Tsuyu Asui, otherwise known as the Rainy Season Hero, Froppy.

“Dominant Will.” That quirk name sounded like something one of those villains that are all rising up these days would have, and anyone hearing it would probably think it belonged to the leader of an evil organization.

It's nothing like that, though. You’re just an eighteen-year-old guy with no henchmen, no scheme for world domination, nothing like that. You only want the same things every other eighteen-year-old guy wants when he sees those heroines in tight costumes fighting crime every day… At least, what you think they all want, secretly.

You aren’t such a bad guy. In your opinion. And, well... If you are a bad guy, there’s a reason for it. It all started back when you were an innocent kid…

Ren Yamada. Age 8.

Your mother was leading you by the hand from your grade school classroom. You hardly remember her face; she died at a young age. And, of course, you hardly remember the specifics of something that happened 10 years ago when you were just a bratty kid. You only remember what you later pieced together: it was the day your quirk awakened.

You got in a fight with another kid, and you two were pulling at each other’s hair, shouting at each other. Who knows what started it, and who knows who caused it? It probably had something to do with a stupid joke: the two of you were basically talking nonsense to each other, you suggested he ought to “shut up" and "eat dirt,” and somehow or another he ended up outside in the sandbox, shoveling it into his mouth with both hands. Big deal, right? Stupid kids doing stupid things to make each other laugh. He was just trying to go along with the joke, to make the other kids laugh, right? It wasn’t anything you did…

That’s what anyone would think. So… why was your mother crying? Why were you getting yelled at? If anything, you were the embarrassed one, being dragged out of class…

You hardly remember anything about her face, except for her wet eyes and that furious expression she made when she told you that what you’d just done was bad, and that you could never tell anyone about it. That, if you did it again, you could go to jail… Did they put 8-year-old kids in jail? Of course not, but a dumb kid like you didn’t know that. And, she said, if you told anyone about what you just did, you could end up separated from your family forever. Then, you were crying, too.

The main takeaway was what you had done was bad, and you should never do it again. Even thinking about doing it was scary. Talking about it with anyone was against the rules, and talking about it with your mom, remembering that face she made, was as terrifying as anything.

You never had a chance to talk with her about it again. So, you grew up as one of the 20% of people with no quirk. As a quirkless kid, you wondered what it was like for those heroes on TV. You admired them and looked up to them, like any powerless 8-year-old would.

Ren Yamada. Age 13.

With only a dad to take care of you and no siblings, no special talents and no quirk to speak of, you’d lived a slightly stressful but otherwise ordinary life. However, as you continued to get older, you’d become more and more aware of two things.

First: quirks. It seemed like more and more of your friends had them, even if they were goofy things like horns on their head or the power to throw their voice, and you had long-since picked up that they were allowed to use them as freely as they wanted. You were the only person (that you knew of, anyway) who lived under this strange rule where you were not only prohibited from using his quirk, you couldn’t even talk about it.

Second: girls. This wasn’t anything unique to you, but you’d hit puberty, and you were at the age where whether a person had boobs or not was something that started to mean something to you. In a more general sense, though, you had entered the part of your life when, instead of being grossed out by girls, you wanted them to like you.

Well, really, you wanted everyone to like you. Those days, privately, it was all you cared about. You were always cutting up, even at your own expense, trying to make people laugh.

It was one of those days where you were passing the time before class with your large group of friends, and the topic of quirks had come up. Everyone was talking over each other to show them off. Horn guy was talking about how much they had grown recently. Throwing-voice-girl was blasting her singing voice all over the room. You… were sitting quietly, trying to at least laugh along with jokes and get a word in edgewise when you could.

It was just one of those days that it wasn’t working out. Nothing you said got a reaction out of anyone. Your quirk might as well have been being mute and invisible. Frankly, you were getting a little ticked, even trying to change the subject of conversation, but that was like skiing against an avalanche.

