I stayed like that, allowing all that weight to press down on me, as Queen, aka one of the best bands of all time, continued to play.

When I was kid, I’d watched the 2004 Punisher movie. In it, there was a scene where Punisher left a dude whose arm was trapped with his other arm outstretched, a small bomb in his hand, a wire tied taut to the detonator. If the dude's arm dropped, the bomb went off. A small bomb. Only about five pounds.

But enough weight, over enough time, without rest? Well…

I stayed like that, bent over the pair beneath me. All the weight of a marble building on top of me, with nothing but time and music around me.

The kid and woman were not the cheery sort. I don’t know, something about the situation seemed to bum them out.

So I started talking, using my hopefully much better Japanese. “Hey,” the mom looked up at me, while the kid continued to cry. “You both good? You get-” I tried to remember the correct word. “Hurt?”

“N-No,” the lady said, looking down at her kid. “I’m okay. He’s okay...” the last part was said with a deep and warm smile of relief as she brushed a hand through his hair.

“Kaa-san,” the kid mumbled. “Is he a hero?”

She gave me a sad look. I got it. In a situation like this? Of course a kid would look for a hero.

“I’m not,” I admitted slowly. The kid stared at me, his eyes wide. “But there’s a hero out there. A friend. Cow Lady. She’s fighting a villain right now, gonna save us all,” I grinned at him. “I’m not a hero. But we’ve got some here.”

From the looks of it, the kid seemed to take some solace in that. Good thing I’d made sure to learn how to pronounce Tauren’s hero name correctly. Ushi, cow, and Oishii, tasty or delicious, sounded WAY too similar.

“Are you okay?” the mom asked me.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I adjusted myself a bit, allowing the immense pressure on my back to rest more on my shoulders. Fuck me, the shit was heavy. It felt like my spine was getting cooked slowly, my arms and legs cramping. I kept it up though. And I kept talking.

“So, you like heroes kid?”

“Yes!” the kid still looked scared, but he was a lot calmer now. “I like Fat Gum!”

Fat Gum? Well damn, I was really expecting All Might. Still…

“Fat Gum is pretty darn cool,” I pushed up a bit, raising my arms up to grip the weight above me better, feeling like Atlas under the sky. “My favorite hero is…I like the old comic book ones, like Superman,” I explained, saying the last part in English.

“S-Supaman?” The kid asked, while the mom’s eyes widened in recognition. “Who is that?”

Ah. What a crying shame. The mom and I shared a look. “Superman… well, I guess you could say he’s the hero in the old days. He was the All Might back then. One we looked up too, even if he wasn’t real.”

“He wasn’t real?” the kid’s smile dropped. “Then he doesn’t matter.”

“Of course he matters,” I grinned. “All Might is real. Fat Gum is real. Even if they ain't here. They give you hope, teach you what's right, makes you do better, you know?”

I thought that maybe my weak Japanese and the kid's youth may have combined to weaken my point, but the kid was simply staring at me.

“Is that why you saved us, Mister?”

“Um…” I kinda chuckled as Queen’s ‘I Want To Break Free’ played from my phone. “No. I just kind of ran in to be honest,” the mom stared at me aghast. “But they are part of why I want to be a hero.”

Wonder what the OG Bowser would have thought of that. Then again, he probably thought he was a hero, always getting cockblocked by Mario and his dastardly plans. Then again, you don’t call yourself a Demon King without being a little self-aware...

“...What can Superman do?” the kid asked, tears now drying into tracks across his dusty face.

I grinned. “Well. Let me adjust the bi-ru on my back, and I’ll-”

“Bi-ru?” the woman asked, surprised. Then she let out a little, ‘ah’ sound. “You mean building! Biru.”

“...What did I say?”

She leaned over and whispered so the kid couldn’t hear. “Beer.”

Japanese is hard man.

I sighed, but continued. “Well. Superman. The story is old. And told often. But there is something that is always the same. Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope in the form of a rocket. Good parents. A man, with all the power in the universe. Who just wants to help people have a good life.”

God. What a nerd I was. Sat under a building of pure stone, and I was telling the story of Superman to get my mind off it. Well, hopefully the kid would enjoy it. Based on the look in his eyes, he seemed to like it.

------

We were under there for around an hour or so. I was in the middle of explaining Superman fighting Braniac, after telling the story of him becoming friends with Krypto, when the weight atop me began to lessen.

