Chapter 1: The Crimson Blur of Shanghai
The bustling streets of Shanghai were a sensory overload of the best kind. The air smelled of frying oil, roasting chestnuts, and the ozone tinge of a million electric scooters weaving through traffic like metallic beetles. For Kido, however, the only sensory input that mattered right now was the steam rising from the paper bowl in his hands.
"Spicy chicken dumplings," Kido murmured, his fiery orange eyes widening with an intensity usually reserved for life-or-death situations. He poked a dumpling with a bamboo skewer. "The breakfast of champions."
He sat on a frayed plastic stool outside a small street vendor's stall, his spiky red hair defying gravity and local fashion standards in equal measure. At fifteen years old, Kido was a study in contrasts. When sitting still, he looked almost intimidating—sharp angular eyes, wild hair, and a perpetual slouch that suggested rebellion. But the moment he opened his mouth, the illusion shattered into a dozen goofy pieces.
"Hey, boss!" Kido shouted to the cook, his mouth half-full, steam puffing out with every word. "These are hot! Like, magma hot, not just spice hot!"
The cook, an elderly man whose quirk made his bushy eyebrows float perpetually three inches off his face, sighed heavily. "That is how steam works, kid. Physics. You blow on it."
"Oh. Right. Strategy." Kido nodded solemnly, blowing on the next dumpling with exaggerated, hurricane-force breaths.
Kido wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact, most of his teachers in his third year of middle school claimed he wasn't even a knife; he was more of a spoon. A very sturdy, reliable spoon, perhaps excellent for digging holes, but definitely not designed for cutting through complex calculus or literature analysis. He lived entirely in the moment, and right now, that moment was occupied by dumplings.
Although of Japanese descent, his parents had moved the family to China for business when he was a toddler. He spoke Mandarin with a heavy, clunky accent and Japanese with a strange, outdated dialect acquired from old movies, leaving him in a linguistic limbo that only added to his local reputation as the neighborhood's "lovable idiot."
"Finish up, Kido," the cook grunted, wiping down the stainless-steel counter. "Don't you have that career counseling meeting today? The one you missed three times?"
"Technically, I didn't miss them," Kido argued, swallowing a dumpling whole and immediately regretting it. "I just went to the wrong room. Three times. The school layout is a labyrinth, boss. It changes. I swear it's alive."
"It's a perfectly square building, kid."
"Exactly! Too many corners. Confusing."
Kido stood up, stretching his limbs. He tossed the empty bowl toward a recycling bin with a clumsy overhand throw. It missed by a foot, hit the rim, bounced off a surprised businessman's shoulder, and landed on the floor.
"Sorry!" Kido yelped, scrambling to pick it up and dunk it properly.
He dusted off his hands and stepped out onto the sidewalk, merging into the thick flow of the morning crowd. The city was waking up. Businessmen in sharp suits checked wrist-mounted holographic displays, students with obvious mutant quirks—some with scales, others with extra limbs—hauled heavy backpacks, and tourists gawked at the glass skyscrapers piercing the morning smog.
Kido walked with a bouncy, careless gait, humming a tune that didn't exist outside his own head. He wasn't worried about the future. His parents wanted him to go into a regular high school, get a degree in something safe like logistics, and settle down. Kido didn't have a counter-argument because thinking about five years in the future usually gave him a migraine.
Creeeeeeeak.
The sound was low, a sickening metallic groan that vibrated in the teeth of everyone on the block. It wasn't the normal background noise of the city. It was the sound of catastrophic structural failure.
Kido stopped mid-step. He looked up, squinting against the sun.
Twenty stories above, at a construction site for a new luxury hotel, the main cable of a massive tower crane had snapped. The counterweight, a dense block of reinforced concrete the size of a minivan, was in free-fall.
Directly below it, in the middle of the busy crosswalk, a young girl with bobbed dark hair in a school uniform had dropped her phone. She started to lunge for it, heard the noise, looked up, and froze. The shadow was expanding rapidly over her.
The crowd screamed. People scrambled backward in a panic, tripping over each other, dropping briefcases and coffees. It was pure chaos. Two local Pro Heroes were already on site, securing the perimeter from an earlier minor malfunction, but they were too far away, their backs turned to the falling debris.
The physics were absolute; the block would crush the girl and crater the street in less than two seconds.
Kido didn't think. He didn't calculate the trajectory. He didn't weigh the moral implications of heroism or the legality of public quirk use.
