Jack sat on a chair while the nurses in front of him prepared a few needles. He was about to undergo something all 15-year-olds wished to undergo in the current year of 2044; ESP Awakening.

Due to leaps and bounds in both Genetic Modification, Neuro-sciences, and General Medicine, Humans were able to take a step forward in Evolution and become Espers.

Sadly, not everybody could take this step. If you were too young you wouldn't awaken to your fullest potential and if you were too old you wouldn't awaken at all. After a few years of test trials among all ages, the researchers concluded that the age of 15 was the optimal age to undergo the awakening procedure.

Jack looked at the needles the Nurses were filling up and thought back to his lessons in school about the magical liquid which spurred on the Human Race.

It was called Genetic Awakening Liquid or Geno-Liquid for short. It entered the body for multiple needles and flowed around the body awakening any latent potential it had. The effects were different for everyone but it commonly did a few things such as: bring about an increase in body strength, reflexes and speed, rid the body of any hidden injuries or illnesses and finally change the hair and eye color of the individual.

Jack Nakamura was most happy about the last part of what it commonly changes. He was half-Japanese and half-English but unlike his English mother who had gorgeous blonde hair and blue eyes, he had plain, even to the point of dull-looking black hair and eyes.

It may seem like a silly wish when he was about to literally gain superpowers but he wished to stand out, to be able to show off and he just couldn't imagine a plain looking guy like him doing that.

If anyone who knew him heard him refer to himself as plain looking, they'd slap him and tell him to fuck off.

Despite his plain black hair and eyes, Jack was incredibly handsome having both sharp, masculine and noble features made him seem like some kind of warrior prince. Along with his tall height and muscular physique, Jack was a certified lady killer.

'Hmm...I'm pretty glad I passed that last exam, I wasn't quite sure I'd be picked with who I was up against...I heard she got picked for the awakening as well anyway.'

A tall, curvy figure appeared in Jack's head. The girls light brown hair and green eyes seemed to be the perfect match for each other with amplified her already staggering beauty. This was his rival, Aya Takahashi, a child prodigy from a family of Espers who excelled and overcame anything she did.

Well, until she met Jack.

He beat her in sports, exams, popularity, you name it and she challenged Jack to it and lost miserably. After a while, she started to 'hate' him and he 'started' to love her and they constantly had back and forth 'arguments' with Jack always being love-struck with her and Aya always shutting him down.

Jack was content with his relationship with her despite her Tsundere-like attitude but when it came for both of them to undergo the most stressful part for any teenager's life nowadays, Jack couldn't hold back and fully ran ahead and 100% the exam to be allowed to awaken.

Jack sighed when he thought about how he thoroughly crushed her in the exams, regret seeming to pour out of his orifices.

These tests were put in place because while everyone and anyone could awaken, Geno-Liquid cost a hell of a lot of money to make, so the Governments of the world implemented a very complex exam into the end of person's last year in middle school to make sure they would only pick the best of the best.

The exams had a few different parts to it. There were tons of mental exams taken, along with subject exams to test a person's mental abilities faculties. Then there was a physical exam to see if the person was physically the best they could be so the Geno-Liquid could improve them further than a normal human with average physical prowess. After that, they would undergo some other simple tests to see their willpower and emotional and social intelligence.

Jack, like usual, excelled in all his tests but unlike usual, he took them all incredibly seriously and in the process shocked everyone watching till their hands were shaking.

He 100% all the exam papers and showed his slightly past peak-human physical condition in the physical exams and showed his shocking charisma and indomitable willpower in the last exams.

Even though Aya was just like him, she was shocked by his serious attitude and the way he brushed her off. She felt like she'd lost something when Jack looked at her blankly and didn't have any sort of his usual joy in his eyes.

When she confronted him with the question of "Why are you trying so hard?" Jack looked at her and simply said:

"Because I can't afford to lose this chance."

Any more questions about why he couldn't lose the chance were ignored. Only Jack knew that he wanted to leave behind his 'plain' looks but at the same time, he also knew that was a cover reason. He truly didn't care about his hair and eye color being plain, it reminded him of his dad.

