable."

The debates and thrown insults continued for a bit longer, as topic after topic shifted, but it ultimately came back to the fact of… why was a UA student protesting against a system that benefits themselves?

"Sometimes…" Hans said, "There are certain things that you can't help but notice. Most people suppress that, and because it works with them, they accept it. And then, there are idiots like me that can't help but speak their mind to address the fallacies that populate our society. Like looking at media, we need to think critically, and most laws and systems are pretty archaic."

With a final sigh, Hans waved goodbye to most of the protesters and anti-protesters, who had now cooled down enough to leave for lunch.

Hans yawned, stretching his arms and scratching his own neck.

"Man, that was exhausting." he sighed, looking up at an electronic billboard. For a second, it stayed on a commercial for Uwabami's shampoo. He stared at the gaudy camerawork and editing, before his glare hardened.

This was indeed a stupid system.

Then, the message changed. At first, he almost looked away as he saw the irritating UA logo, but then, the billboard completely changed. He refocused his gaze when there seemed to be a sports event playing. With energy beams flying around.

"Oh, god." Hans said, burying his face in his hands. "Please don't tell me that I'll be participating in something like that. And it'll be mandatory. Painting what I've said today as a… big hypocritical statement."

It was probably inaccurate anyways. With this being a shounen world, there would obviously be supervillains that would just rip the status quo up on its head and ruin his entire argument.

But it was nice while it lasted, actually trying to do something.

"Let's just get home." Hans said, sighing. "I might need to write my obituary soon."

"What, is the Hero Association going to assassinate you?" his father questioned with a cheery tone. "That's probably not going to happen."

"No, much worse." Hans said. "Fate is going to do me in."

"Didn't you say, just yesterday, that everything was predetermined since the Big Bang?" his father asked, raising an eyebrow. Hans only saw it through the rearview mirror of the bike.

"Well, yeah." Hans said, sighing. "And now that I know nothing I do is going to matter because of the annoying plot, all I can really do is work to try and survive."

"What changed your grand declaration about doing something to society?"

"A sports event killed all of my motivation."

…

"Ma'am, we have it. However, we were discovered while running away. We managed to escape just as the government closed their borders."

Kiara shut off the radio, talking about some pointless protest in Japan. "Perfect. Place the box on the table, and be gentle. That box is worth more than your squad's lives ever will be." It was time to finally summon Hans definitively, once and for all. She hadn't been appearing in public events at all for about a month now just to get every single detail of the summoning circle right.

This time, she would summon something, even if it wasn't Hans.

Pouring the human bone dust from the coffin in the corner in a pattern she had created, one very different from the usual summoning circle pattern, she sent an experimental pulse of mana into it. With her fame and her somewhat viable spirit origin from her servant days, it was getting easier and easier to replenish her mana.

And with the premier of her new movie around the world, her mana would be at an all time high. That was when she would unleash it.

"This time. This time it will work" Kiara whispered to herself. "Then…" she continued in her head, putting all her focus on the very delicate task. "We can watch together as this world collapses into your corrupted fairy tales."

AN Time

This chapter was a bit of an info dump, I guess. But it's a lot of dialogue, and, well, there is a lot that is wrong with MHA society. I'm not the biggest MHA lore guy, but then again, Hans isn't either, considering the fact that he is also limited in perspective and biased to see civilians as average people that are as non-combative as he wishes he could be. Also, shounen world All For One yadda yadda yadda wreck society.

If you want to continue the lore debate, you can try joining the discord.

Discord link: discord . gg / 9t9MK3jHmV

-SpiritOfErebus