My Hero Academia: Rise of Ben 10, Book 1.

It Started When an Alien...

"Oi... wake up. Ben.. wake up."

A dream. That's the best way to define this world. It was once an ordinary planet, filled with ordinary humans, until something inexplicable happened, something that couldn't be explained by normal science alone. 

One day in china a baby was born with extraordinary abilities, and that was just the beginning. Human children of the next generation were born with powers, unique and different in composition, strange and wondrous.

These powers were called Quirks.

And with the arrival of Quirks came the dream job that was once thought only as the stuff of dreams and and the ink upon comics.  

Super Heroes became a paid profession, and a much needed one to deal with villains, those who used their quirks for illegal and immoral activities.  

Every child's dream was to become a hero one day. But as with all professions, it wasn't a job for everyone, even those who had quirks. Training was undertaken at schools with the curriculum designed specifically to train heroes.  And not everyone had the right quirks, temperament, or skill to succeed. 

It was truly a dream. But sometimes, as was with every dream, you woke up. And when you woke up, the dream was no more. 

That was how Ben felt when he woke up every day. 

And he felt no different now as he opened his eyes  now. 

He was lying on grass beneath a tree under a blue sky in the middle of the city. Sitting next to him was a girl in a gray school uniform.  She had black hair that was straight cut, a sort of 'I don't care' expression and the oddest part about her were what appeared to be wires coming down from her earlobes shaped like headphone plugs. 

She sat next to Ben under the tree in the park, looking slightly amused. "How long you going to sleep there? I've got class in an hour you know."

"Oh.." Ben grunted, sitting up and yawning. "Sorry, guess I zoned out."

"You're always zoning out." said Kyoka Jiro with a sigh as she strummed the guitar she had on her lap. "How am I supposed to get your opinion on a new song if you're always falling asleep?"

"They're good, you don't me to figure that out." Ben grunted. 

Kyoka had been Ben's friend since Preschool.  After his parents got business jobs that were extremely lucrative, Ben had been allowed to go live overseas in Japan as part of a current deal between the US and Japanese government to obtain more workers for skilled jobs. 

Ben agreed, but only because he wanted to enroll in the Hero Program. It was harder to do so in the US due to stricter grade requirements, but it wouldn't have mattered either way. It was mostly desperation that got Ben in Japan, not because he believed he had a chance. 

After multiple attempts.. and a disaster that nearly ended his life when he tried to enter the UA Academy entrance exam, Ben had to face the terrible truth.  He was quirkless. 

They were a very small percentage of the world's society, but there were humans who just didn't have any powers to speak of, and they were generally looked down upon in society.  Those without quirks could not be heroes, that was the realistic fact of the matter, one that Ben didn't take well. 

Originally he and Kyoka had decided they would both enter UA together, but in the end Ben had ended up going into the Business Program at UA. It was the same school for heroes, and they could see each other at lunch time, but..  Ben was in the class that studied for becoming involved in ordinary business ventures.  Overall it was like being forced to work as the janitor in the theater of the play you tried out and failed for.