From Zero to Hero

“No! Please! You don’t have to do this.,” a man’s voice echoed through the room. This was the last thing the man would ever say as his soul left his body; his corpse slid down the blood covered wall. Shackles around his wrists held the body in a somewhat upright position. I had witnessed the most gruesome scene any human mind could imagine, but not only was I a witness, I was the murderer. I was locked up right in front of the recently passed man; in a basement at the end of the world, that no one could hear our screams. The only source of light in were two old candlestands that stood on each side of said man. It lit up enough to see the with pain painted face that once stared back at me for what seems like days. Everything beyond that was all but a big black abyss, where anything could stare back at me, and I wouldn’t even know.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to beg for forgiveness, pleading to a God to forgive me for what I had done. In my mind I raged, shouting until my voice gave out, but my lips did not part. I felt trapped inside my own body, a body that did not listen to my orders. I wanted this to stop, but no matter how hard I fought, my limbs kept moving, my eyes kept open, and my mouth stood shut. 
I stared down at my blood covered arms as a cloud of black vapor wrapped itself around them before slowly sinking into my skin. I felt as if my body would burn up from the inside out, my blood nearly boiling. The pain overwhelmed me which finally broke my silence and I let out an agonizing scream. I fell to my side and tried to pull myself free from my restrains but it had no use. I tried to contain the pain, control it, focus on something else; anything else. 

I heard a door open and got my hopes up that someone would come and safe me. This hope died as soon as I saw three men, dressed in all black, walk past me to the dead man. They uncuffed him, his lifeless body hitting the floor in front of my feet. I shuffled back to the wall as much as I could staring back at the spaced-out, wide-open eyes of my victim.

 Two of these men dragged the body away from me only leaving a trail of blood and excrements. The third one came up to me, holding a pair of keys, playing with them while he walked. He knelt down right in front of my face and grabbed my chin, making me look at him.His eyes narrowed, he grinned down at me with a smile wide enough to reach from ear to ear, his voice rough as he whispered some words: “It’s okay, it’s over now. You did an excellent job Kozuke.” I knew this man oh so well, we even shared a last name. This monster was no one else than my father, Kotaro Shimura. I used to see this man as a role model, a hero and protector of this family. Where did it all go wrong?

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I was still struggling to keep my voice down not screaming my lungs out as the burning went through my body and collected itself in my chest. I was hunched over in pain, but Kotaro kept a tight grip on my face as I grid my teeth. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction to hear me whine or whimper, I was stronger than that. He stared at me as if he would enjoy this, seeing his child suffer like this, his face still gleaming.
The burning faded after a while, minutes after they started, and my body started to cool down. The room started to feel colder and colder, until a Siberian winter was nothing against it. My teeth started to chatter; goosebumps spread over my body. The shivers took over me, my eyelids got heavy as my body slowly started to shut down. A slap across the face woke me up again but only for me to see my father staring back at me with his hand lifted ready to strike again the moment my eyes would close. My head fell into his hand as I was barely able to keep myself from blacking out. 
I heard the door open, and more footsteps came towards us. “What did you do! You weren’t supposed to hurt her!” a new female voice shouted at him.
He dropped my head and got up, turning towards the person, and shoving them away screaming something. I couldn’t really follow the conversation as I slipped in and out of consciousness.
I did notice that this fight had turned physical as one of the two landed right next to me against the wall. That was all I remembered before everything went black and my body went numb. 

Now you may ask yourself what this just was. This was just one of many nightmares that kept me up at night. It seemed nearly unbelievable, like from some sort of TV show or anime but this dream came closer to our world as you might think.

