"What do you think it means to be a hero, Mat?"
His elder brother, Alec, asked the question while lounging on the windowsill, moonlight gleaming off the twin horns that protruded from either side of his head. The horns caught the silver light and seemed to glow with an ethereal quality.
Mat picked at a loose thread on his worn t-shirt, avoiding his brother's gaze. "I don't know?" He responded with feigned indifference. "Stop disasters? Fight villains? Be flashy and have cool powers? What else is a hero supposed to do?"
"Ugh, you're looking at it all surface level." Alec pressed his hand to his forehead dramatically, his signature move whenever Mat failed to grasp his profound wisdom. "That's why you'd never make it as a hero."
The words stung more than they should have, even though he never really wanted to be a hero in the first place. Mat swallowed the bitter retort rising in his throat.
"Heroes do one thing, and one thing only." Alec straightened his posture and placed his hand on his chest resolutely, his voice dropping to the theatrical baritone he practiced in the shower when he thought no one was listening. "They save people."
As if on cue, the air became still. The constant hum of heat pumps outside their window ceased, and the flickering bulb in their ceiling fixture went dark. The world seemed to hold its breath, as if waiting for Mat's response. Or perhaps something worse loomed on the horizon.
"I want to save people too," Alec said, his lips curling into a lopsided grin. "All I want is to keep people from danger and make them safe. That's all I want out of life."
That's such a boring dream, Mat wanted to add sarcastically, but the words died in his throat as the corner of his vision exploded into blinding white.
His pulse quickened in microseconds, his brain desperately absorbing information even as his body remained frozen. Even if he could have moved, it wouldn't have mattered. The situation was damned from the beginning.
Searing heat pressed against the left side of his face, like someone had taken a blowtorch to his skin. Before his nerve endings could fully register the pain, the brick wall beside them shattered. Chunks of concrete and plaster slammed into his side, lifting him off his feet and hurling him through the gaping wound in their apartment.
Falling.
The realization struck him with more force than the explosion. He was falling through open air, twenty-three floors above the ground. Cool night breeze mingled with acrid smoke, filling his nostrils as he tried to cough, but the breath hooked in his throat. Wind rushed past his ears with increasing velocity as gravity claimed him.
Mat tried to twist his body to see what remained of their apartment, but his senses had gone haywire. His equilibrium shattered, unable to distinguish left from right, up from down, front from back. His brain offered only one coherent thought: An explosion. That's what happened.
A jagged mass of concrete debris caught up to him mid-fall, colliding with his left arm. The bone snapped with an audible crack that somehow pierced the rushing wind. White-hot pain radiated from his shoulder to fingertips. Through tear-blurred vision, he caught glimpses of fire and smoke, of red and black.
"But why?" he whimpered, tears streaming upward from his eyes, abandoning him just as life was about to do the same.
His thoughts fragmented in the chaos. One moment he had been in that cramped room, arguing with his brother in the cheap apartment their mother had struggled to afford after dad left. He was supposed to start high school next month. Alec was supposed to take the entrance exam for Atlas Academy, chasing his naive dream of heroism.
So why why why why
Why had this happened to him? "Why me?" The question pounded in his skull with each passing second of freefall.
He knew who caused these explosions. The so-called "villains" who had been waging their civil war against the government for the past two years. But what did Mat have to do with any of that? They were just ordinary people living ordinary lives. The news had always shown the conflicts happening in designated war zones, not in residential districts. Not here. So why were they so damn unlucky?
As he rocketed downward, weightless and helpless, the muted booms of distant explosions grew clearer. Now he could hear the screams. The sirens. The sounds of a city in chaos. Which meant he was getting closer to the ground.
Mat held his breath, hoping at least for a quick end, remembering Alec's words from just moments ago:
"Heroes do one thing, and one thing only. They save people."
People like him couldn't become heroes. His brother had a mediocre quirk that wouldn't fare well against fights with literal demigods who could chuck buildings with ease and fly into the sky at a moment's notice. Alec's power was just horns on his head—practically useless unless you wanted to ram enemies to death.
And Mat's own power? Not even worth mentioning. So pathetic that he'd rather let people assume he was powerless.
So where were they? Where were the real heroes with their earth-shattering powers and lightning-fast reflexes? Why couldn't they stop the villain that had caused this? Why couldn't they do their damn job?
