Story

Chapter 1

"Look! Oh my God!"
"Who is that? He's beating those huge monsters!"
"He's friggin' crazy what is that strength?!"
The television was blaring one morning and the television had one brown-haired child as it's viewer who had a large grin and a shiny look in his eye.
A woman's voice shouts out, along with sounds of pots and pans being washed
"Mori! You're gonna be late! Turn off the TV and catch the bus!"
"Ok, Mom!"
The brown-haired child lives in a small house, where the kitchen is connected to the living room and only 2 bed rooms are in the house. Many potted plants are around the house and many photos of him and his parents. He clicks the TV off, puts his book bag on and goes to the door to put his shoes on, his mother comes up to the door.
"Mori, crime rates are higher than ever, so please be careful. Look both ways before crossing the street, and don't talk to strangers, and stay with your friends coming home, and drink enough water and-"
"Ok, Mom, I'm not a baby anymore!" He grumbles
"Alright, alright, my little Shirio"
She kisses him on his cheek and pats him out of the house.
"Bye Mom!"
He gets on the bus and takes his seat next to a very energetic looking kid with blue hair, red eyes, and sharp teeth who seems happy to see him. They start talking to each other and along with many other kids make a lot of noise.
The bus arrives at the school and all the kids flood out of the bus, forming two lines in front of the door. They move from room to room, learning different subjects from math to science and to spelling. Finally lunch comes around and many of the kids are cheering and running to go grab their lunch boxes, meanwhile one little girl is having trouble finding theirs. She scurry around, frantically looking for it and are almost driven to tears, but then, another child walks up to them with his friend and says to her "Is this your lunch?" she turns around and smiles and goes to grab it, but the boy yanks it away making her trip.
"Hahaha! That'll teach ya to be such a smarty-pants!"
The girl starts to sob and cries for them to give it back, only to have them shove her away until they eventually shove her too hard and she lands on her butt which makes her cry harder and catches the attention of the young boy with the brown hair who is already standing in front of her.
"Stop, now!" He says as he has his arms out wide.
"Give her the lunch box back, or else I will use my super powers on you!" He makes a pathetic looking fighting pose
The bullies pause for a moment before bursting out laughing and shoving him over.
"Idiot!" they chanted at him, he looked like he was about to cry but he sniffled and stood back up.
The bullies continued to shove him over and over between each other until they got bored and left him on the floor, throwing the lunch box on his belly.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the girl holding her hand out to him, but he quickly stood up by himself
"Ha, haha!" A very unenthusiastic laugh "No need to fear! I won against the bullies in the end by not giving up!"
The girl picked up her lunch box and smile at him
"Thank you" she says before bowing her head and running off, which left the young boy with a blush and a smile on his face.

"Yeah, that's me right there, ya see? Kid with that stupid grin and brown bowl haircut? Ahh, I still cringe when I think of myself saying "I'll use my super powers!" but, this memory's pretty precious, it reminds me why I'm doing what I am today. What you ask? A Hero, of course! I'm Shirio Mori, and I am best friend with the number one Hero!"

An alarm rings and Shirio jumps out of bed to rush his uniform on. He goes to the bathroom, quickly brushes his teeth and combs his bowl haircut. He runs to the dining table with his baby sister, his mother, and his father who has his head in a newspaper. He immediately wolfs down his food, choking and hitting his chest just for his baby sister to laugh.
"Mori! I told you not to eat so fast! What're you in a rush for anyway?"
"Myamnamu" He says will food in his mouth
"Swallow your food first! Jeez!"
He gulps it down and says "It's high school selection week! I can't wait to turn my form in!" His father simply frunts.
"What school are you even going to?" His mother questions
"Koketsu!"
His mother starts to eat a piece of bacon "Oh, that's ni-"
His mother spits out her food, his father drops his newspaper and his baby sister laughs
"K-koketsu?! Are you crazy, Mori?!"
"W-what kind of choice is that?! That's a hero school! What about that, uh, medical school?!"
"I made up my mind, I wanna be a hero! I thought about it for a while and that's what I want to be!"
"Mori! No!" His father shouts "Simply no!"
"Why not? My powers manifested! I'm plenty strong! And smart! I can do it!" Shirio summons a tall, long limbed being behind him.
The being is Shirio's avatar, it's his gift from The Light to aid him in his future endeavors. It has the ability to transform one form of energy to a different form at will.
"No means no, Mori, we've told you so many times before!" His father has stood up now "There's too many risks to being a hero! People will be going for your neck left and right, even other heroes!"
"But it's what I want! You said I could choose what I want to be! That's what I want to be!" His avatar disappears
"Anything but that! We don't want a day where you won't come home! You'll be the next man of the family!"
"I can provide better if I become a good hero! There are many benefits to it!"
"I forbid you!"
"Well, it's my future and it's mine to decide!" Shirio slams his fork down, causing his unfinished meal to land on the floor, he swings his book bag on and heads out the door.
"Mori Shirio! You get back here right now, clean up this mess, and-!" The yelling from his father silenced the second he closed the door, he then started to run down the street to his school teary-eyed.
"I don't understand that kid" His father mutters before slamming his fist on the table
"He seemed very passionate about it" His mother says
"Passionate or not, he'll be killed doing his "hero" work before we know it"
"Mori, will?" His baby sister began to cry
"N-no! Nono! Maiko! He's fine! Don't cry, don't cry!"

