Chapter Text
Heroes aren’t born; they’re made. No baby comes out of the womb wearing a mask, spandex and a cape, they come out naked, crying and screaming. They’re not unique, they’re just another sack of flesh with no clue what's going on. Even when they grow up and they get their powers, they’re still not a hero. They’re just a kid that can shoot lightning from their fingertips or freeze time. Powers don't make a hero any more than a loaded gun makes a soldier. A person can only truly become a hero through one thing. Going through some seriously fucked up shit.
Thomas Sayers was a very rich and powerful man. One of the most powerful men in Australia, in fact. He owned businesses, brands, entire companies; more than most people could keep track of. To the public, he was a single devoted father who'd never let romance distract him from raising his boy. And he did have a son; that part was true. Everything else was the work of his publicity team, bless their souls. To the cameras and the magazines, that son was a nice, kind, funny but not crude, hardworking boy, a perfect heir to a perfect empire.
But Thomas knew what his son really was.
His son was rough, wild, loud-mouthed, quick-tempered, and utterly allergic to authority. He was the exact opposite of the image the world had of him. However, underneath all that noise, he was kind. Helpful, even, he was the type of boy to help an old lady cross the road and punch anyone who looked at him funny while he was doing it. More than anything, his son had the fiercest, most unshakable sense of justice Thomas had ever seen. The kind of Justice that didn't care who you were or how much you were worth, if something was wrong, he'd make it right, knuckles bloody or not.
Really, he reminded Thomas of his mother. The short time Thomas had spent with her was enough to know that her genes had done most of the work in making the boy. The only thing his son had inherited from him was his good looks, or so the tabloids liked to say.
One night, as Thomas sat in his office, overlooking the city lights, with all of this turning over in his mind, the glass of bourbon in his hand long gone warm, he found himself wondering, as he so often did, where his son was. His son never came back home until late in the night and then left to go to that expensive hero school Thomas paid for early every morning. Thomas barely saw his son anymore. But still, even if he never saw his son, or tried to repair their relationship, or tried to do anything, Thomas wondered where Ryan, his one and only son, was.
And whether the boy ever thought of him at all.
Across the city, deep in some random building hidden between the bright and fancy skyscrapers, Ryan was having the time of his life.
He wasn't thinking about his father. Wasn't thinking about much of anything, honestly, just the music thumping somewhere behind him, the bright LEDS shining in his face and the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He ducked under a wild swing, came up grinning, and drove his fist clean into the guy's jaw.
Ryan Roedor, he never used his father's name, preferring his mother's instead, had just finished playing to the biggest crowd his wannabe band had ever pulled. Where the rest of the band had wandered off to now, he had no clue. He was too busy teaching this guy a lesson. Well, actually, Ryan could probably guess where they were. Silas was probably off flirting with some girl, Graham was most likely hiding away in a corner somewhere, and Toby was 100% actually helping pack up the instruments, the living legend he is.
Their band was called The Ankle Biters, named after a nickname the teachers had pinned on Ryan's friend group back when they first walked through the doors of the Australian Institute for Heroics. The AIH was the fancy hero school Ryan's dad paid for: a place for kids with the strongest quirks and the sharpest minds, where the country sent its best and brightest to be forged into the next generation of pros.
Ryan stuck out like a sore thumb, he was only averagely smart, and his quirk wasn’t the greatest. It was called Rat King, it allowed him to talk to and command rats, as well as having rat powers, like superhuman strength, boosted agility, really anything a rat could do, he could do. He could scurry up a sheer wall without slowing down, squeeze through gaps no teenage boy his size had any business fitting through, and drop from heights that should've shattered his legs, only to land in a crouch and keep moving. It left its marks on him, too. Two round ears sat high on his head, twitching toward sounds long before anyone else caught them. His fingers ended in short black claws, good for gripping and better for tearing. And behind him trailed a long pink tail that betrayed his every mood, no matter how hard he tried to play it cool. It wasn’t as cool of a quirk as his friends, but it helped in fights.
Like right now.
The guy charged again, fists swinging wild. Ryan didn't bother dodging, he just whistled, low and sharp, and the ground answered. Hundreds of rats squirmed and scuttled out of the gutters and the gaps in the brickwork, a tide of grey and twitching whiskers, gnashing their teeth and squealing in glee. The guy's swagger died in his throat. The rats swarmed up his legs and back, biting and screeching, and he went down hollering, wildly thrashing, trying to get the rats off him. Ryan nodded at his little friends, squeaking out in their language a command to just scare the guy a little, nothing permanent. The guy deserved that much, after trying to feel up a teenage girl in the crowd a few hours back. The rats understood. They always did.
And with that, Ryan strolled into the building, looking through the crowd for his friends.
