Title: Hopemaxxing (MHA/Superman SI)
Author: Magus explorator
Universe: My Hero Academia X DC Superman)
Word Count: 230k
Status: Ongoing (recently updated)
Synopsis:
The world is changing. In Japan, the Symbol of Peace is preparing to pass the torch—and Sir Nighteye thinks he's found the perfect successor. Or at least, he thought he had… until a green-haired kid got there first.
But while digging for copper, he might've struck gold.
Born in Kansas. Corn-fed, sun-fueled, and raised with moral strength by two loving farmers, he's not here to be the next Symbol of Peace.
He's here to be the first Symbol of Hope.
Rec Reading Site: SpaceBattles
First Chapter:
You know, I probably should've figured things out earlier—who I was, what I was, all those big existential identity crisis things. But to be fair, life here's a little… odd.
People have superpowers. Quirks, they call 'em. Some are flashy—telekinesis, flame breath, flying elbows. Most are weirdly specific. One guy could summon bread. Another could instantly calculate the volume of any object. I once met a girl whose quirk let her talk to geese, and only geese.
So I thought nothing of it. Just part of the world. I was born in a hospital like everyone else. Mom screamed, Dad cried, the nurse took way too many pictures. No alien spacecraft. No mysterious meteor crater. Just Kansas.
So when I didn't show any signs of a quirk right away, I figured I was just a late bloomer. That happens sometimes. I cheered for the other kids in kindergarten—James with his goat legs, Lily with her neon tears, Rebecca with her sandpaper skin. I even tried to help the ones who didn't get anything flashy. It's rough, feeling left behind.
Then, well… I happened.
It was show and tell, more specifically quirk show and tell, the Supreme Court ruled it as our Second and Fourteenth Amendment right, so the teachers just kept an eye on us with the town quirk safety officer just behind them. God bless them for it.
I was gripping the edge of the lunch table when my fingers phased right through it. Splinters flew. I started floating. Then my vision went wild—I could see inside people. Organs, bones, weird glittery tumors from genetic quirks. My ears picked up everything—the hum of the light fixtures, someone farting across the gym, a squirrel sneezing miles away. It was a lot.
And then lasers blasted from my eyes and melted the whiteboard and the sealing along with it.
They had to rebuild part of the school.
The principal, Mr. Stevens, bless him, just looked at me and sighed. "Well, I guess we needed new windows anyway."
After that, things moved fast. Doctors poked and prodded, scientists asked questions I didn't understand, and a man from the Department of Quirk Safety showed up with a clipboard and seven different pamphlets. I got put in a special class to help me adjust to the noise, which—thankfully—I got a handle on in the following months. I got my flying license at the DMV (even if I only passed that test on my fourth try—I had some problems getting the landing part right).
Turns out my quirk was "solar-powered." That's what the specialists called it. The longer I stood in the sun, the stronger I got. Super strength, flight, x-ray vision, heat vision, hyper-hearing, all bundled into one increasingly overpowered package. Kind of like… well, you know. Him. But there were no Kryptonians here. Not even DC comics, I checked. Extensively.
Adjusting wasn't easy. Everything felt fragile. I crushed pencils like toothpicks, bent doorknobs without meaning to, snapped forks trying to eat mac and cheese. The janitor became my archnemesis. "Kid, you're gonna bankrupt us in fixtures," he'd mutter while sweeping up yet another busted water fountain.
I didn't like the attention. I was never the class clown or the loudmouth. I liked being the quiet kid, sitting in the back, drawing or reading or just… listening. But when you laser-beam your own classroom and accidentally fly through the gym ceiling, subtlety kinda dies.
Still, life went on. I got stronger. I got better. I learned to fly without crashing into birds. I helped at the farm when my powers didn't scare the cows. I lived.
Until the day some dude called Nighteye sent my pa an email.
Tokyo. Japan. A full-ride scholarship to the most prestigious hero school in the world. It was the kind of offer people dreamed of.
That was three years ago.
The day before I left, the entire class skipped school and met me at the scrapyard.
There, under the Kansas sun, I stood with six rusted trains hitched to my back by a heavy steel chain. I was sweating through my shirt, my boots digging into the dirt. The metal was hot. My muscles ached. And everyone was cheering.
"GO, CLARK, GO!"
Rebecca's voice cut through the noise, followed by James blasting me with a cooling spray from his quirk. The group of train groaned behind me, stubborn and ancient. But I pulled. Slowly. Steadily. One step. Then another. The wheels finally lurched, metal shrieking across the track.
