~A Short History of Events Leading Up to the Present~

Since time immemorial, there have been numerous records of important events. The actual, complete history of the written word is, to current analysts and historians, a mystery – seeing as the documentation of language creation would present obstacles to those who wished to do so during a period where formal language did not even exist to begin with. Current linguists appear satisfied with studying the earliest known usages and forms of languages, such as the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt found in weathered pyramids, or the pictorial beginnings of modern Chinese characters discovered by chance on animal shells and bones excavated from among crudely fashioned tools. Close examination of such discoveries have led to many theories concerning the evolution of the written word into the form we see today. Discoveries of pictorial languages (e.g. Sumerian) and the overactive imagination of the lingual specialist population today have also spawned wild, colourful schools of thought alluding to aliens having an intergalactic hand, or limb, in the development of the human race as we know it.

However, the issue of language is hardly the main focus of our discussion today. Instead, we will be looking at people – humans. For as long as the written word has existed, it has mainly been used to document the life of humans during the period in question. Through the examination of various sources, historians have pieced together key shards of information (with the help of the aforementioned linguists) about the types of people we today know as ability users. Historical records from all over the Earth rarely have much in common – history, as they say, is written and rewritten by the winners. In every age, there has been constant strife and competition, where the victorious rule and the whimpers of the weak are rarely heard. In relatively recent history, the unification of the strife-filled Middle Kingdom, the era of European colonization and the age of American freedom come immediately to mind. Yet, as rarely as such conflicting sources of information support each other, they all corroborate each other on one, and only one singular topic – the existence of humans so abnormal that they have been the target of documentation throughout space and time, across the cultures of humanity.

They say that curiosity is derived from difference, and such people were so obviously different that they were the subject of inquisitive study throughout the ages. It is from the manifestation of such powers as levitation, pyrokinesis and hypnosis which prompted both awe and fear from those who were classified as normal. Some treated them like gods. Others tried to imitate them out of reverence. Some were jealous of their supernatural abilities, and tried to find some way to attain such powers themselves. As for the majority, most shunned them like the plague, for such massive differences can inspire not only admiration, but it can also, and is more likely to, arouse feelings of suspicion and a primal fear of being threatened out of existence. The majority sentiment has been recorded faithfully as propaganda of the period, one of the most famous being the witch hunts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Yet, those with more subtle abilities have often gone on to become historically important figures, be they famous or infamous. Perhaps the classic example here would be Adolf Hitler, a man with the characteristics of abnormally strong charisma and political sense. On the other end of the spectrum would be someone like da Vinci, with an aesthetic and designing ability far greater that the contemporaries of his time.

In more recent, modern times, the existence of such ability users has been of great interest to scientists, who view them as the solution to the problems currently afflicting the entire world. For example, a person who had the skill to generate and control electricity would be able to alleviate the world's need for combustible fuel, tackling the issue of global warming. The in-depth study of such skill users was proposed to be advanced in Japan, at the cutting edge of experimental and developmental technology. The hospital chosen to be the groundbreaker on Abnormal (as such ability users were called at the time) Studies was the Hakoniwa Hospital, under the auspices of the then General Director, Dr. Tsurubami Fukurou and funded by the ultra-wealthy Kurokami family. The skill users of the period were gathered in a nearby school known as Hakoniwa Academy, led by headmaster Shiranui Hakama, and a special class known as Class 13 was created to accommodate them while they were undergoing various experiments to figure out what exactly made them Abnormal.

This paragraph of this short summary will take its information directly from the official history of Hakoniwa Academy. The official history includes details of the 98th and 99th president of the student council, Kurokami Medaka, and her efforts to derail the Flask Plan, an offshoot of the Abnormal Studies project. The student council president was documented to be one of the most Abnormal of Abnormals, and as such was largely the protagonist of these accounts. The objective of the Flask Plan was to create the perfect human based on data gathered from the study of Abnormals and experiment on the students of the school. To borrow the words of headmaster Shiranui Hakama, it was to create a "genius potion" which would allow normal humans to attain skills of their own, to become as powerful and prestigious as those who were born Abnormal. According to official accounts, Kurokami Medaka stopped the Flask Plan temporarily, after which her authority was challenged by a student named Kumagawa Misogi. She reclaimed her title as president, but afterwards lost it to a coup d'état by her General Affairs Manager, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, who became the 100th student council president. It was a considered a shock defeat to Kurokami, who was thought to be invincible.

Yet, despite her efforts, the Flask Plan was continued after she left the academy, and was eventually successful after approximately a century's worth of research. The end result was the development of a curriculum specially designed to alter a person's perception of his or her world, transforming the Abnormality into something with a specifically defined scientific formula. One of the scientific journals of the time quoted a scientist explaining roughly how this formula would work. He said, "The curriculum would result in a human able to influence the real world with his mind. Through specially designed education, one would be able to decide whether Schrödinger's cat is alive or dead purely by thinking it." The advent of this curriculum resulted in Hakoniwa Academy being absorbed into a larger city specially designed to cater to education needs in Japan, naturally including the newly devised formula. Being at the forefront of technology, this newfound metropolis is the very definition of cutting edge, with equipment thirty years ahead of the outside world.

It is exactly in this location where a protagonist similar to Kurokami Medaka and the historical legend Shishime Iihiko is located. A protagonist which appears only once every thousand years.

The time: 100 years later, in the next millenium.

The location: Academy City, west of Tokyo, Japan.

The protagonist: Kamijou Touma.