In an open field near a few rugged mountains, a man lay on the ground, gasping for air. His chest rose and fell as he stared up at the sky, his left hand glowing with a faint pink hue. Light particles drifted from his fingertips, disappearing into the breeze.
"My journey…"
He muttered between short, shaky breaths, clenching his glowing fist as the pinkish hue spread across his entire body like smoke seeping through skin.
"…is finally…"
He smiled. Slowly, he brought his fist to his forehead, eyes fluttering shut as a peaceful smile formed on his lips, even as his body began to fade.
"…ending."
And just like that, he vanished. His body dissolved into light, leaving behind only silence and darkness.
…
"Huh?"
A teenage boy opened his eyes slowly, tears already tracing down his cheeks.
"I'm crying again…" he whispered, touching the wetness on his face. He wiped the tears away, then sat up on his futon with a tired sigh.
"What time is it…?"
He glanced at the alarm clock beside him. Red numbers flashed across the screen.
4:49.
"Still early, huh…"
He didn't bother trying to fall back asleep. Even if his body begged for rest, the dream had already taken it from him.
For the past ten years, every time he closed his eyes, that dream returned. The same man, the same dream, revealing that man's journey.
But it never felt like a dream.
It felt like… another life.
A long, winding journey through different worlds. A man drifting from one place to another, a passerby hero with no place to return to.
Those dreams always felt real. Uncomfortably real.
The man's name was Kadoya Tsukasa, a traveler who crossed into other worlds, each one home to its own heroes. He walked among them, befriending them and gaining their powers, while in some, he destroyed them.
But Tsukasa's journey wasn't his own. It was a recollection of everyone else's.
And somehow, he felt like he'd lived through all of it.
But he wasn't Tsukasa.
His name was Tsutsumi Ryoko. Just a regular fourteen-year-old boy.
Not some immortal, world-hopping warrior. He is just a kid.
Even their appearance doesn't match. The man has black hair and eyes. While he has dark-purple, almost black with mangeta color hair, and his eyes is a shade of purple.
He glanced down at his stomach, where something familiar wrapped around him, a white belt.
The only thing he and Tsukasa shared.
The man's belt was a transformation device, something that let him become a masked hero. Tsutsumi Ryoko's belt… was different.
It was part of him.
Not something he could remove. Not something he asked for. It had been there ever since his quirk awakened.
"I'm tired…" Tsutsumi muttered, resting a hand on the belt fused to his waist.
In this world, quirks were the norm. Over 80% of the population had some supernatural ability. People born without quirks were becoming rarer by the year.
Tsutsumi Ryoko was one of the "lucky" ones, born with a mutant-type quirk. But his quirk wasn't flashy or powerful. It didn't let him fly or shoot fire. It just gave him… a belt.
It looked cool, sure. But it didn't do anything.
He remembered what the man in his dream did, how Tsukasa opened a curtain of aurora, stepping into another world like it was second nature. How every new world gifted him powers, new identities, new roles to play.
"…I wonder," Tsutsumi murmured.
He raised his left hand and waved it, slowly.
Nothing happened.
"Yeah, of course not." He lowered his arm with a sigh. "It's just a dream…"
Then, a shimmer passed from the left. A swirling aurora swept across the room, wrapping around him in a flash of iridescent light.
And everything changed.
Tsutsumi Ryoko blinked.
He looked around and immediately realized, this wasn't his bedroom.
He was sitting on the ground, dressed in strange, unfamiliar clothing and equipment.
A plain white shirt clung to his chest. Blue pants tucked neatly into knee-length boots. Leather straps wrapped tightly around his body, securing what looked like some sort of mechanical gear to his hips and back.
"What the hell…?"
He stared at his hands, both gripping handlebars, like motorcycle grips. Tubes ran from them to a device strapped to his lower back. On each side were blade holders attached to a complex metallic rig.
A sudden shout snapped him out of his confusion.
"What are you standing there for, solider!?"