It was a goodbye, me finally beating the trains, which I have been used to train my muscles, now under the watchful and cheering eyes of my classmates.
And when the six train finally stopped, the crowd rushed in—hugs, handshakes, teary-eyed speeches. James nudged me with his horned head. "Try not to level Tokyo, alright?"
"No promises," I said.
One by one, they left, heading off to figure out how to explain to their parents why the whole class skipped school. That left me alone in the sun. It felt… good. Like a charge, low and humming in my bones. I took a breath, deep and calm.
Then I flew.
First stop: the only pizza place in Smallville. One medium pepperoni and a six-pack of Coke later, I rose back into the air, cardboard box under one arm, soda clinking in my bag.
The air was warm and buzzing with cicadas as I flew over the last hill. Below me, the Kent farm spread out like a postcard—faded red barn, yellowing cornfields, a half-dismantled tractor out by the shed that'd been "almost fixed" for going on eight years now.
Home.
I touched down gently in the dirt driveway, just in front of the porch. Tried to make the landing clean this time—feet together, no crater, no sudden sonic booms. I'd cracked the birdbath last month and Mom had made me re-pour the concrete.
Speaking of Mom—
"You're late," she called from the porch, arms crossed but smile blooming. Martha Kent, wearing overalls and a sun hat that looked like it belonged in a gardening catalog, leaned on the rail like she'd been waiting for me all afternoon. Her hands were dirt-stained. The ivy growing up the side of the porch rustled like it was greeting me too.
"Pizza run," I said, holding up the box. "Last dinner with the family, though something American felt right."
"You better not be flying on an empty stomach again. That's how you broke the weather vane last month."
"That was a gust of wind," I lied, walking up the steps. The vines on the rail reached out playfully to tug at my wrist as I passed.
Mom snorted. "Gust of wind, my foot. Sky lit up like the Fourth of July when you hit the power line."
"Which I also missed," I added, and she waved a hand dismissively.
Inside, the house smelled like warm bread and lavender. The furniture was all secondhand but cared for, and the walls were lined with family photos—old ones, from the time of grand grand grand pappy as a GI all the way to the present. There was one of me as a baby chewing on a rubber tractor, and another of Dad floating three inches off the ground while trying to fix a leaky roof. He called it "precision lifting." Mom called it being lazy.
Pa was in the kitchen, hovering a spoon lazily over a bubbling pot while reading the Topeka Tribune one page at a time—without using his hands. Jonathan Kent, a man built like the local grain silo, had the kind of telekinesis that didn't make headlines. Not flashy. But within ten feet? He could juggle a dozen tools and never drop a screw.
"Smells good," I said, setting the pizza down on the counter.
He gave me a nod over the top of his glasses, spoon still stirring behind him. "Brought back pepperoni? You're gonna make your mother jealous."
"I told you I like veggie!" Mom yelled from the porch, clearly still eavesdropping. The ivy rustled indignantly.
"You brought soda, at least," Dad said with a faint smile. "That'll buy you a few minutes of forgiveness."
I flopped onto one of the kitchen chairs, letting the solar charge from earlier hum low in my chest. The house always grounded me. Even if I could hear the hum of every fridge within a ten-mile radius, even if I could accidentally snap the doorknob off just trying to leave a room, this place always made it feel manageable.
"So," Dad said after a beat, spoon finally clinking to a rest in the pot. "Tomorrow, huh?"
"Yeah."
He nodded again, slower this time. "You packed?"
"As much as I can be. Gonna try not to cause any international incidents for at least the first week."
"You've got your documents? Visa? School placement letter?"
"All in the bag."
"Extra socks?" Ma yelled from outside.
"...Yes, Mom."
She stepped into the kitchen then, vines sliding back like polite curtains. "You sure you're ready? You know West Point also offered you a scholarship, it's a little worse but its in the states." she asked, and her voice was soft in a way that always made my chest ache. Not worried, not trying to stop me—just Mom, hoping her kid didn't get turned into modern art by some kaiju-level villain on day one.
"I think so," I said.
"Think?"
"I know I'll miss this," I admitted, glancing around. "The quiet. The corn You guys. Even the cows."
"Just not the chickens," Dad said dryly.
"They don't like me for some reason, I feed them for goodness sake," I muttered.
Mom came over, brushing my hair back with her dirt-streaked fingers. "You'll be okay. You've got your father's stubbornness and my green thumb."
"Literally," I said, watching a small vine sneak a Coke can out of the bag behind her.
"I will take that back," she warned the plant, and it retreated sheepishly.