“Get closer to me,” I warned them as the rubble around us shifted, the sounds of people slowly digging towards us. The two pressed close to me. After a long moment of stone on stone and the sounds of a huge amount of people, one of the stones got shifted before light shone in on the three of us from the front. WAY too bright a light. What the heck?

“Hey, tone it back!” I barked, eyes closing as I stared out. I pulled my head back into my shell and glared out of my shell as I continued to hold up the rubble.

“Bowser!” Tauren was a dark shadow backlit by that bright-as-fuck light to my eyes. She climbed in and grabbed the mother and kid, handing them to a cop who was out there. “You okay?” she asked me.

“I need to find a chiropractor that works on shells,” I grunted. “Am I okay to let this weight go?”

“Yeah, you’re fine,” Tauren told me, shifting to her minotaur-like bull form and pushing up on the rubble, pushing it safely off of me long enough to get me out of there.

God. Relief. You would not believe it. I stumbled forward, head popping out of my shell, the rubble collapsing behind me while Tauren caught my two-ton body and helped me. My arms and legs were cramped up, and I felt like my spine had shortened, like my muscles had been getting cooked.

“You did good, sugah,” Tauren told me.

“That means the world to me,” I told her honestly.

I looked out as we left. Cameras surrounded us. That was a surprise. Not just camera phones, but reporters standing there with their bright as fuck cameralights shining on us. “Wow, can you all tone down the-”

I was cut off by a blonde blur rushing forward to hug me around my waist. I felt two horns click against my face.

Pony. Her eyes were closed as she hugged me tightly. I wrapped an arm around her, while Tauren hugged her as well, the three of us ignoring the cameras around us.

------

Later on, a cop was talking to Pony and I. A medic had taken a look at me already, and decided I was okay except for exhaustion, though he recommended I see a specialist if my back continued to hurt, as I might need someone special considering the shell that was in the way.

The main cop who was speaking to me was interesting looking. He had a bee’s stinger poking out of his chin and a pair of see through wings on his back, and looked exasperated, two of his friends watching. “You did a good thing, but you also took an enormous risk. If you messed up-”

“But he didn’t,” Tauren said nearby, looking annoyed. “Seriously, it’s not like they did anything that crazy!”

“They don’t have hero licenses and we have reports that your daughter and the young man used their quirks to either save people or fight off the vines,” the police officer said calmly. “Horns to pick up those inside could have stabbed someone by accident. The fires he used to drive off the vines could have burned someone.”

“We only wanted to help…” Pony said sadly.

I didn’t say anything yet, only listening as he sighed and jumped back into the speech he was giving as the other two officers watched. Technically he was right, but I wasn’t about to agree that I shouldn’t have gone in. Maybe something could have gone wrong. But I wasn’t going to regret my choice.

I looked over at Pony. She looked up at me, still looking down. That, more than anything, prompted me to speak.

“We had two choices,” I said, cutting off the officer. “Get in trouble and save lives, or do nothing and watch the building fall on everyone.”

“You didn’t have to use your quirks to-” the officer began to say.

“Yes, we did,” I growled. The cop stopped talking. I guess I was more intimidating than I expected, even to a cop. I continued.

“We didn’t use our quirks for the hell of it. There were elderly people, children, and plant vines literally ripping the entrance way apart. We had to use our quirks in the moment to help everyone we could. We’ll be careful from now on,” I looked at Pony for agreement, and she nodded emphatically. “We know why the law exists. We get it. And if we’d had the choice, we would have stood by and let the authorities handle it.”

“But there wasn’t anyone else to help,” Pony said. “Momma was fighting the villain. I promise mister, we wouldn’t have done it otherwise!”

“...Ugh,” the cop rubbed his beesting chin, fingers running along the point with the edge of long habit. “Well… You understand why I’m worried.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I get it. And we aren’t the vigilante types. But we had to do it. If we had to pick, well… I’d do it again,” I looked over at the crowd. The mom and kid were with an ambulance crew. The elderly couple Pony had saved were being hugged by their family. They kept looking over at us. The looks they gave Pony and me…

“Me too. It was worth it,” Pony said softly.

The police officer, a helpless look on his face, looked over at Tauren, but she was grinning widely. He sighed, then turned and walked away, his fellow officers following. Tauren walked over to us as they left.

“Come on,” she chuckled. “I need to yell at you guys myself.”

“You’re going to yell at us?” Pony yelped.

