What deku had a Cosmic Hunger quirk

 

The light in the doctor’s office was too bright. It hummed with a frequency that made the back of Izuku Midoriya’s teeth ache. It was a specific, electric taste—like licking a battery—that he would later come to associate with the very concept of energy.

But right now, he was four years old. He was swinging his legs, his red sneakers scuffing against the linoleum, clutching an action figure of All Might so tightly the plastic ridges were leaving indentations in his palm.

"Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor said. His voice was not the dismissive, bored tone of a man about to deliver bad news. It was the tight, trembling tone of a man looking at a live grenade sitting on his desk.

Dr. Tsubasa adjusted his thick goggles. He hadn't looked at Izuku once since the X-rays came back. He was staring at the transparency on the light board, wiping sweat from his upper lip.

"Is... is something wrong, Doctor?" Inko Midoriya asked, her hands twisting in her lap. "Izuku is the only one in his kindergarten class who hasn't manifested yet. I was worried he might be... well, quirkless."

The doctor let out a sharp, hysterical little laugh. "Quirkless? No. No, madam. That would be the best-case scenario. We should be so lucky."

Izuku stopped swinging his legs. The air in the room felt heavy. The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to be getting louder, drilling into his ears. He felt a strange hollowness in his stomach—not the rumble of missing breakfast, but a deep, cold cavern opening up beneath his ribs.

"Then what is it?" Inko pressed, her voice rising in panic.

Dr. Tsubasa turned off the light board. He turned to face them, but he leaned back in his chair, putting distance between himself and the four-year-old boy.

"The X-rays show no double joint in the pinky toe, which usually indicates a Quirk," Tsubasa said, speaking rapidly. "But they also show... anomalies. His bone density is incredibly high, yet his mass readings are fluctuating. And his metabolic rate... Mrs. Midoriya, according to these blood tests, your son’s cells are vibrating."

"Vibrating?"

"Starving," Tsubasa corrected. He picked up a file, his hands shaking slightly. "We detected a unique radiation signature coming from his epidermal layer. It’s faint right now, microscopic. But it’s not emitting energy. It’s pulling it. It’s a localized gravitational anomaly tied to biological functions."

Inko blinked. "I... I don't understand."

"He doesn't have a stockpiling quirk like a strength enhancer," Tsubasa whispered, looking at Izuku with a mixture of scientific fascination and primal fear. "And he doesn't have an emitter quirk like your telekinesis. He has a deficit. A void. Mrs. Midoriya, your son is classified as a Category 6 Biological Hazard Potential. We call it a 'Singularity Event.'"

Izuku looked up. "Does that mean I can be a hero?"

The doctor flinched. The question hung in the air, innocent and devastating.

"Kid," Tsubasa said, his voice grave. "You’re going to have a very hard time just being a human."

The drive home was silent. Inko gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. Izuku sat in the back, looking at his hands.

He felt... different. Now that the doctor had said the words, it was like a dam had broken inside him. The hollowness in his gut was expanding. It was a physical sensation, like a drain spiral pulling water down. He looked at the streetlights passing by. Every time they passed one, he felt a tug. A desire.

Hungry.

"Mom?"

"It's okay, Izuku," Inko said, her voice wobbling. "We'll... we'll figure it out. We just need to buy more groceries. That's all. Just a big appetite."

She was trying to rationalize it. Trying to make it normal.

But normal ended twenty minutes later.

They had parked the car. Izuku saw Kacchan and his friends at the neighborhood park across the street. The instinct to play, the instinct to be normal, overrode the strange coldness in his stomach.

"Can I go play? Just for a minute?"

Inko hesitated, looking at him. He looked so small. So fragile. "Okay. Five minutes. I'll get dinner started."

Izuku ran. He ran toward the sandpit where Katsuki Bakugo was holding court, small explosions popping in his palms like firecrackers.

"Deku!" Bakugo grinned, his red eyes sharp. "I heard you went to the doctor! Did they finally tell you you're broken?"

"I have a quirk!" Izuku shouted, stepping into the sand. "I do! The doctor said it's... it's a Singularity!"

Bakugo scoffed, standing up. "Singularity? Sounds like a fancy word for nothing. You're still just a pebble in my path."

"I'm not!"

"Get out of my way, Deku!"

Bakugo lunged. It was the same game they always played. Kacchan would push him, pop a few explosions to scare him, and Izuku would cry. It was the hierarchy of the playground.

Bakugo’s hand came forward, sparks flying, aiming for Izuku’s shoulder.

Izuku flinched. He put his hands up to protect his face.

And then, the Hunger woke up.

It didn't feel like a muscle flexing. It felt like a mouth opening. A mouth that had been stitched shut for four years suddenly ripping its sutures. The world went quiet.

Absolute quiet.

The sound of the cicadas cut out. The wind stopped. The heat of the summer afternoon vanished, replaced by a cold so profound it burned.

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. He saw Bakugo’s hand coming toward him. He saw the explosion—the bright orange and yellow flash of nitroglycerin igniting.

But the fire didn't hit him.

As the explosion touched Izuku’s outstretched palm, it didn't detonate. It twisted. The fire swirled, distorting like paint going down a drain. The light bent, turning from orange to red, then to a deep, bruising purple, and then... nothing.

The explosion vanished.

But it didn't stop there.

Bakugo’s momentum carried him forward. His hand brushed Izuku’s palm.

"AAAGH!"

Bakugo screamed—a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He scrambled back, falling onto the sand, clutching his right hand.

The other kids froze.

"Kacchan?" Izuku whispered. The cold was receding. The sounds of the world were rushing back in—the cicadas screaming, a car honking, the wind rustling the trees.

Izuku looked at his own hand. It looked normal. Maybe a little paler.

Then he looked at the ground between them.

A perfect sphere of the sandbox was missing. Not scooped out, but erased. A chunk of the rubber lining, the sand, a discarded candy wrapper—it was all gone. There was no dust, no debris. Just a perfectly smooth, spherical crater cut into the reality of the playground.

"My hand!" Bakugo was hyperventilating, staring at his fingers. They were gray, ashen, looking like they had been left in the snow for hours. The explosion sweat glands were dried out, the skin withered. "You... you ate it! You ate my fire!"

Izuku took a step forward. "Kacchan, are you okay—"

"STAY AWAY!" Bakugo shrieked, scrambling backward on his heels, kicking up sand. For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo looked at Izuku Midoriya not with disdain, but with horror. "Don't touch me! You're a monster!"

Izuku stood frozen, his hand still outstretched. He felt a sudden surge of energy in his chest—the sugar from the explosion, the matter from the sand. It rushed through his veins, making his heart hammer like a bird trapped in a cage. He wasn't hungry anymore. He felt... full. Powerfully, terrifyingly full.

He looked at the empty crater in the ground.

I did that?

He began to cry. But when he went to wipe his eyes, he saw the light around his fingers warping, bending toward his skin.

He didn't dare touch his own face.

Ten Years Later.

The alarm clock didn't wake Izuku. He had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, listening to the growl of his own stomach.

It was a low, constant vibration, like a subwoofer left on in the room below.

Izuku sat up, the movement sluggish. He was fourteen years old, but he looked like a ghost haunting his own bedroom. He was tall, having hit a growth spurt over the summer, but he was alarmingly gaunt. His collarbones jutted out sharply against his skin. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken and rimmed with dark, bruised circles.

He looked like a famine victim.

He swung his legs out of bed and walked to the mini-fridge in the corner of his room. It was covered in warning stickers. Biohazard. High Calorie Content.

He opened it. Inside were rows of dense, gelatinous blocks wrapped in foil. "hero-grade caloric supplements," the label read. They were designed for heroes with massive energy outputs like Endeavor or Fat Gum. For them, it was a boost. For Izuku, it was breakfast.

He unwrapped two of the blocks—20,000 calories each—and ate them in three bites. He barely tasted them. It was like throwing coal into a furnace that was already burning white-hot. The gnawing emptiness in his gut quieted, just a fraction. It was never gone. It was just... waiting.

He moved to his dresser. On top sat a pair of gloves.

They weren't normal gloves. They were thick, black, woven from a carbon-lead fiber mesh, extending up to his elbows. Heavy locking mechanisms clamped around the wrists.

Containment Unit v4.0.

Izuku slid his hands into them. The heavy click-hiss of the seals engaging was the sound that started his day. He couldn't touch anything skin-to-skin. Not his mother, not his food, not a doorknob. If he did, the Singularity would activate. The passive pull was always there. Without the dampening material of the gloves, he would slowly erode everything he touched, turning matter into energy to feed the void.

He got dressed in his school uniform. The black gakuran hung loosely on his skeletal frame. He looked in the mirror.

Green, messy hair. Large, terrified eyes. And the aura.

If he squinted, he could see it. A faint distortion in the air around him, like heat haze on asphalt. The light didn't reflect off him quite right. It seemed to dim as it got closer to his body.

"I'm here," he whispered to the reflection. "I'm still here."

He walked out to the kitchen.

Inko was there, frying eggs. Dozens of eggs. There was a mountain of toast, a pot of rice the size of a bucket, and slabs of bacon.

"Good morning, Izuku," she said. She smiled, but her eyes were tired. She worked two jobs now to pay for the food bills and the government-mandated insurance for his quirk.

"Morning, Mom."

He sat down. He didn't use utensils; the gloves made it hard. He just grabbed the toast and shoveled it in.

Inko watched him, her hand hovering near his shoulder but never landing. She hadn't hugged him in ten years. Not without a hazmat suit.

"Do you have your spare batteries?" she asked.

"Yeah. In my bag." Izuku tapped his yellow backpack. Inside were three industrial-grade lithium-ion batteries. In an emergency, if the hunger got too bad and he risked a blackout, he could drain them. It was cleaner than eating a desk. Or a person.

"Be careful, Izuku. Please."

"I always am."

He finished the mountain of food in ten minutes. He was still hungry.

Aldera Junior High was a study in isolation.

Izuku walked through the halls, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea. No one shoved him. No one tripped him. They pressed their backs against the lockers, eyes wide, holding their breath as he passed.

They didn't call him Deku because he was useless. They called him Deku because it sounded like Desu—Death.

He kept his head down, clutching his notebook to his chest with his heavy, armored hands.

Hero Analysis for the Future. No. 13.

He sat at his desk in the back corner. The desks around him were empty. The students had dragged them away, creating a two-meter buffer zone.

The teacher walked in, slamming a stack of papers on the podium.

"You're all third years now," the teacher droned. "It's time to think seriously about your future. I would hand out these career aptitude forms, but..." He paused, smirking. "I assume you all want to be heroes!"