The real reason was that his family was falling apart after the death of his dad and he needed to gain enough strength to pull his family together again while also securing a high-paying job which any Esper can gain easily.

Merely 2 years before, Jack was quite carefree. While he was still a prodigy that made his parents proud, he didn't take things seriously very much but he wasn't too over the top. His dad was an office worker who worked his ass off to supply his family with what they wanted and to keep a roof over their heads, while his mom was just an ordinary house wife. Life was good.

And this carried on until the terrible day his dad came down with a weird illness.

The symptoms were negligible at first; Slightly lethargic behavior, sensitive eyes and slight memory loss about minor things about where he misplaced his keys or whether he'd left the oven on.

But as time went on he started to lose function of his limbs but tried to keep it a secret while secretly going to the doctors to see what was happening to his body. It didn't take long for Jack's mom to find out as his dad fell down the stairs and got pretty beat up by the fall and when his mom rushed up to him, all he was muttering was 'I can't feel my legs' and 'I'm sorry...!'.

After that night, his dad told his mom everything causing her to break down in fear of what was happening to her most beloved husband.

Both Jack's parents decided to keep it a secret from both Jack and his two elder sisters in fear they might do something drastic. Luckily for them, the constant numbness his dad would feel fluctuated quite a bit so there were periods where he was completely fine but behind closed doors, his father was struggling with a body which was slowly shutting itself off.

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To add to the trauma, he kept having extremely intense headaches which felt like someone had taken a hammer to head over and over again.

His condition deteriorated until finally, Jack and his older sister May figured out what was going on.

Elizabeth and Daichi Nakamura had been blessed with 3 prodigy children. The oldest, Mikasa, was an incredibly talented fighter and slightly above average in intelligence. Her body was strong and so was her mind, she seemed like some kind of reincarnated martial arts master when she fought. She was energetic, cheerful and kind to everyone around her. She was the kind of older sister who doted heavily of her younger siblings.

The second oldest, May, was the complete opposite in terms of her abilities because instead of being physically gifted she was immensely intelligent. She was considered a genius of all subjects and only too a few days to master any subject to the high school level. Her genius-level intellect was to the point where there wasn't any point in her going to school other than to do exams because all she'd do was sleep. She was gentle, calm and seemed like a motherly kind of older sister.

Despite this, she was quite lazy because of her brain power taking up quite a lot of energy.

Both of these girls awakened as Espers and were shockingly talented in ESP training. But despite their prodigy like abilities, they were outshone by their little brothers'.

Jack was like a mixture of both his older sisters while being even more of a monstrous prodigy. He was both mentally and physically gifted and excelled at anything he did. This lead to him being carefree, confident and a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. However, he never developed any kind of arrogant behavior and was kind to everyone regardless of their abilities.

He learned subjects off of his older sister May and martial arts and fighting off of his older sister Mikasa, rocketing him forward but despite this, he never tried too hard at anything like previously said.

But when he stared at his dad in a hospital bed, his carefree appearance was nowhere to be seen. When he saw his crying and screaming mother, clutching at his father's comatose body, his happy-go-lucky attitude was gone. And as he saw his usually lively expression wearing sisters looking blankly at their father like he was, he felt his heart ache with pain.

After this day, his energetic and cheerful sister Mikasa turned cold and unforgiving to people for even the slightest grievance, even Jack and May. May, on the other hand, locked herself away, she became incredibly gloomy and her calm demeanor was replaced with a timid and shy demeanor which lead to her becoming a shut-in who didn't leave her room.

His mom had to take up multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet and because his sister May was a shut-in who dropped out of the Esper Academy and his sister was now unbelievably cold and slightly uncaring, the family, or more accurately Jack and his mother, was starved for money and income.

However, despite the things happening, Jack stayed the same, in fact, he was more cheerful than in the past. It wasn't because he was happy about his dad being in a coma but because he knew his family needed some cheer in it.

His mother, who saw her 13-year-old son putting on a facade for the family, cried silent tears; her carefree, baby boy was being forced to mature at a rate much faster than he should.

Jack was confident that he could help his family pull through this, that his dad would become healthy again and they'd all become happy once more!