“Well, not really,” Tauren joked. “I’m mostly happy you two are okay. So we’ll really just go get some food and head home… I forgot the groceries!” Tauren said suddenly, clutching her face as she realized why we’d headed out in the first place.

As Pony laughed at her mom's antics, I saw the police cart away a dude who I took a double take at. He had a head shaped like a tomato and arms of green vines. He also looked bruised, beaten, and tired as hell.

“Was he a hard fight?” I asked Tauren as we walked away from the scene.

“Hell yeah he was,” Tauren gave the guy a glare. “He was on trigger. The stuff makes any minor quirk a hell of fight,” she sighed. “But it’s over now. Let’s get our food and go home, dahlings.”

We went on our way.

That night, I would have a nightmare. Of the world, crushing on me, threatening to destroy things that were important.

Very nice brain. Couldn’t be more symbolic? Had to just basically restate the day’s events?

Good motivation though. Because I woke up that morning and immediately headed to the quarry. If I was ever going to be a hero, I’d have to keep getting stronger. I knew I could do it now. I had proof. I just had to keep it going.

And when I showed up at the quarry to see Pony balancing on her horns, a look of determination on her face, I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

------

We spent the rest of our time off training like crazy. Then we went back to school in September. Our time there was mostly just normal trickling back into our lives again. Classes, teachers, and homework. I kept up my training as best as I could though. Pony became a minor celebrity after footage of her saving people hit the internet, which she was adorably bashful about. She deserved it though.

I got hit with a bit of that as well. Not as much as Pony, but there was this one video going around of me breathing fire and holding the rubble up while the Gamera theme song played. I mean… what the hell? Who put that kind of work into something like that?

Also, it turns out Bowser can blush. Well, I can at least.

My studies continued to be interesting as hell. The world of the future was full of very interesting history. Right up until just after 2030, things were pretty normal. The highlights, you know, Titanic, United Nations, Batman, Elon Musk, Twitter.

Then, Quirks. And chaos. I’d have thought, after all the comics we had warned us about the kinds of things a world of superpowers might lead to, we’d have been somewhat able to withstand those problems, but there goes me hoping people would listen to good ideas.

Nations that had already been at war lit aflame. Entire cities were wiped out. Huge portions of the society I once knew were now gone. Hell, even the internet was entirely different. Nowhere and nothing was safe. Technology did continue to advance, but at a much slower pace. And superheroes or supervillains took a while to become a thing. Super-soldiers were more of the norm. Men and women tied to nations, not ideals, not to what may have been right to do.

It was only recently that something close to peace had finally come. And that was built on a mountain of bodies.

Seriously. I’d thought the reason that I didn’t see brand names in the season of the anime I watched was because of copyright issues. Turned out, most companies simply disappeared as time passed.

Except some like Pepsi and Coca-Cola. That was never ending.

So yeah. Interesting history. Bleak, sad, history, with heroes, bad guys, and some people just doing what they could to survive. But interesting.

All that aside, things in my life finally got into a routine of sorts. School, hanging with Pony, training, then school again. I practiced my shell spin and trained with Pony in basic combat, the two of us playing cops and robbers for keeps. I pushed myself to learn as much Japanese as I could, helping Pony along the way. And she would push me

I jogged a lot. Running around the town, trying to get my cardio up. And then, as time went by… Well.

I headed to the beach on my days off. I’d go out, see the sun shining over the ocean, the sands, people hanging out. And, well… I didn’t go there for the view.

Somedays I would see them. Somedays, I would just miss them. I didn’t go to talk to them, though I’d sometimes train nearby. It felt, I don’t know, awkward, seeing them in the distance. I didn’t know if I should even try to approach.

But they were there. A tiny green-haired kid, picking up trash on the beach. And a tall blonde-haired man, cheering him on. Deku and All Might, working their asses off to get him ready.

I left middle-school that year with Pony. My grades weren’t perfect, but they were better than the last time I was in middle school. And in those final months before we would apply to UA, I started taking Pony with me to the beach. We’d go running a lot of the time, but we did some more unorthodox training as well.

Pony would go surfing whenever we would go to the beach, on my recommendation. She was still having trouble balancing on her horns, so surfing turned out to be a damn good way for her to practice it. She got really into it as well.

For me, I started swimming around with her, wearing my extra big swim trunks. Turns out, I was pretty damn fast at it. I’d zoom back and forth in the water, diving deep under the waves. That’s how I found out my fire breath could temporarily work underwater, create waves of steam. That gave me an idea for some kind of steam move, but I had yet to figure out that whole thing.