Shirio stops for a moment to catch his breath and stares at his high school selection paper, and nods in reassurance.
He enters his school just before the bell rings and takes his seat. He takes out his notebook and folder, which he places on top of his selection paper.
"Hey hey hey!" A person shouts and slamming his hand on Shirio's desk making him jump
"AYY-Oh, it's just you" He sighs of relief. A tall blue-haired red-eyed boy with spiky teeth, eye liner and a smile stands beside him, he has his uniform on loosely and has his book bag on with one strap.
"What's up man? You're covered in sweat. Did'ja have some fun time with a chick before class?" He raises his eyebrow
"No!" He waves his hand at him
The boy takes his seat "Well, besides that, you look like you're havin' some issues, man"
"It's nothing, just had a bit of a fight with my dad"
"Who won?"
"Not that kind of fight, we were just yellin' at each other cause I wanted to go to Koketsu"
"Ah, I see, he wants you to become a doctuur." He says in a mocking tone
"Chirikara!" Shirio groans, the blue haired boy laughs
His name is Chirikara Oshiro, he's been best friend with Shirio for a while and makes jokes like this a lot which may or may not make his buddy angry.
"But, nah, I get it, he thinks it's too dangerous."
"Yeah, but it's what I want, right? So just let me do it!"
"I don't fancy goin' to Hero school, I kinda wanna go to a school with a basketball team. Fightin' is just not my thing."
"But you're crazy! That power of yours is beyond anyone in this school!"
"Well, ya always say that and ask me to go to Koketsu with ya, but it just ain't my idea of fun, y'know?"
"I just want you to think about it, your power could seriously save many people's lives."
"Perhaps" Chirikara says with a bigger smile and the final chimes of the bell ring signalling the class to begin. The teacher slides open the door and walks in.
"Good morning, class" The teacher projects to the class
"Good morning, teacher" The students either say diligently or groan
"Before we begin, we must obviously address what's on everyone's mind." He holds out a blank paper with the words "High school selection" written on it "Does anyone have their high school selection form filled out?" Many of the students raise their hands, including Shirio. They pass up their papers, but Shirio's paper ends up on top.
"Koketsu?" The teacher questions, the class looks in wonder
The teacher shrugs and places the papers into his desk and claps his hands "Alright, let's start class, books out everyone, get off your phones, and let's get some smiles going!"
Most of class time for the two boys was Shirio copying notes down, while Chirikara doodles or makes origami figures which he tosses on Shirio's desk only for him to throw it back.

The bell chimes and students are already making noise while the teacher tries to get the last few words of his lesson out.
"Hey! Didn't ya hear? Someone in this class wants to get into Koketsu! Can ya believe that?" A girl says to her friends
"Is it Kami? She's so popular and cool!" A girl turns around in her desk and asks
"No no, it has to be a guy, I don't think girls want to do stuff like that" A guy mentions
Shirio eavesdrops and nervously smiles to himself playing with his fingers.
"It's Shirio" Chirikara calls out grabbing the student's attention
"Shirio?!" The class cries out
Shirio looks in shock and starts thinking about the reactions of the others "Koketsu? Think smaller!" "You in Koketsu? Ha!" "You don't even look like a hero!" Shirio grabs his stomach in nervousness and looks over at his best friend to see what his intent was, Chirikara looks back at him and smiles.
"Shirio!" A students cries out, then a whole group of kids in unison say "That's so cool!"
Shirio snaps out of his daze "Eh?" as he sees a bunch of his classmates start to surround his desk
"Koketsu! You're gonna be a hero!" A boy says with his arm in the air "You can represent our middle school!" Another boy butts in "You wanna be like Ultimatum?! Or are you a Charger fan?" a girl says as she holds up pictures. Shirio tries his best to answer everyone but is clearly having trouble addressing them all at the same time, meanwhile Chirikara sits and sips on some Strawberry milk.
After this ordeal and the students head out to their next class, Shirio has a sigh of relief and looks over at a smiling Chirikara
"Y'know, if everyday is like that, maybe a Hero ain't too bad, hm?"
"Well, you can definitely handle fame better than me, you frigging super star" he says as he rests his head on his arms.
The other periods breeze by quickly, and Shirio and Chirikara walk with one another home.
"Yo, ya wanna head out to eat? There's this cool burger place near here called Boas" Chirikara suggests
"No, I have to-" Shirio stops for a moment and remembers the fight that morning
"Sounds good, I could use something to take my mind off things" he sighs while rubbing his stomach

