Story Description
Adulthood in 2026 comes with a rating — and yours hasn't been written yet. When a rare few come of age, body and mind change at once and they gain power no ordinary person can touch. America rebuilt itself around them. The strongest become licensed heroes: celebrities with sponsors, rankings and millions of followers. The rest become villains, or merchandise. At the Hero Academy in New York, every freshman has to walk into a metal room and let a machine decide what they're worth — C-grade, or something the world has never had to name. At the three great crews, rookies are shipped to disaster sites before their badge stops smelling of plastic. And in Chicago's Under-City, where the law is a rumor and leverage is the only currency, the anti-hero cell called Refusal is recruiting for a war on the entire system. Your ability is yours to design — or to gamble on a fate draw. Your grade is yours to earn. Reputation, warrants, rivals at the top of the class, enemies made in the dark: none of it is handed out, and all of it is priced. What to expect: a near-future superhero progression fantasy built on hard-won ranks (C through SSS), academy and crew life, an underground-crime route, rivalries, found family and consequences that stick. Second person, present tense, three starting routes — academy freshman, crew rookie, villain. Content warnings: violence, serious injury, on-page power backlash, organized crime, character death. You start unranked. Where you finish — number one, or a photograph on a warrant — is the one thing this world won't decide for you.
Characters
The character you play. Name, sex, appearance, ability and background are entirely yours to set; your starting faction decides whether you begin at the Academy, in a hero crew, or in the Under-City.
Dean of Instruction at the Hero Academy, a retired front-line hero who runs the individual ability assessment room himself. He judges people by how they actually perform, never by presentation.
The undisputed number one of his year, SS-grade, brilliant and arrogant, treating every assessment as a declaration of war in front of an audience.
A student council member with an unremarkable ability and an exceptional read on any situation. There is almost nothing in the Academy she doesn't know, and she always wants to arrange everyone else's life for them.
A veteran hero with years at Nova who understands cameras and traffic better than anyone. Sharp-tongued and steady-handed with rookies, and never careless about a rescue.
Lineage's number-one ace, who believes rank is everything, despises the cautious rescue crowd, and wants nothing but to stand on everyone else's back.
The best-connected broker in the Under-City, running an old record shop as a front and selling any secret at all on the side — for the right price and the right risk.
A senior lieutenant of Refusal who goes after the hero system's scandals. Clean and efficient in the field, and disarmingly polite in conversation.