Finally, you let it slip out. Rather, you blurted it out at a volume to eclipse even the guy whose quirk was having a noisy voice. You told all your classmates you had a crazy quirk that you’d never told them about.

Right away, everyone wanted to see, and right away, you showed them. You tried exactly what you’d done in grade school, convincing one of the other kids (the horn guy, who really wasn’t that popular, you now remembered) to go outside and eat dirt. You even pulled on his hair a little, to try and recreate it exactly. People began to murmur and laugh when they couldn’t see anything happening, and minutes passed… But after a little while, soon enough, horn guy had turned into eating-dirt-guy, even climbing out of an open first-story classroom window to get to the flower bed outside quickly, and the whole classroom was laughing.

Everyone had a request, and, every time they saw it actually worked, they got a little bit crazier. They seemed to have the funny idea that if everyone submitted themselves to it, it was fair and entertaining for everyone, but that wasn’t the case at all: the changes were all over the place, from things as small to “will hop on one leg whenever you ask” to things as big as “curses out the teacher whenever the school bell rings.” If a kid wanted to become more popular, they’d turn themselves into a pin cushion for my quirk, thinking making themselves a laughingstock who shook cans of soda before opening them, moonwalked through the hallway, and always checked the wrong locker before their own would somehow make them a cool kid instead of just the butt of a joke.

Yes, everyone had a request, and everyone was willingly changed… Until you were a little too slow to break up your classroom huddle before the bell one day. The teacher saw you with your hand on a girl’s head, then saw her curl up in a ball on her desk, sucking her thumb.

Well, suddenly all the weirdness that had been going on in school that week made sense. After a short round of questioning, the teacher got you to spill the beans. He gave you a stern talking to, you got detention for a week, and that was the end of it, right?

Nope. This damn homeroom teacher told parents. And when the parents were told, they became furious. Every one of them wanted to know what you’d changed about their precious little angel, and made you painstakingly change every kid back to normal, one by one… Honestly, to this day you weren’t sure you’d remembered all of the changes you'd made and fixed all of them. What a pain in the ass. Surely that was the end of it?

Not at all! Where to start?

Those “friends” you’d made by playing around with your quirk all got scolded by their parents who learned they’d voluntarily put themselves up for it, and nobody had the time of day for you after that. In terms of popularity, there was the rest of the class, then dirt-eating-horned kid, and then way, way down, at the bottom of the pile, was “creep who made me look like an idiot and then got me in trouble for it.”

Speaking of those parents, at least they had the wisdom to understand it had all been a series of harmless, victimless pranks, right? No way. From that point on, any time any kid suddenly acted out, picked up a weird new hobby, did anything their parents didn’t think they were capable of doing, your jerk of a teacher was dragging you into his office. “Have you been touching people lately? Did you tell them to do anything weird? There’ll be big consequences if anyone can prove it, young man!”

You had no friends. Needless to say, you never had a mutual crush. Even the adults around you were constantly on your case. The only consolation was your dad planning to switch your school, which you thought was for his own peace of mind as much as anything.

After that, with a new start, with your quirk hidden once again, you’d have one more chance to start fresh… And that was good news. Your quirk was ruining your life, no two ways about it. You watched those heroes on TV, wondering what it would be like to have a quirk that made you happy instead of miserable; that made you a hero for using it, instead of a menace to society; that made you friends, instead of enemies. You didn't need anyone to tell you to never use that quirk again.

Ren Yamada. Age 18.

So much for second chances. Apparently, the incident at your previous school had been such a big deal that, when you transferred four years ago, all of the other teachers and all of the students around you were made aware of your quirk. Well, the teachers were told what it did; the students were simply told “don’t let this guy touch your head under any circumstances.”

That was a fast way to get a bad rep. Even before anyone knew what that rumor meant, how were they supposed to take it? The obvious first question is “why would Ren wanna touch my head in the first place? Is he some kind of creep?” And, of course, one day, some teacher in some classroom must have let it slip into discussion, or some classmate read about it somewhere… And then, suddenly, your whole grade knew about it.

