The Wrath of the Skull Hero (MHA x Skullgirls Crossover)

Alone

Marie Korbel had learned at the young age of 5 that the world was an unfair and malignant place.

In the United States, where her family was born unto this world, she was birthed unto a world of heroics, villainy, and powers far beyond those of the human mind. Such powers were moderated, recorded, all things that the government could do in order to keep the rights and liberties of it's people safeguarded from the rising numbers of those with or without power. Despite this, the gap between those with and without power grew, and the viewpoint of such people changed slowly yet surely. What was once a normality became a freakish thing for those without power...super powers weren't "super" they were just..quirks. That was what the government proceeded to call them anyways.

Why is this all important to recount? It is simple..Marie is part of the lesser spectrum of humanity, at least to the world's eye.

Her family was downright enraged that their sweet single child, one they tried desperately to conceive and raise in the hopes it gained powers, just so this quirkless family can be "normal"...was just as quirkless as them, they were livid...enraged by this. anger lead to screaming...to forcing her to commit laborious acts...to being abandoned months later, at the steps of an orphanage. 

she was alone at the age of 6. 

tears never helped her case, not in the slightest. Despite all the mourning she could have committed to, she ended up quietly affirming her situations and chose to accept such a life that she had been given. She stuffed her anger, her sadness...deep down inside her, so that none dared question why she cried. She looked far more mature than her age as time went on, to the point she scarily looked like her mother at times as she aged. With every year that passes, more and more things happened...her skills at cleaning and prep work made her the talk of the orphanages that handled her when she had to move purely due to the rooms inside of orphanages constantly being changed out to make room for younger and younger orphans, and she accepted it all. Again and again, she would move, across cities to states...to entire continents

her final orphanage she would ever see the walls of happened to settle down in Musutafu Prefecture, off in the city of Japan. The orphanage itself was dodgey at best, and with it's notoriety, it wasn't surprising to learn that they had found a loophole in their social services contracts, something along the lines of a 16 year old being considered "of age" to be kicked out, and those kicked out due to this, the orphanage was reconciled for their "loss" with governmental funds. It didn't matter to Marie much at all. Years of countless pratfalls and sadness filled days managed to make her realize just how infinitesimally useless it was to fight the systems of a government she wasn't really a part of in the first place. 

Despite such suffering and pain..she still held a wish in her heart. She wished to be the one thing that could change the perceptions of the masses, whom can help those who suffered like her...a hero.

Heroes were always looked up to far more lovingly than any government or superpower could be in their poignant existences. They were listened to, regarded as far greater than gods in some cases, due to their sacrificial wills and wants to save the humanity they oh so wish to see. Marie always dreamt of such a world...a world where Marie Kobert, a mere orphan, could attain such fame and fortune as to save those who have been oh so risghteously wronged by the world around them. There was just one issue to that want, that dream..one that even Marie fully sees within herself...

she was quirkless. The quirkless cannot become such things. Heroes barely survived on their own with quirks..so how could some weak, realist of a woman such as her even BEGIN to imagine even a microcosm of a chance at a position of a hero? The answer was there, and she knew it...she couldn't be/ She was some worthless husk of a woman, unfit to even be a F-lister's sidekick. She accepted that reality too, and moved on...no matter how hard she cried and hated herself for it.

A day came, a few days before she is to be kicked out of her only home, where she decided a plan as she wandered the streets of the city to keep her head out of the gutter. Her plan was for her future, however bleak it may be. despite how the world was quirk wise, she wasn't childish enough to ignore the other souls who were just as quirkless as she. They had jobs and livelihoods outside and, while looked down on..paid well and all. She could probably move into a small apartment after a while, find a man to be with, and be a far better mother to her own children. Despite how bleak and said it sounded she...smiled warmly. She could find a nice man, right? someone who cared and held onto her, and made her feel special and happy...

She didn't account for the massive, earth shattering explosion to shoot across the entire street feet away from her, and her world to go black.

==========

This was what death was like, correct? Cold, bleak...hopeless, even with the lack of thought and care she could attain given her brains were potentially mere pink stuff on the sidewalk now. She felt like she was floating in an endless sea of darkness, her breath gone and unable to be gained back..such a horrid feeling, drowning was. Yet she didn't feel the urge to breath at all, so panic couldn't set in. It was like some feeling of stasis, of stillness. She stared, unblinking into the void, her shaking as she stared at it all. She hoped for a time, that she was merely unconscious, yet time stretched and stretched, and the coldness never left her. She had truly died.

Marie had finally broke down.

sobs filled the still air as for once, she felt true despair in her heart. There was no lighter side to this rainbow, nor was there any form of reconciliation, of hope, of happiness, just...utter painful darkness. It was horrid. She couldn't even end it all here, how could she? She was dead already. Her sobs filled the void as a constant stillness continued on around her, the lack of sound and air making her truly alone. What was the point of hope if all it ever gave you was suffering? What world had given rise to such madness, to such divide between humanity? Why did the world have to become as it was? If it was normal, she could have had a FAMILY, she could have LIVED and been HAPPY for once...and yet, true happiness could never come to her now. She was what she always was..alone.

The stillness lingered more as sobs slowly came to what i always ended as...acceptance. She should remain as she always was...worthless. And now the gods have given her that chance, that oh so righteous chance to clench onto her despair for all eternity. no amount of wishes could spare her now. She will now be what she always knew she was...

before she could finish her thoughts, the sound of disturbed stillness that did not come from her shot off from the distance, like a fish swimming through the water. For once, she felt some chill hit her spine as a new event was now occurring, one she had never knew before in her life of solitude and lack of care for her being....

she was no longer alone.