His brain shut off, and instinct took the wheel.
Click.
It felt like a physical gear shifting violently inside his chest. The world around him didn't slow down—that was a common misconception about speedsters. The world stayed exactly the same speed. Kido just decided he wasn't subject to its rules anymore.
Velocity Shift: Third Gear.
The air around him warped with a sonic boom that never quite materialized. To the onlookers, the red-haired boy simply vanished from existence.
But if one looked closely, they would see the residue. A trail of burning, fiery orange shadows lingered in the air, painting a chaotic, jagged path of Kido's movement. These weren't actual flames; they were the kinetic friction of his existence burning itself into the visual spectrum of the universe.
Kido was a master craftsman in this state. The clumsiness that made him miss the trash can vanished completely. His footwork was impeccable, sliding between two rushing businessmen with millimeter precision, dodging a dropped coffee cup before the liquid even hit the ground.
He covered the fifty meters to the girl in 0.4 seconds.
He didn't stop. Stopping right next to her would kill her with the displaced air pressure. He scooped her up in motion, his arm supporting her neck and knees with perfect form to disperse the incredible inertia through his own reinforced skeletal structure. He pivoted hard on his heel, the asphalt instantly turning to molten tar beneath his sneaker, and redirected his momentum sideways.
Whoosh!
He deposited the girl on the safe side of the street, near the awning of a flower shop, just as the concrete block slammed into the earth.
BOOM!
The impact was deafening. It shook the glass out of nearby storefronts. Dust billowed up like a dense urban mushroom cloud, coating everything in gray grit. Car alarms blared in a discordant chorus.
The crowd was silent for a heartbeat, coughing in the dust, waiting to see the carnage.
As the dust settled heavy on the street, they saw the massive crater in the road. And ten meters away, leaning casually against a lamppost, was Kido.
The fiery orange shadows that had trailed him were slowly fading, dissolving like vibrant ink in water.
"Are... are you okay?" the girl asked, trembling violently, still clutching her cracked phone. She looked up at her savior, dark eyes wide with shock and dawning hero worship.
Kido looked undeniably cool. His red hair was blown back wildly by the wind of his own speed. His orange eyes were glowing with residual power. He opened his mouth to say something profound, something heroic he'd read in a comic book like, 'Fear not citizen, for safety has arrived.'
Instead, his eyes glazed over. His jaw went slack.
"Uhhhh..." Kido drooled slightly.
The recoil hit him. He had used his quirk at high output for roughly one second. The cost was immediate and brutal. His brain scrambled. It was the sensation of chugging a gallon of frozen slushie in a single gulp, combined with the feeling of walking into a room and completely forgetting why, multiplied by a factor of ten.
For the next few seconds, Kido was essentially a vegetable.
"Sir?" the girl asked, her voice rising in worry.
"Colors are loud," Kido mumbled, staring blankly at a changing traffic light. He swayed, his incredible reflexes gone, and tripped over his own shoelace, face-planting into the sidewalk with a dull, unheroic thud.
"Ouch," he said into the concrete.
The paralysis faded a moment later. The 'brain freeze' washed away like fog in the sun, leaving him blinking rapidly and wiping dust and drool off his cheek.
"Whoa," Kido said, sitting up and rubbing his sore nose. "That was fast. You okay, miss?"
Before she could answer, the wail of sirens cut through the dusty air. The two local heroes finally rushed over from the perimeter.
One was a massive man made of craggy, gray polished stone; the other was a lithe woman in a pink suit with extendable ribbon-like arms. They scanned the scene, expecting to clear gruesome debris. Instead, they found a crater, a safe victim, and a confused teenager sitting on the curb.
"Who did this?" the Stone Hero barked, his voice like grinding rocks, looking at the unharmed girl. "Who moved the civilian?"
The entire crowd pointed at Kido.
The Stone Hero stomped over, his shadow looming over the boy. "You. Kid. Did you just use an unlicensed speed quirk in a Level 4 public space?"
Kido scrambled to his feet, dusting off his uniform pants. "Uh, yes? Maybe? But the block was falling really fast, Mr. Rock Guy. And gravity is... you know, heavy."
The Hero narrowed his stony eyes, then looked at the impossible distance Kido had covered in the blink of an eye. He looked at the fading orange trails still shimmering faintly in the air.
"That speed..." The Hero muttered to his partner. "The perimeter sensors didn't even register an entry until it was over."
