A rough hand grasped his face.
"Who told you that you could talk to me like that?" The hand retracted, quickly returning, smashing into a young face. A boy, no older than eight, sprawled across the floor. He had been knocked unconscious by the strike.
Obviously, the attack was not the only one he was enduring. Huge bruises and scarring were visible on all parts of the boy's body. Only his face was left unscarred, but bruises covered his face more than his normal skin.
Standing almost 200 cm tall, a colossal man took a swig from a liquor bottle and spit on the boy's unconscious form. His skin was like caramel, and his face gruffly handsome. His hair buzzed, and he wore a white tank top that could barely control his bulging muscles. The man was a giant.
Pretty much unstoppable in every way. Out of his baggy pants, the handle of a pistol stuck out in the air. He pulled it from his waist and aimed at the boy's head. He lined the shot and pulled the trigger three times.
3 bullet holes appeared in a circle in the concrete around the boy's head. He laughed heartily and stumbled away.
Despite his lack of sleep the night before, Adonis felt energized. 'It must be the change in living situation.' he told himself. He had just moved from America, the land of the free, to Japan. The reason for his move was a series of events that fortunately ended in the American government paying him to leave the country and enter Japan. He left the second he finished middle school and came to Japan.
This Earth was several hundred years in the future. At some point, with very little explanation, humans started developing abilities. Powers, you could call it. Powers called Talents. These Talents would be like superhuman strength, flight, and invisibility. Other powers changed genetic code and made people into an animal-like version with similar traits and abilities.
Subsequently, as a result of people gaining these powers, chaos broke loose. People used their powers to rob and kill. Ordinary citizens were turned into mass murderers. People who did anything like that were called villains. Modern weaponry had little use, as many Talents negated any weaponry.
The most effective way was to use other Talents to defeat others. So people came into existence called heroes. Heroes were people with special training and licensing that defeated villains. Most of the time heroes have strong talents that can defend the world against evil. Eventually, the world returned to a state of equilibrium.
Villains rose and were defeated by heroes. Sometimes the heroes would lose, but there were many now, and the hero business had turned into a career path many children would try to follow. Japan was one of the most prosperous countries after the talents had started. They had the best heroes and the best hero schools. Kids dreamed of becoming a hero in Japan.
Schools were created with stringent entrance exams. Only a select group could make it past the initial stages, but Adonis hadn't come to be a hero. He had his own personal reasons that happened to place him in Japan. The American government had gotten his visa and paid him to leave. But the amount of money was nowhere close enough to help him survive.
He had to move to the cheapest place he could find, in which he ended up in the worst part of Osaka, where a woman rented him a room in her house for a great price. He speaks very poor Japanese, and the move so far has been painful, to say the least. His room was bare, and he slept in a sleeping bag he had purchased.
Nevertheless, he was grateful for the newfound living environment. His living situation had gotten better by a considerable amount. America did not treat him well.
He pushed himself out of his sleeping bag and stretched in his room. The walls were bare, and he was sure any sounds would echo. But that didn't matter much since he hadn't said anything in the last 10 hours, Not even to himself. He had been conditioned to keep his noises low, a survival mechanism.
Adonis was hungry, a familiar feeling, but he might as well check to see if the woman he lived with was willing to share food with him. His room was trashy and gross. Actually, the whole house was. Holes were in the walls, and in one corner of the room, there was a nasty stain that stunk like moldy cheese. A whole wall was covered in burns, likely from a fire-based Talent.
He quietly entered the rest of the house, while nicer than his room, was also a poor living situation. A middle-aged woman sat on a stained yellow couch, smoking a cigarette and laughing loudly at a blaring tv. It was early morning, and it smelled like she had made some basic breakfast.
She hadn't noticed him and continued to laugh at what looked like an interview with a particularly goofy-looking hero. He quietly walked up and coughed to get her attention. She jumped and turned to him, her flab jiggling at the sudden movement.
She tapped her cigarette into an ashtray and said, "What!?" He spoke to her in broken Japanese.
"Can my food?" His voice was the kind of monotone that was uncomfortable. But the monotone also intrigued people. How could he leave out so much emotion despite being a human like everyone else?
The woman looked him up and down and gestured her head to the dining table. A half-eaten egg sandwich was on a plate.
"You can have the rest if you wash the dishes." He picked up on only half the words but generally got the idea. He understood, 'have, wash dishes.' Shrugging, he left and began washing the mountain of dishes while the woman laughed at her show. Before he had finished, her show was over, and she came up behind him.
She's in her mid-40s and overweight. Her skin health was poor, and she mainly lived off of money she could scam off of guys in the area. Generally, she's gross. She walked behind him and slipped her hands under his shirt. He pushed her off him and tried to focus on finishing the dishes.
He was good-looking for a 15-year-old. His muscles were much bigger, and his skin darker. He was the ideal man for a trashy woman like her. Bigger, black, and young. He's about 5 feet and 9 inches tall and has dreads hanging in front of his face down to his chin. His eyes were matte gray and solemn-looking. The woman had heard stories about black men.
She flashed him a yellow grin and said, "Can't blame me for trying." He side-eyed her and went back to washing the dishes. She opened the yellow fridge and began looking through its contents. "So, what are you doing in Japan?" She asked him.
He took about 20 seconds to think about what she said. His Japanese desperately needed work.
"I do not know." She tilted her head in confusion.
"What do you mean? Aren't you going to high school?" He shook his head.
"I cannot pass any of their entrance exams."
"Not even the one a couple blocks from here? They say 90 percent of people who take it pass. Mind you, the people applying to a school like that are already bottom of the barrel." He pursed his lips.