Just like that, until graduation, you were that creepy kid who tries to touch peoples’ heads and mess with their brains again.

Never mind that you hadn’t used your quirk since back then…

Never mind that touching anyone’s head would probably get you tackled to the ground and get the cops called on you…

People kept their distance. You ate lunch by yourself. The other kids didn’t want you in their group for projects, and teachers actually bent the rules and re-framed assignments so those kids wouldn’t have to.

Your grades were okay. You were pretty sure it was because all the teachers who knew the secret of your quirk were either afraid of you or didn’t want you around.

You barely even had what could be called a circle of friends, but you did have at least one or two people you could rely on… People just as unpopular as you. You all had an unspoken rule to help each other out when class assignments required it. However, you’d never all band together: if a group of popular kids came looking to stir up trouble, it was every loser for himself or herself, and the weakest got fed on.

In that ecosystem, the closest person you had to a real friend was a girl named Angela. Well, you called her a girl, but you didn’t think of her as one: her entire head to some point around where the neck should be was deformed into a shape like an angler fish, except for a surprisingly cutesy eye on either side of her head. The two of you were almost always in groups together. You thought maybe she suspected you’d never touch that weird head of hers, so, unlike the rest of the school, she didn't see you as anything to worry about.

Eventually, the two of you were doing more and more assignments together as the only two who would tolerate each other. Even besides having a fish head, Angela had a kind of twisted and dirty sense of humor that made her hard to get along with… Really, you didn't mind it, though. You could laugh at those kinds of jokes now and then. You thought it would have made sense for you to be boyfriend and girlfriend, if her freaky face wasn’t below even your low standards and you weren’t a social pariah.

So you thought… that is, so you thought until a week before graduation day. It was another crummy day just like any other, except that Angela had told you she had something important to tell you behind the school. That… was obviously something private. Not just an invitation to work on an assignment. Angela had barely even asked you to hang out alone with her before...

By the time you arrived there at lunch, you’d already totally adjusted your standards. Was the fish head really a deal breaker? Plenty of people had weird quirks that deformed their bodies. And… even if she had a fish head, she had a totally female body beneath that school uniform. From what you could see, anyway. You were ready to take what you could get… No, it wasn’t just that. You and Angela had made a special connection in your shared circumstances. You two weren’t just a pair of necessity, you were a real pair, dammit!

A pair is two people… So, you were a little surprised to see an entire crowd of your classmates behind the school when you arrived for your confession of love…

“He showed up, just like I promised!” Angela gurgled in that strange, rough voice of hers, standing in the ring of popular kids… Or, really, almost every kid in the class but me, who was surrounded in the center. “All I had to do is tell him I’d let him get his dirty hands on my head, heh heh heh!”

Everyone was already laughing, but you had to go and make it even funnier. Before you could stop yourself, the question slipped out: what about the confession?

Everyone was really laughing, then.

You wanted to tell them to shut up. To shut up, then eat dirt… To shut up, then eat shit and die! You finally snapped, and said as much. The crowd quieted down, not out of regret or remorse, but out of that same instinct that makes people slow down and gawk when passing a wreck on the side of the road. It was a bad audience, but it was an audience, and you called out Angela by name. Get your dirty hands on her head?! Who the hell wanted to feel up a slimy fish like that, anyway? Where did she get off, looking down on you with a lousy quirk like that, when yours was so powerful? In fact, why wasn’t everyone getting down on their knees and bowing to you, thanking you profusely for not fucking up their brains and turning them into your slaves with your godlike quirk, Dominant Will? You’d done everything right, blended into the background of society in spite of the awesome power you were born with, and for what?! To be disrespected and abused?! You shouted it all at Angela, like she would somehow apologize, the cloudy skies would part, and suddenly your life would be sunshine and rainbows with friends, a girlfriend, and respect.

Instead, some guys kicked your ass.