He turned toward the voice, another man, wearing the same gear, just fired two grappling hooks from his hips and launched himself into the sky toward a nearby town.
From Tsutsumi's position, he saw crowds of civilians fleeing in terror.
Behind them, massive, naked humanoid creatures, between 5 to 10 meters tall, lumbered toward the town. Featureless below the waist. Human eyes. Wide, twisted smiles.
"...The world-traveling thing is actually real?" Tsutsumi muttered, his voice tight.
He was shocked, but he couldn't afford to freeze.
His eyes locked on the rooftops ahead. On instinct, he gripped the handlebars and fired his hooks. The cables embedded into a rooftop, and his body jerked forward, propelled through the air.
Shock flashed across his face, but he moved. So naturally. Like he'd used this gear all his life. He soared from rooftop to rooftop, sliding across tiles, zipping through narrow alleys, instinct guiding every move.
Swinging through a crumbling alleyway, he spotted a crying girl kneeling on some debris, next to a few corpses, seconds away from being crushed by a 7-meter Titan's foot. Without thinking, Tsutsumi twisted mid-air, swung down, snatched her up, and launched another hook to escape just in time.
They landed hard. His feet hit the stone ground, his knees buckling slightly. He gently set the girl down.
"Follow the others. Run. Don't look back."
She nodded shakily and ran off.
And Tsutsumi jumped back into the chaos.
He didn't know where he was, or why. For ten years, he was just a boy born with a useless quirk. A boy chasing shadows, trying to uncover the disappearance of his mother.
Now he was in a nightmare world where giant humans devoured people like cattle.
He was afraid. Horrified, even. But he couldn't stand still. Something in his gut demanded he move.
So he did.
His lungs burned. Muscles ached. But he didn't stop; it was like a voice inside him telling him to keep pushing. To keep moving forward and do the right think.
He launched from another tower and landed just in time to block two children who were running toward the chaos instead of away.
"Hey! What are you doing? Get out of here!"
They didn't answer. Their eyes were locked on a crumbling house nearby, where a woman lay trapped beneath splintered beams and rubble.
"Mom!" the boy shouted and ran straight past him.
"Eren!" The woman shouted back, seeing her son running toward her.
Tsutsumi turned sharply as the boy, Eren, knelt beside the woman, desperately trying to lift the debris. A girl with a red scarf joined him.
"Kid, it's no use! You can't-"
He froze mid-sentence. All three of them looked up. A towering Titan loomed over the house, staring down at them with a wide, vacant smile.
"Hurry, Mikasa!" Eren yelled, straining with his tiny arms.
"I'm trying!" she cried, tugging with everything she had.
"Eren, take Mikasa and run!" the mother cried out. Her voice cracked with urgency.
"I don't want to run! Get up already!" the boy pleaded trying to lift the wooden beam up with his small hands.
"My legs are crushed," she said, eyes beginning to tremble. "Even if I get out… I can't run."
Her gaze shifted to Tsutsumi. "Please… take my children. Get them out of here."
Tsutsumi opened his mouth, but Eren shouted over her.
"I'll run away carrying you!"
"Why don't you ever listen to me!?" she screamed, tears falling freely. "At least listen to my final request!"
Tsutsumi stared, paralyzed. He wasn't a pro hero. He wasn't trained for this. He was just a teen who stumbled into the wrong world.
But he saw something familiar in this scene. His mother, once a Pro Hero, vanished without a trace. He never gave up on searching for her despite knowing nothing. Now, this boy stood here, refusing to leave his mother behind.
Tsutsumi bit his lip. "Both of you, grab her."
The children turned toward him, confused.
"I'll try to lift the beam. When I do, you pull her out as fast as possible. Got it!?"
"Right!" Eren shouted first, grabbing his mother's arm. Mikasa followed, her grip steady.
Tsutsumi ripped off one of the leather straps on his waist and looped it tightly around the main support beam. The mother protested, but he ignored her.