The class erupted. Quirks flared—telekinetic fingers, elongated eyes, minor strength boosts.

"Yes, yes, you have wonderful quirks," the teacher said. "But no power usage in school. You know the rules."

He shuffled the papers. "Oh, and speaking of UA High... Bakugo, you’re aiming for the top, aren't you?"

Katsuki Bakugo sat with his feet on his desk. He had changed too. He wasn't the boisterous bully of his childhood. He was sharp, tense, like a wire pulled until it snapped. He didn't look at the teacher. His eyes were fixed on the corner of the room. On Izuku.

"I'm going to be the only one from this dump to make it," Bakugo said. His voice was low, lacking its usual explosive arrogance. It was a cold statement of fact. "I've aced the mocks."

"Indeed," the teacher nodded. "And... oh. Midoriya is also applying to UA."

The room went dead silent.

No one laughed. In the canon of another universe, they would have jeered. You? Quirkless Deku?

Here, the silence was heavy with terror.

Bakugo’s feet slammed onto the floor. He turned slowly in his chair.

"You," Bakugo hissed.

Izuku didn't look up. He stared at the weave of his gloves.

"You're actually going to try?" Bakugo’s voice rose, vibrating with a strange mix of anger and panic. "You think they'll let you in? You’re a walking black hole, Deku. You’ll kill someone in the entrance exam."

"I... I have to try," Izuku whispered. His voice was raspy. "It's the only place that might teach me how to stop it. How to control it."

"Control?" Bakugo stood up, small sparks popping erratically in his palms. "You don't control a natural disaster. You just... exist."

"Bakugo, sit down," the teacher said nervously. He didn't want a fight. If Bakugo fired an explosion and Midoriya panicked... the whole building could lose a wall.

Bakugo sat, but he didn't stop glaring.

The end of the day.

Izuku was packing his bag. He moved slowly to conserve energy. Every movement cost calories.

He felt a shadow over his desk.

Bakugo was there. He snatched the notebook from Izuku’s hands. His movements were fast, terrified, like he was grabbing a snake.

"Hero Analysis," Bakugo read the cover. He flipped through it.

The pages weren't filled with drawings of costumes or special moves. They were filled with physics equations. Event horizon calculations. Caloric density charts of various materials (concrete, steel, wood). Strategies for suppression.

How to hold back.

How not to eat the villain.

Minimum safe distances.

Bakugo stared at the pages. His hand trembled.

"You're obsessed," Bakugo muttered. He closed the book. Smoke curled from his palms, scorching the edges of the notebook.

"Give it back, Kacchan."

"Don't call me that." Bakugo tossed the notebook onto the desk. He didn't throw it out the window. He didn't want to touch Izuku’s things for longer than necessary.

"Listen to me," Bakugo said, leaning in, keeping a careful distance. "Don't go to UA. Go to a hospital. Go to a facility. Somewhere they can lock you in a lead box."

Izuku looked up. His eyes were dark, the pupils dilated so wide the green iris was a thin ring. "Is that what you think I am? Just a monster?"

"I think," Bakugo swallowed, his bravado cracking for a split second, "that one day you're going to get hungry, and you're not going to stop. And I don't want to be there when the world disappears."

Bakugo turned and marched out of the room, his "lackeys" trailing behind him, casting fearful glances back at the solitary figure in the corner.

Izuku sat there for a long time. He touched the scorched edge of his notebook with his gloved finger.

"I won't," he whispered. "I won't eat the world."

But his stomach growled, a deep, tectonic rumble that shook the desk.

The walk home was the hardest part of the day.

The calorie supplements from lunch were fading. The exhaustion was setting in. Izuku usually took the shortcut through the underpass to avoid crowds. If he bumped into someone when he was this low on energy, the gloves might not be enough. The passive drain increased the hungrier he got.

He entered the tunnel. It was cool and dark.

He walked with a heavy, trudging step.

Just get home. Mom bought the high-density protein bars. Just get home.

He heard a wet, squelching sound behind him.

Izuku stopped. He didn't turn around. He could feel the energy signature. It was... muddy. chaotic.

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak..." a gurgling voice hissed.

Izuku turned.

Rising from the manhole cover was a mass of sludge. It had eyes and a mouth full of jagged, yellow liquid teeth.

"You'll do," the villain sneered. "I just need a skin suit to hide in. Don't worry, kid. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then you'll suffocate."

The villain lunged.

In another life, Izuku would have frozen. He would have clawed futilely at the slime entering his mouth.

But this Izuku was a predator. A starving, desperate predator.

The slime hit him. It wrapped around his body, engulfing him.

"Gotcha!" the villain laughed. "Now, hold still while I—"

The villain paused.

The slime touching Izuku’s skin wasn't suffocating the boy. It was... bubbling.

Izuku’s eyes were wide open inside the muck. He wasn't holding his breath. He was opening his pores.

The hunger took the wheel.

Food.

The thought wasn't a word; it was a directive.

Izuku’s Containment Gloves hissed as the seals disengaged. He hadn't consciously unlocked them—his quirk had done it for him. He ripped the gloves off his hands inside the sludge.

Ten bare fingers sank into the villain’s fluid body.

CONTACT.

"WH-WHAT?" The villain’s voice went up an octave. "What are you doing? Why does it burn?"

Izuku didn't answer. He gasped, his mouth opening, and he didn't inhale air. He inhaled the villain.

The sludge began to swirl. Not flowing over Izuku, but flowing into him. The liquid mass was being sucked into the palms of his hands and the pores of his skin.

"STOP! STOP IT!" the villain shrieked. He tried to pull back, but he was caught in the gravity well. "YOU'RE EATING ME! WHAT ARE YOU?!"

Izuku’s vision went white. The rush of energy was intoxicating. It was better than the protein blocks. It was better than electricity. It was life. The sludge was full of organic compounds, kinetic energy, quirk factors. It was a banquet.

His gaunt frame seemed to swell, his muscles filling out instantly as the matter was converted to mass. The dark circles under his eyes vanished. His skin began to glow with a faint, violet starlight.

"No! NO! I'M SORRY!" The villain was shrinking rapidly. He was the size of a truck, then a car, then a person. "LET ME GO!"

A sewer grate burst open with a clang.

"FEAR NOT! FOR I AM—"

All Might stood at the entrance of the tunnel, striking a pose, his smile blinding.

"HERE!"

All Might blinked. His smile faltered.

He had expected to find a villain attacking a helpless schoolboy.

What he found was a glowing, terrifying entity standing in a puddle of water, holding a screaming, basketball-sized blob of sludge that was frantically trying to crawl away.

The boy—Izuku—turned to look at All Might. His eyes were entirely black, the irises glowing white rings. His mouth was open in a silent snarl. Veins of purple light pulsed beneath his skin.

"Young man!" All Might shouted, dropping his smile. This was a villain situation, but he wasn't sure who the villain was anymore. "Release him!"

Izuku blinked. The voice of the Symbol of Peace cut through the hunger haze.

All Might?

The black spread in his eyes receded, revealing the terrified green underneath. Izuku looked at his hands. He was gripping the Sludge Villain’s "neck" (or what was left of it). The villain was sobbing.

"He tried to eat me!" the villain wailed. "He tried to eat me!"

Izuku dropped the sludge. He scrambled back, his chest heaving. The rush of power was fading, replaced by immediate, crushing guilt. He looked at his hands—they were bare.

"I... I didn't mean to..." Izuku stammered. He looked at All Might. "I just... I was so hungry."

All Might stepped forward, cautious. He had seen many quirks in his time. Fire, ice, strength, mind control. But looking at this boy, he felt a chill go down his spine that he hadn't felt since his fight with Him. The air around the boy was warped.

"Are you injured?" All Might asked, his voice softer now. He quickly scooped the traumatized sludge villain into a soda bottle.

"No," Izuku whispered. He reached for his discarded gloves, his hands trembling. He quickly shoved them back on, the locks clicking shut. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"You have a powerful quirk there," All Might said, watching the boy carefully. "A dangerous one."

"I know," Izuku said, tears forming in his eyes. "I know."

He grabbed his bag and ran. He didn't ask for an autograph. He didn't ask if he could be a hero. He just wanted to get away before he got hungry again.

All Might stood in the tunnel for a moment, watching the boy run. He looked at the soda bottle in his hand. The villain inside was shivering.

"That kid..." All Might muttered. He coughed, a speck of blood hitting his hand. "He didn't use a technique. He just... absorbed."

He felt a strange resonance. One For All was humming inside him, but not in a welcoming way. It was humming in warning.

Izuku didn't go straight home. He ended up on the roof of a commercial building a few blocks away. He needed air. He needed to think.

He leaned against the railing, looking out over Musutafu. The sun was setting, painting the sky in oranges and purples.

He felt... great. Physically, he felt better than he had in years. The villain’s mass had sustained him. He wasn't shaking. He wasn't cold.

And that was the problem.

I enjoyed it.

He looked at his gloved hands.

I didn't just defend myself. I wanted to consume him. If All Might hadn't come... would I have stopped? Or would I have erased him completely?

The door to the roof creaked open.

Izuku spun around, expecting a security guard.

It was All Might. In his skeletal, true form. Steam was rising off his shoulders.

"Y-You..." Izuku backed up against the railing. "The skeleton guy? Where did All Might go?"

The man sighed and sat down on a vent box. "I am All Might, kid. Long story. Hero work takes a toll on the gut." He lifted his shirt, showing the nasty scar.

Izuku flinched. He could smell the injury. He could smell the missing energy in the man’s system.

"You're... fading," Izuku whispered without thinking. "You're leaking power."

All Might’s eyes narrowed. " sharp kid. Yeah. I am."

"Why are you here?"

"I followed you," All Might said bluntly. "I wanted to make sure you weren't going to... have another snack."

Izuku looked down. "I'm not a villain."

"I know," All Might said. "I saw your eyes. You were terrified. Not of the villain, but of yourself."

All Might stood up and walked over to the railing, standing next to Izuku. "I've been looking for a successor," he started, staring at the sunset. "Someone to inherit my power."

Izuku’s heart stopped. Inherit?

"But," All Might turned to look at him, his face serious. "I cannot give it to you."

The words hit Izuku like a physical blow. "Oh. Because... because I'm a monster?"

"No," All Might said firmly. "Because it would kill you. Or worse, you would kill it."

All Might pointed a bony finger at Izuku’s chest. "My power is energy. Stockpiled, massive energy. If I put that inside you... based on what I saw in that tunnel... your body would treat it like a buffet. You wouldn't cultivate the power; you would digest it. It would be like feeding a star to a black hole. Unstable. Catastrophic."

