Hope is Unbreakable

Late March, 2019 — Moscow, Russia With heavy steps, a teenage boy reluctantly exited a Metro station somewhere on the northwest of Moscow and started to thread along the street. His goal was an unassuming building - the Eurasian branch of Speedwagon Foundation, also acting as a museum. The boy was named Yuri Volkov, and he was given a history assignment for his class: select a museum from the list, go there, write about the exhibits. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not if you wait on the museum selection until the very last minute, so everything else is already picked. So now Yuri had to go literally to the opposite side of the Russian capital for his assignment, muttering under his breath about why did the teachers do this when the state exams are just 2 months away, and students should rather be preparing for them. The spring hasn’t fully arrived in Moscow yet — chilly wind was biting at his face, and the sidewalks were lined with the kind of grey-black snow that refused to melt. He turned the final corner and came to a stop. It was immediately obvious that something was wrong. Tape stretched across the front gate. Police cars and ambulances were parked nearby, their lights flashing but sirens turned off. A couple of officers stood guarding the front entrance. Medics brought out a black plastic wrapped body on a stretcher. Something bad definitely happened here. "You've got to be kidding me." He stood there a minute, his breath visible in the cold air. No one looked in his direction. Yuri considered asking one of the officers about what happened, but something told him not to. It didn’t matter really, as there was no way in hell anyone would let him in. So, disappointed and mildly shocked, he turned around and started walking home.

***

My mood was already down the drain. I’d blown my last option for the assignment and will probably get a bad grade now. As I was walking back through the half-frozen slush and planning about how I would have to search everything up on the internet for the assignment, perhaps finding a list of exhibits this museum had and just making something up that would let me pass, a figure brushed past me. It was too late when I realized that he bumped into me on purpose. And by then, my phone was already gone. “Hey!” I spun around just in time to see the guy — his hoodie pulled low, face or even hair impossible to see — running down the street. I sighed in irritation. The guy didn’t even glance back at me as he ran away, but then he tripped. He didn’t stumble over the curb or misstep on the ice. No, his foot slammed into a jagged rock that laid on the pavement like it had been waiting for him. He hit the ground hard, with a loud thud. My phone slid out of his hand and across the icy sidewalk. I walked up in silence, picked it up, and looked at the guy. He groaned, face down. He could barely move, so I guessed the impact was pretty hard. I glanced at the rock, smiling at myself for a job well done. I turned around and kept walking, inspecting my phone on the way. Thankfully the impact only damaged the phonecase, so I simply stuffed it back in my pocket. The streets were mostly empty, so I was sure nobody saw what happened here. Except that wasn’t the case. At the entrance to the Speedwagon Foundation building, a tall man in a long white coat was speaking to one of the police officers. He didn’t see the scene entirely, only caught a flash of purple with his side vision. The man knew something was up, but he didn’t have time to investigate this. He focused on the conversation with the officer. As the policeman finished explaining what brief details he had, the man nodded and went into the building.

***

Of course, the tall man was none other than Jotaro Kujo himself. As Jotaro walked into the restricted research center of the building, the scale of the attack became apparent. Dead bodies of researchers and staff were scattered all over the place, blood stains and warped metal everywhere. The bodies were lying in unnatural positions — slumped over desks, their bones crushed with broken filing cabinets, documents scattered everywhere, pinned to the floor with warped metal rails. One guy even was buried under a vending machine, its metallic frame partially melted. The variety of wounds on the corpses also hinted at the supernaturalness of the attack: deep cuts, punctures, decapitation. The stuff that’s very hard to do so quickly and precisely without an alarm being raised. "This is the work of a Stand user for sure. One that can manipulate metal. It might not be physically strong itself, judging by the lack of bruises and other punching injuries, or the user wanted to only use their Stand’s ability for whatever reason." Jotaro muttered, examining a stairwell where three researchers lay frozen in death. Their fingers were fused into the railing, skin and steel mended together. There were no signs of struggle. Poor researchers and museum staff were regular people and didn’t have any idea what was happening. Most of them even had zero knowledge about Stands. The attacker left no other evidence that could lead to their identity. All cameras were destroyed completely, and the security room’s storage drives were melted completely. Jotaro entered the containment room at the heart of the archive. The reinforced glass and metal display that held a single, ancient artifact was now broken. The metal frame was once again melted, and the remaining glass sheets just slid down to the floor, not being held together by anything anymore. The Stand Arrow was gone. The artifact capable of awakening special ability in those worthy enough, it was found in Central Russia just a few days ago, with Jotaro taking the earliest plane he could to retrieve it and bring it to safety. Yet someone with bad intentions has already found out about it. And now it was in their hands. [Star Platinum] flickered into view for just a second, analyzing the scene. But there was nothing more to see here. Apart from the lack of corpses, the room and the damage had no difference to other metallic objects. Jotaro lingered in the room for another moment, then left. "Whoever took this arrow will definitely use it," He said quietly, eyes narrowing. "Until then, we won’t know who that was."