Then why couldn't they save Alec? he thought.
And why couldn't they save me?
He expected his world to turn black, or perhaps red, depending on how quickly he met his end. In the awful clarity of impending death, he imagined his skull cracking as he fell headfirst onto the pavement, his bones fracturing and protruding through skin, his body twisted into unnatural angles like a discarded doll.
The screams grew louder. The smell of burning flesh hit his nostrils as the ground rushed up to meet him.
He waited for the pain. Waited to feel his brain leaking out, his spine severing as his body crumpled.
He waited. Waited. Waited.
Was it over already? Was death so quick that he hadn't even noticed the transition?
Is this the afterlife? Heaven? Hell? Or those places in Greek mythology where he'd be processed for reincarnation? Asphodel? Elysium?
"Kid! Are you awake?" A sharp voice called out, sounding faint in his ringing ears.
It was then that Mat realized what had happened. He couldn't move freely—not because he was paralyzed or dead, but because he was stuck.
A thick film of viscous fluid had engulfed his body at the moment of impact. His quirk. The one thing that made him different from others. The ability that he had always considered useless. Now he could feel the dull thud of the dampened shock from the collision with the ground, his bones creaking as hands pulled him out of the gelatinous mass.
"Looks like that ability of yours really came in handy here." The person who had called out to him said. Mat blinked through the slime to see a paramedic with a scraggly beard and shifty eyes that darted from side to side, scanning the chaos around them.
He wore a blue and green vest with reflective strips that caught the firelight. Mat had seen uniforms like it before on the news.
"You're really lucky to have survived," the paramedic said, examining Mat's injuries before attempting to drag him toward a medical unit van parked hazardously on the debris-strewn street.
"I'm fine," Mat insisted, tearing his hand away with surprising strength, adrenaline masking the pain signals his body was desperately trying to send.
Above them, several buildings burned like massive torches, painting the night sky crimson. Entire high-rises groaned and tilted, promising more destruction. The street was littered with rubble, shattered glass, and—Mat's stomach lurched—bodies.
He expected to see the city's superhumans dashing through the chaos. Some using their ice powers to extinguish the flames. Others transforming into giants to prevent buildings from collapsing. The heroes that featured on his brother's posters and action figures.
But the only people offering any help were paramedics and civilians, tending to the wounded and dragging survivors from wreckage.
His left arm throbbed with pain where the impact of the explosion had broken the bone, but Mat ignored it. He had to find Alec and his mother.
"What are you doing? You'll die here!" The paramedic grabbed at his good arm, all pretense of professional calm gone. The man wanted to save himself too.
"My family," Mat choked out, eyes scanning the burning building they'd just escaped. "They're still in there. In the fires."
The paramedic's face told him everything before words could. The man didn't think anyone else could have survived that direct hit. Mat was one of the lucky ones—his quirk had saved him when nothing else could.
"If your family survived, you'll find them with the people we rescued in the aftermath," the paramedic said as another explosion tore through a nearby skyscraper. The massive structure began tilting with an unearthly groan, preparing to fall and cause another cascade of destruction. "If we stay here any longer, you won't be alive to see your family—if they make it. Come on, kid."
Mat relented, taking the paramedic's hand as they ran toward the nearest evacuation vehicle. But his eyes remained fixed on the burning ruins of his home. How far could they run? What if the entire city was under attack? What if there was nowhere safe left?
Then he saw it—a single horn glowing red from the heat, partially buried under a pile of rubble near what had once been their apartment building. He knew instantly where—who—that horn had come from.
Mat broke free and ran back, ignoring the paramedic's shouts. He dropped to his knees and gripped the horn tightly, even as it singed and burned his palm. He wouldn't let go. Couldn't let go. It was all he had left of his brother.
Tears welled in his eyes but refused to fall. A strange numbness spread through his chest, replacing the panic and fear with something colder, harder.
Why? Why did he have to survive while Alec didn't? It was so unfair. So cosmically, cruelly unfair. Alec, who had dreamed of being a hero. Alec, who actually had a visible quirk. Alec, who had a future.
But from that moment forward, as Mat clutched his brother's severed horn and watched their world burn, he made a vow. He would avenge his brother. He would become what Alec had wanted to be—not just a hero, but someone who truly saved people.
And to do that, he would have to hunt down every last villain in the country. That was how he would atone for his survival.