[1st POV]
'Hell has a name, and it's called Aldera Elementary School. I know it because I've been there' - famous quote by Katsuki Bakugo, the Symbol of Power.
...
"We shouldn't be doing this, Kacchan!" Midoriya was fidgeting as we walked around the streets of Musutafu.
"We shouldn't skip school only after a month of attending it," he said, walking behind me. He was always stopping and running to catch back up to me.
He was caught in a perpetual loop of denial and commitment. He stopped first, thinking maybe he should return by himself, but when he saw my back getting further, he ran to catch up to me again.
He should really make a decision.
"What's the point of going to school? We are too smart for it anyway," I said with a huff. And no, I did not find elementary school easy because of the foreign memory I had. I was naturally just that smart. I was light-years away from my peers.
On a scale of 1 to 10, my opinion of elementary school was rock bottom 0. I personally did not have a good time at all. It wasn't because of the study material either. It was mostly because of the children.
The young, snotty children who were annoyance incarnate. I finally realised why children always had parents. It's because only their parents could love them. If they didn't have parents, no one would love them. So God gave a pair to everyone.
But that's not even the worst part.
The worst part was that you couldn't beat them.
If I could, I'd totally stay in school.
"Where are we going, Kacchan? No, do you even know where we're going? What if we get lost?!"
I smacked him in the head. "Of course I know where we're going! Do you doubt me, Deku? If not, then SHUT THE HELL UP! No one asked you to follow me."
I totally did. But of course I did it indirectly.
We roamed around the city for a few hours. I was waiting for something big to happen. It was why I brought Deku along in the first place. Here I was, clearly skipping class and doing something bad. To top it off, I had the main character with me.
I thought a villain attack would happen by now, or something.
Wasn't every incident supposed to revolve around the main character?
I turned towards Deku.
"Please stop looking at me like you are disappointed or something." He hid his face, becoming flustered due to the number of times I've looked at him in the past few hours.
"Scream at the top of your lungs that you're going to become the Number 1 hero. Maybe that'll do something," I said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.
"What?! That's embarrassing, Kacchan."
"Just do it, Deku. If you have a dream, you need to put it out to the universe. That's the only way it can come true," I said wisely.
"B-But, B-But..." he was full of hesitation.
"Butt, butt, butt, just say it!"
"....But aren't you going to be the Number 1 hero?" he said, giving me a side-eye.
"Don't get ahead of yourself. I said it's the only way it can come true. Never said anything about how it will come true," I said, placing a strong hand on his shoulder. "Now, scream."
After a few more beats of anxiety and showing him my fist, he finally screamed loudly in the middle of the busy street.
"I WILL BE THE NUMBER 1 HERO!!"
The scream was loud, but not that loud with how noisy the traffic was. A few people stopped, turning to look at Midoriya with a fond smile.
On the other hand, I was looking around with great expectation.
A second passed. Then two. Then a minute.
Nothing happened.
I turned towards Deku.
"I said stop looking at me like that!" he hid his blushing face.
Maybe he wasn't really the main character.
Maybe I was the main character all along and that loser remembered the anime wrong.
To make matters worse, Deku didn't attract any villains, but he did attract a few patrolling heroes.
"Why aren't you kids in school?"
Two heroes came forward, and one of them crouched to our level. At this point, Deku was in full panic mode as if we were caught selling meth.
But like the sharp kid he was, he quickly made up an excuse.
"We were walking to school b-but we got lost?" If the excuse was written, it would be confusing. But Deku was anything but a natural liar. He was sweating a whole lot while his body language was all over the place.
On the other hand, I was silent. My eyes narrowed at the hero, specifically his costume. I think I remembered him from somewhere.
Eventually, they both turned to me.
"...."
"...."
"Nah, I can't remember you. You must be an extra," I said before giving him a look.
"...Madoka," the hero turned to his buddy behind him, "Why is that kid looking at me like my father?" he said in a whimper while pointing at me.
And shortly after, my adventure came to an end as the heroes escorted us back to our school.
I don't think I need to say it, but my mother was absolutely pissed when she learned about it. And since then, I never skipped school again.
What did my mother do?
...You don't want to know.
/////////
[Time-skip 1 year]
I was 6 years old now.
Remember that as you look at my incredible physique. Knowing my age will help you comprehend how incredible I am.