They enter the restaurant and hear the jingle of the bell upon entering.
Chirikara takes a seat and tells Shirio what to order for him, and he gets on line.
As he's waiting a tall boy with a red and black jacket stands in front of Shirio, nearly dwarfing him in size. Shirio takes a step back but is also a bit annoyed for the rude cutting the boy committed.
"Hey" He taps his shoulder "I was waiting in line first and you cut in front of me?"
The boy turns around and gives Shirio a dirty look. The boy had dark skin and a scar over his left eye, along with white hair and black streaks through them.
"I know what I did, what're you gonna do about it?"
Shirio gulps and opens his mouth to say something, but stays quiet
"What I thought, punk" The boy says before turning back around
The boy ordered a monstrous amount of food and had to sift through his wallet for a while to pay for it. Shirio gazed in disbelief.
Shirio regained his attention when the cashier lady was trying to call his attention and he ordered his food to bring it to Chirikara.
"Hey, do you know that guy?" Shirio points at the scary boy he encountered who is currently shoving burgers in his mouth
"Woahohoho! What a mouth that guy has!"
"Quiet down! He might hear you!" But when Shirio looked back the boy was already glaring back at them, and this sent a shiver down Shirio's back.
"Maybe he ain't such a bad guy? Let's talk to em" Chirikara says before taking the last bites of his burgers, sipping his soda and getting up to meet him, Shirio timidly follows.
Chirikara walks up to the boy and holds his hand out to him "Hey there, nice to meet you" the boy looks at his hand then back to him before smacking his hand away and going back to his burgers.
"That ain't very nice, man, come on, show some decency?" immediately after saying that and reaching his hand out the boy took a swing to Chirikara's chin, which he swiftly dodges to the boy's surprise.
"Leave me the hell alone, jackass."
"Come on Chirikara, this guy is bad news, let's just get out of here."
"Hmmm, alright, but next time I see him I'll definitely be friends with him, okay?" He turns around and snaps a finger at the boy who glares at them again before going back to his meal.
They exit the store and start walking home and eventually have to split up, which they then wave to each other goodbye.

Shirio arrives home and was about to open the door, but remembers the morning and opens the door much more slowly and enters his home where no one seems to be home. He then makes his way to his room until his father opens the door and calls him. Shirio pauses and turns around to see his father with a worried tone in his face.
"Shirio, we need to talk to you." and then he signaled him into his room, Shirio reluctantly agreed.
He sat down with his mother and father and there was a brief silence in the room, with only the sound of the clock ticking.
"Shirio, about this morning" his mother started and Shirio grips his fist
"We haven't changed our mind about it" his father asked, Shirio's face tensed up like he was about to cry
"The hero path is seriously way too dangerous for people to be in, and parents of their wishful children definitely need to think it through quite thoroughly." his mother was saying these things with a bit of a choked up voice
"We want what's best for our baby boy, we know how old you are, but you're still so young to us." she continued
"When you laid that news on us this morning, I was terribly shocked, a lot of thoughts went into our minds, what would happen if something bad happens." She blew her nose "We wondered what would happen if our baby boy didn't come home, if we watched the news and saw our son dead, what would we do? What could we do?" She starts wiping her tears again and his father put his hand on her shoulder.
"Son" He begins "We definitely did put in a lot of thought about this" he crosses his arms "I would have never approved of you being a hero like this, however" he takes a deep breath "Your mother convinced me to think of it like this, if you were to be accepted in Koketsu, and you were able to take the entrance exam" Shirio looks up with teary eyes "If you were to fail, you are to never try again, but if you pass" he uncrosses his arms and puts his thumbs up and Shirio's mother looks up at him and smiles "You can be a hero" Shirio's jaw drops and tears flood his eyes, he jumps at his parents to hug them and continues to cry tears of joy, while both of them hug him back.

