Chapter 15 - My SI Stash #15 - My Hero School Adventure is All Wrong, As Expected by storybookknight (BNHA & Oregairu) (1/2)
-One of those fanfic that made me stay up till 5 am to finish it, and yes I really like Oregairu what can I say I like edgy MC's :P
Synopsis: Hikigaya Hachiman is the last person on earth who should ever apply to U.A. High School. Yet somehow, he manages anyway. In a world of irrepressible optimism and idealism, these are the adventures of a young man who believes that idealism is a lie.
Rated: T
Words: 107K
Posted on: fanfiction.net/s/13113155/1/My-Hero-School-Adventure-is-All-Wrong-As-Expected(storybookknight)
-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)
Chapter 1
Society calls someone who suffers so that another person can benefit a victim.
Society calls someone who suffers so that society can benefit a hero.
When a mugger assaults a helpless victim, injures them, and steals a week's worth of wages, society calls that a terrible crime that should never happen to anyone.
When a hero puts in a week's worth of heroing on society's behalf, not only do they lose out on the potential wages that they could have made by working for their own benefit, they also bear a great risk of injury or even death, yet for some reason, society calls this a privilege and an honor that should go only to the most deserving.
Simply put, society is stealing from heroes. The great masses of ordinary people who expect to be defended and saved from disaster every day are no more than parasites on the backs of the powerful, escaping being blamed for the hero's losses through the virtues of collective responsibility. Since each person is no weaker or needier than the people around them, it naturally must not be their fault that they had to be helped, therefore they must have deserved to be helped, therefore stealing from those that helped you is perfectly just.
Of course, society claims that heroes are paid for their help, but are they really? If I take 500 yen from someone, and 'pay' them 100 yen for the privilege, is that really payment? Most Pro Heroes make the comfortable wages of civil servants, yet so do most civil servants or salarymen. Society demands that salarymen work in air-conditioned office buildings, and demands that heroes rush into buildings that are on fire, yet has somehow decided that both are deserving of equivalent financial rewards. As for those wealthy heroes that do exist, they tend to be the heads of agencies, the exceptionally attractive, the ones with business-related Quirks, and so on; if they had become CEOs / actresses / businessmen instead of heroes, who's to say that they wouldn't have made more?
Of course, there are some people whose Quirk has no business applications, and who would not have been successful in non-heroic employment who could be said to have made money off of being a hero - but even they are making less than they could. Society has decreed that anyone in possession of an incredibly deadly and dangerous Quirk who uses it to its fullest potential is a Villain, and must therefore be apprehended by those people with violent and dangerous Quirks who have bowed to the whims of society.
Naturally, as a member of the current society who appreciates living in an enlightened democracy rather than the All Might or Endeavor Shogunate, I have no complaints with this particular instance of 'theft'. Nevertheless, if you were to ask whether All Might would make more money as a volunteer hero or as a ruthless warlord, the balance obviously leans towards the latter.
So then, why do heroes, those members of society with the most useful and powerful perks, allow society to steal from them? Why don't they insist on fairer wages? Why are there so many heroes who accept very low-paying hero positions even though they could get a more profitable job? Or who donate the majority of their heroic earnings to charity? If they're already being stolen from by society, why do so many heroes go out of their way to give society even more?
Many people would say that it is out of the innate goodness and kindness of their hearts, but that is ridiculous propaganda intended to placate the masses. Humans are rational animals, and don't take actions without reasons for doing so. Saying that someone is 'good' or 'kind' is just another way of saying that someone is more motivated than usual by intangible benefits.
Fame, approval, respect, praise awe, worship, satisfaction, meaningfulness of life, heroes receive all of these things from society. The heroes that are most esteemed and respected are those that are motivated to do the most for society's benefit, and those who do not receive enough accolades to make up for the strenuous demands that a hero career places upon them burn out and fade away.
Since heroes give their time and energy away and receive accolades in return, you might be tempted to say that rather than theft, heroism might better be classified as a trade. Consider, though, that society has a monopoly on fame, near-monopolies on praise, worship, respect and approval, and is by far the cheapest supplier for satisfaction and meaning in life. Furthermore, it is obvious that the majority of people in life are unhappy and unfulfilled, that more people apply to become heroes than ever succeed, and that those who do become heroes are often targets of jealousy and envy. Although praise and respect are intangible and cost nothing to create, clearly there is not enough to go around. As society is the only supplier of this good, it is clear that society is creating artificial scarcity in order to raise the price that it can demand that heroes pay to receive it. Consider the fact that vigilantism is illegal. On the one side, some people are so desperate for praise and respect that they have no other recourse than breaking the law in order to acquire it; on the other side its illegality restricts the supply of praise and respect further. In short, when society shakes down a hero for their services in exchange for public praise and approval, it is not a trade but rather an extortion, which is a form of theft. QED.
