AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the rough draft of what I hope to become something that I'll be writing regularly. I want to thank my Beta Readers who have already spent weeks going over this with me. My main issue is that I feel the writing is still fairly dry in some areas and I would like to improve that. Regardless I told myself I would post something this week so here it is!

SecondaryNote: I've done a rewrite to touch up some grammar and lore.

Makoto Hino: Origin

I was five years old when All Might retired. He wasn't a household name like Hades or Poseidon or the other American Heroes I was used to hearing about but Dad was proud of his heritage. As a Japanese immigrant, there was no hero to compare to the Symbol of Peace in my Dad's eyes. He passed that onto me at an early age. My room wasn't overflowing with All Might merch or anything, but I knew if there was any hero to idolize, outside of my parents, it was him. I stepped out into the living room, rubbing my eyes to make sure I was seeing everything right and not making a mistake based on the glare of the morning sun coming through our living room window. Dad was staring at the tv and All Might was fighting for his life, the surrounding area devastated with buildings crumbled and smoking. The city had been smashed into a crater around them as the Villain taunted him. My blood ran cold when I saw All Might's body deflate into that skeletal form. Dad stood up in shock. The two of us stood there in our living room as other heroes came to aid the Symbol of Peace, a man wreathed in flames and one who could fold his body like paper.

"Dad? What's wrong with All Might?" I asked as I watched All Might struggle in his diminished state, holding back the oversized and grotesque fist of a villain I didn't recognize. "Did that man do something to him?"

"I… I don't know…" Masato Hino was a man who, in all of my lifetime, could easily be called an optimist. He was the kind of man to smile when he greeted you because he was genuinely glad to see you, even if you brought him bad news. He was funny and a great father but that morning he wasn't himself. Nobody was. I should have known something was off; Dad wasn't holding his coffee, but the smell was stronger than usual, his second favorite coffee mug lay on the carpet as the liquid seeped into it, staining the fabric and permeating the air with his over-sugared drink. In the following moments All Might seemed nearly defeated by the villain until the very last second when he countered. I jumped and shouted and cheered just like all of the other people who were watching. Dad joined in too. The both of us shouting so loudly and passionately that Mom rushed into the living room to see what had happened. Her tired, yet angry, eyes quickly softened at the sight of her family and the reason we were cheering. The excitement was short lived. Later that day the Symbol of Peace was retired.

"Makoto, did I ever tell you why I came to the US?" Dad asked me that night. "It was because of him. All Might had done so much in Japan to stop crime that it seemed almost unfair for us to leave the rest of the world behind. So I came here to support heroes." Those words stuck with me, especially with what happened next. As the world scratched its head as to what to do without its Symbol of Peace the villains began to rise. Other countries were already starting to see it even before All Might retired. With All Might teaching at UA High villains all over the globe began to realize they could get away with more and more. No more impromptu 'vacations' where All Might would randomly show up in China or the United States. The United States was one of the first countries to realize an obvious fact about All Might. He was far ahead in strength and efficiency than any one hero was alone. The popularity of Hero teams began to rise and it wasn't long before both my parents were scouted by Project Pantheon and the Pluto Agency.

Prior to Pluto, Dad had been a project director for a support tech company in the Silicon Valley. He was recruited straight out of UA and moved to the US without a moment's thought. His Quirk, Cables, allowed him to pull computer cables from his forearms that he could use to link into computers mentally and control them. It wasn't suited for a direct fight so he learned all about support items. He excelled in his field with his first support item being a group of robot arms controlled directly from his computer. Once he was linked in he pushed his quirk further and further until he learned to work with it in his sleep, replacing dreams with computer screens. He was prolific and no amount of jet lag from the move was going to stop him. He took no time in getting into his new lab in San Jose, California in order to produce the best tech and gear for heroes throughout the West Coast. It was there he caught the eye of an upcoming hero. Screeching Strix, my mother, had graduated from Evergreen Academy in San Jose and was looking to make a name for herself when she met my dad.

Mom had done her best to fight through her Hero Academy. Her Quirk, Baleful Hunter, gave her all of the abilities of an owl. She could increase her senses at will from average to those of an owl in an instant. It was useful for tracking criminals and gathering information but her real power came from the night sky. At night her reflexes and strength went well beyond that of a normal human. She was a super predator, specializing in close quarters combat and knife fighting. In her search for something that fit more to her theme as a hero so that she could stand out she approached Dad's company.

