Hero Among Shadows

Chapter 2

A little disclaimer: My Hero Academia belongs to Kohei Horikoshi.

--- The next day

As he rides the train to school for his second day of his third and last year of middle school, Tanaka looks through his phone to check if there's any more news going on all over the country. So far, there hasn't been anything interesting to look at. It's only when he stumbles upon a video that was just uploaded a few minutes ago catching his attention that he decides to check it out.

Clicking on it, what he sees on the video is quite interesting to say the least.

Apparently a villain with a sludge quirk has been rampaging through one of Musutafu's alleyways, causing untold property damage in the process. The pro heroes that are there at the scene, Backdraft, Death Arms, and Mount Lady, were unable to even get to the villain because of the fires resulting from said damage.

What made things even worse was that the sludge villain had a hostage, who looks to be struggling within confines of his slimy body. If Tanaka were to look closely, he could see the look of fear in the boy's eyes as he's being suffocated by the sludge villain. Who wouldn't be afraid of something like that happening to them?

The brunette is about halfway through the video when he noticed someone run past Death Arms and heading straight towards the villain. From the looks of the school uniform, he appears to be a middle school student.

'What is he doing? Is he trying to get himself killed?' Tanaka thinks to himself. He watches the guy grab hold of his backpack and swing it right into one of the villain's eyes, causing said villain to recoil in pain from being hit there.

'Smart move there,' the brunette remarks to himself.

He then sees the guy try to save the hostage by digging his hands into the sludgy fluid holding the latter but to no avail. The last few seconds of the video show the Symbol of Peace himself, All Might, coming in to save the two boys before taking down the sludge villain with a punch so powerful it caused it to rain.

'That's the Symbol of Peace for ya,' Tanaka thinks as the video ends. His thoughts then wander over to the boy that was trying to save the hostage. While what he did was rather reckless and stupid, he at least did the right thing.

That's the problem with heroes these days. Most of them just do it for money and fame, instead of saving people just because it's the right thing to do. It just ticks him off how some of those heroes can act like total hypocrites, saying one thing while doing another.

Only two pro heroes ever came from Lotal in the past 20 years, and one of them graduated from Shiketsu High. The other graduated from U.A. and was considered one of the youngest to ever reach the Top 100 in Japan's pro hero rankings. The second hero from Lotal only had a few years of working in the field before her tragic end at the age of 20 by the hands of a cold-hearted villain. It was a major tragedy for the townsfolk, since they lost a promising hero in the making who had a whole life ahead of her.

Why did she have to die like that? It just isn't fair.