The world didn't end with a bang or a whimper; it ended with a high-definition Snap that played on a loop on every screen from Tokyo to New York, turning a localized industrial tragedy into the world's most-watched animation.
In the sterile, white-washed misery of the Shizuoka General Hospital, Hideki—the man who would soon be both the most envied and most scrutinized journalist in Japan—was currently experiencing the sensation of his optic nerves being used as a sharpening stone.
Hideki lay flat on his back, his head wrapped in thick, cooling bandages that were already beginning to show damp, pink stains near the eyes.
Hideki's Quirk, "Camera Eye," was a precision biological instrument. It was designed for the three-dimensional physics of a quirk-filled world.
But when the reality in the Ashita district had flattened into a cel-shaded canvas, Hideki's physiology had literally tried to vibrate out of his skull to match the frame rate of a god. He hadn't just recorded a hero; he had recorded the visual overwrite of the universe.
"Is... the feed... still live?" Hideki rasped. His throat felt like it had been lined with broken glass.
"It's everywhere, Hideki-san," a nurse whispered. She was standing by his bed, but she wasn't looking at his chart.
She was staring at the small television mounted on the wall, her hands trembling. "The agency says the Hero X clip... it's reached one billion views. The servers at the news station crashed twice. They say people are calling it 'The Day the Drawing Came to Life'."
Hideki didn't feel famous. He felt like his brain had been put through a paper shredder. But beneath the agony, there was a jagged, predatory satisfaction. He was a bottom-tier freelancer who lurked in dumpsters for a scoop, but he had captured a Miracle.
Hideki didn't care about the thousands of people who had almost died in the fire. He only cared that his lenses were the only ones clear enough to see the "White God" appear.
In his footage, the "Soot Guy"—the grimy kid who had been desperately holding up the wreckage—was about to be crushed.
And then, as if the universe intervened to save the boy, Hero X had manifested right next to him. To Hideki, the kid was just a lucky victim who got to witness a god from the front row.
-----
Four hundred miles away, standing atop a skyscraper in Roppongi, All Might stood as a golden statue against the night sky. He held a burner phone in his hand, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the screen.
Beside him, leaning against a ventilation duct and looking equally exhausted, was a small, elderly man in a yellow cape—Gran Torino.
The veteran hero from America—the man who had spent the last two decades becoming the undisputed Number One Hero in the United States—felt a profound, chilling sense of wonder.
This was his Homecoming Debut, the night was supposed to announce his presence as Japan's Symbol of Peace. Instead, he felt like a spectator.
"Nezu," All Might whispered into his comms, his voice cracking with exhaustion. "I was five minutes away. I was pushing my limits to reach them... but he was already there. Did you see it? The fire didn't just go out. It was as if the concept of heat was erased from the area."
"I saw it, Toshinori," the Principal's voice crackled back, steady and uncharacteristically grave. "I've run the numbers. The 'Snap' didn't follow the laws of thermodynamics. It was a conceptual restructuring. The media isn't calling you the Symbol of Peace this morning; they are calling you the 'Late Arrival.' The world is reactive; they are already calling this a religious event. We need to find this young man—the 'Soot Hero' who appeared before the flash. Aizawa is on it, but we aren't the only ones looking."
Gran Torino grunted, spat on the roof, and looked at All Might. "Twenty years in the States, Toshinori. Nana sent you there to grow strong enough to face the dark, and you come back to Japan only to get upstaged by a ghost in a white suit on night one. This world is getting strange."
But while All Might saw hope, others saw a threat to the natural order.
-----
Deep beneath an unassuming office building, All For One sat in his throne.
He felt the shift in the global weight of public focus. He felt the fear, the awe, and the sudden, violent surge of collective belief directed toward a single point in Shizuoka.
"Doctor," the Demon Lord's voice echoed, cold and hungry. "Find that reporter. Hideki. I want the raw data from his optic nerves. This power... it doesn't belong to the heroes. It is a power that rewrites the very laws of the world. It is the power of a King."
All For One's jaw tightened. He had been monitoring the American news for years, tracking the blond oaf's progress. He had known the moment All Might left the U.S. coast recently, and he had spent that time preparing for a war. But this? This Hero X was an anomaly he hadn't calculated for. It irritated him.
He had waited decades for All Might to return to his home soil just to crush him, and now, a "drawing" had stolen the spotlight.
-----
In America, a young Cathleen Bate—the future Star and Stripe—stopped her workout. She stared at the monitor, watching the "Snap" repeat.
Her own power, New Order, required her to impose her will onto reality with a name and a touch. This Hero X... he just clicked his fingers, and the world forgot how to be three-dimensional.
She felt a spark of competitive fire, but beneath it, a chilling realization: the bar for "Godhood" had just been moved.
-----
In a small, cluttered apartment, 5-year-old Izuku Midoriya sat in his All Might pajamas. He had just come home from a doctor who told him he was "Quirkless." His eyes were red from crying.
On his desk was a handmade scrapbook filled with blurry photos of All Might's American exploits—there were no action figures yet in Japan, just the raw hope of a boy clinging to the man who was finally, finally coming home.
Then, the news interrupted his favorite All Might video.