"She was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen," Dad told me. "Until she took off her headdress and mask… then she was even more beautiful." My mom's headdress was extremely misleading. Most people assumed that her hair was naturally a brown tuft of feather fluff at the back of her headdress. In truth, underneath her mask and headdress, Sierra Hino had shining white hair and bright golden eyes. How could my dad refuse? He built her a new hero suit that held a jetpack with attached wings. The steel 'feathers' could detach from the wingspan into multi-functional knives. With this new arsenal, she quickly made a name for herself in California. A couple of years later they were married and I came along.

After All Might's retirement there was no doubt about what was going to happen in the US. The media called it an uprising. The heroes called it war. The Rareza Drug Cartel began as a powerful alliance of drug lords, backed by powerful quirk users who were after the same goal: money and power. The group quickly took over Mexico and after that it was a matter of time before the Southern US was a war zone of quirk users. Mom and Dad were away a lot already but when All Might retired it seemed like there was some kind of raid or mission twice a month. I remember my mom coming home with black eyes, or limping around the house some days. Dad never lost his smile though, joking about how she got her injuries due to malfunctions with his tech. I knew better than that. Seeing All Might and Mom getting injured told me all I needed to know. Hero work wasn't as easy as some people made it seem.

While Mom and Dad were off trying to stop the Cartel from taking over the country, I got more and more into comic books, fiction and non-fiction. Some of my favorites were the fake ones about 'quirkless' heroes. Back before quirks there were plenty of stories about heroes without powers. The kind that dressed up like animals and used gadgets instead of powers to save the day. It was also around this time that we all realized my quirk hadn't shown up yet. My toe was missing the right joints for someone with a quirk but nothing notable happened. I wasn't setting things on fire with my mind or shooting lasers from my eyes. No tufts of fur or feathers behind my ears or little usb-nubs on my arms. The doctors were stumped. By this time children in my classes had started to point out that I might be quirkless. I tried not to think much of it. I even tried to keep up with some of the kids who would use their quirks on the playground which led to me getting hurt more often than I should have. The scrapes and bruises went away. Sometimes they would go away faster than they should have but we didn't notice.

When I accidently let it slip that Dad worked in the support department for Pluto my classmates started asking questions about Dad's job. Pluto had been founded by the Underworld Hero: Hades. He got his start in the Olympians, a group of heroes styled after the Greek gods. These heroes were the basis for Project Pantheon, with each member of the Olympians being tasked to create their own international hero agency under the United Nations. While the Jupiter and Neptune agencies, founded by Zues and Poseidan respectivly, worked in the public eye to alleviate the fear of the people, the Pluto agency worked in the shadows to chase results under the guidance of Hades. His Quirk, Styx, generated green wisping energy in the form of skeletal hands and bodies. With a ghostly skeleton horde at his disposal he was mostly unfit for climbing the public rankings due to issues gaining popularity. He created Pluto to be a Symbol of Fear to criminals in place of the Symbol of Peace to the people. It wasn't a popular approach with the public but the United States Government appreciated heroes who were lesser known but effective. The heroes at Pluto could be easily embedded in police strike forces, SRTs, SWAT teams or even military units working toward capturing international villains. He got them the results they wanted and that's what mattered. The US Military and Project Pantheon had come together to form a Joint Task Force alongside the United Nations, aided by the investigative efforts of several US law enforcement agencies and Interpol. With these forces combined they had the authority and manpower to take down the Rareza Cartel. Clean up operations took time. The Mexican Government hadn't been overthrown but had been proven to be essentially useless in the face of the Rareza Cartel. Project Pantheon and Military remained a major force within Mexico with Heroes from our Agency still stationed there.

After dismantling the Cartel Pluto remained, becoming a major hero agency that worked alongside Jupiter. They held onto their authority by keeping the JTF active as a deterrent to large criminal organizations. Dad was hired on as a private technology developer for the Agency. Mom became Hades' eyes and ears out in the field as he moved from patrol hero to Agency Director. With the Rareza Cartel down for the count my parents were home more often and able to focus on other things like the fact that my quirk hadn't appeared yet.

More time passed and my quirk had yet to show up. On the outside I was usually fine but my parents had occasionally caught me watching videos of pro heroes in tears. By all accounts I should have had my quirk. My mom, being the level headed person she was, tried to use logic to calm me down. She told me stories about how some heroes' quirks would manifest just when they needed it most but, looking back at it, I think she felt just as down as I did about it. My Dad had a sillier approach to it. He would tell me that it was hiding from me. Eventually the jokes stopped working but Dad's smile never really faded. Even after his jokes lost their flavor I think his smile kept us going.

