The last thing Lt. Aoi Kobayashi remembered was leading his men on patrol through a village in Kandahar. His ears were ringing, and he could feel warmth spreading down his leg. Aoi tried to get up, but he could not. He couldn't move. Aoi's right leg lay a few feet away from him. Sgt. Rodriguez was moving his mouth, but Aoi couldn't make sense of the words. The Sergeant was trying to drag him away, grabbing Aoi by his vest. Aoi felt cold; he felt sleepy. "Oh my, I'm dying," he thought as his vision dimmed. He saw a torrent of blood spurting from the stump where his leg had been. He thought of his mother and her tears before he boarded the plane to Afghanistan. He thought of his father's stern and stoic face. Aoi's eyelids were heavy; he couldn't keep them open, and then he drifted off to sleep, never to wake again
He was floating in water, or so it seemed—an endless expanse of nothing but black space. He felt no pain, and then a wheel appeared before him. It looked like the roulette wheel from the TV show, The Price Is Right. He thought about spinning it, and then it spun. It spun so fast he couldn't make sense of the words. Then it slowed and stopped. Lt. Kobayashi read the words. It said, "My Hero Academia"
"WTF does that mean?" he thought.
And then another wheel appeared. "Ah, what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound," he thought, and it spun. This time he was cognizant enough to read. "These are superpowers," he thought. He could read the words as the wheel slowed: Kryptonian physiology. The wheel kept moving; he read Canary cry, Martian Physiology , and the needle slowed Green Lantern. Aoi couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was a comic book fan and had read every DC comic he could get his hands on.
Then the pain hit—excruciating pain. If he had a tongue, he would have bitten it out. He tried to move, but his body felt like it was being smothered by warm Jell-O. He couldn't breathe. He heard voices on the other side: screams of a woman, the soothing voice of an older woman.
Then he saw the light, blinding and disorienting. The light was too bright for his eyes; Aoi shut them. He felt small and weak, and then he heard the voices. He could make sense of them now. They are speaking Japanese he thought. "It is a boy " A joyful voice said as Aoi passed out