Izuku slumped. "So, I can't be a hero. Even All Might thinks so."

"I didn't say that."

Izuku looked up.

All Might was grinning. Not the plastic hero smile, but a genuine, small smirk.

"I said you can't have my power. But you have plenty of your own. Too much, in fact." All Might placed a hand on Izuku’s shoulder. He hesitated for a microsecond, then made contact.

Izuku flinched, but the gloves held.

"They call quirks 'superpowers'," All Might said. "But yours is a curse, isn't it? It's a hunger."

"Yes."

"A hero isn't someone who has the perfect quirk," All Might said softly. "A hero is someone who meddles when they don't need to. You fought that villain. You saved yourself. You have the drive."

All Might leaned in.

"Young man, I cannot give you One For All. But I have been the Number One Hero for decades. I know how to control power. I know how to build a body that can withstand the impossible."

He offered his hand.

"I can teach you. Not how to be strong—you're already dangerous. I can teach you how to be starved without losing your mind. I can teach you Control."

Izuku stared at the skeletal hand.

For ten years, people had told him to hide. To suppress. To stop.

This was the first person who offered to help him manage.

"Can I..." Izuku’s voice cracked. "Can I be a hero without hurting everyone I touch?"

"I don't know," All Might admitted. "But I'm willing to help you find out."

Izuku reached out. His clunky, armored glove gripped All Might’s bony hand.

"Okay," Izuku sobbed. "Okay."

As they shook hands, the streetlights below flickered and died, their electricity drawn upward into the sobbing boy on the roof.

All Might just laughed. "We have a lot of work to do. First step: figuring out your grocery budget."

The world was made of food.

That was the first lesson Izuku Midoriya had to unlearn.

To the average person, a rusted refrigerator sitting on a pile of garbage was just refuse. To a recycling plant, it was scrap metal and plastic. But to Izuku, standing at the edge of Dagobah Municipal Beach Park at five in the morning, the refrigerator was a dense, tantalizing block of potential energy. He could see the latent chemical bonds in the plastic, the oxidative energy in the rust, the cold, hard reality of the steel waiting to be unmade.

It whispered to him. The whole beach whispered. It was a cacophony of inanimate objects begging to be erased.

"It looks delicious, doesn't it?"

The voice broke Izuku’s trance. He blinked, the violet haze at the edge of his vision receding, replaced by the gray, pre-dawn light of the coast.

All Might stood beside him. He wasn't in his heroic, muscular form. He was in his true form—skeletal, sunken eyes, wild hair that looked like withered grass. In a way, he looked more like Izuku than anyone else did. They were both creatures defined by what they had lost. All Might had lost his stomach and his time; Izuku had lost his fullness.

"It's loud," Izuku admitted, adjusting the heavy straps of his containment gloves. The carbon-lead mesh was cold against his skin, a constant reminder of the barrier between him and the world. "The trash. It’s... humming."

All Might nodded, looking out over the mountains of debris that choked the coastline. "That’s why we’re here, Midoriya. You’ve spent fourteen years starving yourself, treating your quirk like a shameful secret. You’ve been holding your breath."

All Might turned to him, his blue eyes sharp and serious. "To control the void, you must first understand the appetite. You can't just suppress it. You have to negotiate with it."

Izuku looked at his hands. "Negotiate?"

"This beach," All Might gestured broadly with a bony hand. "It’s not just a cleanup project. It’s a buffet. But you are not going to gorge yourself. You are going to learn to taste."

He kicked a tire lying near his foot. "Your training is twofold. First, the physical. Your body is frail. It’s a paper cup trying to hold acid. If you channel too much of your Singularity, you’ll burn out your own nervous system or dissolve your own bones. We need to build you a vessel strong enough to contain the hunger."

All Might pointed to a massive, rusted truck chassis half-buried in the sand. "You will move that. By hand. Without your quirk."

Izuku’s jaw dropped. "That... that weighs two tons."

"And second," All Might continued, ignoring the protest. "You will eat. But you will eat on my command, and only what I tell you. You will learn to take a single bite of a car battery without swallowing the car. You will learn to sip the ocean without draining the tide. We are going to teach your body the difference between gluttony and sustenance."

Izuku looked at the truck. Then he looked at the piles of trash.

"It sounds impossible," Izuku whispered.

All Might grinned. Blood coughed into his hand, which he wiped casually on his pants. "It is. But you ate a villain yesterday, kid. I think moving a truck is a step down."

Month 1: The Withdrawal

The first month was hell. Not the kind of hell Izuku expected—muscle soreness and exhaustion—but a psychological hell.

Moving the trash was grueling. Izuku was weak. He had spent his life avoiding physical exertion because exertion burned calories, and burning calories made the Hunger wake up. Now, he was being forced to burn everything he had.

He dragged tires. He pushed broken lockers. He hauled bags of wet, rotting compost.

And every second, the trash screamed at him.

Eat me, the tire whispered. I am rubber and steel. I am complex hydrocarbons. I will make you warm.

Consume me, the microwave hummed. I have a magnetron. I have copper. I am electricity.

Izuku would stand there, sweating, his muscles trembling, staring at a piece of junk with a look of pure longing. His stomach would roar, a sound that vibrated through his ribcage and scared the seagulls away.

"No," All Might would bark from his perch on a vending machine. "Lift it. Don't lick it."

"I wasn't going to lick it!" Izuku shouted back, heaving a washing machine onto his back. "I was just... admiring its density!"

"You were drooling, Young Midoriya."

The worst part was the "feeding" sessions.

Twice a week, All Might allowed him to use his quirk. But it wasn't the release Izuku craved.

"Here," All Might said, holding out a single, rusty bolt.

Izuku stared at it. "A bolt?"

"Take off your right glove. Touch it with one finger. Do not erase it. Just... dim it."

"Dim it?"

"Absorb the heat. Absorb the oxidation. Leave the metal."

It was excruciating. Izuku took off his glove. His hand was pale, the veins dark. When he touched the bolt, his instinct was to open the floodgates. To turn the matter into zero-point energy and swallow it whole.

Instead, he had to strain, sweating buckets, to only pull the warmth from the metal. It was like trying to drink water from a firehose with a straw.

"Control," All Might urged. "Visualize a gate. You are opening it a millimeter."

The bolt turned gray. It crumbled into dust.

"Dammit!" Izuku cried out, falling back into the sand. He had eaten it. Again.

"Better," All Might noted, writing in a notebook. "It took three seconds this time. Last week it was instantaneous."

"I'm still failing."

"You're learning," All Might corrected. "You're learning that you don't have to be a black hole. You can be a gravity well. You can be an orbit."

The physical toll was immense. Izuku’s diet had to change radically to support the exertion. All Might used his connections (and a significant portion of his fortune) to import experimental high-density nutrient bricks from I-Island. They tasted like chalk and burning plastic, but they sat heavy in Izuku’s stomach, quieting the void for a few hours.

But at school, the silence was harder to maintain.

Month 3: The Ghost in the Classroom

Aldera Junior High had become a minefield.

Since the "incident" with the Sludge Villain—which had been reported as a "gas main leak" and a "villain apprehension by All Might," with no mention of the boy who ate the villain—Izuku had changed.

He wasn't shrinking anymore. He was tired, yes. His eyes were constantly shadowed, and he sometimes stared at the blackboard with a terrifying intensity, as if he were calculating how many joules of energy were in the chalk. But he wasn't hunching his shoulders.

He walked with a strange, heavy grace. The training on the beach was building a core of dense muscle under his loose uniform. He felt heavier, grounded.

But the students sensed the predator in him.

It was lunch. Izuku sat alone, eating a block of "Hero-Grade Caloric Dense Protein." It looked like a brick of gray fudge. He ate it with mechanical precision.

"Oi. Deku."

The cafeteria went silent.

Katsuki Bakugo stood at the end of the table. His hands were in his pockets, but his shoulders were tight. Bakugo had been watching him for months. Watching the way Izuku didn't flinch at loud noises anymore. Watching the way the lights in the classroom would dim slightly when Izuku got frustrated with a math problem.

Izuku stopped chewing. He looked up. "Yes, Kacchan?"

"You're eating weird crap," Bakugo said, nodding at the brick. "And you smell like garbage and sea salt."

"I'm training," Izuku said simply.

"Training?" Bakugo scoffed, but there was no humor in it. He slammed a hand on the table. A small explosion popped.

Usually, the table would scorch. This time, the explosion popped, and the smoke instantly veered sideways, sucked toward Izuku’s chest before vanishing into his shirt.

Bakugo froze. He stared at the smoke that wasn't there.

"Stop doing that," Bakugo whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of rage and genuine fear. "Stop stealing my light."

"I can't help it," Izuku said quietly. He put the rest of the protein block in his mouth and swallowed. "I'm just hungry, Kacchan."

"You're not a hero," Bakugo hissed, leaning in. "Heroes give things to people. Safety. Hope. You? You just take. You're a taker, Deku. That’s all you’ll ever be."

Bakugo turned and walked away.

Izuku sat there, the words stinging worse than any burn. A taker.

He looked at his hand, encased in the glove.

He’s right. All I do is consume. Can I really save anyone if my power is just... removal?

That afternoon, he went to the beach early. He didn't wait for All Might. He found a refrigerator. He didn't try to lift it. He put his gloved hands on it and screamed, ripping the door off its hinges with raw, physical strength.

He didn't use his quirk. He refused to satisfy the hunger. He would starve the monster until it learned to heel.

Month 6: Event Horizon

The breakthrough happened on a rainy Tuesday.

The beach was halfway cleared. The piles of trash were now organized mounds. Izuku stood in the rain, shirtless, his body steaming. He was unrecognizable from the twig-boy of six months ago. He was lean, corded with muscle, his skin possessing a faint, healthy luster despite his pallor.

All Might was sitting under a beach umbrella, drinking tea.

"Today is different," All Might announced.

He stood up and tossed something at Izuku.

Izuku caught it. It was a baseball.

"Pitch it to me," All Might said. "As hard as you can."

"I might hurt you," Izuku warned. Even in his skinny form, All Might was frail.

"Just throw the ball, Midoriya."

Izuku wound up. He didn't use One For All—he didn't have it. He used the torque of his hips, the strength of his back, the frustration of six months of hauling garbage.

He threw the ball.

It was a good throw. Fast. But All Might caught it with ease.

"Good," All Might said. "Now. Throw it again. But this time... I want you to use the Singularity. Not to eat the ball. But to propel it."

Izuku blinked. "Propel it? My quirk attracts. It pulls."

"Think, boy!" All Might tapped his temple. "Gravity is a curve. If you create a vacuum point behind the ball, what happens?"

