Collateral Damage| bnha

chapter one| let it happen

                                 author's note: I was just rewatching mha and I had this idea and I started writing just because and I wrote so much that I had to put it somewhere, is truly more about the characters and morality and the world of superheroes but it still does have romance here and there. Is just a work in progress but I might keep writing it. Also I am sorry for my grammar and stuff, English is not my first language. Let me know if it gets confusing !

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The idea of causing the death of a human being is almost unbearable to have, is barely even a consideration most times, because we place value in human life, we aim to protect it. Yet, once violence starts, somehow causing harm feels no longer foreign.

Life and death were ideas that often crossed my mind, sometimes more than others. I could never quite explain which side of the balance I was on, I could never tell if I had a broken moral compass or if I was just truly as lost as everyone else. And although there were times in which I found myself getting closer to the answer, there was always something or someone that seemed to pull me away. This story is not about good or evil, this story is not about making the right decisions and following the right people, because truly, there are no right decisions, and there are no right people. But somehow I found myself in the midst of all of it. In the midst of life and death and the thin line that separates them. This truly is, just a story.

I live in a hero society, and by those standards one will assume that being hero-like is a given. Is a perfect place in which helping the old lady cross the road or providing shelter to those in need is just a regular Tuesday afternoon. I live in a hero society, in which bravery and selflessness are highly rewarded, in which becoming a hero for the greater good is an actual option. I live in a hero society, in which public opinion matters, rules matter, morality matter, and most importantly. Evil matters.

I think people tend to assume that because we live in a so-called "hero" society the word hero is the most important part of that society, people take that as heroism being the one trait the society has plenty of, what this society has to offer. Yet I feel, heroes are the one thing that is lacking. I think that it all started on a regular Tuesday afternoon in a hero society. And a regular Tuesday afternoon in this society doesn't look like helping stray puppies nor feeding the poor. It normally looks like getting late to class because a "villain" decided to make his problem, everyone's problem.

Before I even turned the corner the first thing I noticed was the smoke in the air. It was thick and dark gray, I could still see the remaining ashes floating by. I knew there had to be some type of fire. Smoke created from factories around here is usually just clouds filled with water vapor, and if it was some type of vehicle the smoke will be well dispersed. This wasn't like that, the smoke filled the air so much so that the closer I got the more difficult it became to breathe without feeling my lungs absorbing some type of carbon dioxide or perhaps nitroglycerin? Regardless of that fact, there was a large explosion somewhere near here, and I had already missed class twice this week. I was positive the excuse of "a villain got in my way to class" would not work this time. People were quickly running away from the scene, muttering to each other facts about the incident. "He appeared out of nowhere", "The pros can't get to him", "What is he trying to do?". Among other sentences whose only purpose is to overstate the obvious. However, this time, one particular sentence caught my attention: "poor kid". I was all too familiar with those words.

"Kid?" I called out to the couple that had muttered as they walked by me, but by the time I asked they were already turning the other corner

For a second there I saw myself walking towards the danger instead of away from it. I already had to take a detour, I did not have time to see some pros fighting the villain of the week. But I kept convincing myself that if I just walked near the incident, I could take a peek as I made my usual morning walk, not too much meddling, but enough to get a hold of what kind of villain caused a fire this large, enough to see what did it mean to be considered a kid to be pitied. I made my steps quicker as I came close to the commotion, there were a few people standing by the sidelines as always trying to catch a glimpse of the heroes in action. I normally understood the appeal of it, the appeal of seeing people stronger than you in many ways handle a situation in which never in a million years you would've hoped to encounter. But when most times the so-called "villain" is just a guy stealing a purse from an old lady, you kind of grow tired of standing around in the sidelines. This time, there were enough people to call it an audience. I stood somewhere in the back, trying to see in between the moving heads and the smokescreen the explosions kept creating. People kept mumbling and exclaiming to each other but even with all their noise it was clear that the pro heroes were having a hard time. They kept yelling at each other commands, trying to rescue as many people as they could and keep the fire under control, thankfully it was still a small enough area but one wrong move and the whole city would be filled with smoke.