What if deku had an Immortality quirk

All men are not created equal. 

This was the harsh, unyielding truth that Izuku Midoriya learned at the tender age of four. It was not a lesson taught in a classroom, nor was it a piece of wisdom handed down by a caring elder. It was a truth carved into the very fabric of the world, broadcasted on every television screen, painted on every billboard, and demonstrated on every playground. 

Society had evolved, or perhaps mutated, into a superhuman hierarchy. The advent of the glowing baby in Qing-qing City had been the catalyst for a paradigm shift that altered human history forever. Quirks—extraordinary, physics-defying abilities—had become the new normal. Fire-breathing, telekinesis, acid secretion, flight; the impossible had become mundane. Nearly eighty percent of the global population possessed some form of superhuman trait. 

To have a Quirk was to be human. To lack one was to be a relic of a bygone era, a biological dead end.

Izuku Midoriya wanted nothing more than to be a hero. He wanted to be like the man on the computer screen, the towering monolith of justice known as All Might. He wanted to save people with a fearless smile that could banish the darkest of shadows. He would sit for hours in his dark bedroom, the glow of the monitor reflecting in his wide, starry eyes as he watched the old video of All Might rescuing hundreds of people from a blazing disaster in his debut. 

“Fear not, citizens! Hope has arrived! Because I am here!”

Izuku would rock back and forth, clutching his All Might action figure, his heart swelling with a desperate, burning anticipation. He couldn't wait for his Quirk to manifest. He knew it would be spectacular. Maybe he would breathe fire like his father, or attract small objects like his mother. Maybe it would be a combination of both—telekinetic fire manipulation! The possibilities were endless, and every morning he woke up hoping to find sparks dancing on his fingertips or toys floating around his room.

But the days turned into weeks, and the weeks bled into months. By the time his fourth birthday had come and gone, there were no sparks. There was no floating. 

There was only a doctor’s office, a chilling x-ray of a foot, and a heavy sigh from a man in a white coat.

"You should probably give it up," the doctor had said, his voice devoid of malice but dripping with a clinical apathy that cut deeper than any knife. 

The doctor had pointed a pen at the x-ray illuminated on the lightbox. He explained the evolutionary theory of Quirks, the streamlining of the human body, the absence of the extra joint in the pinky toe. He pointed to Izuku’s x-ray, where that useless, primitive joint sat clear as day. A biological anchor holding him to the past. 

Izuku’s world shattered in that sterile room. He had dropped his All Might figure. The plastic hero hit the linoleum floor with a hollow clatter, a sound that would echo in Izuku’s mind for years to come. 

His mother, Inko, had cried. She had hugged him, her tears soaking his shirt, apologizing over and over again as if it were her fault. “I’m sorry, Izuku. I’m so sorry.” But an apology wasn't what he needed. He needed someone to tell him he could still do it. He needed someone to tell him that he wasn't broken.

For a few months, Izuku lived as a Quirkless boy. 

It was a bleak existence. The children at school, led by his childhood friend Katsuki Bakugo, were quick to notice his lack of power. Katsuki, who had recently manifested an incredible, flashy Explosion Quirk, became the sun around which the rest of the children orbited. And Izuku, lacking a Quirk, became the dust beneath their feet. He was christened with a new name: Deku. The useless one. The one who couldn't do anything.

Izuku tried to endure it. He kept smiling, kept following Katsuki, kept hoping that maybe, just maybe, the doctor was wrong. He read comic books where heroes got their powers late. He wished upon every shooting star, every dandelion, every birthday candle. 

He didn't know that the universe was listening. He didn't know that he did have a Quirk, sleeping dormant in his marrow, waiting for the one specific trigger required to wake it up.

He didn't know that in order to be reborn, he first had to die.

It happened on a Tuesday in late October. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and the distant exhaust of rush hour traffic. The playground was bustling with children showing off their developing powers. Katsuki was at the center of attention, as always, popping small, impressive explosions from his palms that smelled like burnt sugar and ozone. 

Izuku sat on the edge of the sandbox, a safe distance away, sketching in a ratty notebook. He was drawing Katsuki’s explosions, trying to calculate the blast radius and the spark ignition. Even if he couldn't have a Quirk, he could understand them. He could still be a hero with his mind. 

"Hey! Look up there!" one of Katsuki’s lackeys—a boy with extendable fingers—shouted, pointing toward the edge of the park. 

