"Traditional entrance exams are suspended," the headmistress continued, her voice carrying an authority that made Mateo's chest tighten. "Instead, all applicants will undergo a comprehensive evaluation of their potential. Quirk registration is no longer a prerequisite for consideration."
His vision blurred for a moment, and he gripped the counter edge to keep from swaying. The 300 dollars he'd been hoarding in a coffee can under his mattress—every spare credit from two years of arcade wages—suddenly felt weightless in his memory.
"We seek not just power, but courage. Not just ability, but potential"
Mateo's throat constricted. Around him, murmurs began to ripple through the small crowd. A girl with blue-streaked hair whispered something urgent to her friend. An older man in work coveralls shook his head slowly, as if rejecting what he was hearing.
"Those who pass evaluation will begin accelerated training immediately." The headmistress's expression hardened, and Mateo caught something beneath her composed facade—exhaustion, maybe, or the weight of decisions that kept her awake at night. "I will not sugarcoat this reality: the path will be dangerous. Not all who enter will complete the program. But those who succeed will stand as the next generation of heroes our society desperately needs."
Desperately needs. The phrase lingered in the air like smoke from a distant fire.
The screen shifted to display application information, but Mateo barely registered the logistics. His mind had fractured, part of him still standing in the arcade while another part was already walking through Atlas Academy's gates. No entrance fee. No quirk prerequisites. Just an evaluation of "potential"—whatever that meant for someone like him.
"For those with concerns about qualifications," the headmistress said, as if she could see through the screen into every heart harboring doubt, "know this: history's greatest heroes are often forged in unlikely circumstances. Come as you are. We will determine your potential."
The broadcast concluded with emergency protocols and contact information. As the screens reverted to their interrupted games, the arcade erupted—but not with the usual excitement. The conversations were hushed, urgent, tinged with something that might have been fear or hope or both.
"They're scraping the bottom of the barrel now," someone muttered behind Mateo. He turned to see a lanky teenager with patches of scaled skin along his arms, his voice carrying the cynicism of someone too young to sound so weathered. "Must be worse than they're telling us."
"My cousin has a melting quirk," another voice chimed in—a girl who couldn't have been older than sixteen, her eyes bright with possibility. "Weak as hell, but maybe... maybe they'd take him now."
"You'd have to be insane," countered a third voice. "Did you catch what she didn't say? They're not looking for heroes. They're looking for bodies to throw at whatever's coming."
Mateo's hands were trembling now, the damaged nerves singing with each pulse of his heart. The voices around him felt distant, as if he were hearing them through water. His brother's face flickered in his memory—not as he'd been at the end, broken and still, but as he'd been in their shared childhood room, whispering plans for their future heroics after lights-out.
"You're thinking about it, aren't you?"
Shinji's voice cut through the fog of memory and possibility. The older man had appeared beside him at the counter, his weathered face unreadable in the shifting light of the game screens. Mateo realized he'd been staring at nothing, his hands white-knuckled on the counter edge.
"I have to try," Mateo replied, the words coming out rougher than he'd intended. His throat felt raw, as if he'd been shouting.
Shinji studied him with eyes that had seen too much. The arcade owner had always been gruff, businesslike, but something softer flickered across his features now—recognition, maybe, or the kind of understanding that came from shared loss.
"You lost someone to a villain too, huh."
It wasn't a question. The weight of it settled between them, heavy as the dust that coated everything in Ashdrift these days. Around them, the conversations continued—hopeful, fearful, desperate—but Mateo felt isolated in this moment with Shinji, as if they were the only two people who understood what this announcement really meant.
"Yeah," Mateo finally admitted. The word felt inadequate, too small to contain the magnitude of his brother's death, the system's failure, his own crushing helplessness. But it was all he had.
Shinji's hand settled on his shoulder—not gently, but with the firm grip of someone who knew what it meant to carry weight. "Mateo... just be careful. This isn't about entrance exams anymore. They're looking for soldiers."
Something hardened in Mateo's chest, crystallizing around the constant ache of loss and frustration. "I know exactly what they're looking for," he said, his voice steadier than it had been all day. "That's why I have to go."
The remainder of his shift passed in a haze of routine actions and racing thoughts.
Customers came and went—fewer than usual, he noticed. Word was spreading fast, and people were making their own calculations about what Atlas Academy's announcement meant for their lives. The girl with blue hair had left shortly after the broadcast, her friend in tow, both of them talking in quick, animated whispers about applications and evaluations.
By four-thirty, the arcade was nearly empty. Even the hardcore gamers who usually claimed the fighting game cabinets until closing had drifted away, leaving behind the electronic ghosts of their abandoned matches. The silence felt expectant, like the moment before thunder.
Mateo was counting the register when Shinji approached, his footsteps unusually hesitant on the worn carpet.
"Too bad I won't be seeing you tomorrow, Mateo," the older man said, his tone carefully casual. But his eyes were watchful, measuring Mateo's response.
"Yeah, I'll be taking the day off." Mateo tried to keep his voice neutral, though his heart was hammering against his bruised ribs with anticipation and dread in equal measure.
Shinji chuckled—a rough sound like gravel shifting. "Been expecting this since they started letting news of the breaches leak. You're not the only one who'll be missing work tomorrow." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wrinkled envelope, worn soft at the edges. "Your pay. Plus a little extra."