He pressed his shoulder against the rubble. The Titan was almost on top of them.
Then, in a surge of reckless stupidity or bravery, Tsutsumi fired his hooks directly at the Titan.
The gas-powered burst rocketed him toward it, while he held onto the wooden beam, trying to use the force to lift it up, the mechanism screaming as smoke erupted from the gear. Using the tension of the gear to lift the beam just enough.
The children pulled, and the woman was freed. They all stumbled back, gasping, but there was no time to breathe. The Titan's foot swatted the rig loose. And Tsutsumi was flung through the air, straight into its open mouth.
The woman and her children watched in horror. Tsutsumi twisted in midair, just enough to meet their gaze.
His face was calm yet determined.
His voice, steady. "Fight on, for the sake of your ideals."
And the Titan's jaws closed.
Back in his room, an aurora curtain tore open across the air, and Tsutsumi's body came flying out of it.
He slammed into the closet door, knocking it wide open as a mountain of clothes collapsed onto him, burying him completely.
"I live!" Tsutsumi burst out from the pile, gasping for air, his heart still pounding wildly in his chest.
He exhaled hard and stumbled to his feet, muscles aching, lungs still burning. His hands trembled slightly as he looked down at himself. He was back in his casual clothes, the same ones he wore to bed.
And yet, the pain in his body told a different story.
He slowly sat down, trying to steady his breath.
That's when he noticed them. Two cards had appeared in his hand, smooth, glossy, and unfamiliar.
Attack Ride: Vertical Maneuvering Gear
Attack Ride: Ackerman Awakening
Tsutsumi Ryoko stared at them, wide-eyed.
They weren't from any dream he'd had before, but something about them felt connected. He remembered Kadoya Tsukasa. In those dreams, Tsukasa could gain the powers of other heroes by forming bonds or by destroying them.
"So this is... the real power of my quirk?" he murmured, lowering the cards slowly.
His eyes drifted to the alarm clock.
6:37.
Time had moved on, and he was back in his world. But nothing felt the same.
Tsutsumi's gaze dropped to the belt on his waist, still stuck to him like always. His fingers hovered over the center of the device. Just like in the dreams, it shifted and clicked open, revealing a slot perfectly sized for a card.
He took a breath and slid one in.
Attack Ride: Ackerman Awakening
The belt snapped shut.
A sharp pain lanced through his skull. Tsutsumi staggered, nearly collapsing as the card vanished in a burst of data-like light. He clutched his head, gritting his teeth.
"This is…" he gasped.
Flashes of memory not his own rushed through his mind.
As the combined battle experience from every single Ackerman that came before him crashed into his head, nearly making him pass out from the overload of information, before they quickly faded.
Tsutsumi fell back against the wall, his breathing ragged.
After what happened, he decided it would be better to stay in bed than to go to school; his brain was still ringing loudly from the overload he had just experienced.
His doorbell rang, but Tsutsumi made no effort to get up and go open the door; his head was still hurting, and he was afraid that this pain would cause him to accidentally use the Aurora Curtain and send himself and everyone else to another world.
Throughout the year, when children awakened a powerful quirk, it could sometimes spiral out of control. Some awakenings had been so dangerous that pro heroes were forced to respond in droves just to contain one kid's raw power.
The ringing doorbell stopped, and Tsutsumi let out a sigh of relief before the window of his room suddenly opened from the other side.
"Ryo! Get your lazy ass up!"
His gaze snapped toward the voice.
Leaning halfway through the window was a petite girl with fair skin, sharp onyx eyes framed by long lower lashes and short, straight brows. Her chin-length purple hair had an uneven fringe, with two distinct soundwave-like reflections in the strands.
She wore a standard white sailor uniform, simple but neat.
But the most noticeable feature is the plug-shaped earphone jacks dangling from her earlobes.
This tomboy was Tsutsumi Ryoko's next-door neighbor and childhood friend, Jiro Kyoka.