Chapter 2

The next school morning Shirio came into class with a large smile on his face thinking to himself of what had occurred yesterday. He imagines the wonderful times he'll have with his new classmates as they will grow with one another and become heroes someday. As he was thinking of this he remembers Chirikara and where he might end up, but when he looked over Chirikara seemed to not be present. He started to worry to himself as today was the last day they were accepting high school selection papers, he started to remember Chirikara's words "I kinda wanna go to a school with a good basketball team"
"Is he really going to just play basketball all his life?" Shirio thought to himself
But, just then someone swings open the door, and it was Chirikara panting and had a huge smile on his face.
"Ch-Chirikara?! Are you alright? Where were you?"
"I wanna be a hero!" He yells as he holds up a crumbled high school selection paper that has a black scribble through the first choice and replaced with "Koketsu"
He hands in his slip to the teacher and takes his seat and looks over at Shirio with his ever lasting smile.
"I was on my way home and some kid had their cat stuck in a tree, right? Then after she said thanks to me, I felt fantastic! I wanted to do more! So I did! I went around town lookin' for any way to help out n stuff and I helped almost everyone in the neighborhood! I feel friggin' amazing! I want to be a hero with you, Shirio! I want to use my powers to help more people!" As he says that his hands engulf in a blue flame and he smacks them together, putting them out.
Chirikara's ability is to project a blue fire from his body, it can come in many different forms and is extremely flexible!
Shirio looks in amazement, surprised at Chirikara's sudden change of mind
"That's one hell of an origin story for you, man"
Chirikara nods his head violently as many classmates get up to congratulate Chirikara on his development
They continue with their classes, meanwhile both Shirio and Chirikara wait impatiently.
After school they walk out together with a couple of other classmates as they decided to go eat barbecue in celebration of their efforts, they walk in and order all the meat middle school students could enjoy.
"Chirikara! Shirio!" A very big classmate stands up and says
"You two need more meat! If you're gonna be heroes you gotta start gaining more muscle now!"
As he is saying this him and the other classmates are shoving meat onto their plate
"Don't forget vegetables, too!" A girl adds on and sliding grilled onions and tomatoes
Chirikara and Shirio looked in disbelief and amazement before looking at each other, smiling, and asking their friends to countdown.
Once they did, they begun digging in and trying to finish faster than the other as their friends cheered on.
After this event, they all split up to go home and Chirikara and Shirio walked home together.
On their way, they spot a large incline and look at eachother, nod, and run up the incline together
When they get to the top, Chirikara announces his uncontested victory and both collapse on the floor with one another looking at the stars
"Man, being a hero will be so much damn fun!"
"Yeah, and we get to meet all these cool people, like true heroes and strong as hell classmates we can improve with"
They sit there for about an hour just star gazing and talking about what they will do when they get into Koketsu, but Shirio realizes something.
"Hey, have you thought of a hero name, yet?"
"Huh?"
"A hero name. What people will be calling you when you do your work"
"Hmmm, I haven't thought of that. Maybe I'll go with something generic, like Blue Fire Man!"
"Well, I'm sure it won't be too soon, you'll have a lot of time to think about it"
"What about you, yo?"
"I will be known as the energy hero, Force!" He announces as he flexes and summons his avatar
"Hoho! Nice! Very fancy and simple, suits you. I need somethin' that makes people go Woah!"
"Well, you're the kind of person to think of stuff like that, so only you can do it, which is amazing"
"Man, I don't think I'll be sleepin' anytime soon, so friggin' excited"
"Well, you don't have to worry about that, we're on summer break now"
"Eh?" Chirikara questions in disbelief before sitting up, checking his phone and calenders.

On the morning of the first summer day, as the sound of wind and cicadas fill the air, Shirio wakes up at the time his alarm should've gone off, but decides to sleep in anyway. He was abruptly awoken by a splash of water, when he was finally able to see he was in the river near the park in a gym outfit with Chirikara standing over him with an empty water bottle.
"Get your butt up, Shirio! We're gonna start our summer training for Koketsu!"
"H-huh?! Wait, wait, wait! Why are we at the park? How did you get me here? I don't even own these clothes!"
Chirikara shakes his head "Don't worry about that young hero, we got training to do, let's go!"
He lifts him up and immediately starts jogging, where Shirio slowly follows, they jog for a short period of time before Shirio starts getting out of breath where Chirikara hands him a water bottle.
"I ain't ready for this man" He says, exhausted
"I can't just exercise straight from waking up, I'm starving!"
Chirikara winks and says "Would you say that if someone's life was in danger?"
Shirio opens his mouth to answer, but then stops and thinks about it
"Don't think 'bout it! In situations like those, you can't think!