These powers weren’t just a creation of my fantasy, even outside of a dream people could do unbelievable things. The first occurrence of such a thing was in Ching-Chang city. An extraordinary child was born that radiated light. After that reports of people who have all kind of superpowers popped up across the globe. No one knew what caused these quirks, people could only make guesses and assumptions. 
Rumors said that these abilities were man made in a laboratory somewhere in the world. Others say that some form of God send his child into our world. Different stories say that these powers were to result of a cataclysm of two worlds, which allowed these somewhat magical powers to pass into our world. This was all based on the multiverse theory, that there are infinite universes where everything exists, and one of them, where quirks had always existed, collided with our timeline. Either way, the world we knew became a superhuman society with about eighty percent possessing some kind of supernatural power.

These powers got the fitting name “quirk” as every ability was unique and special in its own way.A few years after the discovery of quirks crime rates skyrocketed, that was also when my family came into some power and fame. At this time a few self-proclaimed Heroes founded an organization they called “The World Hero Association.” They were responsible for managing, recruiting, and training other Heroes all over the world.  Since the WHA was founded, they have been our sworn arch enemies. We were the flagship for the freedom movement they tried to stop. They restricted the use of quirks in public and deemed some even dangerous. But a quirk itself was harmless, the person who held it was the dangerous one. My family and I were revolutionaries, the rebels that were societies outcasts for not playing by these wannabe hero’s rules.

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My family befriended another powerful man that believed in the same values and societal standards that we stood for. With his help they founded a group, a refuge for all those who had been shunned for who they are or what they believed in. They called it the L.O.V, or League of Villains. The “Villains” of society were a sanctuary and home for many lost souls that would have ended in the streets otherwise.
One of these men that came here was my father Kotaro, he had gotten himself in trouble with the enemy and had to be rescued before he would have gone insane by their torture. My mother , Nao Shimura, was the one to welcome him and explained the ways of the League to him.

My mother was a saint, caring and loving towards everyone, which made her the leaders favorite. The man that cofounded this group called himself “All for One”, nobody ever learned his real name. “All for One” had very high expectations for his favorite disciple, he treated her as the daughter he could never have.
He was not pleased to hear that Nao had fallen in love with the mentally unstable Kotaro. If someone was considered dangerous that it was him. Somewhere along his past he developed a lean towards violence and bloodshed, with a lot of underlaying rage. It was a miracle for the world that he was one of the quirkless ones otherwise he would have done far worse to the world. 
Even if “All for One” wasn’t particularly pleased with their arrangement Nao chose him and he was not one to deny his daughter anything. They married soon after, stabilizing the family and strengthening their reign as ruling family. As a marriage gift “All for one” granted Kotaro his only wish, to have a quirk. This was supposed to be impossible, either you were born with these powers, or you will never have them, but “All for One” was a powerful man, more powerful than most could imagine, and he made the impossible, possibly. Giving this unstable person powers with highly destructive capabilities.  
With their cruel and cunning ways, they soon made themselves a name in the community of drug dealers and hitman and other sorts of underground business. The League grew in members and influence in the underworld, pulling strings in politics and economy with their goal to eradicate the people that call themselves “Hero’s”.

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With all the money they could dream of and in a stable environment they could start thinking more about themselves, of expanding the family, or getting an heir to their wealth and influence. That’s when they had my older brother Tenko Shimura. Even if he was a very gentle and kind soul, his environment was anything but pleasant. He saw things no child should ever be exposed to, so much death and blood on a daily basis. These things would and did traumatize this young mind to a point where he became mentally unstable from an early age on.
They were all aware of the risks of bringing a child into this world. He had a higher chance of becoming quirkless and if he, by any chance gets passed down parts of the already split quirk “All for One” had given Kotaro, nobody would know what would happen to him. 