Mateo started to protest, but Shinji held up a calloused hand, silencing him.
"My son would have been your age," Shinji said suddenly, the confession catching Mateo off guard. The older man's voice, usually gruff with authority or irritation, had gone quiet, almost gentle. "He didn't have a power either, but still... he always stood up for his friends when they got bullied. Always getting beat up himself for it. Always in trouble, that kid."
Shinji's gaze drifted toward the windows, where the late afternoon light was painting the empty street in shades of amber and rust. "He was in the Eastern District when the first wave hit. No warning, no evacuation order. Just... gone."
The weight of those words hung in the arcade's stale air. Mateo felt something shift in his chest, a recognition of shared grief that went deeper than words. Shinji's hand found his shoulder again, and this time the grip was gentler, almost protective.
"You're a little like him," Shinji continued, his voice barely audible above the arcade's electronic hum. "I don't know how you're going to be a hero without a quirk, but... promise me you won't push yourself too hard out there. Promise me you'll come back."
Mateo nodded, though the promise felt like ash in his mouth. If becoming a hero required everything he had—and more—he would give it without hesitation. But he couldn't say that to Shinji, not when the older man was looking at him with eyes that had already buried one surrogate son.
Seeming satisfied with the silent response, Shinji stepped back and began gathering his things. His movements were deliberate, almost ritualistic, as if he were performing these actions for the last time. He packed the day's receipts into a small leather bag, checked the locks on the prize cabinets, and finally reached for the ring of keys hanging by the back door.
He turned back to face the nearly empty arcade, where only three dedicated gamers remained, their eyes red-rimmed from hours of play, fingers moving with the mechanical precision of the truly addicted.
"All right, you kids! Time to go!" Shinji called out, waving his arms in a shooing motion. "I'm closing up!"
One of the gamers looked up in confusion. "Closing? It's only five. You usually stay open until eight."
Shinji's expression softened into something that might have been relief. "That's because I'm closing for good," he announced, and there was satisfaction in his voice now, mixed with something that sounded like freedom. "I'm leaving this dead town. Moving to the Capital."
In all his time working here, he'd never considered that Shinji might have his own dreams, his own escape plans. The arcade owner had always seemed like a permanent fixture of Ashdrift, as rooted and unchanging as the faded posters on the walls or the permanent stains on the carpet.
"Really?" The question slipped out before Mateo could stop it.
"Really." Shinji laughed, but there was sadness in it too. "I've been saving up for years, waiting for the right moment. Figured now's as good a time as any." He gestured toward the front windows, beyond which the distant rumble of military transports could be heard moving along the highway. "It's only a matter of time before this place gets swallowed up by the war zones anyway. I'd rather struggle with rent in the Capital than wait around here to become collateral damage."
As if summoned by his words, a deep boom echoed from somewhere beyond the town limits. The windows rattled in their frames, and dust motes danced in the evening light. All five of them—Shinji, Mateo, and the three remaining gamers—froze, listening to the silence that followed.
"Getting closer," one of the gamers muttered, but his voice lacked conviction. They'd all heard the explosions before, had all learned to gauge their distance by the intensity of the vibrations. This one felt different—not closer, exactly, but bigger. Hungrier.
"Yeah," Shinji said quietly. "Getting closer."
He moved to the front of the arcade and began pulling down the metal security gate, the mechanism squealing in protest. The sound was final, definitive—the death rattle of a dream Mateo hadn't even realized he'd been holding onto.
"Since those three don't want to leave," Shinji muttered as he secured the heavy padlock, "they can deal with the consequences."
From inside the arcade came muffled shouts of realization and the sound of fists pounding on metal. Shinji and Mateo shared a brief smile at the commotion, but the humor felt hollow, forced.
"Goodbye, Mateo," Shinji said, his expression growing serious again. In the slanted afternoon light, the lines around his eyes seemed deeper, carved by years of loss and hard decisions.
"Goodbye, Shinji." Mateo hesitated, then added, "Maybe we'll see each other in the Capital."
Shinji's smile suggested he didn't believe it, but he nodded anyway. "Maybe we will. Take care of yourself, kid. And remember what I said—come back alive."
They parted ways at the corner—Shinji heading toward the residential district with his small bag of belongings, Mateo toward the old commercial zone where The Underground gym waited. Behind them, the pounding on the arcade doors intensified, but neither of them looked back.
As Mateo walked through Ashdrift's empty streets, he noticed things he'd somehow missed before: the boarded-up windows, the faded recruitment posters peeling from lamp posts, the way shadows seemed to linger longer in doorways and alleys. The town wasn't just dying—it was already half dead, waiting for someone to notice and make it official.
Tomorrow, he would stand before Atlas Academy's evaluators and try to prove he had potential worth cultivating. Tonight, he would train until his body gave out, pushing himself through routines that might prepare him for whatever came next. But first, he would walk these familiar streets one more time, carrying the weight of Shinji's goodbye and the promise he'd made—a promise he already knew he might not be able to keep.
The war was coming to Ashdrift whether they were ready or not. The only question left was whether he would meet it as a hero or as another casualty in a conflict too large for any one person to understand.
As another distant explosion lit the horizon, Mateo quickened his pace. He had work to do.