You kept your head down from that point on. You didn't report it to the teachers; none of them were on your side, anyway. You survived the week, somehow, and graduated. If there was one thing you could do, at least, it was study… Not like you had anything else going on. Your extracurriculars were… not good, but you found your way into a university, all the same. Dad seemed happy to have you out of the house.

Ren Yamada. 18-year-old university student. Time to start again, huh?

Fuck that. You’d reinvented yourself over and over, only to get told by the world to eat shit every time. It hadn’t escaped you that you were now the correct age to be prosecuted, and the thin protection of being a grade school student, a juvenile, was now gone. Your quirk must surely be well-known among the bigwigs in law enforcement (at least, you had been kicked around enough to make you that paranoid), and you were certain the only reason you hadn’t been locked up somewhere preemptively was that your weak-ass quirk made you sit there and touch your victim’s head with a hand for a good while to enact any kind of meaningful change, and even then, only a little bit at a time.

The whole world was just waiting for an excuse that would allow it to finally put you away for good. No, you and the world weren’t compatible. There were only two possibilities: change the world, or change yourself.

Changing the world was for those heroes, the ones in that untouchable world on TV. Many of the latest wave of popular heroes were UA high school, and you couldn’t imagine how different their lives must be from your own. You’d give almost anything to trade your sorry life in and become one of those respected, confident, beloved heroes. You didn't think your quirk would possibly let you do that, though... Being honest, you'd actually considered becoming a villain as alternative, but what hero could you possibly beat with a quirk like yours unless someone else strapped them to a chair first?

The only thing you had was the power to change yourself. And, sitting alone in the tiny apartment your dad had happily helped pay for in order to get you out of his life, staring at the beautiful heroes and heroines appearing on the Top Up-and-Comer ranking on the TV, you made the decision: if you couldn't change the world, you needed to change yourself.

You’d never tried it before… The idea was almost like reaching in your mouth to touch your own uvula. But… first and foremost, the image of Angela’s horrific laughing face was seared into your mind. You wanted to prevent something like that from ever happening again… But you also didn’t want to snap again, and end up doing something you’d regret with your power.

Relationships were no good for you, but you didn’t think it was healthy to cut yourself off entirely from male impulses and urges. You'd probably only snap even faster. The TV in front of you gave you what you thought was a clever idea: what if all of your unhealthy urges, all of your romantic desires, lust, and perverted daydreams, could just be redirected harmlessly to the people on the other side of that screen? Sure, it’d be unrequited longing and a virgin life, but plenty of people lived that way… And those people largely didn’t have incredible quirks they had to keep themselves from abusing. You did.

So, with the TV still playing, you decided to lie down on the sofa with your own hand on your own head for once. You were deep in concentration, digging for the result like you’d successfully done for so many classmates in the past, for so many dumb reasons. Only, this time, your reason was noble: you were protecting yourself and everyone else. You repeated it to yourself, over and over:

I won’t lust for or have dirty thoughts about anyone except pro heroes.

I won’t lust for or have dirty thoughts about anyone except pro heroes.

I won’t lust for or have dirty thoughts about anyone except pro heroes.

This was safe. This was good. Heroes were the one group of people you were never likely to get close to, and, if you did, you’d certainly never have a chance to actually do anything to one.

Those heroes, who you’d once respected and then idolized, would now basically exist as guilt-free material for your fap sessions, as far as you were concerned. That would allow you to live a health life, free of distractions and temptations to use your quirk. As you began to nod off, you kept repeating:

I’ll lust for and have dirty thoughts about pro heroes.

I’ll lust for and have dirty thoughts about pro heroes.

I’ll lust for and have dirty thoughts about pro heroes.

Ren Yamada. Age 18. Present day.