If heroism is theft, then the best heroes are those individuals that make the best victims for society's predation. Society clearly agrees with me, as children with obviously powerful or useful Quirks are given access to praise and respect at an early age, causing as many as possible children who are 'hero material' to become addicted to society's approval and therefore to seek ever greater and higher levels of fame and respect. Those with more ordinary Quirks, on the other hand, are doled out praise and respect in minimal doses so that the neediest and greediest among the mundanes will work hard enough to match with skill the natural usefulness to society of the powerful.
If society wanted to create an ideal hero, they would take someone who had never received any praise or respect in their life, who had never thought they would amount to anything, and then suddenly grant them incredible amounts of both fame and power simultaneously. Unlike children who began powerful, they would know what it felt like to have nothing, would have no acquired immunity to the addicting effects of society's approval, and would furthermore feel indebted to the society that awarded them the chance for success.
However, it is impossible to grant super-powerful Quirks to Quirkless nobodies, so that is wishful thinking. The next best thing, therefore, would likely be an individual whose Quirk everyone thought was useless, but who suddenly discovered a way to become powerful with it. Someone like that would be desperate to escape from the feeling of worthlessness, unlikely to return to a meaningless life once they had the chance to excel, and would be just as dedicated as someone who had had the hope of success from the beginning.
I, Hikigaya Hachiman, have no particular record of prior service to the community. Neither have I exhibited any signs of leadership or teamwork in the past. In point of fact, I have spent the majority of my elementary and junior high school careers despised by the community, with a Quirk so useless that people used to call me Zero-man instead of Hachiman. Nevertheless, I believe that I would make a good candidate to attend the Heroics Program at U.A. High School, precisely because I am exactly the type of friendless nobody who is likely to fall for society's blandishments and become addicted to a life of underpaid prestige. Despite the fact that I have no illusions about the devil's bargain that society offers, it is one that I am still willing to accept.
Because ultimately, I can guarantee that my greed for meaningfulness in life is superior to anyone else's.
Hikigaya Hachiman.
Of course, even as I signed the essay in front of me, I knew that I was lying. For one thing, even if I had a vague interest in a meaningful life, I was absolutely the last person who would ever be motivated by what society thought of me. I was a Loner with a capital L, the sort of person who had existed separate from such concepts as friendship and camaraderie for long enough that they were no longer necessary, a fish that had survived on land for long enough that it had figured out how to breathe air. As a side note, when I do interact with people, they have a distressing tendency to tell me that I have the eyes of a dead fish, but I'm pretty sure that that's unrelated. And although I did have a Quirk that had formerly been judged as useless, a designation that could lead to social ostracism for even the friendliest person in the world, if I was honest with myself I realized that my lack of friends had more to do with my personality than my Quirk. Charitably, my personality could be described as 'cynical' and 'overly honest'; more typically, it was usually described as 'rotten'. Where the average person who applied for UA's Heroics course was an idealistic youth dedicated to achieving their dreams, I was the sort of person who denounced ideals, youth, dedication, and dreams as lies, both separately and collectively.
No, rather than taking a grueling test with a 1-in-300 rate of passing out of a love for heroism and public service, I was trying to get into U.A.'s Heroics program for reasons that might be more accurately described as a combination of 'enlightened self-interest', 'stubborn refusal to admit one's own error', and 'spite'.
Especially spite.
If that sounds strange, well, maybe I should start at the beginning.
My story, like most peoples' stories these days, starts with my Quirk. Personally, I've always believed that was a lazy form of storytelling; reducing a character's personality down to their Quirk is the hallmark of a middle-school-syndrome hack who can't be bothered to describe their protagonists in any way more complicated than a set of superpowers attached to a generically shonen archetype. Certainly, my Quirk isn't directly responsible for my generalized feelings of misanthropy towards society, nor is it responsible for my decision to apply to U.A. despite those feelings, but somehow my Quirk lurks around the edges of those thoughts regardless.
Picture if you will a typical elementary-school classroom. Odds are you're imagining rows of desks and chairs with a blackboard at the front of the room; shelves to the sides and posters on the walls. At the front of it, in front of the blackboard, imagine an idealistic young boy with messy dark hair and lively eyes, a Hikigaya Hachiman not yet resigned to the realities of social ostracism. Sure, he's never been the most popular kid, but today is Quirk show-and-tell day, and he's sure that when he shows everyone else how awesome his Quirk is he'll be sure to finally make some friends!
”Uhm, hi everybody! My name is Hikigaya Hachiman, and, um, I have a power copy Quirk!”