The Ribbon Hero stepped forward, her expression softer than her partner's. "You have incredible reaction time, young man. Most pros would have hesitated due to the distance. You moved before the cable even fully separated. What is your name?"
"Kido," he said, scratching the back of his head, feeling the heat still radiating from his hair. "Just Kido."
"Well, Kido," the Stone Hero crossed his massive arms. "Technically, we should arrest you for vigilante quirk usage. It's a strict regulation."
Kido paled. "Arrest? I don't have bail money! I spent my last yuan on those dumplings! And I dropped one!"
The Ribbon Hero chuckled, placing a hand on the Stone Hero's arm. "Relax, Boulder. The Good Samaritan clause protects him in immediate life-saving scenarios. But tell me, Kido... with speed like that, and the instincts to use it... why are you wearing a standard middle school uniform? Have you applied to the Shanghai Hero Academy?"
Kido blinked, the gears in his head turning slowly again. "Shanghai Academy? No way. Too much homework. My cousin went there and he went bald from stress at sixteen. I like my hair."
The Ribbon Hero smiled, shaking her head. "Then what are your plans? A talent like that is wasted on regular civilian life. You moved like a pro out there. A rough, unpolished pro, but a pro nonetheless."
Kido looked down at his hands. He could still feel the residual heat humming beneath his skin. When he ran, when the world turned into a blur of colors and wind, he didn't feel stupid. He didn't feel like the kid who couldn't find the right classroom. He felt precise. He felt powerful. He felt useful.
"I..." Kido started, then a wide, goofy grin split his face. "I've been thinking about it. Actually, I'm already decided."
"Decided on what?"
"Going to the source," Kido pointed east, toward the ocean. "My aunt lives in Japan. Musutafu City. She says the food is amazing there."
The Stone Hero raised a jagged eyebrow. "Musutafu? That's where U.A. High is located. The premier Hero school in the world."
"U.A.?" Kido tilted his head. "Is that the one with the big 'H' shaped glass buildings? Yeah, I saw it on the news. Looks shiny. Do they have a good cafeteria?"
The heroes exchanged a look. This kid was either a tactical genius playing the fool, or a complete idiot with a nuclear reactor for a quirk.
"They have the best cafeteria in the country," the Ribbon Hero confirmed, smiling. "But the entrance exam is notoriously difficult. The acceptance rate is brutal."
Kido shrugged, the confident smile returning. "Hard is okay. Boring is bad. And saving that girl just now? That wasn't boring at all."
He looked back at the girl he had saved. She was hugging her crying mother now, looking back at him with gratitude. A warmth spread through Kido's chest that had nothing to do with the spicy dumplings.
"Yeah," Kido decided, clenching his fist. "Japan. I'm going to go be a hero. Seems like way less reading than becoming a logistics manager."
The conversation with his parents that evening was surprisingly short, though heavy with unspoken emotion. They knew Kido. They knew traditional schooling was suffocating his spirit. And after seeing the viral news footage of their son turning into an orange blur to snatch a life from the jaws of death, they realized that perhaps his path wasn't meant to be safe.
His mother cried as she packed a suitcase that was far too large, stuffing it with enough preserved spicy radishes to feed a small army.
"Just promise me one thing," she sniffed, handing him a sealed jar. "Don't eat only instant ramen. Your Aunt Harumi will cook for you, but you must be polite and help wash the dishes."
"I'm always polite! And I'm great at dishes!" Kido protested, trying to jam a stack of brightly colored comic books into the already bursting side pocket of his bag.
"Kido," his father said, his voice gruff as he placed a heavy hand on his son's shoulder near the front door. "The recoil. You know what happens if you push it too far."
Kido paused in his packing. The air in the hallway felt heavy. He knew.
"I know, Dad," Kido said, his voice surprisingly serious for the first time all day. "I just have to be fast enough to win before my brain freezes."
"Or," his father sighed, pulling him into a rough hug, "You could learn to think before you run."
Kido laughed, pulling away and slinging his heavy backpack over his shoulder. "Let's not get crazy now, old man. Baby steps."
He looked out the taxi window at the neon-lit Shanghai skyline one last time as they headed to the airport. The city was a blur of red and gold lights. Tomorrow, everything would be new. Next stop: Japan. Next stop: U.A. High.
He just really hoped he wouldn't get on the wrong plane and end up in Korea.