Everyone was worried sick about the young boy up until he was four years old, and he actually started showing signs of a quirk. The power his father was given had indeed transferred to the young boy. He could disintegrate matter with his bare hands, all he needed to do was touch an object or person with all five of his fingers. His outside began to change his well, his hair turned to a light sky blue, his eyes gotten a lighter shade of red. Suddenly he could do something that had nothing to do with either of his parents quirk. He started creating pairs of hands that could, just like his original hands, disintegrate things by touch. 
With this began the fighting between Kotaro and Nao and with his temperament these fights more often than not turned physical. He accused her of cheating, which was a very sensitive topic for him. Only “All for One” could barely stop the man from beating his favorite child to death. After begging to reconcile and promising over and over again that she didn’t cheat Kotaro could put his anger aside and wanted to raise his child with her.

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One day “All for One” brought something extraordinary with him, from one of his missions. The corpse of a deceased young Hero. His hair was nearly glowing with a beautiful arctic blue, the rest of his body was nearly mangled beyond recognition. He was going to be their first subject to undergo dramatic changes to create a soulless, spineless artificial human. 
One of the Leagues doctors invented a modification to bring a dead man back to life and brainwash them to a point where they would be loyal servants to whoever they are assigned. 
With this the first ever “Nomu” was created. They gave him the name Kurogiri, and he was assigned the task to protect and serve Tenko Shimura and his family always and ever. They fused his quirk with his body, making him into one of his clouds. His entire body became some sort of thick black smoke that could be touched but can lose all its form and pass through the smallest of cracks or turn into any desired shape. 

Kurogiri stood by their side and took care of little Tenko while his parents were out and about to do their master’s bidding. Not long after they had a long-term babysitter for Tenko, my mother had found out she was pregnant again. 

Soon after Tenko had gotten a little sister Kozuke Shimura, which is me. I always had the biggest smile and was the happiest laughing baby they ever saw, is what I have been told.
At first, Tenko absolutely despised me, he suddenly had to give up some of his time and freedom to take care of me as well, since Kurogiri couldn’t do everything himself. For him I must have been nothing but a useless burden since babies really didn’t do much other than scream, eat and sleep.
Once I was a toddler, he gained some sort of protective brother sense for me. Whenever he would get some time he would spend it with me, playing, babbling, running around the house, and causing trouble hoping that we didn’t get caught. He was such a sweet boy, no matter how much work I was sometimes. He saw how pure I still was and wanted to protect this innocence as long as he could. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to live through the same hell he had to endure.
Everything went perfectly, I was four years younger but nearly just as smart as Tenko, I was actively listening to my parents planning and started getting involved in the LOV. It all seemed to go well, until I turned four. This was the year I was supposed to get a quirk, but something was taking it’s time there. 
Every day I would wake up and was suddenly expected to have some sort of power, but nothing ever happened. They feared that I would be one of these quirkless scums and became even harder with my training and the punishments for failing became harsher. 

Tenko couldn’t watch any longer how my parents were pressing me to give them what they wanted and punish me for something I had no control over. He intervened multiple times, each and every time he would be beaten back into his place. Yet he wouldn’t give up, he would try to withstand his father’s quirk so he wouldn’t lay another hand on me. 
The years went on, and still no sign of a quirk, but instead of a quirk I had gotten a friend. A young boy, not even a year older than my brother landed on our doorstep. His hair crimson red with white at the roots, his body severely burned from head to toe, the skin falling off his arms and face

You see his deal was fire, blue flames shooting out of his palm that reached lava like temperatures. These flames where so powerful that his young body and mind could not control them, they would go off in an uncontrollable amount, burning down everything in his path. It would even burn himself as the flames took over his body. 
He spent months with the best doctors we could afford and all this time I wondered why they would go to such great lengths for this boy while we barely received any of this attention. 
We learned more about him as he spent his first days with us, he was covered with bandages, and we couldn’t really get close to him, but he was nice to us and was fun to talk to. He got severely burned by a quirk accident; the doctors told him he might forever be wearing those bandages as his skin was burned off in several places. We tried our best to make him feel better about this by constantly drawing on the fabric before a nurse came to change it every day.