By the time I'd reached middle school I'd pretty much come to terms with it. Missing joint or not I was quirkless as far as I was concerned. That didn't keep me from acting normal. I did what I could to try and keep up with others. I didn't slack in class. Quirk or not I'd inherited my father's intellect. I excelled in my studies and even did what I could to help my classmates who didn't. I aspired to be like those quirkless heroes I read about in the comics. Maybe not as heroic as they were but still aspiring to bring their same attitude to my lifestyle. One in particular stood out, Nightwing. He was kind to people and trusting. Looking back on it now those may have been flaws on his part but regardless, in his universe he was regarded as the most trustworthy hero and if he vouched for you then you probably weren't half bad. We had a lot in common in my mind. Our parents were a part of something bigger and we wanted something more, but at the same time we wanted the same. But the biggest difference between me and him was that he was quirkless… and I wasn't. I just didn't know it yet.

The day I discovered my Quirk started average. It was about a month into my first year in middle school and the sky was grey, threatening rain. After rereading Volume 3 of an older run of Nightwing comics I was eager to get home to reread Volume 4.

"Should have just brought both with me," I thought as I walked through the downtown area. In order to better protect the identities of their heroes from villains who would exploit that information, Pluto had set up their headquarters to house their heroes and their families. The HQ, where we lived, was just a quick light rail ride away from my middle school but that day I was going to be late. Two blocks away from the station something in an alley caught my eye. I remembered everything that my parents had told me about walking blindly into dangerous situations, and promptly ignored it. Standing with her back pressed against a wall was an older girl. She must have been a local college student, foreign by the way she spoke but I could make out what she was saying through her accent. In front of the girl was a hooded figure who must have backed her into the alley in the first place.

"Please just take whatever you want," she offered her wallet.

"Phone too," the thug demanded. I moved to get a better angle, trying to get a description of him at least as I pressed the panic button on my cell phone. My parents had had it installed when I first got it in elementary school. Even with the Rareza Cartel dismantled it didn't cost anything to keep the panic button on my phone and Mom thought it might be a good idea just in case anything were to ever happen.

I reached the edge of the alley and moved to hide behind a garbage container but, it was off balance and before I could react it began to roll out from under itself in a clatter. He was big, larger than the average adult. His skin was light but weather-beaten. Probably homeless from the looks of his tattered jeans and baggy, ragged hoodie. "Hey kid come here."

"Oh no I should…" I moved to walk away when I saw the reason the girl was so afraid. The man's right sleeve was rolled up to reveal what looked like the receiver for a pump shotgun built right into his arm. He was too far to tell if it was some kind of support item or his actual arm and getting closer wasn't on my agenda. I recognized the receiver itself from the time I'd spent around the Agency. During the fight against the Rareza Cartel I'd spent a lot of time in the Pluto Agency training facilities. The officers were always nice and my mom's direct supervisor, Cerberus, really seemed to like me. Despite my mom's constant requests for me to not be shown around the facility beyond Dad's lab I'd gotten a few tours while her and dad were out on missions down south. Cerberus had taught me the basics of gun safety and how to shoot. I enjoyed shooting and wasn't half bad. I figured it must have been the extra attachments on some of the guns but I could plug a bullseye at two hundred meters with a standard rifle. My groups were tight and Cerberus had even suggested I try competitive shooting but we'd decided that my mom would probably kill us.

"I'm not asking," the thug extended the weapon toward me. Hesitantly, I stepped into the alley with them. He must have noticed because he motioned for me to move faster with his shotgun arm. This crying girl was about to lose everything she had, whether it was her money or her life and now some eleven year old kid had just been thrown into the mix. Her eyes burned with fear as the man ordered us against the wall. "Whatever you've got on you kid, just hand it over and you can both go on your way." His breath smelled like stale beer and garlic had a baby and I was doing my best not to cringe at the smell.

"Y-y-es sir," I said, watching the gun-arm while he took a step back and pointed it at me. I was frightened but at least I didn't have to smell his breath anymore. There was no loading tube. Either this guy only had the one shell in the chamber or his body could produce shells forever. I thought back to the comics and some of the stuff I'd heard around Dad's lab. "If he could produce shells at will he wouldn't be some raggedy street thug… right?" I thought as my wallet came out of my pocket. As his eyes moved over to the girl I dropped the wallet from my shaky hand while the gun was still trained on me. The wallet hit the ground with a SMACK that must have startled the thug. His head jerked back to me in slow motion. Comic book panels raced in my mind as I thought of how those quirkless heroes would have dodged and my body moved faster than I expected, dropping low and away from the girl. There was a deafening bang that left my ears ringing and more comic books found their way to my mind. Lower now as the buckshot grazed my blue hoodie. He'd missed. His hand came out of his pocket holding a fresh shell and those comic panels were still fresh in mind.

