[attr="class","header2"]APPEARANCE

[attr="class","body"]
An audible click followed by the crackle of static echoed through the fairly empty room. There was nothing in here except a projector hooked to an older looking computer, and a chair. On the opposite side of the room a video crackled to life. A japanese man with a smile that could light up a room. He had hair of dark pink and white swirled together and after a moment or two of playing with the camera he nodded, "There we go." He turned the camera around to focus on a young girl with pastel pink hair sitting at a table in a garden, scribbling on a piece of paper. In the background it sounded like explosions were happened every few moments, plumes of smoke were visible over the gardens fence.

"A completely innocent creature. Born in a time when the world has barely scraped the surface of these...quirks. You'd think that when given superhuman abilities, the world would change for the better. And maybe it will. There's just as much good as there is bad and the government has no clue how to handle it all---"

"Papa! Come look at my picture..." The young girl said, waving an arm at his camera, a series of moving tattoo's swirled on the skin of her arm. The man behind the camera sighed and the picture clicked off leaving the screen black for several long moments. After about thirty seconds it came back on. The man was sitting in a chair with the young girl sleeping in his lap. He looked exhausted, behind him the telltale flickering of flames could be seen though no fire was visible.

"This is not the world I wanted to raise her in. Without a mother, without a place to grow up safely. The world is in flames. But, I think...I've found a way to save her. A way to make sure that she gets her chance to light up the world." He looked to the side where a blackened room sat, a series of wires leading into it.

"A way to preserve her. Until a better future. The only thing is that in doing so, I'll never see her again. But what's missing out on her life, in exchange for making sure she gets a chance at a life?" The man reached up, running his hand over the hair of the sleeping girl. THe man picked up a remote and pointed it at the screen which flickered and went black again.

When it came back, the young girl was sitting on a padded seat. Several wires and IV tubes were attached all over her body. A series of wires protruded from her back as if they'd been attached to her spine. The girl was flexing her fingers a little, "I...It hurts Papa." The man came into view of the camera holding what looked like a helmet except it looked like it would enclose someones head fully. No visor. No anything.

The man crouched down and looked at her, "I know sweetie. But the pain will go away soon. I promise when you wake up after our little test here, you'll be free from the pain and be allowed to play all day ok?" The girl nodded, putting on a rather brave face and leaning back. The man smiled and lifted the helmet, "Now. Deep breaths and relax." He placed the steel helmet over her head and pressed several buttons on the interface built into the side of it before attaching several tubes and wires to the back.

He pressed one more button and the screen went black, flickering back to life with the camera sideways and the man standing over the chair, now with a protective perspex casing around it. The chair was hooked to hundreds of machines in the room as the man ran his fingers over the glass, his daughter laying there, lost in the world the machines had pulled her into, "I love you my Daughter. When you wake, know that I love you. Know that this was done only because I love you."

An explosion was heard and the whole room seemed to shake. A snake of shadow swirled into life around the mans right arm while a snake of light did the same on his left, "Time to make sure you survive." He leaned down and turned off the camera one last time which a sharp squeal.

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29 Years Later

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In the countryside there was a monument that had stood for forty years. The statue of a young girl who looked completely at peace as she reached towards the sky. The monument had no words. Nobody knew of it's origin. Only that people came far and wide to admire the long stretching fields of flowers that surrounded it. A great battle had been fought here many years ago, a small village had been levelled and lost to time. Now reduced to no more than this monument and the flowered fields. Some said the flowers each represented one of the souls lost in that battle during the vigilante era years ago. Beauty to represent the dead.

But the truth of the place was deeper than that. Deeper of course meaning underground. Fifty feet below the monument in a chamber lit only by the flickering lights of hundred of machines. The hiss of air exchangers, the beeping of monitors and...the sound of a drop of water dribbling endlessly from a small crack in the ceiling. The room had been designed to last decades. But much like anything in the world, Mother nature had worked her tendrils into the space. Moisture and roots had long since caused a hairline crack in the roof of the two foot cement chamber. A single drop of water falling endlessly upon a series of cordage leading to one of the many machines.

It took years, but eventually that drop had made it's way through the cord. Had set off a series of failsafe's and for the first time in forty plus years, the voice of the five year old girl came from her lips. The helmet on her head crumbled away and she was left shivering on the strange chair as light flooded the room and red lights and alarms flashed.

"P...Papa?!" Came her voice, hoarse from years of not being used. Panic set in quickly as she yanked herself from the chair, needles tore from skin, metal housings popped from her spine and while the pain was excruciating the adrenaline injected from the machines to wake her kept her going. She didn't remember much from that day. Somehow she'd made it to the steel doors that slid open with a hiss, somehow made it up the stairs as the second set of doors pushed open, through years of earth and roots, forcing themselves open and letting daylight rush in with a loud 'Whoosh'.

She never forgot the smell of those flowers for the first time. That first breath of air in many many years.

The place was a tourist attraction, so when a girl, covered in blood with wires hanging off every inch of her body stumbled through the fields of flowers, staining them red, was seen. Things went into motion quickly. Police were called, Heroes arrived and she was whisked off to a world completely unlike her own, a world nearly three decades into her future.

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2084 - Present

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2084. That was the year that I woke. The year I realized everything I'd ever known when I went to sleep was gone. No father to speak of, No home, No family. Only an endless series of scientific studies from the time I woke at six years old until I was ten and finally injected into the foster care system after spending five years as a lab rat. Now, in Japan. It's not often that children in foster care get adopted and I wasn't the most appealing case given the lack of medical records, and my very depressed personality even at ten years old. But unlike many, I got lucky.

Keiko Hayashi. A single mother, who wasn't able to have children. She'd taken me in. Taken the lost little girl and given her a home and it's where I spent my life right up until the day I decided to attend UAU. If it wasn't for her and her family, I'd have been no better than the other lost children. She made me the woman I am today and while I carry her name, the one I was given by the doctors when I was first discovered has stuck more. My name is May Hayashi. Or as everyone calls me, May Twenty-First, the day I woke and joined this strange new world.