Our father had put him in a room with us since he was only a child and was grateful for everything, they had done for him. He called himself Touya Todoroki. My brother and him soon became best friends, connecting over the trauma both have been through. 
I got introduced to him a bit later since they first wanted the boys to connect, it was a plan already made for the future. Touya was always so kind and gentle with me, he saw that I wasn’t ready to learn about the cruelty of the life they lived. Even if he was like four years older than me, he still drew pictures with me, read me bedtime stories and helped me with my studies. He became somewhat of a teacher, caregiver, and friend at the same time.

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He was also the first one who saw me use my quirk as I had finally gotten it at the age of six, which was two years too late, but I couldn’t have been more proud. It was just for a couple of seconds but long enough that I could call him over to look at me. “Toto! Lookie! look what I can do!” ¸I shouted over at him while we were playing.
Since I was still pretty young my speech wasn’t perfect. I usually wanted to say Touya, but I had issued with the “ouy” sound. Therefore, I usually stuck with “Toto,” it sounded very adorable, and he allowed no one else to use this for him. Once Tenko tried it but got whacked over the head by Touya which I found very amusing.
I wanted to grab a pencil, but it was out of reach, I stretched out my hand as smoke started pouring out of my hand. It ran up my hand to my elbow before a line of smoke slithered it’s way to the pencil and wrapped itself around it, lifting it off the ground.

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He looked up from his drawing book to see me holding a pencil without using my hand. He was staring in awe and quickly got over to inspect this a bit more careful. “Woah look at that little mouse, you got yourself a quirk. And look at you too, your hair!”  he cheered me on as he grabbed a little mirror and held it in front of me.
My hair started glowing the icy blue turning even brighter than it was before. A slight wind had picked up in the room that let my hair fly around weightlessly. 
Our eyes met and I could only giggle at how he looked at me, his eyes were wide open, and his mouth was gaping. He must have been so proud of me in this moment, since he was one of the people who never lost hope in me, that I one day, would get a quirk stronger than any other before. He was, with my brother, my biggest support system I had in this short but momentous time as a toddler.

The wind around us began to pick up speed, lift off all the papers and light objects, tossing them around everywhere. I began to feel quite scared as even the furniture began to move while I had no control over what was happening to me. My fear even increased the storm knocking over tables and chairs. I quickly crawled over to Touya and into his arms while he tried to shield me from whatever came flying at us.“Hold on tight”, he whispered as he got on his feet and carried me towards the door so we could leave this room. 
The intense air pressure picked us both off the floor and flung us across the room against a bookshelf which was already swaying in the wind. Some of the books fell out and hit Touya on the head making him hiss out in surprise and maybe a little bit of pain but he never stopped covering me.

I started crying in his arms, unable to control my emotions or my quirk. My hands wrapped around him, and I could feel myself squeeze tightly against his chest. He was struggling to breathe as tentacles of smoke had wrapped themselves around him as well nearly squeezing him to death. 
I quickly let go of him and apologized in tears while he caught his breath. I quickly moved back trying to get him as far away from me as possible so my quirk wouldn’t be able to hurt him. I jumped back and fell into the already unstable bookshelf knocking more books out and with that soon the entire shelf threatened to crash down on us.

My legs were shaking, and I could barely move but I had to save Toto. I ran towards him and managed to grab his shoulder as suddenly everything went quiet. 
For the blink of an eyes the storm was gone, everything was gone, my body started to feel as light as a feather, as if all the weight had been taken off me. I opened my eyes and I saw things that no human could possibly imagine. 

I was in a deep darkness of space surrounded by millions of stars and colorful space dust, one or the other black hole glowed in the distance. I was hovering here in nothingness as I looked into the infinity of our universe. I could breathe as normal, and move around, only very slowly. 
In my arms was Touya, tightly snuggled against my body trying to pull me back down in his lap. He didn’t really seem to be quite with me as his body was stiff and barely breathing. 
This moment only lasted for so long as we were thrown back into the room where chaos reeked. I looked up to the incoming bookshelf and noticed we were in a completely different corner of the room, the bookshelf had already fallen over but we were nowhere near it. 
I looked back at Toto who was also just as afraid as me, softly sobbing into my shirt. In this moment I could forget about everything that was happening around us and direct my whole attention towards my friend. I knelt down and cuddled back into his lap trying to stop him from crying. 

