The New Divide

(Inspired by Higurashi and Star Wars The Clone Wars)

In the years since the emergence of quirks, many young and aspiring souls have longed to escape from their homes in the countryside of Japan and move into the big cities. It is in the cities and urban landscapes where all the big hero and villain fights are, and it's where all the opportunities to become a hero and chase dreams of success in the hero industry lie.

As such, much of Japan's countryside and rural prefectures have been abandoned, left for nature to reclaim. Those who once lived there have performed a mass exodus, migrating into the urban districts and leaving their old homes behind.

Now, many of the old towns and villages that populate Japan's rural countryside are themselves depopulated. The Japanese Diet and HPSC have long since abandoned them, considering them to be relics of an old age compared to the flashy spectacles of heroes and villains in the more developed parts of the country. As such, few people live in these towns, and even fewer heroes guard them.

But there are still those scattered few that live in these old homes. Dead-enders and vagabonds, farmers and nature lovers, and even the occasional community, made up of those who have nowhere else to go and who want to escape the chaos of the urban sprawls of Japan and their endless struggles.

However, this has created tensions between those living in the countryside and those living in the cities. In the eyes of those living out in the rural zones, the heroes and bigwigs in the city are out of touch with the rest of Japan and their needs, and their heroes are thuggish bullies who will only come around when they either get disturbed in the big cities or when a villain flees into the countryside, which happens a lot more than the heroes can control, leaving a lot of villages and rural towns open to attack and exploitation by various villains, only adding to the resentment that those villages hold to the heroes for their lack of protection.

In the eyes of those living in the urban zones, the people living in the countryside are themselves out of touch with modern-day Japan and hero society, and are ungrateful for all that the heroes have done for them and are trying to run away from their responsibilities by fleeing from the urban areas to the countryside. Many of those who left to live in the countryside are themselves former villains and the like, and instead of trying to make something with their lives and change things for the better, they just want to run away from their problems instead of solving them. And it's not like those villagers are innocent themselves. Many of them have been found helping villains and giving them shelter from the heroes, meaning that they're perfectly fine with breaking the law whenever it best suits them.

The growing conflict between the two factions is a murky wash of grey morality. Neither side is particularly guiltfree, there are good and bad people on both sides, and there are people in both parties who want to escalate the ever approaching battle for their own purposes.

It also doesn't help that many of those that move to the countryside are people with black marks on their records, such as getting expelled from U.A., former villains who can't find work anywhere due to their criminal records, or are trying to escape persecution due to their quirks, leading to a serious escalation of tensions when any heroes from the big cities show up and start poking around. Many of these communities have become self-governing thanks to the wider Japanese government neglecting these parts of their country, and any heroes who do grow up in the sticks and stay where they were born tend to side with their hometowns over any official governing body or hero superior, which only adds to the dangerous amount of tension in the room.

The biggest theme in this story is classism, and how even in a supposedly utopian world like hero society, there will always be problems such as financial divides and poverty that plague civilisation for as long as it exists. Another of the biggest themes is how conflict can spring up from the most unlikeliest of places, and how the smallest spark and ignite a bonfire within a society.

However, one day, these existing class divisions threaten to spill over when the body of a dead hero is found floating down the Shimanto River, its origin point reported to be a fishing town named Saresh, deep within the Japanese countryside.

Class 1-A are sent to accompany the investigators, as well as provide security alongside the travelling and local heroes and to learn of towns such as Saresh and understand the people that they are going to be protecting in the future. In this, Shoji and Ochako end up becoming extremely important in getting their classes accumulated to the local environment and its inhabitants, Shoji for having been born in one of these rural towns, and Ochako for having experienced life under the poverty line like many of the townspeople herself.

However, there are still tensions (how many times can I say that word in this story idea?) that are boiling underneath the surface. The single hero that has made Saresh his home cannot stand the newcomers, and the villagers are very much the same, giving the students and the heroes that have come with them the cold shoulder wherever they go. In turn, the arriving heroes would make their distain of the townspeople known, and several hero students, such as Momo, Iida, and Todoroki, would be confused and annoyed by the villagers, not yet able to recognise the vast class gap between them and the people of Saresh themselves.

During this time, Class 1-A would come to learn that the town of Saresh has been communicating with several other riverside towns running up and down the Shimanto River, and that they haven't just been trading fish with each other. Calling themselves the Shimanto Rover Coalition, or SRC for short, this new alliance has decided that they've had enough of the bigwigs in the Japanese upper classes of society neglecting their needs and letting their homes be regularly attacked, all while forcing them out of their homes in the city for one reason or another. They're not interested in overthrowing hero society or fighting anyone. They just want to support each other and live their own lives peacefully... though they have no compunctions about defending themselves if they must.

But the majority of the heroes hate this. These townsfolk are trading support items and weapons with each other, and possibly selling them off for profit as well. Even if it's just for self-defence to make up for heroic shortcomings, what they're doing is still incredibly illegal and something that warrants a hero intervention. Their weapons-trading makes them vigilantes at best, and villains at worse, and it is the heroes' job to uphold the law and stop this.

The heroes suggest calling on them more, but the townsfolk know that that's not going to be a better solution. The majority of heroes don't bother with the rural areas of Japan. There's not enough people there to warrant getting into a big and flashy battle. The only reason that the heroes are out here in the sticks is because one of their own happened to get offed. If it wasn't for that, then they'd be left to fend for themselves, as always. Their weapon trading is the only choice they have right now.

As the heroes and the newly-christened SRC threaten to go to war with each other, Class 1-A find themselves caught in the middle and uncertain of who's side they should be on, as the growing conflict between the two sides has become awash with a lot of grey moral conundrums and uncertainties. Tension begins to grow within the class itself as students begin to pick sides, all the while they're trying to deescalate the conflict and figure out who the murderer of the hero from before is as well.

But then, eventually, they find the murderer. A girl the same age as them, who is also terrified out of her mind.

The hero had tried to rape her, as she had killed him out of self-defence.

And when the heroes try to take her away to stand trial for her actions, the villagers, and the rest of the SRC, refuse to hand her over.

This is the boiling point, and the two sides finally decide to go to war with each other. Class 1-A realise that even with all their support items and weapons, the villagers are still a bunch of untrained civilians against seasoned pro heroes. They won't stand a chance. They'll be massacred.

And as the class begins to split and choose sides for themselves, they find themselves in a desperate race to stop war from breaking out across the countryside.

But they may just be too late, as fighting has already begun...

And if this conflict reaches its height, then there will be casualties.