Time doesn't crawl when you have a goal; it sprints.
For most kids in Musutafu, the years between four and fourteen were a blur of schoolyard games, hero merchandise, and growing into their Quirks. For me, it was a decade of calloused hands, bruised ribs, and learning how to treat the world around me like an extension of my own nervous system.
I became Genji's shadow. Every day at 5:00 PM, without fail, I met the old man at the abandoned convenience store.
The training wasn't cinematic. There were no epic soundtracks or glowing auras (*Cough* Goku *Cough*). It was grimy, exhausting, and repetitive. But it worked.
Vignette I: Age 7 — The Whispering Wind
"If I can hear you breathing, you're dead," Genji said, sitting on his favorite concrete wall. He was tossing dried soybeans at me with the speed and accuracy of a pitching machine.
I was blindfolded. My shirt was off, and my skin was mapped in purple welts from the beans I'd failed to dodge over the last two hours.
In my past life, Ba Gua was about circle walking and evasion. In this life, with the air acting as a physical medium, it was about displacement. I didn't just move my body; I willed the air around me to slide past, minimizing friction.
Thwack. A soybean caught me in the ribs.
"Focus, brat," Genji wheezed. "Stop trying to guess where they're coming from. Feel the displacement. The air tells you everything if you stop talking over it."
I stopped fighting. I let my shoulders drop, exhaling a long, slow breath. I didn't listen with my ears; I listened with the fine hairs on my arms.
A soybean cut through the air toward my left temple. I didn't duck. I just pivoted on the ball of my foot, shifting a pocket of air with my shoulder. The bean sailed past my ear, missing by a hair's breadth.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Three more. I slipped them all in a continuous, flowing spiral.
[Air Attunement: 15.00%]
[Trait Unlocked: Weightless Step — Your movements generate no sound when moving at normal speeds.]
"Hmph," Genji grunted, his voice sounding suspiciously proud. "Passable. Now do it while balancing on one leg."
Vignette II: Age 10 — The Stubborn Stone
By ten, I was the resident "freak" of the middle school. I wasn't bullied anymore—not after Bakugo tried to corner me behind the gym in third grade and ended up tripping over his own shoelaces three times without me ever touching him.
But I was isolated. While the other boys were talking about which Pro Hero agency they wanted to join, I was spending my weekends standing waist-deep in the local river or holding a horse stance until my thighs screamed in agony.
Earth was still my white whale.
"You're still fighting it," Genji said, watching me from the shade of his umbrella. We were in a rocky quarry on the outskirts of the city. "You're trying to move the rock like you move the air. Air is a guest, kid. Earth is the host. You don't ask it to move. You demand it."
I was standing in front of a boulder the size of a microwave. My hands were pressed against the rough, sun-baked surface. I was breathing deep, trying to find that same "thread" I used for air, but the stone was a wall of absolute, stubborn silence.
"I can't feel it," I grunted, sweat stinging my eyes.
"Because you're thinking like a human," Genji said, tossing a pebble at the back of my head. "A human is soft. A human dies. To move the earth, you have to be the earth. Stand firm. Be unyielding."
I closed my eyes. I dropped my center of gravity, digging my toes into the gravel. I stopped trying to pull at the stone. I just pushed my awareness down through my soles, into the bedrock.
For a single, fleeting second, the boulder didn't feel like a separate object. It felt like an extension of my own bones.
The ground gave a sharp, sudden crack. A hairline fissure opened up in the dirt beneath the rock, shifting it barely a centimeter.
The effort left me on my hands and knees, gasping for breath as my vision swam with black spots.
[Earth Attunement: 2.10%]
[System Note: A flicker of intent. The mountain acknowledges your presence.]
Vignette III: Age 14 — The Divergence
The final year of middle school arrived with a heavy sense of inevitability.
I was standing at the back of the classroom, watching the teacher throw a stack of career counseling forms into the air with a theatrical flourish.
"You all want to be heroes, anyway!" the teacher laughed, and the room exploded into a chorus of cheers and Quirk displays.
I didn't cheer. I sat in the back, arms crossed, watching the two boys in the front row.
Bakugo was lounging at his desk, his feet up, radiating a toxic level of arrogance and radiating an even more intense smell of caramel. He was bigger now, his explosions louder, his ego fed daily by a society that valued flashy combat Quirks above all else.
Izuku Midoriya was hunched over his desk, frantically scribbling in a notebook titled Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13. He was still Quirkless. Still chasing after Bakugo like a lost puppy, despite the constant burns and insults.
Neither of them had balance. One was a runaway train; the other was a train wreck waiting to happen.
After class, I was putting my shoes in my locker when a heavy hand slammed against the metal next to my head.
"Takeda," Bakugo growled. His voice had dropped an octave, but the scent of burnt caramel remained the same. "You're applying for U.A., aren't you?"
I didn't flinch. I didn't even look up from my shoes. "What if I am, Katsuki?"
"Don't play dumb with me! You've been acting like you're above everyone since daycare," Bakugo snarled, a small, warning *pop* erupting from his palm. "But you're just a Quirkless nobody with some fancy footwork. I'm going to be the only one from this trash school who makes it to the hero track. Stay out of my way, or I'll blast you."
I finally looked at him. I didn't see a rival. I saw a child terrified of not being special.
"I'm not in your way, Katsuki," I said calmly, stepping past him. "You are."
I left him fuming in the hallway. I had no interest in his petty drama. I had real work to do.
That evening, I stood on the edge of the Dagobah Municipal Beach. It was a famous local eyesore, piled high with rusted refrigerators, broken washing machines, and tons of ocean-swept garbage.
Somewhere down the coastline, I knew Izuku would soon be training with All Might to inherit the legendary One For All.
But I wasn't looking for a hand-me-down power.
I looked down at my hands, feeling the steady thrum of the wind on my skin and the solid mass of the earth beneath my feet. Tomorrow, my true training with Genji for the U.A. exam would begin. It was time to unlock the earth.
LORE-SYNC & PROGRESSION
+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Element | Attunement | Techniques/Traits Unlocked |
+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Air | 15.00% | Weightless Step (Silent movement, air-cushioned dodging) | +----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Earth | 2.10% | Latent (Minor vibration sensing, ground cracking)|
+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Water | 0.00% | Locked |
+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Fire | 0.00% | Locked |
+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------+