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The more I focused on catching Touya’s tears and less on the storm, the surroundings calmed down. I noticed myself getting calmer as well as the wind nearly stopped leaving me only slightly shocked. Toto was still clinging to me as I was holding on to him, we both were our only safe place in this room. We were both crying in each other’s arms cuddled together in the last corner of the room which was  a complete mess.
We came back to our senses as the door flew open. Kotaro, Nao, and Kurogiri stood in the doorway staring at us. My quirk still hasn’t fully calmed down, a layer of smoke still covered my arms and dripped down my hands before it dissolved in the air. My hair was still submersed in this tranquilizing glow while moving weightlessly in the wind. Black tears ran down my cheek turning my eyes pitch black.
I could only look at them helplessly and stand up for what I have done. “There’s been an accident. I ... I couldn’t control it.”, I whimpered as I let Kurogiri rush through to take care of Touya. 
Nao immediately ran towards me and made sure I was okay while Kotaro inspected the rest of my quirk that was left in the room. Mom was convincing me that it was okay, that I should take a deep breath and relax, that it was over. 

She looked quite frightened and kept looking up between dad and Kurogiri. I had no idea what was going on between the three of them, but Nao surely didn’t want me to figure it out, so she ordered Kurogiri to take me outside again and celebrate me finally getting a quirk. 
I ran over to Touya and hugged him very tightly as he got back on his feet apologizing for what happened. He had no hard feelings towards me as he had a similar case of panic the moment his fire came to life. 

It was the most amazing day; we went to go get all my favorite foods and as much ice cream as I could eat. I had already forgotten the stress from before, I was just happy that I could get out of this house and away from the tension in there.
As I got back inside I wanted to run up to Tenko’s room and tell him all about what I did, I also wanted to check on Touya if he was okay or if the books hurt him a lot. The air in the house was dense, I could hear fighting from the kitchen and wanted to quickly stay away from that. 
I ran up the stairs to Tenko’s room and knocked. I saw the light of joy leave his eyes as he saw it was me. He looked at me with such disgust and pain. I thought he was upset about what happened, I did make quite the mess in the room, but I promised to clean it later. He shut the door in front of my face and send me away and told me he never wanted to see me again. 
Confused and hurt by his words I wanted to find Touya, who was his room. As I walked in there Touya was already up and sitting on a bed playing on his phone. I expected him to be mad at me as well, I really screwed up this time. Instead, he was rather happy to see me, he invited me to sit with him and I snuggle up with him right away. I was still sad from what Tenko just said to me and wanted to know what all this was about and why nobody was happy that I finally had a quirk. He said that these were adult problems and that I shouldn’t worry too much about it.

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We soon got interrupted by Kotaro who came screaming down the hallway. I expected a punishment for the mess, but I had hope that in the end he would still be proud of me. 
He came into the room, without even knocking first, and grabbed me by my arm, yanking me out of the bed. I didn’t scream or complain about the pain, it would have made things worse. I bit on my tongue to keep me from making any noise as he dragged me out of the room. 
Touya had already thrown his phone away and was running behind us trying to catch up and pull me back. I passed Kurogiri who had no choice but to stay obediently by my father’s side as he gotten orders not to interfere. I heard my mother scream at him. He huffed as he brought me to the basement door.
He opened it and with one yank threw me down the stairs. I started screaming for help, no one’s help would have been enough, but mostly Tenko or Touya, they had to do something. I wanted to run back up the stairs, but I couldn’t get there is time.