Izuku’s eyes widened. Physics. It was just physics.

He held the ball. He focused. Not on the ball itself, but on the space directly behind his hand. He visualized a tiny, microscopic tear in reality. A mouth opening just for a nanosecond.

He felt the pull. The air rushed into the space behind his palm.

He threw.

CRACK.

The sound was like a whip breaking the sound barrier. The vacuum collapsed, creating a shockwave that launched the ball forward. It didn't just fly; it vanished.

It hit the ocean three hundred meters away with a splash like a cannonball.

Izuku stared at his hand. His fingers were smoking, cold frost forming on his knuckles from the sudden temperature drop.

"I... I pushed it," Izuku whispered. "I used the hunger to push."

"You used the negative pressure to create positive force," All Might corrected, beaming. "You turned the void into a thruster. You didn't eat the energy, Midoriya. You redirected it."

Izuku fell to his knees in the sand, laughing. It was a hysterical, wet sound.

"I created," he sobbed. "I made something happen. I didn't just delete it."

"You're getting there," All Might said, walking over and placing a hand on his head. "You're no longer a black hole. You're a quasar. You're learning to shine."

Month 9: The Relapse

Progress was not a straight line.

It was a week before the exam. The stress was mounting. The beach was clean—pristine, actually. The golden sands of Dagobah Beach had returned, glittering under the winter sun.

But Izuku was tired.

He had pushed too hard during sparring. He had drained three industrial batteries in one session to practice his "Void Shroud"—a technique where he pulled light around him to become invisible.

He was walking home, his batteries empty, his stomach screaming.

He took a shortcut through a demolition site. It was a mistake.

The smell hit him. Copper. Ozone. Old, dry rot.

He stopped. His vision blurred. The violet ring in his eyes expanded, swallowing the green.

Need.

He saw a generator. A massive, diesel-powered generator sitting on a pallet. It was leaking fuel. It was vibrating.

Izuku walked toward it. He was sleepwalking. The conscious part of his brain—the part that wanted to be a hero—was screaming, banging on the glass of his mind. Stop! It’s not yours! That’s stealing! That’s destruction!

The Hunger didn't care.

Izuku reached out. He didn't take off his glove. The Hunger was so strong it began to eat the glove. The carbon mesh frayed, dissolving into grey dust.

His bare fingertips brushed the cold metal of the generator.

FEED.

The world turned purple.

The metal groaned. The diesel fuel inside didn't burn; it transmuted. The chemical energy was ripped apart, stripped of its electrons, and funneled directly into Izuku’s cells. The generator crumpled like a soda can, imploding inward.

"Hey! You!"

A flashlight beam cut through the dark. A security guard.

Izuku whipped around. He didn't look like a boy. He looked like a wraith. His skin was glowing with veins of blue fire. His mouth was open, a small sphere of darkness floating between his teeth.

The guard froze. "What the hell..."

Izuku took a step forward. The hunger wasn't satisfied. The generator was an appetizer. The guard... the guard was a biological battery. A walking sack of electrical impulses and chemical heat.

Warm, the Hunger whispered. Eat the warmth.

Izuku raised his hand. The air between them began to distort. The guard’s flashlight beam bent, curving into Izuku’s palm.

"Run," Izuku rasped. The voice wasn't his. It was layered, distorted. "Run away."

The guard dropped the flashlight and bolted, screaming.

Izuku stood there, hand outstretched. He was trembling. He fought the urge to chase. He fought the urge to hunt.

He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, digging his nails in until he drew blood. The pain snapped him back.

The glow faded. The sphere in his mouth vanished.

Izuku looked at the crushed remains of the generator. He looked at the fleeing guard.

He fell to his knees in the mud, vomiting up a slurry of gray bile.

He dialed All Might.

"I did it again," Izuku whispered into the phone, his voice thick with shame. "I almost ate a person."

There was a silence on the other end.

"Where are you?" All Might asked. No judgment. Just the mission.

"The construction site on 4th."

"Stay there. Do not touch anything. I'm coming."

When All Might arrived, he didn't lecture. He brought a lead-lined blanket and a thermos of hot, sugary tea. He sat with Izuku in the mud until the shaking stopped.

"This is why we train," All Might said softly. "You think control is a permanent state? It's not. It's a choice you make every single second. Today you almost failed. But you stopped. You told him to run."

"I wanted to chase him," Izuku confessed. "For a second, he didn't look like a person. He looked like a meal."

"But you didn't," All Might said. "And that is the difference between a villain and a hero with a scary quirk. A villain eats. A hero starves, so that others can eat."

All Might stood up, offering a hand.

"The exam is next week. Are you going to let this define you? Or are you going to use that fear?"

Izuku looked at the generator. He owed the construction company a lot of money. But he was alive. And the guard was alive.

"I'll use it," Izuku said, standing up. "I'll never let the hunger win again."

The Day of the Exam

The morning of the UA Entrance Exam, the Midoriya household was quiet.

Inko had cooked a feast. Katsudon. But not just katsudon—ultra-dense, carb-loaded katsudon laced with the dietary supplements All Might had provided.

Izuku ate it solemnly.

"You look different, Izuku," Inko said, watching him from the counter. She was wringing her hands, but she wasn't crying.

"I feel different," Izuku said.

He stood up. He was wearing his middle school uniform, but it was tight around the shoulders now. He wore new gloves—All Might’s graduation gift. Containment Unit v5.0. Sleek, black, with gold trim and adjustable vents on the knuckles.

"Mom," Izuku said. "I'm going."

"Izuku!" Inko stepped forward. She hesitated, then closed the distance. She hugged him.

Izuku froze. "Mom, the gloves—"

"I don't care," she said, squeezing him tight. "You're my son. You're not a black hole. You're my sun."

Izuku felt a warmth that had nothing to do with calories. He carefully, gently, patted her back with his armored hands.

"I'll do my best."

UA High School Gates

The sheer size of UA was intimidating. The glass walls reflected the sky, massive and imposing.

Izuku walked through the crowd. He kept his elbows in, his eyes down. He could feel the energy of the other students. It was a cacophony.

Someone bumped into him.

"Out of my way, Deku."

Bakugo walked past him. He didn't look back. He didn't explode him. He just walked with a singular, laser focus.

Izuku took a deep breath.

He tripped.

It was a classic clumsiness. His foot caught on the pavement. He fell forward.

If he hit the ground with his hands, he might accidentally activate the Singularity on the concrete. He panicked, flailing.

He didn't hit the ground.

He stopped in mid-air.

"Are you okay?"

Izuku looked around. A girl with a round face and brown hair was touching his shoulder. She was floating slightly.

"I stopped you with my quirk," she said, smiling brightly. "It's bad luck to fall before the test, right?"

Izuku stared at her.

She was... glowing. To his eyes, she was a radiant aura of pink and white light. Her energy felt light, buoyant. It didn't taste like heavy metal or electricity. It tasted like cotton candy.

"I... uh..." Izuku stammered.

"Oh! Sorry, I didn't ask first." She released him. He landed on his feet. "I'm Uraraka Ochako. Good luck!"

She waved and walked away.

Izuku stood there, stunned.

She had touched him. And he hadn't wanted to eat her.

For the first time in his life, the Hunger had been silent in the presence of a quirk. Maybe it was because her quirk reduced gravity, and his increased it? Maybe they were opposites?

Or maybe it was just because she was nice.

"Nice," Izuku whispered, clutching his chest. "I talked to a girl."

The Practical Exam: Battle Center B

The orientation was a blur. Present Mic screamed. Iida scolded him for muttering.

Now, they stood before the massive gates of the mock city.

Izuku stood in the back, adjusting the vents on his gloves. He opened them to 10%. Just a sip.

Start!

Present Mic’s voice rang out. There are no countdowns in real battles! Run!

The crowd surged forward.

Izuku ran. He wasn't the fastest, but he had stamina now. He had dragged trucks through sand. Running on pavement felt like flying.

He turned a corner. A One-Pointer robot—a mechanical drone on a single wheel—rolled out.

"Target acquired," the robot beeped.

Izuku didn't slow down. He didn't punch.

He ran straight at it.

As the robot lunged, Izuku side-stepped. He placed his left hand on the robot’s chassis as he passed.

"Void Touch."

He didn't eat the robot. He ate the friction.

He stole the kinetic energy holding the robot’s wheel to the pavement. The robot lost all traction. Its internal gyroscope spun wildly, confused by the sudden loss of physical laws. It spun out, crashing into a wall and shattering.

"Zero effort," Izuku panted, keep moving. "Conservation of calories."

He found a Two-Pointer. This one was a scorpion-like tank.

It fired a rubber bullet.

Izuku raised his hand. The bullet hit his palm and vanished.

Thwip.

Converted to kinetic energy.

Izuku slammed his hand onto the hood of the robot. He released the energy he had just absorbed from the bullet, amplifying it with a fraction of his own stockpile.

BOOM.

The robot’s engine block was crushed inward as if hit by a sledgehammer.

"Twenty points!" someone shouted in the distance.

Izuku was moving like a ghost. Other students were flashy—explosions, lasers, growing giant.

Izuku was silence.

He would touch a robot, and it would rust instantly, falling apart.

He would wave his hand, and a robot’s battery would drain, the machine powering down with a sad whine.

He would jump, lightening his own mass to float over an attack, then increase his density to drop like an anvil on a Three-Pointer’s head.

He was dancing with physics.

45 Points.

50 Points.

60 Points.

He was panting. The hunger was waking up. The more he used the quirk, the more it wanted. The robots tasted like cold soup. Not satisfying.

More, the void whispered. Take the building. Take the street.

"No," Izuku gritted his teeth. "Stick to the diet."

Then, the ground shook.

THE ZERO POINTER.

It was colossal. Taller than the skyscrapers. It rose from the ground like a god of destruction. Its shadow covered the entire main street.

Students screamed. "Run! It's the gimmick!"

Izuku turned to run. That thing was too big. If he tried to stop it, he would have to uncork the bottle. He would have to eat too much.

He took a step back.

"Owww!"

A cry for help.

Izuku froze. He looked back.

Uraraka was trapped. Rubble had pinned her leg. The Zero Pointer was looming over her, its massive tread about to crush her into the asphalt.

The other students were fleeing. Even Iida was running away.

Izuku looked at the robot. He looked at the girl.

Control is a choice.

Izuku didn't run away. He ran toward the monster.

"Hey! Idiot! Stop!" someone yelled.

Izuku didn't hear them. He felt the familiar cold opening in his stomach. But this time, he didn't fear it. He aimed it.

He leaped.