Ryan found Silas quickly, sprawled across a couch like he owned it, one arm slung around some girl, spinning her a web of little white lies just to watch her laugh. His quirk was a thin, silvery film that could spread across his whole body in an instant, fine as air and utterly unbreakable. Nothing pierced it, nothing cracked it, nothing shattered it, it was stronger than Graphene. He could shrink it to a second skin or balloon it into a dome, reshape it at the speed of thought. One of the most powerful quirks in their year, wasted on a guy who mostly used it to look untouchable at parties, and was currently telling some random girl that he once beat All Might in an arm wrestle. With a small nod to the girl, Ryan pulled Silas to his feet. “Aw, come on, man… I was so close!” Silas whined, running a hand through his curly white hair. Ryan was tall, 6’6 to be exact, and Silas was the only boy Ryan’s age that was able to look him in the eyes without having to stand on a stool. He wasn't built like Ryan, though. Where Ryan was all wiry, obvious muscle, Silas was lean to the point of skinny, the kind of frame that looked like it could be blown away in a strong wind, right up until he moved, and you caught the deceptive cords of muscle, and a little bit of chub, shifting under his shirt.
Soon, the two stumbled across Graham. He was exactly where Ryan expected, slouched against a wall on the edge of the room, half-swallowed by shadow, a drink in his hand that he hadn't touched, mindlessly scrolling through his phone. His face wasn’t visible, covered by long grey hair, and he was dressed in black from collar to boots. His build was nothing remarkable, average in every direction, the kind of body you'd forget the second he stepped out of sight. Which was funny, considering what lived inside it. Graham could reach out with his mind and bend bone to his will: his own, an enemy's, anyone's. He could levitate them, sharpen them into spears and blades, knit them into shields, bone was like clay for him, endlessly reshaped at a glance. He had more trouble controlling bones under flesh, but if he was focused enough, he could. He stood up and followed without a word.
That just left Toby, and sure enough, they found him down near the stage, coiling a cable around his arm. The only one doing a lick of work, the true heart of the band. Toby was the shortest of the group, a respectable five-foot-eleven that somehow got lost in a crew of six-foot-sixes. He was broad, dark-skinned, with a warm face and an easy patience the other three sorely lacked. His messy brown hair was a mix between a afro and a mullet, and somehow, he rocked it. Toby probably had the kindest quirk of the group: he could heal people, wind a wound away, undo a bruise, knit a broken bone. But it had a catch. Push it too far and Sab woke up, a second voice grown in his head alongside the quirk, not a real demon but happy to look the part. It dragged his body into a new shape as it surfaced, horns and red-cracked skin and gold eyes, something taller and stronger and grinning. Worse, Sab could undo every wound Toby had closed, a superhuman with a mean streak, unless Toby could talk it into doing some good instead.
These four boys were powerful, some of the strongest in their entire school. But, like Ryan, not one of them fit the perfect hero image.
As the four boys pushed through the crowd, Toby hauling the equipment with a grudging hand from Graham, Silas cleared his throat. “Well, I would say that was a pretty good gig. I got a lovely lady's number, Graham didn’t break his guitar for once, Toby finally let loose for once and Ryan kicked some guy’s ass! A lovely evening if I say so myself.” He cackled, slapping Ryan on the back. Ryan shook his head, chuckling. "Don't get too comfortable. We've still got school in the morning." On cue, all of the lads groaned. "Ugh. Don't remind me." Graham muttered, lightly shaking his head.
"You hear who we're getting, though?" Toby cut in, shifting the gear higher on his shoulder.
"New combat instructor starts tomorrow. It's Mirage."
Ryan came to a halt, Silas running into his back with a light thud.
“Mirage? As in the number three hero?” Silas blinked, rubbing his face.
"That's the one." Toby grinned, opening a door so Graham could push the instruments onto the sidewalk.
Silas let out a low whistle. "Well. Suddenly I don't hate school quite so much."
As the others fell into pointless conversation, Ryan began to think. A pro that famous didn't take a teaching post for no reason. Mirage was the number three hero in Australia and one of the most popular female heroes as well. Why on earth would she want a teacher job? It didn't add up. Ryan was a naturally suspicious person, and every instinct he had was telling him the same thing: this spelt trouble.
As Toby hauled the last of their gear into his dad's van, Ryan cleared his head. He'd had a good evening—dwelling on all this would only ruin it. So he took a deep breath, let a small smile creep across his face, and slid into the passenger seat.
"You wanna get some Maccas?" he shouted.
The answer came back as one loud, unanimous yes.
The van peeled off into the night, four idiots crammed inside, music up, windows down, the city sliding past in streaks of neon. And somewhere under the noise and the laughter, Ryan let himself wonder, really wonder, the same goddamn topic he always came back to.
Would he ever truly become a hero?
He'd wanted it since he was a kid. Not the cameras, not the merchandise, not the power to do anything you wanted, even if it was bad. Just the real thing. Someone people could look up to. Someone who showed up when it mattered and made things right. Someone that would appear when all hope was lost, to say that everything would be okay, that they were there.
He didn't have the flashiest quirk. He didn't have the perfect image. He wasn’t the smartest or the strongest. No experience, no battles under his belt other than some back alley battles. He didn't even have his father's name. But maybe, he thought, that was the point.
Maybe heroes weren't born at all.
Maybe they were made.