And as I sat there, talking about crop yields and tractor parts and whether I could bring my own butter to Japan (jury's still out), I realized something:
I wasn't scared.
Nervous, yeah. Heart pounding, for sure. But not scared.
Because no matter what happened over there—whether I fit in or stuck out like a sunlamp in a blackout—I knew where I came from.
Countryside boy, Kansas born and bred... even if the big city was sucked, I still got that.
We ate dinner on the porch.
The sky over the fields had that late summer glow—peach-colored clouds, streaks of gold bleeding into blue, the kind of sky you could stare at for hours and still not get tired of. Cicadas hummed low in the distance. Wind rustled the corn, soft like a lullaby.
It felt like home.
Mom sat beside me, dirt still under her nails. She'd promised not to work during dinner tonight, so instead, she just sent the plants to do it for her.
"Alright, fellas," she said, half to me, half to the ivy crawling along the railing. "Bring the wine."
The vines rustled with something like enthusiasm. A moment later, the kitchen door creaked open and a bottle floated out, nestled gently in leafy tendrils, followed by two glasses. One vine popped the cork with a little flourish.
"I swear they're getting smarter," I muttered, grinning.
"They're just well-watered," Mom said, taking her glass. "Unlike some people who think pizza and soda is a food group."
"I'm carbo-loading," I said, raising my slice like it was evidence. "International flight tomorrow."
Dad chuckled from the other end of the table. "Yeah, three hours across the Pacific. Real grueling."
"Four, tops," I said, taking a sip of Coke. "I'm pacing myself."
He was already sipping his wine, eyes turned toward the darkening sky. "Y'know, if it weren't for my bad heart, I'd have joined a rescue crew in a heartbeat. Maybe partnered with someone like Captain Celebrity. Say what you will about his ego, the guy gets the job done."
Mom rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Really, Jon? That guy's just a walking PR campaign. I'd take Stars and Stripes any day. Discipline, presence, actual humility. She was even my junior in university."
Dad raised his eyebrows. "She did punch a missile out of the sky last month. I'll give you that."
They turned to me.
"What about you, Clark?" Mom asked, tilting her glass. "Got a favorite?"
I took another bite, chewing slow. "I think they're all good. I mean, you kind of have to be, to do what they do. But I always liked the rescue types best. The ones who stay behind after the fight. The ones who pull people out of rubble, who carry civilians through fire, who show up when the cameras aren't rolling."
I shrugged. "I dunno. That's the kind of hero I want to be. When I graduate."
Mom made a soft, fond noise—less a "aww" and more like her heart was trying to hug me. "You sweet boy."
Dad gave me a nod, simple and proud. "That's a good kind of hero to be."
"And you better not go vanishing for months," Mom added, jabbing a finger at me—but not too hard. "With your flying speed, you've got no excuse not to visit."
"I won't," I promised. "I could leave Tokyo before dinner and still be back here before dessert."
"You'll come back for Christmas," she said, like it wasn't a question. "And Easter. And your birthday."
"Goes without saying."
"And to help us finish the new barn roof," Dad added, not missing a beat.
I gave him a look. "You do remember what happened the last time I tried to help with the roof, right?"
He chuckled. "That's why I said help. I'll float the nails, you hammer them in gently."
"Gently," I echoed. "Right."
We sat there like that for a while, sipping drinks and trading quiet jokes as the stars came out. The moon hung broken and pale in the sky, watching over the fields like it always did.
I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock screaming in my ear. Not metaphorically—actually screaming.
Normal decibels for a normal person. For me? It might as well have been a firetruck ramming through my skull at Mach 3. My head jerked, my body spasmed, and then—
CRASH.
Straight down onto the bed.
The ceiling foam rattled. My mattress groaned. The old springs let out a sound somewhere between a dying cat and a ship's horn.
I laid there for a second, face planted in a pillow, processing the fact that I'd once again woken up in the air, dangling from the ceiling like a very confused bat.
Right. The wrist straps.
Still wrapped around my arms, thick cords anchored to the reinforced floor like I was a weather balloon they didn't want drifting off. I reached over and unlatched them one by one with practiced ease.
Thunk. Thunk.
Note to self: re-tighten the straps tonight in Japan. I do not want a repeat of the time I woke up thirty feet above the house, nearly gave the neighbor's rooster a heart attack. That was the day I got shaken awake by a cop with a flying quirk. Real polite guy. Gave me a ticket for "unlicensed low-orbit drifting." Still on the fridge.
I sat up, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. The walls of my room were lined with thick gray foam—ugly, dense, blessed silence. It dulled the outside world enough for me to sleep. Mostly. Except for the time I heard... them.