He didn't have One For All’s jumping power. He used his quirk to lessen his own gravity, launching himself into the air like a rocket.

He soared up, level with the Zero Pointer’s face.

The robot’s red eyes locked onto him.

Izuku pulled back his right fist. He disengaged the locks on his glove. The metal hissed and fell away, revealing his bare hand.

The air around him screamed. The light bent. The clouds above the city swirled into a funnel.

"I am not a monster," Izuku roared, tears streaming from his eyes due to the sheer pressure. "I am a Hero!"

He didn't punch the robot. He punched the space inside the robot.

"SINGULARITY SMASH!"

He thrust his hand forward. He didn't touch the metal. He created a localized event horizon—a point of infinite density—right in the center of the robot’s chest.

For a split second, silence.

Then, the robot imploded.

The massive metal plates buckled inward, sucked toward the invisible point Izuku had created. The head sheared off, pulled down into the chest cavity. The tracks lifted off the ground. The entire skyscraper-sized machine crumpled like a piece of paper being crushed in a giant’s fist.

Then, Izuku closed his hand.

Release.

The gravity reversed.

BOOM.

The compressed energy detonated. The remains of the Zero Pointer were blasted backward, scattering into the air as harmless shrapnel.

Izuku hung in the air for a second, surrounded by a halo of purple light.

Then, his eyes rolled back.

"Calorie... deficit..."

He fell.

He plummeted from the sky, a broken puppet with no strings.

Slap.

A hand touched his face.

"Release!"

He stopped inches from the ground. Uraraka, panting and covered in dust, held her hands together. She released him, and he flopped onto the concrete.

Izuku couldn't move. He couldn't see. He was so hungry he felt like he was digesting his own stomach lining.

But he could hear.

He heard the silence of the arena.

And then, he heard footsteps.

"Good grief," a rasping voice said. Recovery Girl? No. It was... someone else.

Then, darkness took him.

Observation Room

The teachers watched the screen in stunned silence.

The Zero Pointer wasn't just destroyed. It was... twisted. It looked like modern art.

"That kid," Midnight whispered. "Did he just... eat the robot?"

All Might stood in the back of the room. He wasn't smiling. He was gripping the railing so hard it bent.

"He didn't eat it," All Might said softly. "He disciplined it."

Aizawa Shota stared at the screen, at the unconscious boy with the broken arm and the black veins.

"Midoriya Izuku," Aizawa muttered. "Hazard Class S. We're going to have our hands full."

He picked up a stamp.

ACCEPTED.

"Let's see if we can keep him from swallowing the school."

The sun was not a friendly celestial body. To most, it was warmth, life, photosynthesis. To Izuku Midoriya, it was a screaming ball of fusion that taunted him from 93 million miles away.

He sat cross-legged on the sand of Dagobah Municipal Beach Park. It was the last day of February. The air was frigid, the wind biting through his thin workout clothes, but Izuku was sweating.

"Focus, Midoriya," All Might’s voice cut through the roar of the ocean. The skeletal man was sitting on a pristine, rust-free pile of scrap metal—the last remnants of the garbage heap they had cleared over ten months. "Don't eat it. Taste it."

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. His hands rested on his knees, palms up, the heavy containment gloves removed for this exercise. The skin of his palms was pale, almost translucent, veins of dark violet pulsing beneath the surface.

He visualized the sunlight hitting his skin. He didn't just feel the heat; he felt the photons. Little packets of energy, vibrating, colliding with his epidermis.

Don't swallow, he told himself. Don't open the mouth.

The Hunger was always there, a second heartbeat in his chest. It wanted to rip the sky open and drink the sun dry. It wanted to pull the very atmosphere into his lungs and compress it until it ignited.

Sip.

Izuku took a breath. He engaged the microscopic muscles around his pores—muscles he didn't know he had until All Might pointed them out in an anatomy textbook. He opened the floodgates just a fraction of a millimeter.

The air around him warped. The sunlight bending toward him didn't reflect; it sank. For a moment, Izuku became a silhouette, a cutout in reality where the light simply ceased to exist.

Heat flooded his system. It wasn't the chemical burn of food or the electric shock of a battery. It was pure, clean radiation. It filled his reserves, patching the holes in his stamina, quieting the constant, gnawing ache in his gut.

"That's it," All Might whispered, watching the boy turn into a living shadow. "Maintain equilibrium."

Izuku held it for ten seconds. Then twenty. The sand around him began to freeze, the ambient heat sucked away to fuel his internal reactor. Frost crept up his legs.

"And... release," All Might ordered.

Izuku gasped, his concentration breaking. The shadow lifted. The light returned to normal. He fell backward into the sand, his chest heaving. Steam rose from his skin as his body temperature normalized.

"I... I held it," Izuku panted, staring up at the blue sky. "Thirty seconds without losing control."

"Thirty-two," All Might corrected, checking a stopwatch. He walked over and offered Izuku a hand. "You've come a long way from the boy who tried to eat a sludge villain, Young Midoriya."

Izuku took the hand. His grip was firm. The last ten months hadn't just been about learning to photosynthesize. He had rebuilt his body from the ground up. The scrawny, hollow-cheeked ghost was gone. In his place was a dense, corded athlete. He wasn't bulky like All Might in his prime, but he was heavy. His muscles were compacted, built to withstand the gravitational shear of his own quirk.

"Tomorrow is the exam," Izuku said, dusting the sand off his pants. He reached for his gloves—the new Mark V units developed by a friend of All Might’s in the support industry. They were sleek, black, with kinetic dampeners built into the knuckles.

"Are you ready?" All Might asked. "Not physically. I know you can crush a tank. Are you ready mentally?"

Izuku strapped the gloves on. Click. Hiss. The sound of safety.

"I'm hungry," Izuku said, a small, grim smile touching his lips. "But I think I can keep it under control."

All Might looked at the boy. He saw the shadow that still lingered in Izuku’s eyes—the event horizon that never truly closed.

"Remember," All Might said seriously. "UA isn't a playground. There will be thousands of students. Thousands of quirks. That's a lot of energy in one place. If you slip..."

"I won't," Izuku promised. "I'll starve before I hurt anyone."

The Morning of the Exam

The Midoriya household was quiet, but it was a tense quiet. The air smelled of bacon and high-density protein shakes.

Inko Midoriya was moving around the kitchen like a whirlwind, packing a bento box that weighed five kilograms.

"I put in the extra glucose tabs," she muttered, snapping the lid shut. "And the lead-lined water bottle. And the spare batteries."

"Mom," Izuku said gently, taking the heavy box. "I'm going to take a test, not survive a nuclear winter."

Inko stopped. She looked at him. Her son, who had spent ten years hiding in his room, afraid to touch the doorknobs. Now, he was standing tall, wearing a modified green tracksuit over his uniform, his armored gloves gleaming under the kitchen lights.

"You look so... grown up," she whispered, tears forming in her eyes. "And terrifying."

Izuku laughed softly. "Thanks, Mom."

"Just promise me one thing, Izuku." She grabbed his shoulders, her hands trembling. "If you feel it—if you feel the Hunger getting too big—you walk away. You hear me? You walk out of that gate and come home. Being a hero isn't worth losing yourself."

Izuku looked at her. He thought about the beach. He thought about the sun. He thought about the void in his stomach that was currently purring like a sleeping cat.

"I promise," he lied. He knew he wouldn't walk away. He would either become a hero or he would become a crater. There was no middle ground.

He put on his red sneakers—reinforced with tungsten soles to help him anchor himself—and opened the door.

The world was waiting. And for the first time, Izuku didn't want to hide from it. He wanted to see if he could exist in it without consuming it.

UA High School Gates

The crowd was massive. A sea of middle school uniforms, nervous chatter, and quirk displays.

Izuku walked through the main gate, keeping his elbows tucked in. He moved with a practiced caution, like a man carrying a tray of nitroglycerin.

"Out of the way, Deku."

The voice was low, guttural.

Izuku didn't flinch. He stopped and turned. Katsuki Bakugo stood there, hands in his pockets, flanked by two other boys from Aldera.

Bakugo looked different too. He was sharper. The arrogance was still there, but the manic energy had been replaced by a cold, calculating focus. He had spent the last ten months training just as hard as Izuku, driven by the fear of the "monster" he had grown up with.

"Good morning, Kacchan," Izuku said calmly.

Bakugo’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Izuku’s gloves. " You got new muzzle gears."

"They're containment units," Izuku corrected.

"Whatever," Bakugo scoffed. He stepped closer, invading Izuku’s personal space. "Don't think that just because you stopped being a twig, you're a hero. You're a natural disaster waiting to happen. If you lose control in there, I'll put you down myself."

"I know you would," Izuku said. And he meant it. It wasn't a threat; it was a reassurance. If Izuku became a black hole, Bakugo was one of the few people with enough firepower to maybe, just maybe, blast him apart before he swallowed the city.

Bakugo clicked his tongue and shoved past him. "Don't die, nerd."

Izuku watched him go. He took a deep breath, steeling himself.

He took a step forward.

And tripped.

It was the tungsten soles. He caught the toe of his sneaker on a slightly raised paving stone. Gravity, his oldest enemy and closest friend, took hold.

He fell forward. His hands instinctively shot out to break his fall.

Panic.

If his gloves hit the concrete too hard, the impact sensors might disengage the locks. If his bare skin touched the ground, he would drain the tectonic energy of the pavement. He would create a sinkhole.

He squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the alarm.

He didn't hit the ground.

He stopped, hovering three inches above the tile.

"Are you okay?"

A bubbly voice.

Izuku opened his eyes. He was floating. Weightless. The crushing gravity of his own mass was gone.

He scrambled upright, flailing slightly until his feet touched the ground again.

A girl with round cheeks and brown hair was standing there, smiling. Her fingertips were pressed together.

"It's bad luck to fall, right?" she chirped. "I'm Uraraka Ochako! I'm nervous too!"

Izuku stared at her.

He could see her aura. Everyone had one—a faint field of bio-energy. Bakugo’s was a jagged, explosive orange. All Might’s was a blinding, golden sun.

This girl... she was pink. Soft, buoyant pink.

And when she had touched him, the Hunger hadn't surged. It had... paused.

"Gravity," Izuku whispered. "You... you take away gravity."

"Yep! Zero Gravity!" She beamed. "What's yours? Super strength? You look heavy!"

"I..." Izuku looked at his gloves. "I'm the opposite. I'm... heavy."

"Well, good luck, 'Heavy'!" She waved and ran off toward the orientation hall. "Let's do our best!"

Izuku stood there, stunned. A girl had touched him. And he hadn't wanted to eat her.

