The U.A. preparatory program wasn't like regular elementary school. It was a small facility attached to U.A. High School where children with exceptional or dangerous quirks could learn control alongside their regular education. There were only twelve students in my age group, each with abilities that required special attention.
My teacher was Ms. Fujiwara, a pro hero whose quirk allowed her to create "safe zones" where quirks couldn't cause permanent damage. It was perfect for training young children who might accidentally level a building.
"Remember," she told us on our first day, "your quirks are a part of you, but they don't define you. We're here to learn control, responsibility, and how to use our gifts to help others."
My classmates were an interesting group. There was Ren, whose quirk let him phase through solid matter but sometimes activated involuntarily, leaving him stuck halfway through walls. Mika could generate explosive bubbles but couldn't control their size or timing. Taro's strength quirk was already beyond what most adult heroes possessed, but he kept breaking everything he touched.
And then there was Saki, a quiet girl with dark hair who could see and manipulate probability threads—essentially predicting and slightly altering likely outcomes. She was the only one who seemed to understand the weight of having a power that touched the fundamental nature of reality.
"Your quirk feels different," she told me during lunch one day, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's like... like you're not quite from here."
I almost choked on my rice. "What do you mean?"
"I can see the probability lines around everyone," she explained, sketching invisible patterns in the air. "But yours are... blurred. Like you exist in multiple realities at once." She tilted her head, studying me with unnerving intensity. "Were you someone else before?"
The directness of the question caught me off guard. Children, I remembered, often perceived things adults missed. "I don't know what you mean," I said carefully.
Saki nodded but didn't look convinced. "That's okay. Some secrets are meant to be kept." She went back to eating her lunch, but I caught her watching me thoughtfully throughout the rest of the day.
Training my quirk proved to be both easier and harder than expected. The illusion aspect came naturally—I could create visual duplicates of myself or others, generate false environments, even make objects appear to exist when they didn't. But making those illusions temporarily real required enormous concentration and left me exhausted.
The reality manipulation was more dangerous. Under Ms. Fujiwara's careful supervision, I practiced small changes—altering the color of objects, changing their texture, or temporarily modifying their properties. But I could feel the larger potential lurking beneath the surface, a power that could reshape the world if I ever lost control.
"Your quirk has aspects that remind me of some very dangerous villains," Ms. Fujiwara told me during a private session. "But also some of our greatest heroes. The difference isn't in the power itself, but in how you choose to use it."
She showed me old footage of heroes and villains with reality-affecting quirks. There was Mirage, a hero who used illusions to rescue civilians and confuse criminals. And there was Pandemonium, a villain who had tried to rewrite reality itself before being stopped by All Might twenty years ago.
"Power without wisdom is destruction," she said. "But wisdom without power is helplessness. Your job is to find the balance."
By the time I turned eight, I had achieved a level of control that surprised even Dr. Watanabe. I could maintain multiple complex illusions simultaneously, give them limited physical properties for up to an hour, and make small but permanent changes to inanimate objects. More importantly, I had learned restraint—when to use my power and when to rely on other skills.
My parents were proud but worried. They saw how other people looked at me sometimes, the mixture of awe and fear that came with knowing a child possessed power that could be truly dangerous. They made sure I had a normal home life, friends outside of the preparatory program, and hobbies that had nothing to do with hero work.
"Being powerful doesn't make you better than anyone else," Dad told me one evening as we worked on a particularly stubborn radio in his shop. "It just means you have more responsibility."
"I know," I said, carefully using a tiny amount of electromagnetic manipulation—a trick I'd learned from watching him work—to realign a circuit. "Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to have a simple quirk like yours."
He laughed. "Simple? Do you know how many years it took me to learn not to accidentally erase every electronic device I touched? Every quirk has its complications, son. The strong ones just have bigger complications."
That night, I lay in bed thinking about the future I knew was coming. In a few years, Izuku Midoriya would meet All Might and begin his journey to become the greatest hero. The League of Villains would emerge, Overhaul would begin his experiments, and the world would face threats that would test every hero.
