Hero Among Shadows

Chapter 12

Disclaimer: My Hero Academia belongs to Kohei Horikoshi

Life in the city can be quite an ordeal, especially in the quirk-filled world people live in right now. Lotal City, as well as the neighboring cities surrounding it, is no different from this fact.

It's not exactly as popular as Musutafu, or Hosu, or even Deika City deep in the mountains, but Lotal has a rather unique charm to it. Namely being that it's one of the more culturally diverse in the country, as well as one of the more tolerant towards the quirkless population. Kind of like a safe haven for them, as well as for those who have Quirks that are deemed weaker or even considered villainous everywhere else.

The people don't take too kindly to anyone that has a prejudice against those with the above-mentioned statuses. Should anyone with that type of mindset ever even think of harassing people for any quirk discriminatory reason, they might get themselves a very harsh reality check courtesy of the populous as they get pounded to a pulp. That's before getting themselves a ticket to the local jail. And even there the other prisoners will do whatever they can to ensure that the guilty party with the quirkist attitude will be reminded of their little, shall we say, predicament.

You could say that quirkists are not exactly well liked in prisons nowadays. In fact, they happen to be despised in prisons just as much as child abusers and molesters. Any chance they get, prisoners would gang up on the quirkist inside with them and beat them to within an inch from death or in some cases just downright kill them. Reasons for this are based around the fact that most of the time criminals sent to prison have had to deal with quirk discrimination at some point in their life and had to resort to committing crimes just to survive.

There have even been recorded instances in which people with those discriminatory mindsets have been killed out in public. One was a member of a group called the Creature Rejection Clan, which targeted those with heteromorphic quirks. This particular member, Katashi Gōman, was one such person and was known to have been quite irritating and intolerable by his neighbors ever since he moved in. It didn't matter what they what doing, or what time of the day it was, or where they went, as he would always be either spouting whatever ridiculous doctrines he has, or just being a nuisance in whatever way he could. There were instances in which he attacked his heteromorph neighbors for even walking past his front lawn.

One day, a family was at Moriban Municipal Park along with friends. It was a day off for a majority of the people there, so they were going to spend it there. While the kids play in the playground, the adults would talk with each other in a variety of conversation topics. They also make sure that the kids are within sight, in case anything may happen to them.

At first, things are going rather well for the parkgoers. But then, almost out of nowhere, a white and red striped Sedan showed up and drove into the park grounds. The driver, Gōman it turns out, began hurtling towards the children, ramming and killing two boys. One of those boys was a woodpecker mutant, much like his parents, while the other one just simply had the ability to glow in the dark.

Before anyone could comprehend what had just happened, the CRC member resumed his vehicular slaughter and went after the rest of the park goers. The father of the glow in the dark kid barely evaded to the side of the Sedan, while his wife gets hit with the front bumper to the stomach. She was six weeks pregnant when the brunt force of the collision sent her flying into the side of a tree that destroyed her neck.