***

I tugged my coat tighter as another chilly breeze blew against me. “Global warming my ass…” I muttered. My mind was wandering right now. I preferred to imagine different scenarios about what could have happened at the museum rather than thinking about what to do with my assignment. I glanced at the screen of my phone once again to double check if it still worked — turns out it was a little scratched too, but nothing major. My reflection stared back at me from the dark glass. Short dark brown hair, pale skin due to lack of sunlight, and a pair of sharp blue eyes that always looked more serious than I felt. I wasn’t flashy. Just a 16 year old boy in a fur-lined coat, walking home through dirty snow, blending in with the city like I always did. And that was fine by me. I didn’t mind the way I looked. Never saw a reason to change it. When I got back to my apartment building, I almost forgot to check the mailbox. Finding the one with my apartment number was easy. First box in the third row, I’ve long since memorized that. A big envelope was jutting out of it, impossible to miss. The envelope had a massive black and white logo on it, a logo I saw for the first time. Crown on the top of the logo, it was shaped like a shield with a checkered pattern in the middle, with a pen and what I guessed was ink streak inside of the shield. And to top it off there were words “high school” in all caps written underneath the shield. The back of the envelope grabbed my attention completely. It had Japanese characters, with English letters underneath, most likely a translation. The writing read “Hope’s Peak Academy”, whatever it was. The weirdest thing however, was that the letter was addressed to me. Not my parents, me. I raised an eyebrow and grabbed the envelope, before taking the elevator to the 4th floor, where my apartment was. There I greeted my older sister, who has returned from her University studies, and opened the letter once in my room. The letter was written in both English and Japanese: "Dear Yuri Volkov, You have been selected for enrollment in the International Branch of Hope’s Peak Academy Reserve Course. In this letter, you will find your plane tickets, as well as a list of documents you need to take with you. Accommodation will be provided to you on the Hope’s Peak grounds. Further instructions and a guide will be given to you once you arrive." I blinked. “What the hell is a Hope’s Peak?” I took a photo of the Japanese part of the letter with my phone, and put it into an auto translator. The result was roughly the same as the English part of it, so I read it again aloud this time, to make sure I understood it correctly. Attached to the letter was a boarding pass. A flight from Sheremetyevo to Narita. My name on it. Departure in two weeks from now. Before doing anything, I typed the booking number into the airline’s website, to see if it was valid. It sure was. The webpage proudly showed the flight booking with my credentials in it. With that out of the way, I at least knew the flight was real, so I started researching into this Hope’s Peak Academy. I didn’t want to tell anyone I got invited to some sick foreign school only for it to turn out fake. What I found was quite interesting. Hope’s Peak is some kind of an elite school in Japan founded with the goal to nurture the most talented youth. Apparently, everyone who studied there eventually turned out to be extremely famous, and very proficient in a specific area. They call their students “The Ultimates”. The catch was that Ultimates studied in the Main Course, and to get there you already had to be successful in the field you wanted. The newly opened Reserve Course however seemed to be a way for “regular” people to get a taste of the academy and perhaps earn a chance to promote to other Ultimates, though in the short time the Reserve Course was open, there were no cases of such promotion yet, at least none that I could find. Now, why would an elite academy let regular people study on its grounds? Well, they don’t just let anyone do that. The entrance fee is extremely high, and I guessed that the opening of the International Branch was their way to get overseas parents to burn their money too. I highly doubted they would let even the most prominent foreigners into the Main Course. The weirdest thing was, I couldn't find anywhere about how someone could apply to join the International Branch. They did translate their website to English due to the opening of it, but there was no mention of an application procedure anywhere. “So I got randomly rolled?” I questioned. So far, everything pointed at this. I looked at the forums, but found nothing interesting there. Just a bunch of complaints about the Reserve Course price and how “The school leeches off the people to fund the Ultimates”. Posts such as this are honestly understandable, so I didn't even think it was worth scrolling through them. And, of course, the contacts listed on the website mirrored those on my letter perfectly. Since I had two weeks to make a decision, realistically more like a week, since I would have to pack up in case I decided to go, I thought it would be best to not rush things and maybe research some more when I get the time.

***

Yeah, this plan lasted about a day, because my school got notified, and the principal obviously notified my parents. They were happy. Very happy in fact. They congratulated me, asked me if I knew and didn’t tell them, to which I had to lie that I only just found out together with them. My older sister gave me a big hug, though I was sure she was very jealous of me. Studying in Japan was her dream, and now I was the one who would be able to do that instead. My parents wanted to contact my aunt who frequented Japan so I could maybe live at her place in a more familial environment instead of the school's dorms, but she was currently in Italy and didn’t know when she would return to Japan, so this idea was scratched. Well, at least now I knew for sure the invite was real. And to be honest, I was happy too, and I honestly doubt there would be many people who wouldn’t be happy in my place. Sure enough, two weeks later, I boarded the plane to Tokyo, eager to see what this Hope's Peak Academy had to offer.

***

Snow never really melts in this part of Russia. Inside a decommissioned Soviet bunker — buried beneath decades of secrecy and meters of ground — two figures stood facing each other in front of a table. One was a general. Old, but not old enough for retirement. The other was a girl. Teenage. Lean. She wore a military vest over her school uniform, a weird combination for sure. She had short black hair. Her freckled face was blank and emotionless. In the general’s hands was a cloth-wrapped item — long, thin, and with a shiny golden tipped peeking out. It was THE arrow. The girl reached below the table and produced a simple black case. Opening it, she revealed bundles of cash. Once the general nodded, the girl closed the case and exchanged it for the arrow. “Yes, I have the arrow now.” The girl told someone on the phone once the general left. “We can now find a test subject, although the general said the arrow will choose the person itself, whatever that means…”