"Without a shotgun tube he has to load directly into the receiver," I thought as I remembered what Cerberus had taught me about loading techniques for shotguns that used a similar design. The picture of the Pro-Hero's instructions were clear in my mind and my left hand jumped up as my thumb rammed into the loading port on the side of the weapon. He fumbled the shell, giving me the opening I needed. I pulled the shotgun arm toward me. He stumbled forward and my right hand flew for his throat. It was more than the comic panels. Some of the training videos I'd watched in my dad's lab played in my head as those movements and ideas flowed into me, coming together with my mind as the man's adam's apple bounced in contact with my right hand. He fell back, choking, and my body just moved on its own. Before I realized it my body had spun and I planted the heel of my foot into his temple, knocking him to the ground before he could retrieve another shell from his pocket. Loose shotgun shells spilled across the alley as he hit the ground. Standing there with a blank look on my face, all I could do at that point as my mind tried to process what I had done. I looked back at the girl who still looked scared as she pointed.

The thug's hood fell back to reveal short, dirty blonde hair and grey eyes. We made eye contact before he scrambled for one of the loose shells. In a much less graceful move I kicked as many of the shells away as I could and to my surprise the girl dove forward, purse in hand, and swung it at his head. Her attack hit home and he dropped the shell he'd almost managed to get a hold of. On her back swing I'm pretty sure she hit me too but I didn't notice. My vision tunneled on the shotgun arm as I dove for it, trying to keep him from getting control. He rose quickly and swung his arm wildly to fling me around. Sharp pains shot up my body as my back bounced off a dumpster. There wasn't time to worry about the pain though. I dove forward like an animal and jumped up onto his back. He fought back as the woman pelted him with her purse. She dropped the weight of it on his head and he retaliated with a wild strike, catching her in the chin with the steel-like material of his gun-hand. She stumbled back against the alley wall again and the thug reached up to grab me by my hoodie. He pulled me up and over his shoulder to slam my back into the ground. Air rushed out of my lungs as I arched my back in pain. My eyes flew up to look for the gun but he wasn't above me anymore. He was bent over and grabbing a shotgun shell.

"You could have just gone if you'd listened," the criminal growled as he slammed the shotgun shell into the receiver. Looking up at him felt like everything had gone into slow motion again, only this time around I wasn't making any sudden movements to dodge. Instinct screamed for me to move but my eyes were fixated on the gun and my body felt like it weighed three tons. The barrel leveled toward me and I made eye contact with the thug before closing mine tight. "You were all brave a minute ago," he commented, "open your eyes and look at me!" He shouted and my eyes shot open as he took a step forward with the barrel aimed to my head.

Shunk.

Something impacted against his gun as frost and ice crackled across it. It wasn't long before he was covered in ice from hand to elbow as the frosty substance crawled up his sleeve. I looked up over him to see dark blue wings descending on him from above. My mom had answered the panic button! Screeching Strix dropped down onto the thug's back with all of her weight, kicking him between the shoulder blades and causing him to slam chest first into his icy hand as it was still crystalizing, causing the reactive substance in her ice knife to leave his weapon hand stuck to him. She remained standing on top of him as she looked down at me with worried eyes before snapping back to the reality of the situation.

"Are you two ok?" She asked us. I nodded silently, afraid that if I spoke I'd reveal her identity.

"Thank you," the girl couldn't put her appreciation into more words than that and she repeated them, a lot. She thanked my mom over and over, she thanked me, and even the police who arrived later. Once the police took our statements I went to meet Mom away from all of the civilians and news crews.

That was the first time I'd ever seen my mother cry and I remember hoping it would be the last. "Makoto what were you thinking?" She asked as tears streamed underneath her tactical lenses as she held onto me.

"I don't know mom… I just reacted." It was the truth. Still too shaken to say anything else I just tried to do my best to tell her how I felt. "I was scared but when I saw him cornering that girl I had to do something... I just wasn't expecting it to be that." There were rules and laws about non-heroes taking down criminals. Maybe one of those got broken and she was upset? Mom kept holding me.