But the reality is harsher than a 13-year-old boy's dreams. On the day he turned 14, his father passed away in the same bed he was put in a whole year ago. He'd never opened his eyes or spoke a word, neither side got to say their final goodbyes to one another.

By this point, despite his cheery attitude, Jack was nearly at his breaking point. He'd seen his precious sisters change into twisted versions of their former selves, he'd never given himself any chance to fully let his sadness out and on multiple occasions, he'd walked downstairs at night and seen his Mother holding a picture of their entire family and crying and her eyes out silently.

Now that his dad was dead and his dream of a happy family had been crushed, he'd been pushed over the tipping point.

He stood, balanced on the railings of the roof of his middle school building. He finally let a whole year's worth of tears pour from his eyes; he'd tried his hardest to be strong for his family but he couldn't do it. Jack couldn't stop calling himself a coward at what he was about to do.

Over the past month, Jack's appearance changed drastically. His let his hair grow long and let it become extremely unkempt, he had dark rings around his eyes from a severe lack of sleep and despite his bronze colored skin, there was a weird paleness to his expression. He'd really let himself go and become incredibly haggard looking because nothing really mattered to him anymore and he only continued to beat himself up about what he was about to do and how much it would hurt his family.

But he really couldn't see a way out. His family had fallen apart and he was at a real low-point.

That's when it happened when he met her.

Aya Takahashi had recently moved to his Middle School, stunning everyone with her prodigal abilities, impressive background, and her impeccably beautiful face and body. Jack hadn't paid much attention to her at the time because of obvious reasons.

She'd just been about to exit the gate for the school when she saw a tall, black-haired youth with tears cascading down his face looking like he was about to jump off of the railings he was balanced on.

Her deep down kind nature spurred her on and she rushed to the roof. She got there as soon as Jack was about to step off the railing and she desperately grabbed his school blazer and dragged him back with a force which didn't look like it came from a lithe beauty like her.

Jack was shell-shocked by the sudden pull back but the next words he heard were the real shell shocking thing that day.

"What do you think you're doing?! Killing yourself by jumping off your Middle School Building's Roof?! How stupid and immature of you! Think about your family you idiotic idiot!" her voice sounded so angry but Jack could hear the worry underneath her anger.

That's when he, someone who'd seen country-destroying beauties such as his sisters, fell in love with the person who helped him out of his lowest point.

The next hour was him confiding in Aya about his situation. She cried at parts, cried at other parts...she pretty much cried at most of his story before her angry demeanor disappeared completely replaced with an expression of pity before dragging Jack into a hug.

After that, Jack got up, bowed toward her and went home.

He vowed to never be so weak, ever again.

He took a few month leave from school and fully got himself back into his usual shape and then pushed himself past that. Unlike his past carefree attitude, Jack was now very serious when it came to his training.

He took note materials from both his sisters and pushed himself further. It wasn't until 5 months after his meeting with Aya that he went back to school and met her again.

She didn't seem to remember him, however. Jack had to admit he had changed immensely after the 5 months of serious training. His hair was shorted and swept back towards the back of his head with a few strands falling on his forehead, which was completely different to his shoulder-length unkempt hairstyle she saw.

His eyes were also free of black circles and weren't dull and gloomy anymore. His skin was back to it's full and healthy bronze color and his body had gotten taller and more robust.

Jack decided to not tell her that he was the boy she saved all those months ago because he didn't want her to remember him by that weak appearance.

And there began their competitive spree and the rest has already been said.

His family was still in shambles but his mother was slowly getting better, her period of mourning was nowhere near over but she was finally smiling again. Little did Jack know that he was the reason for her rapid recovery as she'd saw her son acting brave so she knew she had to help support him. A mother's love could overcome any obstacle.

His sisters were the same, however, but Jack figured they'd eventually return to normal.

As Jack was thinking about all this with his eyes closed, the nurses had set up all the needles and machinery for the procedure.

"We're going to inject it now, Nakamura-san." One of the nurses said, to which Jack nodded and closed his eyes, relaxing his body as much as he could.

He felt pricks of pain all over his body as the needles entered his body, followed by a cool sensation as the Geno-Liquid was injected into his body.

The process of Awakening had begun.