"Opposites," he muttered, a small spark of hope igniting in his chest. "Maybe I'm not incompatible with everything."

The Written Exam

The written exam was boring.

That wasn't arrogance; it was fact. Izuku had spent ten years reading advanced physics textbooks to understand why his body broke the laws of thermodynamics.

Question 4: Calculate the escape velocity required for a projectile of mass m...

Izuku wrote the answer in seconds. He lived escape velocity. Every moment of his life was an exercise in preventing his own mass from collapsing into a singularity.

He finished early. He sat in his chair, staring at the back of Bakugo’s head. He could hear the scratching of pencils. The energy in the room was palpable—nervousness, ambition, fear. It tasted like static electricity. Izuku focused on his breathing, sipping the ambient anxiety like a light beverage, keeping his levels stable.

Practical Exam: Battle Center B

The gates to the mock city were enormous. But they felt small compared to the tension radiating from the crowd of students gathered in front of them.

Izuku stood in the back, checking his gear. He adjusted the dials on his wrists.

Vents: 15% Open.

Safety Locks: Engaged.

Battery Reserves: 100%.

He looked like a spec-ops soldier amidst a group of cosplayers. He wore a dark green utility belt filled with nutrient bars. His face was set in a mask of grim determination.

"Hey, you."

A tall boy with glasses and engines in his calves marched up to him. Iida Tenya.

"You've been muttering about 'caloric intake ratios' for the last five minutes," Iida said sternly, chopping his hand. "It's distracting! If you're here to sightsee, you should leave!"

Izuku looked up. His eyes were shadowed, the pupils dilated. "I'm calculating how much I can eat before I explode. Do you mind?"

Iida blinked, taken aback by the bluntness. "Eat? This is a combat exam!"

"For you," Izuku said, turning back to the gate. "For me, it's a buffet."

"START!"

Present Mic’s voice boomed from the tower. "What are you waiting for? There are no countdowns in real battles! Run! Run!"

The crowd hesitated for a fraction of a second.

Izuku didn't.

He launched himself forward. He didn't use an explosive burst of speed. He simply... fell. He shifted his center of gravity forward, creating a localized pull that dragged him horizontally.

He moved like a blurred shadow, bypassing the startled students.

He was the first one through the gate.

A Three-Pointer drone—a massive, treaded tank with missile launchers—rolled around the corner of a fake building.

"TARGET ACQUIRED."

Izuku didn't slow down. He didn't dodge.

He ran straight at it.

"He's going to get run over!" someone screamed behind him.

Izuku raised his right hand. The glove hummed.

The robot fired a missile.

Izuku caught it.

He didn't stop it. He caught it. His hand closed around the warhead.

"Convert."

Fwoom.

There was no explosion. The missile simply dissolved into a cloud of iron filings and a surge of heat that traveled up Izuku’s arm, causing the veins in his neck to glow purple for a second.

Spicy, the Hunger noted.

Izuku leaped, landing on the hood of the tank. He placed his palm flat against the metal plating.

"Drain."

He didn't eat the metal. That was too messy. He ate the electricity.

He pulled the electrons straight out of the battery core. The robot shrieked—a digital, dying wail—as its power source was instantly siphoned. The lights in its eyes died. The treads locked up. It slumped, dead weight.

Izuku jumped off, feeling a rush of caffeine-like energy jittering in his nerves.

"Three points," he whispered.

He kept moving.

Behind him, the other students arrived. They saw the robot. It wasn't smashed. It wasn't melted. It looked pristine, but it was dead. Cold. Like a corpse.

"What did he do to it?" a student with laser navel whispered. "It looks... haunted."

Ten Minutes Later

The battlefield was chaotic. Explosions, ice, lasers.

And amidst the noise, there was a zone of silence.

Wherever Izuku went, things got quiet.

He moved like a ghost. He didn't fight the robots; he simply touched them. A One-Pointer would lunge, Izuku would brush its arm, and the joint would rust instantly, snapping off. A Two-Pointer would try to crush him, and he would drain the kinetic energy from its strike, stopping the fist dead in the air before shattering the casing with a simple tap.

45 Points.

He was efficient. Brutally so.

But the Hunger was waking up.

The robots were appetizers. Cold, metallic snacks. They weren't enough. The exertion of running, of using the quirk repeatedly, was burning calories faster than he could absorb them from the machines.

He was running a deficit.

Izuku panted, leaning against a wall in an alleyway. His vision was swimming. The edges of the world were turning purple.

"Need... organic matter," he wheezed. "Sugar. Fat."

He fumbled for a nutrient bar in his belt. He ripped it open and shoved the dense, chalky block into his mouth, swallowing it whole.

It helped, but barely.

More, the Void growled. Take the building. Take the street. Take the boy with the engine legs.

"Shut up," Izuku hissed, slapping his own face. "Shut up."

He pushed off the wall.

50 Points. That should be enough to pass. He should hide. He should find a corner and wait for the timer to run out.

RUMBLE.

The ground shook. Not a vibration. A convulsion.

Dust fell from the buildings. Students stopped fighting, looking around in confusion.

"What is that?"

"Is that an earthquake?"

Then, the sun was blocked out.

At the far end of the main street, a monstrosity rose. The Zero Pointer.

It was bigger than the data files suggested. It was a moving mountain of green metal, taller than the skyscrapers it was currently crushing under its massive treads.

Izuku stared up at it. His mouth went dry.

It was terrifying.

But to the Hunger... it looked like a banquet.

So much energy, the Void drooled. A nuclear reactor core. Hydraulic pressure. Potential energy.

The students screamed. "Run! It's the Zero Pointer!"

"It's huge!"

"There's no point fighting that! Go!"

The crowd turned into a stampede. Izuku turned with them. His instincts—his human instincts—screamed flee.

He took a step back.

"Owww!"

A small, pained cry.

Izuku froze. The sound cut through the roar of the robot and the panic of the crowd.

He looked back.

Uraraka Ochako was lying in the rubble. A piece of concrete had pinned her leg. She was struggling, her face pale, trying to use her quirk on the rock, but she was exhausted.

The Zero Pointer loomed over her. Its massive hand, the size of a bus, was reaching down, sweeping through the street, crushing everything in its path.

It was going to kill her.

Izuku looked at the fleeing students. He looked at Iida, who was sprinting away, shouting orders to evacuate.

Nobody was stopping.

"I promised Mom," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling. "I promised I wouldn't lose control."

The robot’s shadow fell over Uraraka. She looked up, her eyes wide with terror.

Izuku felt the lock in his stomach click open.

It wasn't a choice. It was a reflex.

He didn't run away. He turned toward the monster.

He didn't sprint. He launched.

He disengaged the gravity limiters on his gloves. For a split second, he made his own mass zero. He kicked off the ground, and the force propelled him like a bullet.

He soared through the air, a green streak against the dusty sky.

"Hey!" someone shouted. "Idiot! Come back!"

Izuku didn't hear them. All he heard was the roar of the blood in his ears and the screaming of the Void.

He flew past the robot’s reaching hand. He flew higher, until he was level with the massive, glowing red eyes of the machine.

He hovered there for a second, suspended by the updraft.

He looked at the robot.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!"

Izuku pulled his right arm back.

He grabbed the dial on his glove.

Safety Release: 100%.

Containment: Disengaged.

The glove hissed and popped open. The metal plates fell away, raining down to the street below.

Izuku’s bare hand was exposed to the air.

The reaction was instant.

The sky darkened. The clouds above the arena swirled, sucked into a vortex centered on Izuku’s fist. The light around him bent, creating a halo of absolute darkness. The sound of the world was sucked away, replaced by a high-pitched, tearing whine—the sound of reality screaming.

Izuku didn't punch the robot.

He punched the space between him and the robot.

"EVENT HORIZON... SMASH!"

He thrust his bare hand forward.

He didn't touch the metal. He opened a hole in the universe. A point of infinite density. A micro-singularity the size of a golf ball.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then, physics broke.

The air rushed in. A shockwave of vacuum pressure hit the Zero Pointer.

The metal face of the robot didn't dent. It stretched. The steel warped like taffy, sucked toward the invisible point in front of Izuku’s hand.

CRUNCH.

The sound was deafening. The entire upper torso of the robot—thousands of tons of steel and circuitry—imploded. The head, the shoulders, the chest—they were all dragged violently forward, compressing, crumpling, twisting into a dense, jagged ball of scrap metal.

The robot’s momentum was arrested instantly. The treads lifted off the ground. The behemoth was pulled off its feet, suspended in the air by the sheer gravitational force of Izuku’s hunger.

Izuku screamed.

The energy was too much. He wasn't just pulling matter; he was pulling the robot's power source. A torrent of electricity and kinetic force rushed into his arm.

His sleeve disintegrated. His skin turned a deep, bruised purple. Black lightning arced off his body.

Too much. Too much. I'm going to burst.

He had to release it.

He clenched his fist, closing the singularity.

"REPEL!"

He reversed the polarity. He took all the energy he had just absorbed—the mass of the robot, the electricity, his own life force—and he pushed.

BOOM.

The crumpled ball of the Zero Pointer was blasted backward. It flew through the air like a discarded toy, crashing into the fake city three blocks away with earth-shattering force. A mushroom cloud of dust rose into the air.

Izuku hung in the sky for one second longer.

The purple glow faded. The darkness receded.

He looked at his arm. It was broken. Not just broken—shattered. It hung limp, purple and swollen.

And then, the crash hit.

It wasn't pain. It was emptiness.

Every calorie in his body had been spent. His blood sugar dropped to zero. His body temperature plummeted.

He fell.

He tumbled from the sky, a broken ragdoll. The ground was rushing up fast.

I did it, he thought, his consciousness fading. I saved her. But... I'm going to die.

He was too weak to use his quirk to land. He was too weak to even brace himself.

"Slap!"

A hand struck his cheek.

Izuku stopped inches from the pavement.

Uraraka, tears streaming down her dusty face, was hovering over him on a piece of floating rubble. She had slapped him to apply her quirk.

"Release!" she gasped, putting her fingertips together.

Gravity returned. Izuku dropped the last three inches, landing with a soft thud on top of Uraraka.

They lay there in the dust. Uraraka was exhausted, nauseous from using her quirk on so much mass.

Izuku was barely breathing.

His skin was ice cold. His eyes were rolled back in his head. His mouth was moving, shaping silent words.

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

The Aftermath

The silence that followed was heavy.

Students began to creep out from their hiding spots. They stared at the path of destruction. They stared at the crushed remains of the Zero Pointer in the distance.

"Is he... is he dead?" someone whispered.