You wake up on your couch with a monster case of morning wood. You remember what you’d been doing the night before… Thankfully, your behavior alteration doesn’t erase your memory when you do it. However, doing it to yourself while trying to sleep might have been a bad idea…

You’re glad you don’t have orientation or classes today, because right now, you have a monster in your boxer shorts that only a group of qualified heroines can handle. In your tiny apartment's tinier bathroom, with a hand on your decidedly average shaft which you'd simply woken up to find a bit more than average, you signal for some of Musutafa’s finest dream heroines to heed the call to action:

Uravity! The gravity-controlling brown-haired cutie you can do in all kinds of mind-bending positions, who has the energy and pep to go multiple rounds!

Creati! The Everything Hero, a knockout ideal beauty who loves to tease her fans with that showy outfit and those huge, barely covered knockers!

Pinky! The exotic, all-pink heroine who always looks excited and ready for it. When you see that acid of hers, you’ve just gotta figure she squirts everywhere!

Invisible Girl! The stealth hero who-

To your great surprise, you manage to finish up on Invisible Girl. Didn’t see that coming! Tidying up your business, you throw some casual clothes on, preparing to go to campus and start scoping it out. Maybe you’ll meet some cute girls in the meantime…

You are, of course, referring to the long shot of passing by some pro heroines. Potential classmates, teachers, ordinary supermodels and actresses… None of them do anything for you any longer, but walking by a girl in a skintight combat suit, a full face mask, or quirk-boosting enhancement gear sure would.

Anyway, first, maybe you’ll be meeting someone in the apartment building? They seem to be making an awful lot of noise out there… It’d be just your luck to have gotten set up next to some party animals who were getting drinking started at 10 AM in the morning...

Your door frame shakes heavily, and it's hard not to picture some quirked-up monster of a frat guy banging on your door to give you a warm college initiation beating for your mental complaints about him. You hesitantly approach the door, then peek through the peephole, but there's no one to see at head height… Are you being pranked? Again, just your luck!

That would be your usual luck… so, naturally, it comes as a total shock to you when you turn the knob and open the door, and into your apartment slides the Rainy Season Hero, Froppy. She calls herself the Rainy Season Hero, but people really think of her as the Frog Hero, right?

Froppy is in your apartment, sprawled out on her back in all of her lanky, long-tongued glory. Sure, she's a taste for eccentrics, with her big, round eyes and wide mouth, those over-sized hands, and her funny way of talking, but… She supposedly has a considerate personality and, well, while her overall body is slender, her vibrantly green and skin-tight hero suit doesn't do much to hide the more feminine and less frog-like assets she's packing. You can't get your eyes off those perky breasts of hers, rising and falling with her breathing. A young woman probably just a bit older than you, she's definitely qualified for that dream team you’d been putting together this morning. And here she is, denting your apartment door and bleeding on your floor-!

Holy shit! Your fanboy delusions will have to wait. You're now aware there's an intense battle with a villain happening a short distance from your apartment, buzzing with a group of heroes and heroines trying to take down a two-story-tall monster that… looks like it was made of sewage? Ugh, and it smells! You can smell it from all the way over here! More importantly, Froppy had been thrown from that fight and into your door, and if you don't do something fast, you aren't just meeting a heroine today: you could be witnessing her final moments!

The first thing you do is peek your head out, doing a quick look this way and that way to make sure none of your neighbors had noticed her. Good... The sound drew your neighbors out, but their eyes are focused on that fight.

Any sensible person would probably call for an ambulance in this situation, but your judgement is poor at the best of times, and you aren't thinking straight. Instead, you drag the ailing heroine through your doorway and shut the door behind you. In a flash, you're tearing up your apartment’s first roll of paper towels, then trying to bandage up the bleeding saw on her head. Naturally, you're no doctor and, in your eagerness to start bandaging, you haven't even properly diagnosed where that blood's coming from.

But this is you being heroic, right? You're rushing to save someone, using your heart instead of your head? Maybe, maybe not. All you know is, holding the back of the heroine's dark green hair and elevating her head like you think you're supposed to from the movies, what you want more than anything is for her to open up those big eyes and thank you in that quirky voice of hers.