Let's just say my parents love each other very much, and my hearing is not nearly as charming as it sounds. The upstairs bedroom used to be theirs. Used to.
I shivered at the memory. No kid should know their father's rhythm.
I got up and did the usual: teeth brushed (gently, because I've shattered toothbrushes before), shower taken (with a steel-reinforced nozzle), hair flattened (until it inevitably rebelled). I grabbed my documents from the desk—passport, visa, school acceptance letter with a sharp corner where I'd nervously bent it too many times. Sent straight from some Japanese guy named Nighteye. Super formal. Sent me a whole folder, paper and digital, with notes, expectations, and some ominous line about "being worthy of the path ahead."
No pressure.
My backpack was full. almost bursting. Still, it felt weird strapping it on. Like the first time you leave for summer camp—except this camp was on the other side of the world and everyone got top tier quirks.
I floated downstairs because I was lazy, and also because we reinforced the support beams after I broke the stairs in sixth grade. That day was a whole thing.
I touched down lightly in the kitchen, where the smell of coffee and fried eggs hit me like a warm hug. Mom stood at the stove, her vine-helpers expertly flipping pancakes and slicing tomatoes in mid-air. Dad was at the table, reading the paper—physically turning the pages with one hand, floating his coffee mug with the other.
They both looked up when I entered.
"There he is," Dad said, smiling. "The soon-to-be international hero."
"Morning, sweetheart," Mom said, setting a plate down for me. "Eat up. You need energy if you're gonna outfly the jet stream."
I smiled, sitting down between them, the weight of the moment finally settling into my chest.
This was it.
Last breakfast at home.
Last meal with the people who raised me, powered or not, through every disaster, every growth spurt, every meltdown—literal and emotional.
I dug in.
And tried not to think about how much I'd miss this.
I zipped up my jacket, slung my backpack over one shoulder, and stepped out onto the front lawn. The sky was still early-morning clear—just a few wispy clouds, the kind you could trace shapes in if you weren't about to punch a hole straight through them.
I slipped on my flight headset, the custom one Dad and I built last year—noise dampening, wind-resistant, voice-activated comms. I tapped the side once. A soft click answered back, and a second later, a calm voice came through the speaker.
"Flight control, Topeka Center. Who am I speaking to?"
"Morning, Topeka. This is Kansas-Delta-One-One-Seven—Clark Kent. Solo superflight, destination Japan, full documentation approved."
There was a pause as they pulled up my file. I could hear the click of a keyboard.
"Whoa. Kansas to Japan, huh?" the controller said with a light laugh. "That's one hell of a quirk you've got there, kid."
"Thanks," I said, trying not to let the grin slip into my voice. "Hoping to put it to good use."
"You're cleared for departure. Keep below cloud cover till you hit the Pacific and I'll transfer you to a Japanese controller once you pass Hawaii. Keep comms open, watch for weather shifts, and don't blind any commercial pilots with a sonic boom, alright?"
"That was one time," I muttered.
"It's on your file kid. Godspeed, Kent."
"Copy that."
I tapped the comms off just as Ma stepped up beside me, her sunhat in hand, eyes shining but trying not to tear up.
"Alright," she said softly, voice just a little too steady. "Final check, mister."
I nodded, standing at attention like I was reporting for duty.
"Clothes?"
"Packed."
"Documents?"
"In the folder. Digital backup too."
"Japanese dictionary?"
I tapped my earbud. "Audiobook version. The principal made me sit through six months of lessons. I can order ramen, apologize for breaking things, and say 'I'm very sorry, ma'am' in three dialects."
She sniffed once and smiled. "Good boy."
Dad joined her, one arm draped across her shoulders. "You know the way?"
"Straight shot east, slight curve with the rotation, keep it steady till I'm over the Pacific, then coast into Honshu."
"You'll call when you land?"
"Promise."
I looked at them both—Ma and Pa. Strong, weird, good people. The kind that make you believe the world can be kind right back.
Then I took two steps back, crouched low, and felt the charge start to build. My cells lit up like coals catching fire. The air shimmered around me. Heat pooled in my chest.
With a soft thump, I launched.
BOOM.
A shockwave split the air, flattening the grass for a hundred feet in every direction. The wind tore past me as I broke the sound barrier, climbing higher, faster, the Kansas fields shrinking below.
I looked over my shoulder one last time.
Down there, standing in front of the farmhouse, were Ma and Pa. They were holding each other, heads leaned together, watching me go.
Martha and Jonathan Kent. My parents.
And I hoped, wherever this road led, I could make them proud.