Chapter Text
Everything was different here.
Like, really different.
For one thing, the buildings were taller. They were made of concrete and steel, some reaching up so far into the sky it was as if they were touching the clouds. Heck, some of them probably were. They dotted the landscape, nearly every area having at least two or three buildings within sight, each brimming with glowing lights, filled with state of the art technology, and teeming with electricity or other man made creations. Roads criss-crossed the country, paths made of hard asphalt spread wide enough for rows of vehicles to traverse, vehicles of seemingly thousands of shapes and sizes and colors. Even the roads had lights, streetlamps, which lit the way when it was dark.
The only place one could go to avoid the monotonous, dull glow of artificial electricity was deep into the forest, an area so thick with leaves that even the light of the moon had trouble piercing through.
I had spent many a night there, sitting on the soft blanket of leaves and basking in the darkness.
Now, I can recognize that it may seem odd for an electricity user to so often seek to avoid electricity. However... it’s different. My electricity is natural, coming from a direct source, like lightning from a storm. The electricity here, though? It is not. It’s fake, artificial, man-made, flowing incorrectly through my veins whenever I try to use it. It’s cheap and brittle, fracturing too easily and behaving too finicky for me to use as effectively as I could use my own.
My own electricity flows smoothly, like how an eel swims through a reef, worming around and weaving precisely through the coral and rocks. It’s calm and collected, snaking across my arms with a cool confidence that always reassures. My electricity is reliable, following my directions and working with my commands, treating me both like an old friend and a general in war. It has its own personality, snarky as it may be.
To me, my electricity is alive.
Whatever they use here, it is dead.
Which is probably why it was so hard to control. I mean, with my electricity it just flowed naturally out of my core, and we worked together as a team. With this electricity, I was basically fighting against it the entire time, which is never what you want. No one wants to wrestle against the weapon you are supposed to be harnessing, trying to use against your enemies.
I hated it.
It was nothing like home.
At home… Well, the buildings were shorter. They were built of sandy stone and wood, constructed as if they were once part of the Earth itself. They were spread out liberally across the landscape, only collected together in smaller towns or farming communities. They were almost completely void of technology, absent of electricity, using candles instead of innumerable lights. The roads were dirt and cobblestone, covered in the divots of carriage wheels and the U-shaped tracks of horses, horses of seemingly thousands of sizes, shapes, and colors. At home, when the road got dark, the people didn’t rely on street lamps; they trusted the moon and the stars to light their path.
I missed it more than anything.
But, as a prince and general of war, it was my duty to learn how to harness the electricity of this strange, foreign land.
After all, we had been a hot target for attack since as long as I could remember.
Adenium is a small desert country, focused more on the arts and the natural world than on modern technological advancements. Instead of working with computer science or weapon development, our country preferred to focus more on agricultural technology and health innovations, trying to use the tools the Earth has given us to advance not only our knowledge, but also to improve our quality of life. We focus on conservation and sustainability, turning our back on modern creations like cars and screens that we believe cause more harm than good.
First and foremost, however, before any science we may still conduct, Adenium is a hub for the arts. We have deep cultural roots in music and dance, throwing seasonal festivals that include traditional performances while still encouraging the development of new works. The capital is covered in artwork, the walls filled with painted murals and windows filled with colorful glass. Tiles form beautiful and complex images on the ground, while buildings in more developed areas are designed in unique ways that catch the eye. One of our country’s biggest prides is our capital’s Plumeria library, which houses the largest collection of books in the world. It’s like a modern day library of Alexandria, except with many more precautions in place.
So, when you put together our small size and our lack of widespread use of technology, it is no wonder that Adenium is always a target for invasion. Countries all over the world have tried their hand at taking us over, seeing us as easy pickings or even, in some annoying cases, a place that needs help becoming “civilized”. It’s ridiculous, but it is the reason that we always need to be on edge.
The only reason my country has survived is because of our in-depth quirk analysis and research, as well as the intense training we put our soldiers through.
So, I ended up here.
As the third crown prince of Adenium, cherished jewel of the desert, and one of the leading generals of our country’s elite military forces, I had been sent under an alias to the world’s most renown hero school in an effort to learn how to harness the power of artificial electricity and protect my people from future threats. Denki Kaminari Raijinshuu, the beloved prince and respected soldier, became simple Denki Kaminari, the idiot of class 1-A who didn’t know how to use his quirk.
