In a world where eighty percent of the population had a quirk, being "quirkless" was more than a disadvantage.
It was a target.
Takao Arashi knew that better than most.
The night sky over Musutafu flickered with quiet lightning. No storm. No wind. Just light, dancing soundlessly above a quiet residential neighborhood.
In the backyard of a narrow two-story house, Takao stood barefoot inside a ring of scorched earth and smoothed stones. Arms outstretched, breath steady, his fingertips sparked with electricity.
A low grumble rolled across the clouds—thunder. Made not by nature, but by the boy black haird boy below.
"Just thunder," he whispered. "Not the whole thing. Don't overreach."
A pulse of compressed sound and static flickered between his palms. He shaped it. Focused it. Held it until the pressure became pain.
Then he let it go.
The ball of thunder launched upward and fizzled into the sky without a trace. No collateral damage. No blinding light. Just control.
Takao exhaled, shaking off the headache appearing as it settled behind his eyes.
Not much but still progress.
He crouched and scribbled in an old note book laid on the grass next to him
'Pantheon: Greece
Aspect: Zues (Thunder mode)
Side Effects and progress:
Migraine has improved from last week which was much harder to deal with
Felt way less fatigue compared to last week as well
Control feels like it's improved more as well, around 5% more than the week before not much but still some progress is better than no progress.'
That was his quirk. Aspect Bringer. He could call upon fragments, aspects of mythological power from gods of different pantheons. Not the gods themselves. Just the divine domains they represented, condensed into raw ability.
It was powerful. Potentially limitless.
But unfortunately Takao didn't awaken it until he was fifteen.
And by then, he'd already spent years being the quirkiness punching bag of his school.
Six Months Ago
Takao had always been small for his age, skinny, quiet, bookish. And worst of all in a hero-obsessed school: he had no quirk to speak of.
"Quirkless scum." Some called him
"Late bloomer." By many others.
"Loser." By everyone else.
He'd learned to stay out of the way. Take the hits. Let the insults roll off. Most days, it wasn't even worth reporting.
But one afternoon, in the boys' locker room, things went further than usual.
"Still quirkless trash, huh?" said Ishida, the ringleader.
Takao didn't answer. He never did.
But that day, he made a mistake, he looked Ishida in the eyes, that was enough.
The first punch knocked him into a row of lockers breaking his nose instantly. A second one followed, strait to his liver, he dropped to the floor, then a kick, then another and another and another.
He was barely conscious when Ishida grabbed him by the collar and dragged him outside, tossing him onto the gravel behind the school.
Bleeding. Humiliated. Broken.
Something inside him cracked.
Not metaphorically, or rhetorically or poetically or theoretically or any other fancy way.
Something older. Something dvine.
It started as a pressure behind his eyes, in his chest, under his skin as it cracked glowing golden underneath. A roaring like waves crashing inside his skull. Then…
Lightning. Follwed by the growl of thunder shortly after.
A bolt smited down from the clear blue sky and struck the earth less than five feet away. The ground exploded. Electricity danced across the gravel, and the chain-link fence melted.
The bullies scattered, screaming.
Takao rose slowly, glowing faintly, eyes rimmed in a bright gold. Hair a golden white
And then collapsed.
He didn't wake for seven days.
Present Day
He wiped sweat from his brow as the last arcs faded from his skin.
It had taken him weeks to understand what happened.
The doctors couldn't explain it fully. His quirk had finally awakened, in a state of distress.
A massive surge of divine energy channeled through a mortal vessel not prepared for it in the slightest.
Aspect Bringer, he called it.
It was like reaching into the mythos of gods and pulling out a thread of their power—lightning from Zeus, insight from Odin, sunlight from Amaterasu. The more powerful the Aspect, the greater the cost.
The Full invocation nearly destroyed him the day he activated his quirk. So now he trained, secretly at home.
Because in Japan, using a quirk without a license, especially one this destructive, wasn't just frowned upon. It was criminal.
Takeo looked at his hands.
They no longer trembled when he summoned an aspect.
That used to terrify him, something so destructive lived in him. It was him.
But now?
Now he wasn't afraid of his quirk and what it could do
He was afraid of not mastering it in time.
The U.A. Entrance Exam was coming, only 9 months left.
The top school for hero hopefuls. The only place he could learn to use his power. And start to become something more.
A hero.
Not out of pride or a show of strength.
But because he'd spent too long on the ground, bleeding and afraid.
Never again. Not for him, or anyone else he can help.