"He took out the gimmick," another said, voice shaking. "In one hit."

"What is he?"

Iida ran over, skidding to a halt. "Medic! We need a medic here!"

A small, elderly woman hobbled through the crowd. Recovery Girl.

"Move aside, move aside," she grumbled, pushing through the stunned students. She looked at Izuku and sucked in a breath. "Oh, dear."

She knelt beside him. She saw the purple arm. She saw the frost on his skin.

"He's in critical metabolic shock," she diagnosed instantly. "He's not just injured; he's empty."

She puckered her lips to kiss his forehead, to activate her healing quirk.

Then she stopped.

She saw the faint, dark distortion still clinging to Izuku’s skin.

"I can't use my quirk," she realized with horror. "If I give him my energy to heal, his body will drain me dry. He'll kill me."

"What?" Iida gasped. "Then what do we do?"

"Glucose!" Recovery Girl shouted, pulling a massive syringe from her coat pocket. "Direct injection! Now!"

She jammed the needle into Izuku’s uninjured arm.

The effect was instantaneous.

Izuku gasped, his eyes snapping open. The blackness in his sclera receded. The frost melted.

He coughed, curling into a ball.

"More..." he wheezed. "Need... more."

"That was enough to wake a horse," Recovery Girl snapped, though her hands were gentle. "You're safe, sonny. You're safe."

Izuku blinked, his vision clearing. He saw Uraraka lying next to him, looking at him with wide, terrified, but grateful eyes.

"You..." Uraraka whispered. "You saved me."

Izuku tried to smile. It came out as a grimace.

"I..." he croaked. "I broke the promise."

"What promise?"

"I didn't... stay small."

The Teachers' Observation Room

The room was silent.

On the main screen, the replay of the "Event Horizon Smash" was paused. The image showed the space warping around Izuku’s hand.

"That wasn't super strength," Midnight said, her voice unusually serious. "That was a gravitational anomaly."

"He folded the robot," Cementoss added, sounding disturbed. "He literally folded the steel like paper."

In the back of the room, All Might let out a breath he had been holding for ten minutes. He leaned against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor.

"He lived," All Might whispered. "Thank god."

"He's unstable," Aizawa said, staring at the screen. He held up Izuku’s file. "Midoriya Izuku. Quirk: Singularity. Hazard Class S."

Aizawa looked at the principal, Nezu, who was sipping tea, his beady eyes gleaming.

"He destroyed the Zero Pointer to save a fellow examinee," Nezu said cheerfully. "Sixty rescue points! A marvelous display of heroism!"

"He almost ate the city block," Aizawa countered.

"Details, Aizawa, details!" Nezu waved a paw. "He held back. If he hadn't, there wouldn't be a city block left."

Nezu turned to the screen, looking at the boy being loaded onto a stretcher.

"We need to accept him," Nezu said, his tone darkening slightly. "Because if we don't teach him how to control that... the villains will. And if that boy becomes a villain... well, school funding will be the least of our problems."

Aizawa sighed. He picked up his stamp.

He slammed it down on Izuku’s file.

ACCEPTED.

"Welcome to UA, Problem Child," Aizawa muttered. "Try not to eat the curriculum."

The gates of UA High School didn't look like school gates. To Izuku Midoriya, staring up at the monolithic barrier of glass and steel, they looked like the containment doors of a nuclear reactor.

It was April. The cherry blossoms were falling, dancing in the wind. To anyone else, they were beautiful pink petals. To Izuku, they were biomass. Cellulose. Sugar. Energy. He watched one petal drift onto the back of his heavy, black glove. He resisted the urge to absorb it.

Calorie Count: 3,200. Stable.

He adjusted the strap on his left wrist. The "Containment Unit v5.0" gloves were a comfort, a heavy weight that reminded him where his body ended and the rest of the universe began.

"Move it, Mob."

Izuku stepped aside instinctively. A student with blue hair and glasses—Iida Tenya, the boy from the exam—marched past him, muttering about punctuality. He didn't look at Izuku. He gave him a wide berth, a subtle arc in his path that kept him exactly two meters away.

It had begun. The reputation.

Izuku walked through the courtyard. He could feel the eyes on him. The whispers were like static in his ears.

"That's him."

"The one who ate the Zero Pointer."

"I heard he doesn't have a quirk; he has a curse."

"Don't get too close. My cousin said he felt cold just standing near him at the exam."

Izuku kept his head down. He clutched his bag straps. The "Singularity" inside him was quiet today, fed by a breakfast of high-density lipid bars and a liter of glucose syrup. It was a dormant beast, curled up in his gut, purring.

He found Class 1-A. The door was massive—huge enough for a giant, or a monster.

It fits, Izuku thought.

He opened the door.

The classroom was chaotic. Bakugo was shouting at Iida, who was scolding him for putting his feet on the desk.

"Remove your foot from the sacred desk!" Iida chopped the air.

"Hah? You wanna fight, Four-Eyes?" Bakugo sneered, small explosions popping in his palms.

Then, the door clicked shut behind Izuku.

The sound was like a gunshot in a library.

Bakugo froze. He slowly turned his head. His red eyes locked onto Izuku. The explosions in his hands died instantly, snuffed out. The smirk vanished, replaced by a guarded, predatory scowl.

Iida stopped mid-chop. He adjusted his glasses, turning to face the newcomer.

"You," Iida said. His voice was loud, but there was a tremor in it. "Midoriya Izuku."

The entire class turned. Nineteen pairs of eyes fixed on him.

Izuku stood in the doorway, feeling the familiar itch under his skin. The anxiety was spiking his metabolism. Burn rate increasing. Need to stay calm.

"Um," Izuku said, raising a gloved hand in a small wave. "Hi."

"You're the one who destroyed the gimmick!" a boy with red, spiky hair yelled, grinning. "That was so manly! And terrifying! But mostly manly!"

"I'm Kirishima Eijiro!" The boy walked over, extending a hand.

Izuku flinched. He took a half-step back, pulling his gloved hands to his chest.

Kirishima paused, confused. "Uh, dude? I'm not gonna bite."

"I can't," Izuku whispered. "The gloves... they're not for style. It's safer if you don't touch me."

The room went quiet again. The reality of his presence settled in. He wasn't just strong; he was hazardous.

"Oh! It's you!"

The tension broke. Uraraka Ochako popped up from behind a desk, her face beaming.

" The Gravity Boy!" she cheered. "I was looking for you! I wanted to thank you again for the exam!"

She didn't stop at a distance. She walked right up to him, entering his personal space.

Izuku stiffened. She's close. Too close. Her aura is so bright.

"You saved my life," she said, her eyes shining. "I tried to find you after the test, but the medics took you away. Are you okay? Your arm looked... really bad."

"I'm fine," Izuku managed to say. "Recovery Girl fixed the bone. The... other stuff... just needed food."

"If you're here to make friends, you can pack up and leave."

The voice came from the floor.

Everyone looked down. A yellow sleeping bag was lying in the doorway like a giant caterpillar. A face peered out—unshaven, tired, with bloodshot eyes.

"This is the hero course," the man mumbled, unzipping the bag and standing up. He was dressed in black, looking more like a vagrant than a teacher. "It took you eight seconds to quiet down. Time is limited. You kids are irrational."

He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a gym uniform.

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shota. Put these on and meet me on the grounds."

He turned to leave, but stopped as he passed Izuku.

Aizawa didn't look at Izuku’s face. He looked at his stomach. At the center of his mass.

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice low. "Don't eat the equipment."

The PE Grounds

The air outside was crisp. The class gathered in a cluster, shivering slightly in their blue gym uniforms. Izuku stood on the periphery, adjusting his gloves. He had to file special paperwork to wear them during physical assessments.

"A Quirk Assessment Test?!" the class shouted in unison.

"What about the ceremony? The guidance counselor meeting?" Uraraka asked.

"If you want to be a hero, you don't have time for such leisurely events," Aizawa drawled. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his capture scarf hanging loosely around his neck. "UA is known for its freestyle traditions. That applies to the teachers as well."

He scanned the group. "Softball throw. Standing long jump. 50-meter dash. Endurance run. Grip strength. Upper-body training. Seated toe touch. Sit-ups. You did these in middle school, right? Without quirks."

He turned to Bakugo. "Bakugo. You finished first in the entrance exam. What was your softball throw in middle school?"

"67 meters," Bakugo grunted.

"Try it with your quirk," Aizawa said, tossing him a ball. "Do whatever you want. Just stay in the circle."

Bakugo walked to the circle. He stretched his arms. He glared at the ball, then at Izuku.

"DIE!"

BOOM.

A massive explosion propelled the ball. It shrieked through the air, leaving a trail of smoke.

"705.2 meters," Aizawa read from his device.

The class gasped.

"700 meters? That's insane!" Kaminari shouted.

"This looks like fun!" Mina Ashido cheered.

Aizawa’s expression darkened. The air grew heavy.

"Fun?" he whispered. "You have three years to become heroes. You think it's going to be fun?"

He smiled—a wide, terrifying expression that didn't reach his eyes.

"Right. The one with the lowest score across all eight events will be judged as having no potential... and will be expelled."

"Expelled?!" Uraraka cried. "That's not fair! It's the first day!"

"Natural disasters aren't fair," Aizawa said, looking directly at Izuku. "Villain attacks aren't fair. Calamities aren't fair. Heroes are the ones who correct that unfairness. If you wanted to hang out at a burger joint, you're in the wrong place."

Izuku swallowed hard. He felt the cold sweat on his back.

Lowest score gets expelled.

He looked at his classmates. Engines. Zero Gravity. Explosions. Creation.

His quirk wasn't a tool. It was a hunger. Using it meant opening the door. Opening the door meant risking the safety of everyone around him.

But if I don't use it, I'm just a guy with heavy gloves.

"Welcome to the Hero Course," Aizawa said. "Now, show me what you've got."

Test 1: 50-Meter Dash

Izuku was paired against Bakugo.

They stood at the starting line. The robot camera focused on them.

"Runners, take your mark."

Bakugo was vibrating. Not with his quirk, but with pure adrenaline. "Don't get in my way, Deku."

"Start!"

BOOM.

Bakugo launched himself backward with an explosion, flying forward.

Izuku didn't have explosive speed. He couldn't fly like that. But he had physics.

He unclenched his left hand, aiming his palm behind him.

Sip. Just a sip.

He created a vacuum. A low-pressure zone directly in front of him, and a high-pressure zone behind him.

The air rushed to fill the void. The wind slammed into his back, pushing him.

He wasn't flying; he was being sucked forward.

He crossed the line.

"5.51 seconds!" the robot announced for Izuku.