The next day I stayed at home in the Agency Offices. It was basically an apartment built into the fifth floor of Headquarters. Two rooms, a small kitchen, one bathroom and a living room. Just perfect for a three person family who really weren't the homebody type. Despite the fact that we didn't use it all that much the living room still had several pictures of our family together. Pictures of me as a kid working with Dad to repair Mom's wingsuit, some of us with the other Agents from Jupiter and Neptune. Mom was sentimental about that kind of stuff. Everything was so boring that day. Comics just weren't doing it and video games weren't much better. The last resort, an old copy of Robin Hood, lay discarded on my bed while I got up to head down toward Dad's lab. Maybe he had something to cure my boredom or take my mind off of the thought of almost being shot. Mom and Dad were both there looking over security cam footage from the building the alley was next to. The camera clearly showed that I was moving faster than a normal eleven year-old boy. The two turned when I entered and the questions came flying in.

Dad, of course, was excited. "My son moved like a real hero! Makoto that was awesome!"

Mom on the other hand was a bit more serious, "Who taught you how to do that? Was it Rainer?" Rainer Wolff aka the Gatekeeper Hero, Cerberus. His hero title was a bit misleading. His Quirk, top secret. But they called him Gatekeeper because he was one of the heroes who stood out during the Rareza Cartel missions. He pushed back many of the incoming criminals and keep them from crossing into the US from Mexico. Usually he captured them but the others who escaped never seemed to try crossing the border again. Hades' whole 'Symbol of Fear' concept really worked with Rainer leading Pluto strikes alongside the US Military and I never really understood why. He was always so nice to me that I couldn't picture him being all that scary. The truth was that I'd just never seen him out in the field.

I ended up telling my mom about Rainer teaching me to shoot but I also explained to them what happened in the alley. The flashes of comic book panels in my head and the training videos Pluto had for self defense. The awkward part was trying to get my mom to believe that I'd never had any combat training outside of learning to shoot. Before I knew it they had me hooked up to a machine that monitored my brain waves and started running me through all sorts of tests.

"Yeah! He definitely has a Quirk!" The excitement in Dad's voice was infectious as Mom's worried look melted and boiled into a wide grin. Rainer had come down as well. He was younger than my parents, only about twenty-nine years old when I was eleven. We had to register my quirk with the State which meant another day of off school for me.

My quirk, Aspire, was originally registered as a mutation that gave me the ability to learn and put concepts into practice with ease. The thug's medical report after I'd nearly jammed his Adam's apple into his throat and kicked him in the side of the head also gave my parents the evidence to register my quirk as giving me heightened reflexes and strength. Despite being five feet tall and one hundred and five pounds I had actually punched him with the force of an average high school senior. The name Aspire was my idea and my parents felt that it fit. I had always aspired to be like them and the heroes I read about and this quirk was the perfect tool to get me there.

When I finally got back to school I decided to push myself a bit more. I set state records for PE tests with what seemed to be natural ability. Anyone at school would have been hard pressed to prove I was using my quirk on purpose since I had no real choice. My body was just 'growing' because puberty or whatever. It was at this time I also took up a few extra hobbies during my time at the Pluto Agency offices. Including a few martial arts defense courses the Agency offered and some private Eskrima training with Cerberus. He was a monster with those sticks and I suffered a ton of extracurricular injuries during those sessions. Picking up the concepts and forms were simple enough with my quirk but I couldn't get over the minor doubts I had when facing Cerberus. The other agents that I trained with though, I felt like I could take them down no problem. My mom even got in on my training, teaching me her techniques for knife throwing.

I found myself attracted to another hobby: Archery. I was still into comic books, even more so after I discovered my quirk. Finding out that I could learn and imitate some of the things I'd read about drove me to scour the pages of my favorite heroes in search of techniques and maneuvers I could bring into the real world. Sure I could have read Superman or Iron Man but I wasn't that strong and, while totally awesome, the nanotech I'd need to recreate Tony Stark's Bleeding Edge armor was pretty much impossible with my current resources. Batman on the other hand, Mom's knives were already similar to his batarangs. I never told Cerberus that my interest in learning Eskrima from him stemmed from what I read in Nightwing. More important than my love for the Bat Family comics was the interest I had in two specific heroes. Hawkeye and the Green Arrow. I could identify with Clint Barton's skills outside of archery so why not just do the rest? Archery came to me quickly and, despite being right handed, I learned to shoot as a lefty. In almost every Hawkeye comic I owned the Arching Avenger fired predominantly with his left hand, so my quirk naturally drew me toward that style of shooting.

While there wasn't much trouble in learning how to use all of the new technology my Dad was designing to complement my skills as an archer there were still problems in other areas. Support technology for heroes required registration. Everything from grappling hooks to capture weapons had to be registered with the government under the name of the hero intending to use it. Dad had a ton of trick arrow ideas but the time it would take to get them registered versus the amount of time I had until my hero academy entrance exams was not doing us any favors.

As middle school came to an end I looked to Evergreen Academy.