"If the exam has anything to do with academics, I'm afraid I can't pass."
"How are you gonna live then? Can't you hire a tutor?"
"I'm gonna figure it out. No, I don't have any money."
"Well, I'm sure as hell not teaching you. I'm not your mom." Adonis closed his eyes and smiled to himself,
"Thank god for that." The woman gave him a weird look.
"Don't you have dreams? Don't you wanna be a hero like all the other kids?" He shrugged.
"Not really. I want to live in Japan. In peace." She looked at him pitifully.
"It doesn't sound like you'll be able to. Maybe I can introduce you to some friends of the villain kind." She smiled as if she had found his calling. She wasn't expecting the exact opposite reaction. His face scrunched up as if he smelled something gross.
"No, thank you." She felt it was in her best interest to stop talking about the villain business. Dark energy radiated from the boy.
"So then, you'll never take an entrance exam?"
"Not unless there's an exam that's not expensive and doesn't require anything academic." He said sarcastically, assuming there was no such thing. The woman thought for a second and smiled.
"Actually, the top 3 hero schools don't have entrance fees. And they take a physical test. Well, actually, every hero school takes a physical test. But the top 3 use it much more than any other school. You can go to the number third-best in Osaka!" Adonis scoffed.
"And compete with half the country?"
"Well, what's your Talent?" Adonis took a second to come up with something.
"Increased physical skills."
She snorted, "Might as well try. The train fee is only 100 yen from here. At least your talent isn't as bad as mine." Adonis eyed her.
"And what is yours."
"I can control small amounts of water. Not even well." He raised his eyebrows.
"Have you ever trained with it?"
"No...I don't have to to know it's much worse than any water-based hero." She pulled out her phone and showed him something. "Look, there's a round of testing later today. You should go now."
"Might as well, I guess."
About half an hour later, he had finished his sandwich and left the building. He left for the train station with only the clothes on his back and two hundred-dollar yen bills.
Not even halfway to the train station, two guys approached him. They were both dressed in dirty hoodies that hid their faces. One of them snapped, and a small ball of fire ignited in his hand. "Empty your pockets kid." Adonis hadn't heard of the word pocket in Japanese before but was familiar with these people's stance.
"No." They seemed surprised he said no.
"Excuse me?"
"No." the man with the fireball seemed quick to anger and threw the ball like a baseball. Obviously, he wasn't good at aiming. The fireball would've struck Adonis' foot had he not lifted it. He avoided it easily and tried walking past the two fools.
The other man's hand turned into stone, and he swung viciously. 'He's trying to kill me?' Black energy surrounded his feet as he propelled himself out of the way. He quickly ran away from them, not wishing to bring any more attention to himself.
Black energy increased the strength of his legs several times, and he was able to leave the guys in the dust. A couple hours later, he stared up at an enormous building. On the front of it, golden letters spelled out 'Osaka future hero academy.' Many people flowed in and out of the supreme-looking building.
Some kids cried from being recently rejected, while others looked highly accomplished. Adonis' hair flew behind his head as a massive burst of air flew out the huge double door. A boy with spiky silver hair and an insane grin exploded out of the building, followed by a golden-haired boy. The golden one gripped the silver one by his collar and slammed him into the ground.
"Watch out!" a few adults began ushering the other kids away from the fight.
"Don't you dare say anything else about her!" The golden hair boy brought a fist back and smashed the other boy's face. An older boy, about 17, with identical golden hair, grabbed what Adonis assumed to be his brother.
"You're embarrassing us." He said calmly. They were familiar. Their family was on the news all the time. The golden hair was a trademark of the omega family. An elite family of people who pass their talents down the generations through highly selective breeding. Their Talents grant flight, super strength, super speed, super durability, super senses, and heat vision.
They were one of the most powerful families in Japan and commanded billions of dollars in sub-hero organizations. They had hundreds of hero offices, each with 10s of heroes working underneath them. Adonis knew nothing of the specifics, but he could only imagine that the family was elite in all ways. The older brother explodes from the ground hauling his brother behind him. They flew away from the scene into the city.
A bunch of people gathered around the silver-haired boy, who stood up as if nothing was wrong. His face seemed perfectly ok. This surprised Adonis since the punch would've at least done some major damage to his face. Air circulated around his body, and he took off into the city. 'Monsters.' Adonis thought.
"Did you hear?" he heard people talk about the spectacle.
"Apparently, The Eto boy said something about the Omega's sister." He heard people cringe.
"Ahh. He must still be frustrated that she went missing. If anyone else said that, they would have died." Adonis shrugged off the speculation. He had to go in and apply for an entrance exam. Black energy snaked up his leg, which he stuffed back down.
Two children, ages 7 and 10, sat at a school cafeteria table. "When we get there, we'll go to hero school and become professional heroes!" The older girl said. They were both caramel-skinned. Obviously siblings. The younger boy looked up at her as his eyes twinkled.
"And how will we get there!"
"I will save money so we can finally get away from Mommy and Daddy. We fly to Tokyo, and the heroes will care for us." She told him the same story every day at lunch.
"And we will eat all their good food!" the boy said excitedly. His matte gray eyes were full of life. There was a connection between these two children that was indescribable. The sky was gray with clouds, and the cafeteria tables were covered in gang graffiti. Huge groups of kids formed around fights recording it with their phones, but all the sweet 7-year-old boy saw was his sister. She turned around with a frown. She couldn't let her brother see the world for how it was.
"Alright, let's keep studying!" They got back to studying their Japanese language textbooks.