It was early in the morning, so early in fact that it was still night.
I stood in our yard, unafraid of the dark even as a child. It was late January, winter. The temperature could go below freezing this early in the morning.
And under the soft illumination of the moon, I stood butt-ass naked.
I was a genius indeed.
I came upon a problem a year ago. Although my dreams and passion burned bright even at a young age, there was no way I could train my quirk. Unlike normal, pathetic little quirks, my powers were loud, awesome and destructive.
My quirk at such a young age was powerful enough that if I went all out, I could blow up an entire house. But that meant that I couldn't train my quirk until I became a student at UA High with the proper permission and facilities.
The law didn't allow anyone to use their quirk in public without a licence. Be it a hero licence, work licence or a doctor licence.
But even then, most people could still use and train their quirk in private. Yet I was a black duck in the sense that I couldn't even use my quirk in private.
The law kept me in check in public while my mother kept me in check in private. Truly, the heavens were against me like every proper main character.
Not that I blame my mother, though. I wouldn't want some 6-year-old kid playing with a quirk called Explosion. Truly, the weak are so blind. If only she knew my greatness, then she'd allow it.
But this didn't mean that I was going to sit idle and let my powers stay stagnant. Not at all. I wasn't like you extras where given enough excuses, you would accept them.
I refuse!
At first, I tried to ask my parents to sign me up to learn martial arts. I was denied. Then I asked for a gym membership, and I was denied again. I asked if I could at least pick fights in the park, and they denied that too.
So I had to get a little more creative.
School was an absolute bore to me, so I made use of it. Although I didn't have access to the gym, I could still train my strength. I did this in many ways. Like gripping the desk as hard as I could to train my grip strength. A few months after doing that, there was a deep handprint on my wooden table.
I filled my bags with dense-looking rocks and did bicep curls while they taught us the mind-blowing functions of multiplication. I sat without my butt touching the chair so that I could strengthen my legs.
I slapped the boy who looked at me wrong and got punished by doing sit-ups (actually squats) in front of the class. Of course, my classmates snickered when they saw me get punished. I slapped them too, boys and girls alike, and got punished more.
I get to beat people and am rewarded with training. And I never ran out of people to slap because some people always laughed at me. It was my favourite infinite training bug.
And now, what you see before me is the result of a year of doing that training.
"I am so fucking ripped," not really.
I posed for the darkness. My body went through different bodybuilder poses as I strained my muscles by flexing them.
Soon enough, my body began sweating even though it was early in the morning.
My quirk turned my sweat into nitro-something-something, and I could cause explosions by detonating them with sparks I could produce. It was a powerful quirk, especially after my upgrade, but I must admit, it had its own flaws.
To cause explosions, I must sweat.
Due to this limitation, my weakness was cold or cold temperatures. I also did not reach my peak potential at the beginning of fights. Instead, as the fight went on, I sweat more due to exertion and adrenaline. I could literally grow with the battle. The longer and more intense the fight, the stronger I became.
My body and my quirk were made for battle.
But what if I was one-shot at the beginning of the fight when I wasn't that strong? Better yet, what if I want to one-shot some extra villain without having to fight him?
That was what I was training to remove.
Bodybuilders could stand still and sweat intensely by just posing on stage. They could do this because of their muscle mass and the perfect control they had over their muscles. Contracting and releasing tension alone was enough to generate body heat and sweat.
Which was exactly why I was here, early in the morning, butt-ass naked, posing for the darkness.
Truly, my genius knew no bounds.
As I executed different poses, I tried my best to control my muscles. My body was stiff and rigid as hell, trying its best to make my temperature rise against the coldest morning.
My lips turned into an evil grin when I saw sweat falling on the ground like rain.
Even if I couldn't train my quirk directly, I would continue to get stronger in other fields. Soon enough, I would be able to sweat easily by just controlling the tension in my muscles. I would have the ability to sweat by just standing still.
Or maybe I would do a small and efficient warm-up. Like Goku's jumping warm-up. But in those few seconds of warm-up, I would sweat more than enough, like in the middle of a battle.
Of course, I would never be as strong as I would be in the middle of a battle, but the difference between them would be much smaller.
I want people to know that they never stood a chance from the beginning.
That's what it would mean to be a Symbol.
/////////