MHA Paragon

I hit the floor with a thud as I toppled out of my chair, but the pain was secondary to the iron first crushing my heart. It was a familiar pain; unfortunately, it was my second heart attack in five years.

To be honest, I was more surprised when I survived the first one. I wasn't exactly the spitting image of a health-conscious person. I was overweight and prediabetic, with high blood pressure, cholesterol, and every other marker that put me at risk of heart complications. 

Maybe the first first heart attack should have been a sign to change my lifestyle. Maybe I should have listened to my doctor, who explicitly told me that If I didn't make drastic changes to my diet, I wouldn't live to see thirty-five. 

Sure enough, he was right; I could feel it; there was no coming back from this one. 

So, as I lay dying on my bedroom floor, I confirmed that your life does indeed flash before your eyes. I imagine it was a comforting phenomenon for most, but it was like viewing a highlight reel of my greatest failure. 

My life had been relatively normal up until my senior year at college when my girlfriend at the time cheated on me. Even worse was that a video of her affair went viral around campus. 

Needless to say, my self-confidence was destroyed, life seemed pointless, and for the month after, I could barely work up the strength to pull myself out of bed. And just when I recovered from my deep bout of depression, my parents died in a freak accident. 

I dropped out of college months before graduating with a degree in architecture, and my life continued to decline after that. 

I found work online in customer service, shutting myself off from the outside world. Little exercise and a poor diet quickly caused me to gain weight, erasing any remaining self-confidence. 

 In retrospect, while it was clear life had dealt me a shitty hand, a majority of the blame lay on my shoulders. 

I could have weathered the storm, graduated, gotten a good-paying job, and met the love of my life. Instead, I ran away and gave up wallowing in my self-pity. 

'Well, I guess hindsight is 20/20,' I thought morosely as my body stilled and stopped writhing on the floor, 'I wonder if there's an afterlife.' 

That was the last thought through my mind before everything faded away and darkness surged up to envelope me. 

[3rd Person] 

Above an obese, greasy corpse, a white orb emerged invisible to the mortal eye. In the next instant, a portal opened in the ceiling lined with fluffy white that glowed with heavenly sunlight. 

As if beaconed, the white orb floated up toward the light, seemingly shining with apparent joy. But before the orb could take its rightful place above, the floor cracked as another portal opened. In contrast to the sunlight and clear skies, the portal on the floor was pitch black and bubbled with a thick, viscous tar-like substance. 

A long sticky tendril shot out from the dark portal, expanding to form a net that latched onto the white orb. 

Before the orb could react, the tendril retracted, retreating into its portal with its prize in hand that quickly closed, vanishing without a trace. 

---

"Kenji" 

"Kenji!" 

"Damnit, Kenji, wake the hell up!" 

My eyes shot open as my bedroom door was kicked in with a loud bang, revealing my mother standing in the doorway. 

"I swear It's every single day with you! Get up right this instant!" 

I let out a groan as I sat up in bed, clutching the sheets to shield my body from the cold morning air, "I'm up alright." 

My mom's face morphed into a deep scowl. "No, it's not alright! You need to get serious, young man. Your senior year isn't the time to joke around! Have you even filled out any college applications yet?" 

I sighed, "It doesn't matter. What school would let me in with my grades? And then imagine when they find out that I don't have a-" 

"Maybe if you got to school on time and applied yourself, you could improve your grades, and nothing else would matter!" my mother interrupted, shouting so loudly that the air rang. Honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do with you! I won't be around to take care of you forever!"

My only reply was a grunt as I stood up, "Fine, I'll go to school. Could you leave my room now?" 

My mom stared at me for a long moment before letting out a deep sigh of defeat, "Breakfast is downstairs; make sure you eat today, alright." 

After my mother left, I went to the bathroom. Closing the door, I let out another sigh before looking in the mirror and staring at my reflection. 

My complexion was deathly pale on account of my never going outside, which contrasted with my pitch black, long, and unkempt as I never spared the effort to take care of it. The same could be said of my body. I was practically a stick, something emphasized by my staggering height, standing nearly six and a half feet tall. 

'At least I'm not a fat slob in this life.' I thought darkly as I cracked a tense smile. 

A few minutes later, I walked out the door and made my way to the elevator with a piece of toast held between my teeth. 

The possibility of reincarnation had never crossed my mind, so imagine my surprise when, eighteen years ago, I woke up in a baby's body. 

I had been reborn as Kenji Atoma, son of Yuki Atoma and a man I had never met or asked about. 

Strolling out of the elevator as the doors opened, I walked out to the sidewalk only for a shadow to pass over me. 

I glanced up at the red spandex hero flying in the sky with a brilliant white cape fluttering behind them. 

Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had not only been reincarnated but reborn into a world where the majority of the human population possessed superpowers in the form of quirks. 

Powerful abilities that allowed people to accomplish once-impossible feats. While the immediate thought of most would be the potential to become a superhero or perhaps even a supervillain, the impacts of your quirk were far-reaching. 

The nature of your quirk determines your future opportunities, especially when it comes to jobs. After all, who wouldn't want to hire a seamstress who can create indestructible string or a lawyer who could detect lies? Thus, subsequently, the lack of a quirk was detrimental. 

'And just my luck, I haven't managed to awaken my quirk yet,' I thought as I turned away from the superhero silently mocking me and started walking to school. 

Like all children who weren't born with their quirks activated, I was expected to awaken my quirk at the age of four. When that didn't happen, my mother took me in for an examination, which would have typically been used to register my quirk officially. 

Surprisingly, the way to tell if someone was quirkless was to see if they possessed a second joint on their pinky toe. My results came back negative, and the doctor explained that I was a late bloomer and that my quirk needed more time to awaken. 

So I waited and waited and waited. Eventually, I accepted that I would never have a quirk, and my last hope for my new lease on life dwindled to nothing. 

I quickly relapsed into my isolation from the world around me, with my only maintained relationship being my new mother. 

However, in my mind, she could never replace the mother I lost in my first life. 

Walking up a set of stairs leading to Tatooin station, I finished my meager breakfast of unbuttered toast before reaching into my bag and pulling out a worn notebook and a pencil. 

When I opened the book, I flipped past the countless sketches of buildings, houses, moments, and every other kind of structure that could be designed. 

It was one of the few activities I still enjoyed from my last life, studying to be an architect. 

Opening a new page, I tapped my pencil against the paper before drawing an outline. 

When I finished the supports, the train pulled into the station, and I quickly boarded to avoid being crushed by the morning foot traffic. 

Finding a spot near the back of the train, I leaned against a pole and continued to sketch. 

I lost myself in drawing as the gentle movement of the train and the quiet chatter of people in the car provided some white noise. 

After some time, I finished the drawing, which features a metropolitan city skyline in modern and brutalist styles. 

My brief sense of purpose and peace faded as I closed my notebook. I looked around the train car, watching the people around me. 

Young businessmen commuting to work, their eyes clear and focused. A group of schoolgirls talked amongst themselves, their faces beaming with smiles. While a mother tightly held her son's hand. 

My gaze lingered on the last scene, and a regretful pang hit me like a physical blow. 

Before I could tear my eyes away, a blood-curdling scream rang through the train, and my head whipped around just in time to see a massive hand the size of a house close around the train cart.