We’d also keep practicing with our quirks as a whole, though that would only be something we could do in the quarry or at a designated training area. But we did it as much as we could.

Pony used her experience with surfing to get better flying on her horns and practiced her accuracy, tossing those horns without controlling them towards anything I could toss up for her.

For me, more shell spinning. I’d do my best to simply stay in one place, spinning as fast I could. Turned out, I needed to master the fine muscle control needed to keep myself going. I didn’t get dizzy, since my body was built to do the move, but I would sometimes lose control and go skating into things if I wasn’t careful. Good practice though. Eventually I could spin in place without worrying about keeping it going too much. Next would have to be actually moving around like that...

Then, came that day. On a day when we were supposed to be getting ready for the upcoming exam later that day, Pony and I were standing on the beach. The sky was still dark as we stood there in awe. He was pushing a car atop a massive pile. A goddamn car. Slowly, carefully, as the sun began to come up over the horizon. He got the top of the pile of trash we’d seen him cleaning up for the last ten months. Finally, he got up there and stood tall. As the sun finally rose, he let out a cry.

That sound echoed across the beach. Triumph. That’s all I could think. If any sound could encapsulate that word, that would be it. Triumph. And a man, in the distance, yelled out in turn.

“OH MY GOODNESS!!!”

“He did it,” Pony said softly, looking around with a finger to her lips as she watched the now clean beach. “I didn’t believe it but… he really did it.”

“Yeah…” I said softly, watching as he fell only for All Might to catch him before he could hit the floor. “He did.”

I probably should have been more amazed. I mean, one of the most awesome moments from the anime, brought to life in front of me! But all I could think of it was what it really meant. That time was up. Really up.

“We better go,” I told Pony, turning around.

“Bowser-kun?” she asked me, hopping over to me. “Are you okay?”

I smiled down at her. “No. I’m nervous as hell. But we’re ready for the exam. Right?”

Pony smiled shakily, then nodded her head, fists clenched. “Yes! We can do this!”

I held out my fist, which she bumped with her own. Then we went off to get ready for UA.

------

I stood before the gates of the UA High School Entrance Exam Location by myself. Pony had gotten there before me, cheerfully telling me on the phone that she would see me there. That was fine. I was still feeling nervous, so a bit of time to myself would be nice.

God. After a full year, finally I was going to the exam. All my training, schooling, and work had been for this. If I failed, well. It was all for naught. I had to get in.

So, no pressure or anything.

I was still staring at the big yellow ‘UA’ sign when I saw a familiar blonde head of hair enter the gates. Katsuki Bakugo walked under the gates with an air about him like someone had shit in his cereal bowl, ignoring my gaze on the back of his head. That, more than anything, prompted me to finally walk in.

I stopped in the courtyard to watch as the blonde asshole teen barked at someone. Bakugo walked into the building, but I wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead, I saw Deku. The kid was in mid-fall when a friendly young girl stopped him with a tap on the shoulder. I started to feel kinda creepy as I watched Ochako Uraraka talk to a shocked Deku, but I couldn’t help it.

I went over to him as Ochako gave him a friendly goodbye and walked away. I stopped next to the kid and gently bumped his shoulder as he was still freaking out over his first ‘conversation’ with a girl. I could relate.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Gaaaaaah!” he jumped, reeling back from me. Then he blinked at the sight of me. “Ah, you’re the turtleman from the beach!”

Guess he’d seen me whenever I jogged past. I did tend to stand out after all.

“Yeah,” I grinned at the kid. “And you’re the trashman.”

“T-Trashman?” he seemed to sink into a depression at that. “Ah. I guess I was picking up trash all that time…”

I couldn’t help the chuckle that brought out of me. I bowed down politely. “I’m Koopa Bowser. Nice to meet you, fellow beachgoer.”

“Ah,” he was unprepared for that. But he recovered quickly, bowing as well. “M-Midoriya Izuku! It’s nice to meet you too!” We rose up from our bow. Somehow, as I watched Izuku grin up at me, I felt just a bit less anxious. “Let’s do our best!” he said nervously but enthusiastically.

“Yeah,” I turned to look over at the UA building, Izuku turning to face it as well. “Let’s do this.”

Walking in side by side, I felt my fists tighten. Soon, we’d be in for it. But the hard part was first.

The written test.