It was a big jump to make.
Gone was the desert sand I loved so much beneath my feet, those beautiful red sunsets no longer mine to see. They were replaced by concrete and grass of an unnatural green, the light of the sun pale as it fought its way through the smog of cities below it. Goodbye I had said to clean springs and twisting rivers, hello to drainage ponds and streams of muddy brown. My long, golden hair, grown out as tradition had dictated, was cut short to fit these modern trends, my intricate robes and well-worn armour replaced by coarse cloth and flimsy leather. Blue contacts covered eyes of gold, makeup caked across my skin to blot out those electric freckles famously associated with my name. No longer had I my language to speak, my music to hear, or my people to see, disconnected from my land as the stars only faintly shone through the thick, suffocating and unnatural light that constantly plagued this place.
How was I to find my path if the stars could not light the way?
Street lamps were hardly the same.
In fact, nothing here was the same. Even the classes were different, the topics on strange subjects and in a language I had just barely learned to read. I had been studying under an Adenish royal tutor since I was a child, so I was pretty well versed in subjects like history, politics, geography, and strategy. I could speak nearly a dozen languages, fight using thousands of techniques, heal a wound while still on a battlefield. I could cook all our traditional foods and sing our traditional songs, dance our traditional dances and tell our traditional tales. I read books on philosophy, studied famous pieces of art, memorized each country’s royal family, their habits and their specialties. My people trusted me to solve their problems and soothe their woes, and my family trusted me to protect their land and represent them well.
But here I was struggling with everything.
Japanese was a new language for me, so I was still getting used to listening to it, reading it, even speaking it myself. It took me far too long to read assignments and answer questions, which led to many of my tests, essays, and homework sheets being left half-finished at my own expense. Not to mention, most of my classes focused on subjects I had never studied before. I mean, of course I had studied things like history and hero laws, but they were only the things that related to my own country. Of course I knew nothing about Japan’s past, I had only lived there for a year. Of course I didn’t know the quirk and hero laws here, as in my own country they were much less strict. I mean, I was doing okay in English, and I wasn’t even doing too bad in math, but overall I was pretty much struggling.
Not to mention hero classes.
I mean, those should be fun, right? They weren’t bad at all, and with the amount of military training I’d done it should be pretty easy for me.
Well, they would have been easy if I was allowed to use my quirk the way I was used to.
But that would have defeated the purpose of me being here. Instead of pulling from the pool of electricity that resonates from my core, I was focusing on using the electricity that surrounded me here. Basically, I was pulling electricity from the buildings and devices around me that I wouldn’t have encountered at home so that in the chance a country attacked our own and we needed to go on offense, I would have a stronger advantage on their grounds. My country’s top analysts were confident that if I could learn how to manage artificial electricity by itself, I would eventually be able to merge it with my own. It would be dangerous and difficult, but if I could do it I would have the power to take down entire cities in just moments.
I wasn’t sure I wanted that type of power.
However, I would do anything to keep my people safe.
Which brought me to where I was, huddled on the ground deep in the forest outside the dorms, hidden beneath the umbrella of leaves that blocked out the ever-present lights of Mustafu. The trees rustled in the wind, the sound faint, yet loud enough to block the hum of cars and buzz of streetlights.
The noise is what bothered me the most out here.
Even when I was sitting alone in my room, it wasn’t silent. The fan was loud as the blades spun above me, the air conditioning whirring, the TV blasting from someone’s room down the hall. There were footsteps above me, below me, around me, cars honking their horns even at the latest hours of the night. While it wasn’t always quiet at home either, there was never this constant noise. Plus, even if it was noise, it wasn’t mechanical noise. It was natural noise, which plays softly on the ears.
Sometimes, when the mechanical loudness was becoming far too suffocating, I slipped out the window, zapped my way past the security system, and hid out here.
Honestly, after being at UA for a year, I felt confident enough in my abilities using artificial electricity. I was fine. More importantly, I didn’t want to be here anymore.
I wanted to go home.
As I breathed in the gentle scent of the unfamiliar trees around me, the branches and leaves of small plants caressing my ankles and legs, I couldn’t help but think of my country, of my people, of my family.
