Chapter 2: The Price of Heroism
POV: Nova Asahi
The alarm clock screamed at 5 AM for the fourteenth consecutive day, its shrill voice cutting through dreams of his old life like a rusty blade. Nova's hand found the snooze button through muscle memory that didn't belong to this body—except it did now, didn't it? Fourteen days of identical mornings had carved new pathways in his teenage brain.
[Daily Quest Available: Training Regimen] [Complete 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 10km run] [Reward: 5 Hero Points, 25 EXP] [Warning: Consecutive completion streak: 13 days. Don't break the chain!]
The system's cheerful persistence had stopped being annoying somewhere around day seven and evolved into something like companionship. At least it was consistent in a world where everything else felt like it had been built on quicksand.
Nova rolled out of bed, joints protesting with the particular ache that came from pushing an untrained body past its limits every single day. His stats had crawled upward with glacial determination:
[STR: 12 | AGI: 13 | END: 11 | INT: 10 | WIS: 10 | LUK: 10]
Two weeks of agony for a handful of stat points. In his old gaming life, he could have gained that much in an afternoon of efficient grinding. Here, every single point felt carved from his flesh with a dull knife.
The push-ups came easier now—not easy, but easier. His form had improved from "pathetic" to merely "terrible." The sit-ups still felt like his abs were trying to tear themselves free from his body. The run had evolved from torture into something more like prolonged suffering.
"Sixty-five Hero Points total," he calculated as his feet hit the pavement outside his apartment complex. "1,935 to go for a single roll. At this rate, I'll need eleven more months just to see what garbage the system considers a starter Quirk."
The math was depressing, but it was honest math. Unless...
Nova's rhythm faltered as evening news from the previous night filtered back through his memory. A purse-snatching three blocks from his apartment. The reporter had mentioned it casually, sandwiched between weather forecasts and traffic updates—just another minor crime in a city where heroes handled the big stuff and police dealt with everything else.
Real crime. Real victims. Real Hero Points.
His pace quickened without conscious decision. The morning run route took him past the convenience store where yesterday's theft had occurred. Nothing looked different in daylight—just another corner shop with flickering signage and windows plastered with advertisements for energy drinks and instant ramen.
But behind that normalcy lurked opportunity. The kind of opportunity that made his stomach churn with self-loathing even as his mind calculated potential point values.
"Ten to twenty Hero Points for stopping a crime," the system had explained during its cheerful tutorial. "Depending on severity and risk level."
Twenty points for stopping one mugging. That was four days of training condensed into a single heroic act. Morally reprehensible thinking, but mathematically sound.
Nova finished his run with the taste of guilt coating his tongue like copper pennies.
Evening brought Musutafu's transformation from mundane city to stage set for impossible stories. Neon signs buzzed to life, casting everything in electric blues and reds. Office workers with minor Quirks made their commutes slightly easier—a man with gecko pads walking up a building's exterior, a woman whose hair acted as extra arms sorting through files while she walked.
And somewhere in this urban maze, crimes were happening. Real crimes. People getting hurt while he sat in his apartment eating convenience store rice and watching the news like it was entertainment.
The breaking point came at 8:47 PM.
"...and now we go to our street reporter with a developing situation in the Musutafu shopping district, where a purse-snatching has just occurred near the Seventh Street intersection..."
Three blocks away. A five-minute sprint if he pushed himself.
Nova was moving before the news anchor finished her sentence.
The streets blurred past him as he ran—not the steady jog of his training routine, but an all-out sprint fueled by adrenaline and the sick excitement of finally, finally having a chance to earn meaningful progress. His newly trained legs carried him faster than he'd thought possible, muscle memory from college track and field finally syncing with his teenage body's capabilities.
The scene unfolded two blocks ahead like a tableau from every crime drama ever filmed. An elderly woman clutched her shoulder and sobbed while a lean figure in dark clothing sprinted down the alley between a ramen shop and a laundromat. No heroes in sight—this was small-time crime, the kind that fell beneath their notice.
Perfect for a desperate boy with no Quirk and everything to prove.
Nova altered course toward the alley, gambling that he could cut off the thief's escape route. His original world track experience kicked in—reading the runner's pace, calculating angles of intersection, finding the optimal pursuit path.
The thief emerged from the alley's far end just as Nova rounded the corner at a dead sprint. They collided in a tangle of limbs and surprised cursing, both of them hitting the pavement hard enough to tear skin and knock breath from lungs.
Nova had fifty pounds and four years of college athletics on his side. The thief had desperation and familiarity with street fighting. They rolled across concrete, grappling for advantage, the stolen purse skittering away from reaching hands.