"4.13 seconds!" for Bakugo.

Izuku skidded to a stop, his boots smoking from the friction. He gasped, closing his hand. The vacuum collapsed with a soft pop.

Bakugo turned, breathing hard. He glared at Izuku. "You're slow, black hole."

"Faster than middle school," Izuku panted.

Test 2: Grip Strength

This was dangerous.

Izuku held the dynamometer. It was a sleek, digital device.

"Just squeeze," Kirishima encouraged him from the side. "Like this!" The redhead crushed his device. "Whoa! 400kg!"

Izuku gripped the handle.

Muscle strength only, he told himself.

He squeezed. The numbers climbed. 45kg. 50kg. 55kg.

It wasn't enough. He needed more.

The Hunger whispered. The spring. It has tension. Tension is energy. Eat the tension.

"No," Izuku muttered.

But his concentration slipped. Just for a microsecond. The violet veins on his hand pulsed.

The device in his hand didn't crush. It withered.

The metal spring inside turned gray instantly, losing its molecular cohesion. The plastic casing warped, not from heat, but from entropy. The digital screen flickered and died as the battery was drained dry.

The device crumbled into dust in his hand.

"Error," the machine beeped.

"Ah," Izuku whispered, staring at the pile of gray powder.

Aizawa walked over. He looked at the dust. He looked at Izuku.

"That costs 8,000 yen," Aizawa said flatly.

"I'm sorry," Izuku squeaked. "I... I got hungry."

"You ate the grip tester?" Sero asked, eyes wide.

"I didn't mean to! It just... slipped!"

Aizawa sighed. "We'll count it as... indefinite. Don't do it again."

Test 3: Standing Long Jump

Izuku cleared the sandbox easily. He simply reduced his own density for a second, becoming lighter than air, and floated across. It was the one test where he felt graceful.

Test 4: Repeated Side Steps

Mineta was a blur. Izuku was average. He couldn't use the void for this; it was too chaotic. He relied on his training at the beach. He was fast, but not superhuman.

The Climax: The Ball Throw

The sun was beginning to dip, casting long shadows across the field.

Most of the class had gone. Uraraka had gotten "Infinity," which had blown everyone's minds.

"Midoriya," Aizawa called.

It was time.

Izuku walked to the circle. He picked up the ball. It felt light in his hand, but heavy in his soul.

He looked at the field. He looked at the sky.

If he used Singularity Smash—the move he used on the Zero Pointer—he would destroy the ball. Or the field. Or his arm.

He needed something else.

Think. Physics. What is weight? It’s the pull of the Earth.

He gripped the ball.

I need to separate the ball from the Earth.

He activated the quirk. His glove hummed. The air around him darkened. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a second.

"Hey," Kirishima whispered. "Is it just me, or did the sun just go behind a cloud?"

"It's him," Tokoyami said, his Dark Shadow vibrating nervously. "He consumes the light."

Izuku wound up. He poured energy into his arm. The hunger roared. OPEN WIDE.

He was about to throw. He was about to unleash a shockwave.

Sudden Silence.

The power vanished.

Not faded. Vanished.

The hunger didn't disappear, but the mechanism to feed it was slammed shut. The door was locked. Izuku felt a sudden, suffocating pressure in his chest. The void was still there, but it was sealed, and it was angry. It began to claw at his insides.

Izuku gasped, dropping the ball. He clutched his chest, doubling over.

"W-What..."

He looked up.

Aizawa was standing there. His hair was floating, defying gravity. His capture scarf was floating. And his eyes were glowing a piercing, bloody red.

"I erased your quirk," Aizawa said. His voice was cold, sharp as a scalpel.

"It... it hurts," Izuku wheezed. "It's building up. Pressure..."

"That's the problem," Aizawa said, walking into the circle. "Your quirk isn't just a tool, Midoriya. It's a biological imperative. It's a mouth that never closes."

Aizawa stopped in front of him. He looked down at the trembling boy.

"I saw the entrance exam. You have zero control. You broke your arm and nearly erased a city block to save one person. And just now? You were about to unleash a gravitational anomaly that would have shattered the windows of this school."

"I... I have to pass," Izuku gritted out, the veins in his neck bulging.

"Pass?" Aizawa scoffed. "If you become a hero with that power, you won't save people. You'll become the disaster they need saving from. You'll get hungry in a rescue, and you'll eat the hostages. You'll lose focus in a fight, and you'll swallow your team."

Aizawa leaned in close.

"I'm not doing this to be cruel. I'm doing it to save you from becoming a villain. Or a corpse."

Aizawa blinked. His hair fell. The red light faded.

The Rush.

The dam broke. The hunger flooded back into Izuku’s system, stronger than before because of the suppression.

Izuku gasped, sucking in air. The ground beneath his feet cracked as gravity reasserted itself around him.

"You have two chances left," Aizawa said, turning his back. "Get it over with. Then go home."

Izuku stared at the ball on the grass.

He was shaking. Aizawa was right. He was a monster. A ticking time bomb.

He looked at his class. They were watching him. Fear. Pity. Curiosity.

I can't go home. I can't go back to the dark room.

He picked up the ball.

Think. Don't fight the hunger. Use it. Don't eat the world. Eat the rules.

He looked at Uraraka. She had removed gravity.

I am gravity.

He closed his eyes.

I don't need to throw it with force. Force creates friction. Friction creates heat. Heat is food.

I need to create a path.

Izuku opened his eyes. They were glowing.

He didn't wind up for a smash. He held the ball in his fingertips.

He activated Singularity not on his arm, but on the space directly above the ball.

He created a micro-vacuum. A straw.

"Go," he whispered.

He tossed the ball up. Gently.

As the ball left his hand, it entered the vacuum stream. There was no air resistance. There was no gravity pulling it down, because the gravity above it was stronger.

The ball shot upward.

It didn't arc. It went straight up. It accelerated.

Whoosh.

It pierced the clouds. It kept going.

Izuku held the stream for three seconds. The effort was agonizing. He was eating the atmosphere in a long, thin tube. The sky turned a dark, twilight blue in a vertical column above the field.

Then, he clenched his fist. The stream collapsed.

The ball was gone. It was in the upper stratosphere.

Aizawa looked at his device.

The numbers were spinning.

INFINITY.

"It... it didn't come down," Sero said, jaw dropping. "He threw it into space?"

Aizawa stared at the screen. Then he looked at Izuku.

Izuku was standing in the circle. His finger was smoking. He looked exhausted, pale, but he was smiling. A small, defiant smile.

"I didn't break my arm," Izuku said, his voice raspy. "And I didn't eat the school."

Aizawa’s expression was unreadable. Then, the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Good."

"DEKU!"

The scream tore through the air.

Bakugo was charging. Explosions popped in his palms, massive and violent.

"What the hell was that?!" Bakugo roared. "You couldn't do that before! You told me you were just a pebble! You told me you were nothing!"

He was fast. He was going to kill him.

Izuku didn't move. He couldn't. He was out of fuel.

This is it. He's going to blow my face off.

ZIP.

The scarf wrapped around Bakugo. It tightened, binding his arms to his torso. The explosions died.

"Gah!" Bakugo struggled. "Let me go!"

Aizawa stood behind him, holding the scarf tight. His hair was floating again.

"Use your quirks in here, and I'll suspend you," Aizawa growled. "We're done. Go back to the classroom."

He released Bakugo.

Bakugo stumbled. He turned to glare at Izuku. The look wasn't just anger anymore. It was terror masked as rage. He had seen the sky turn dark. He had seen the column of nothingness.

"You..." Bakugo hissed. "You're not a hero. You're the end of the world."

He turned and stormed off.

The Results

Izuku stood by the scoreboard. He felt sick.

The results flashed up.

1.  Yaoyorozu Momo

2.  Todoroki Shoto

3.  Bakugo Katsuki

...

18. Midoriya Izuku

19. Mineta Minoru

20. Hagakure Toru

He wasn't last.

He stared at the number 18. He had survived.

"By the way," Aizawa said, walking away. "The expulsion was a logical ruse. It was to draw out your full potential."

"WHAAAAAT?!" the class screamed.

"I knew it!" Yaoyorozu sighed.

Izuku’s knees gave out. He sat down hard on the grass.

"It wasn't a lie," Aizawa muttered to himself as he walked away. "I was ready to send him home. But... that kid creates his own gravity."

Twilight

The students were leaving. Izuku was the last one in the locker room. It took him a long time to change. He had to inspect his gloves for damage.

He walked out of the school building. The sun was setting.

He felt empty. Bakugo’s words were echoing in his head. You're the end of the world.

"Hey! Midoriya!"

Izuku turned.

Iida and Uraraka were waiting for him at the gate.

"We were waiting for you!" Uraraka waved.

"Waiting?" Izuku blinked.

"We're heading to the station," Iida said, chopping his hand. "Since our routes align, it is efficient to walk together!"

"And we wanted to ask about your finger!" Uraraka said, running up to him. "That was amazing! You made a tunnel in the sky!"

She reached out.

Izuku flinched, pulling his arm back. "Careful. I'm... I'm low on energy. The field is unstable."

Uraraka paused. She looked at his heavy, armored gloves. She looked at the fear in his eyes.

She didn't pull back.

Instead, she reached for his sleeve. Not his skin, but the fabric of his uniform.

"Then I'll just hold onto your sleeve," she said, smiling gently. "Like this."

She tugged him forward.

"Come on! Let's get some food. You look like you're starving!"

"Yeah," Iida nodded. "Proper nutrition is essential for hero work! I know a beef stew place that is highly rated!"

"Stew sounds good," Uraraka agreed. "What do you think, Deku?"

"Deku?" Izuku blinked.

"Oh! That's what Bakugo called you. Isn't it your nickname?"

"It... it means useless," Izuku murmured.

"Really?" Uraraka tilted her head. "I think it sounds like 'Dekiru'! Like 'You can do it!'"

Izuku looked at her. He looked at Iida.

They weren't looking at a black hole. They were looking at a classmate.

The hunger in his stomach didn't go away. It never would. But for the first time in fourteen years, the cold in his chest felt a little bit warmer.

"Deku," Izuku whispered, tasting the word. "I... I like it."

He tightened his grip on his bag strap.

"Yeah. Let's get some stew. I could eat... a lot."

Uraraka laughed. "I bet you could!"

They walked out of the gate together, three shadows stretching long in the setting sun. Behind them, Aizawa watched from the window of the faculty room, sipping a juice pouch.

"He found an orbit," Aizawa muttered. "Good. As long as he has satellites, he won't collapse."

He turned off the lights.

"But the villains are waking up. And they're going to want to feed that beast."