I hadn’t been able to see my family for a long time.
The royal family was a large one, made of generations and generations of kings and queens and generals and advisors. However, there are many things that make my family different from the other monarchies in the world. First, the people can vote us out of office at any time. Basically, if the citizens don’t feel like my family is doing a good job, they can come together and essentially eject us from the castle. From there the royal parliament rules until the people can conduct a democratic election to elect a new leader or family to rule. However, this hasn’t happened for hundreds of years, as the last time this happened my family was voted into royalty.
Second, my family is largely public. Essentially, while a lot of royal families keep themselves separate from the common people, my family is largely a part of their lives. I grew up playing with the kids in town, not just rich nobles or parliament children. A large number of my lessons were taught to me by local experts, not by a royal specialist. When the town had a problem, someone in my family would go themselves to help and fix it. There is rarely a day when those outside the castle don’t see us. My family lives on the belief that we are just like those outside of royalty, as we all are humans who will live and die and return to the stars, just that they entrusted us with the ruling of their nation. We rule because of them, and for them, and hence need to know them and for them to know us.
Third, the royal family only earns what the people donate to us. While of course we have taxes, nearly all the money collected from there goes back into the country. The royal salary only goes to the current leader, king or queen or monarch, which is up to them to split amongst their family, and it is only as much as the current salary of our country’s teachers. My family believes that teachers, as those who shape the next generation, are incredibly important and essential, and we believe that their job is perhaps the most important out of anyone’s. We collectively only get as much as one teacher would get in order to remind us of their importance and of our position. Anything else we earn is donated by the people. In our history books, a bad period of ruling is defined by a poor royal family, as they must have failed the citizens. It is also commonplace for the royal family to donate excess wealth back into the community, which is what my family has been doing for the last three generations.
Lastly, the crown doesn’t always go to the first-born of the family. Basically, it can get passed down the line. If my oldest sibling doesn’t want the crown, it goes to my second-oldest sibling. If they don’t want the crown, it goes to my third-oldest sibling. The crown keeps making it’s way down the line until someone claims it or there are no more children, in which case the country will hold an election for a new leader and royal family. If someone did claim the crown and then they die without children, the process starts over again with the oldest surviving sibling. Luckily, my oldest sibling, my brother Barachiel, has already claimed the crown for the future of our country. Once my father dies or retires, the country will be under his rule.
Right now, my family is made up of my father, the king, my eldest brother Barachiel, the king-in-training, his twin sister Laureline, his introverted royal advisor who did not want the crown, my older sister Andromeda, the royal mad scientist and “mad knight of the sunrise” (Look, I know that sounds bad, but she’s actually one of my most popular siblings) Me, a general and jewel of the desert, my younger siblings Edaline, Adelaide, and Fennix, the triplets, my younger sister Sasha, the angel, and the youngest child Cordelia, the miracle baby. My father, Laxus, has his brother and my uncle Ramses as his advisor. My aunt Bast is the head of our military operations, and her sister Loreli is currently the head of Plumeria library. My mother, Sakura, died in childbirth when I was 5. My grandfather Jethro basically raised me after that point, as I was too young to be left alone and thought I was too old to be left with a nursemaid and the babies.
Everyone always says I remind them of my mother.
Hence why I ended up as the family jewel. The position of the Adenium jewel, or the jewel of the desert, is the second most important role in the royal family behind the actual ruler. There isn’t always one. Basically, the jewel is the person, usually in the royal family but not always, who has inspired the people the most, making them feel safe and giving them hope for the future. Essentially, the Adenium jewel is the person the citizens elect as their main representative across all matters, as well as the person in whom the people see the future. They are the most trusted member of the royal family, the person the citizens can go to, and the person they treasure the most. The jewel represents hope, and the Adenium jewel is the person the people believe will shape the future.
The last jewel of the desert was my mother, the kind Queen of Adenium.
The new jewel is me.
I am honored that the people have so much trust in me, and I plan on doing everything in my power to keep them safe and happy, as well as to shape a better future. They are why I am here.
Though, at that point, I didn’t know if I was up for the task.
And as the darkness of the forest around me began to lighten as the first rays of sunrise flitted through the leaves, I couldn’t help the sinking feeling in my chest, the gut feeling in my stomach that something was about to go wrong.