"This is insane. This is actually insane. I'm fighting someone in an alley like I'm in a movie."
But his body knew what to do even if his mind was still catching up. Wrestling moves drilled into him during high school athletics translated perfectly to desperate street combat. A poorly thrown punch glanced off his shoulder, and he responded with a takedown that would have made his old coach proud.
The fight lasted maybe thirty seconds. When it was over, Nova sat on the thief's back with one arm twisted behind his spine, both of them breathing hard and bleeding from scraped elbows.
"Stay down," Nova gasped, and immediately felt ridiculous for saying something so cliché. "Just... just stay down until the police get here."
But the thief had given up the moment he hit the ground the second time. Without a Quirk to even the odds, he was just a desperate kid not much older than Nova's current body, and nowhere near as well-trained.
Nova retrieved the purse and walked back to where the elderly woman sat on a bench, still crying from shock and the pain of a wrenched shoulder.
"Are you hurt?" The question came out steadier than he'd expected. "Do you need an ambulance?"
She looked up at him with eyes that held more gratitude than anyone had ever directed his way—either life. "You... you got it back. I can't afford to lose that money. My medications..."
The weight of her relief hit him like a physical force. This wasn't a number on a screen or experience points in a game. This was a real person whose night had been saved by his intervention, whose anxiety about lost medication money had been lifted by a stranger's willingness to help.
[Crime Stopped! Purse-snatcher apprehended without Quirk assistance!] [Hero Points Earned: +10] [Bonus: +5 for protecting civilian from physical harm] [First Crime Stopped Achievement Unlocked!] [Total Hero Points: 75]
The notifications felt obscene. Fifteen points for this woman's terror, for the tears still drying on her cheeks. Fifteen points closer to pulling a virtual lever and hoping for useful powers.
"You're treating her trauma like a loot drop. You're a monster."
But the points were already added to his total, and the system's cheerful congratulations rang in his head as police sirens wailed in the distance.
Nova's apartment felt smaller when he returned, the walls pressing closer as guilt and elation warred in his chest. Seventy-five Hero Points glowed on his status screen—more than two weeks of training condensed into fifteen minutes of actual heroism.
Heroism. Was that what it had been? Or had it been point farming with convenient moral justification?
The elderly woman's face haunted his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her gratitude had been genuine, her relief palpable. He'd helped someone who needed help, prevented a crime that would have happened regardless of his presence or absence.
But the ugly truth gnawed at him like a parasite: he'd been excited when he saw the news report. His first thought hadn't been concern for the victim, but calculation of potential rewards.
"I need 2000 points for a single roll. At this rate, that's... 133 more crimes. More than one every three days. For months."
The math was inevitable and horrifying. To gain meaningful power in this world, he would need to find people in crisis and solve their problems. And some part of him would always be hoping for more crimes to solve.
Nova sat on his narrow bed, staring at the status screen floating before his eyes:
[NOVA ASAHI - LEVEL 2] [STR: 12 | AGI: 13 | END: 11 | INT: 10 | WIS: 10 | LUK: 10] [Hero Points: 75] [EXP: 375/2000]
The numbers represented real sweat, real pain, and tonight—real help given to someone who needed it. But they also represented a system that rewarded him for other people's suffering.
"What if I just... didn't?"
The thought whispered through his mind like poison. What if he ignored the Hero Points entirely? Focused on training, tried to get into UA through sheer determination and academic excellence? Became a Quirkless hero through skill and determination like some kind of Batman analog?
The idea lasted approximately five seconds before reality crushed it. He'd watched the show. He knew what happened to Quirkless people who tried to be heroes. At best, they became support staff. At worst, they died screaming.
But there was a middle path. A way to thread the needle between gaming the system and maintaining his humanity.
Nova looked at his reflection in the black window and made a decision.
"Every intervention has to be genuine. Every person I help has to matter more than the points they generate. The system gets to be a tool, not a master."
It wasn't a perfect solution. The Hero Points would still accumulate, and he'd still need them to survive in this world. But he could choose how to frame his motivations. Help people first, let the points be a secondary benefit.
"Never wish for crime. Always respond when it appears. Remember every face."
The code felt inadequate, but it was something. A line in the sand between necessity and monstrosity.
His phone buzzed with a news alert: Three more minor crimes reported in Musutafu's western district tonight.
Nova stared at the notification for a long moment, then turned off his phone and went to bed. Tomorrow he would start his nightly patrols, but tonight he would sleep on clean sheets with the memory of genuine gratitude warming his chest.
The Hero Points could wait one more day.
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