Midoriya saw the "Soot Hero"—the grimy, exhausted nobody who saved people and looked like he was about to collapse under the weight of a falling building. And then, he saw the someone. He saw Hero X appear as if out of thin air to save the guy.
Izuku didn't cheer. He leaned forward until his nose touched the glass of the screen.
'The 'Soot Hero' was about to die,' Izuku thought, his small hands clenching. 'He was just a normal guy. He didn't have a flashy quirk. He was just... there saving people quirkless. And then a Miracle saved him.'
In that moment, the raw, unfiltered belief of a child who had just lost his dream anchored itself to the two figures on the screen.
Izuku didn't just want to be "Strong" like All Might. He also wanted to be "Impossible" like Hero X and the "Unwavering Grit" of Soot Hero.
-----
Kaito Arisaka woke up at 6:00 AM, and the first thing he felt was a bizarre, unnatural silence. Today, the world felt... muted. Like it had been muffled by a thick layer of velvet.
He sat up, intending to head to the kitchen for a glass of water. But as he shifted his weight, the wooden bedframe didn't just creak—it disintegrated.
With a sound like a small explosion, the sturdy oak slats shattered into a cloud of splinters and fine dust, dropping him onto the floor with a bone-shaking thud.
"What... what the hell?" Kaito croaked.
His voice sounded wrong. It was deep, resonant, and irritatingly melodic. He scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering. He felt heavy.
Not fat, but dense. He reached out to steady himself against the wall, and his fingers sank into the drywall as if it were warm butter.
"No, no, no," Kaito whispered, staring at the five perfectly smooth finger-holes in his wall. "I'm having a stroke. This is it. The soot from the fire finally got to my brain. I'm hallucinating my own strength."
He stumbled into the bathroom, trying to move with his usual normal morning routine. He didn't recognize the person staring back in the mirror. His skin looked... filtered. There wasn't a single pore or a blemish. It looked like he'd been airbrushed by a team of professional animators.
He grabbed a pair of safety scissors from the cabinet, his hands shaking. "Okay. Calm down. It's just a late-bloomer manifestation. I've had the joint in my toe since I was four. The awakening of my quirk should be the cause of this side effect".
He grabbed a handful of his "perfect" hair and clamped the scissors down.
THWACK.
The metal blades didn't cut the hair. The hair cut the scissors.
"Are you kidding me?!" Kaito yelled. "My hair is indestructible?! What kind of useless, side-effect is this?!"
He looked at the UA Recommendation Form on his nightstand. Aizawa wanted him to be a hero student. Nezu wanted a miracle. The world wanted Hero X.
"I just want a desk job," Kaito whispered to his high-definition reflection. "A desk that doesn't shatter when I put my elbows on it."
But as he tried to pick up his school bag, the leather handle tore off in his hand like wet tissue paper.
"This is going to be a very long day," Kaito sighed.
-----
While Kaito was mourning his broken sink, the highest levels of the Japanese government were in a state of controlled panic.
Inside the Hero Public Safety Commission's headquarters, a dozen high-ranking officials sat around a holographic table. The "Hero X" footage was playing in the center, frozen on the moment of the Snap.
"We've analyzed the 'Soot Hero' from the FamilyMart footage," a woman in a sharp suit said, her voice cold. "His name is Kaito Arisaka. Fifteen years old. Registered as a 'Dud'—he possesses the biological markers for a quirk, but our records show ten years of zero activation or utility. He's been living as a functional quirkless for a decade. But look at the thermal data from the fire."
She tapped the table, and the orange-yellow blotch appeared.
"He was at the center of the phenomenon," she continued. "But he didn't manifest the white suit. He didn't perform the 'Snap.' He was just... there. The public thinks Hero X appeared to save the 'Dud' boy, but we suspect the boy is the source. A human catalyst for something we don't understand."
"Aizawa has already secured the boy," another official noted. "He's bringing him to UA under the guise of the recommendation trials. We will watch him. If Arisaka is the key to summoning a reality-warper of that magnitude, he is the most dangerous asset in the country."
The world was already moving its pieces. Aizawa wanted a witness.
AFO wanted a power.
The HPSC wanted a weapon.
And Kaito? Kaito just wanted to know how to stop his hair from breaking his scissors.
~~~~~
[Author's Note: A Reality Check]
"I've been reading the comments and reviews, and I want to be completely transparent with you all.
I'm a human being—one with a very full plate.
By day, I'm dealing with building codes and equations for my job; by night, I'm grinding away at my master plumber exams. I don't have the 3 or 4 hours a day that 'full-time' hobby writers have to manually craft every single sentence from scratch.
I have a vision for Kaito, Hero X, and timeline that I'm excited to share. Because I'm a technical person—better at structures than prose—I use AI as a tool to help me structure my thoughts and make the story readable.
Is it 'perfect'? Maybe not. But the depth, the world-building, and the logic come from my head, not a machine. I'm doing my best to give you a story with actual content and soul while managing a life that would make Aizawa look well-rested.
If you're here for the mystery of Hero X and a unique take on the MHA world, I hope you'll stick around. If you're looking for a literary masterpiece written by someone with unlimited free time, I'm simply not that person.
Thanks to those who understand the hustle."
-Dr_Chad