But I would be older than the main characters, more experienced, and if everything went according to plan, I would be in a position to help when it mattered most. The question was whether I could change things for the better without disrupting the delicate balance that would eventually lead to peace.
My ninth birthday brought unexpected news. U.A. High School wanted to offer me early admission to their hero course, bypassing the usual entrance exam. At fourteen, I would be a year older than the typical first-year students and would have had five more years of specialized training.
"It's unprecedented," Principal Nezu explained during a meeting with my parents. His animal-like appearance was startling, but his intelligence was immediately apparent. "We've never admitted a student so young to the hero course. But Akira's combination of power level, control, and maturity makes him an exceptional case."
"Is it safe?" Mom asked, her parental instincts clearly at war with her understanding of the opportunity.
"U.A. has the best safety record of any hero school in Japan," Nezu assured her. "And Akira would have additional supervision. We've actually arranged for him to work directly with one of our faculty members who specializes in students with... complex quirks."
He didn't say the name, but somehow I knew. Eraserhead—Shota Aizawa. The underground hero whose quirk could nullify other quirks, making him the perfect teacher for someone whose power could potentially reshape reality.
"I want to do it," I said quietly. My parents looked at me with a mixture of pride and worry.
"It means growing up faster than most kids," Dad warned. "Are you sure you're ready for that?"
I thought about everything I knew was coming, all the battles and tragedies that could be prevented or minimized with the right intervention at the right time. "I'm ready."
The next few years flew by in a blur of intensive training. My quirk continued to evolve, and I began to understand its true scope. I wasn't just creating illusions or manipulating reality—I was touching the boundary between what was real and what could be real, and sometimes bringing possibilities into existence.
I could create illusions so perfect that they became temporarily real. I could look at an object and see all the different things it could become, then choose one and make it happen. I could even, with enormous effort and risk, reach into alternate realities and bring small pieces of them into this world.
Dr. Watanabe called it "Reality Intersection"—the ability to find points where different possible realities touched and briefly merge them. It was a power that touched the fundamental nature of existence itself.
"There may be no upper limit to what you could eventually do," she told me during one of our sessions. "But that's exactly why control is so important. A quirk like yours doesn't just affect the physical world—it affects the metaphysical structure of reality itself."
Saki, who had remained my closest friend through the preparatory program, understood better than anyone else. Her probability manipulation let her see the effects my power had on the likelihood of different outcomes.
"Every time you use your quirk, you create ripples," she explained one day as we practiced together. "Small changes in what's real create small changes in what's possible. And those small changes can become big changes over time."
It was a sobering thought. Every illusion I created, every small alteration to reality, could have consequences I couldn't predict. The responsibility was overwhelming.
But it was also exciting. I had the power to make a real difference in the world, to help people in ways that no other hero could. I just had to be smart about how I used it.
As my fourteenth birthday approached and my admission to U.A. High School became official, I found myself thinking about the future with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. I knew what was coming—the villain attacks, the dangerous situations, the moments when heroes would be pushed to their limits.
But I also knew that I wouldn't be facing these challenges alone. I would have classmates who would become some of the greatest heroes of their generation, teachers who were among the best in the world, and powers that could potentially change the course of history itself.
The night before I was to start at U.A., I sat in my room looking at my acceptance letter and thinking about the boy I had been in my previous life. Unremarkable, unrealized, but full of dreams of being something more.
Rob had given me that chance, but what I did with it was up to me.
"Akira?" Mom's voice came from the doorway. "Are you ready for tomorrow?"
I looked up at her, this woman who had loved and supported me for ten years without knowing that her son carried the memories of another life. "I think so," I said honestly.
She came and sat beside me on the bed, her enhanced senses probably picking up on my emotional state. "You know, when you were born, your father and I hoped you would have a chance to be a hero if that's what you wanted. But we also hoped you would never lose sight of what really matters."
"What's that?"
"The people you're trying to protect," she said simply. "Power can help you save them, but caring about them is what makes you a hero in the first place."
As I lay in bed that night, I thought about all the people I might be able to help, all the tragedies I might be able to prevent. But most of all, I thought about the friends I was about to make and the adventures that lay ahead.
Tomorrow, my real story would begin.