 The room was pitch black, an abyss of nothingness as far as the eye could see. I sat on top of the stairs until my eyes would get used to the darkness. I could see a mattress on the floor, some books, some clothes laid out and another door that would lead to the bathroom.
I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but I had the feeling I wasn’t going to get out of there any time soon. I had no contact with the outside world for months, no amount of screaming or crying or clawing at the door helped. 

It was lonely down there, and very boring. At first, I was crying at lot before falling asleep, hopeless about ever getting out and seeing my family again even if it was just one door separating us. I tried to free myself by banging against the door, but it was locked tight. I was not yet familiar enough with my quirk to use it in a situation like this. I’ve spent a long time in this room, confined to solidarity and darkness. I had no sense of time in here, but from the noise that was coming from the door I could guess if it was morning, evening, or night. 
As the door finally opened, I didn’t see the usual big figure with a facemask and a suit that would always bring me my food, but rather my Toto, who brought me a specialty, warm soup. It was pretty rare for me to get a warm meal send down. It was usually cold leftovers from the others. Right behind him was Kurogiri who was send here to watch over us as the adult while the “kids” could reunite. 

I wanted to jump up and fall around his neck, but my body had gotten too weak to do that. He saw that I could barely move and quickly put my food down before he came over to hug me. I couldn’t help but cry out for him and complain in how much pain I was. 
As the protector that he was he would gently shush me down and pick me up to carry me to bed. I would sit in his lap for however long it took before I would finally settle enough to eat. I was very much capable of feeding myself, yet he insisted that I would simply rest in his lap while he would feed me spoon after spoon. I had gotten rather thin and fragile, yet even malnourished. I could see the resentment in his perfectly sapphire eyes, but he did everything he could. 
Once I was back at some strength, I asked about everything that had been bothering me. Why was I here? What happened outside this door? Where was Tenko? Was he okay?
Nobody had seen him since that day, he was just as locked up as me, only in the attic, where he had at least the tiniest bit of sunlight, the benefits of being the older one. Kurogiri wasn’t speaking at all, and even If he did he wouldn’t be allowed to say anything about this incident as well.

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I had given up on escaping, they kept me here for so long by now, that I adapted to it quite well. After some years I completely forgot what it felt like to be outside, I had no craving of leaving.
  I was alive, I was being fed, and I had at least some time with my Toto now and then. Even if this life was so much more restricted from what I was used to it became quite normal for me. While I was alone, I would read a lot of books, study all subjects on my own or played with my imaginary friends. 

More months past, where I studied day and night, getting close to the expectations that I was given. But those studies, even if they benefitted me on the long run, nearly got me killed. I once came across an interesting study, concerning the human DNA. That’s when the inevitable happened. I just read about the chapter how quirks manifested and how they get passed on along the family. 
At first, I didn’t think much about it, but in the back of my mind these questions kept bubbling up. I never thought about how genes actually worked, how traits get passed down from parents to children. The entire bird and bees talk was still far, far in the future for me. But then how was I created? And how did I get these powers? 
Then I had this horrifying suspicion. Something that would explain everything that happened to me from the day I got my quirk to now finally made sense. 
The wind explained itself, that was my mother’s side but both my brother and father had something to do with disintegration and their hands. If I went by what my book taught me, I should have gotten half of each parent, but I don’t see any of Kotaro’s traits in me.

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The only other thing I had was smoke, which had nothing to do with my family’s quirks. That could only mean that I am not my father’s daughter and that my mother had indeed cheated, with no other than the family butler. No one else had any other smoke-related quirks in the entire League.
I began to wonder who else might have known. Did Tenko find out? Did Toto? Why has nobody said anything to me? I had a right to know who my father was! I felt a kind of hurt and betrayal I never thought this family was able to cause me. I was left in the dark about my own life and was punished for something I had no control over. Only because my mother was unfaithful and my father a lunatic I was locked in here for a bigger part of my life, thrown away so he didn’t need to look at the product of his wife’s infidelity.