Bordering the playground was an old, dilapidated three-story commercial building that was slated for demolition. Scaffolding, rusted and precarious, clung to the side of the brick structure like a metallic spiderweb. And there, trapped on a loose plank of wood on the second-story level, was a tiny, mewling calico kitten. It had somehow climbed up but was now frozen in terror, crying out piteously as the wind swayed the rusted pipes.

A crowd of children gathered at the chain-link fence separating the park from the construction site.

"Whoa, it’s really high up," a girl with small horns murmured.

"Someone should go get it," another kid said.

Katsuki scoffed, crossing his arms, sparks dancing across his knuckles. "It’s just a stupid cat. If it was dumb enough to climb up there, it deserves to be stuck."

Izuku squeezed through the crowd, his green eyes fixed on the trembling animal. His heart hammered in his chest. A life is in danger. The thought rang clear as a bell in his young mind. The kitten was terrified. It needed a hero. 

He looked around. The adults were on the other side of the park, chatting on benches, oblivious to the drama unfolding by the fence. There were no pro heroes passing by. 

Before he could process the danger, before logic could override his instinct, Izuku’s small hands grasped the chain-link fence. He scrambled over it, dropping into the overgrown weeds of the construction site. 

"Hey! What are you doing, Deku?!" Katsuki yelled, his crimson eyes widening in surprise. "Get back here, you Quirkless loser! You're gonna get hurt!"

Izuku didn't listen. The kitten let out another pathetic mewl. Izuku approached the base of the scaffolding. It looked like a towering steel mountain to his four-year-old eyes. The rusted metal was cold beneath his fingers, but he gripped it tightly. 

I can do this, he told himself, finding a foothold on the lowest crossbar. I can be a hero. I can save him.

He began to climb. 

It was slow, arduous work. His arms were small and lacked the muscle mass needed for such a feat, but adrenaline fueled his ascent. Ten feet off the ground. Fifteen. Twenty. The wind picked up, biting at his cheeks and ruffling his unruly green curls. The scaffolding groaned in protest beneath his weight, a haunting, metallic shriek that sent shivers down his spine.

"Deku, you idiot! Get down!" Katsuki’s voice sounded farther away now, tinged with genuine panic. 

Izuku didn't look down. He knew if he looked down, he would freeze. He kept his eyes on the prize. The kitten was only a few feet above him now, huddled on a wooden plank that jutted out precariously over the edge.

"Here, kitty," Izuku whispered, his breath visible in the chilly air. He reached the level of the plank, gripping a vertical pipe with his left hand while reaching out with his right. 

The kitten hissed, backing away.

"It's okay. I'm here. Because I am here," Izuku murmured, echoing the words of his idol. He shifted his weight, stepping onto the wooden plank. 

That was his first mistake. 

The wood, rotted from years of rain and neglect, let out a sickening crack. Izuku froze, his breath catching in his throat. He looked down at the plank. A jagged fissure was sprinting across the grain, directly beneath his red sneakers.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced his chest. He lunged forward, grabbing the scruff of the kitten with his right hand. He had it. He saved it. 

But as he pulled his arm back to retreat to the steel piping, the wooden plank gave way entirely.

The support snapped. Gravity, an unfeeling and absolute master, claimed him. 

Izuku fell. 

Time seemed to dilate, stretching into a surreal, agonizing crawl. He saw the rusted scaffolding rushing upward past him. He felt the sickening sensation of weightlessness in his stomach. He heard the chorus of screams from the children below. He looked at the kitten in his hand, instinctively curling his body inward, wrapping his arms around the tiny animal to shield it from the inevitable impact. 

He didn't have time to scream. He didn't have time to pray. He only had time to feel a profound, crushing sorrow that he would never get to meet All Might.

Then, he hit the ground.

The sound of his impact was something out of a nightmare—a wet, heavy crunch of bone and meat meeting concrete and debris. 

Izuku Midoriya died at 4:12 PM on a Tuesday.

The impact shattered his spine instantly. His skull fractured against a jagged piece of cinderblock, causing a massive, catastrophic hemorrhage. His ribs splintered, piercing his tiny lungs and heart. His neck snapped at an unnatural, horrifying angle. The pain, for the fraction of a millisecond that his brain was capable of processing it, was an apocalyptic explosion of agony. It was a fire that consumed his entire nervous system, burning so bright and so hot that it instantly overloaded his synapses. 

And then, there was nothing. 

The pain vanished. The cold vanished. The sounds of Katsuki screaming his name, the frantic footsteps of adults rushing over, the distant wail of a siren—it all faded into a heavy, suffocating silence. 

Izuku floated in an endless, ink-black void. It wasn't scary, not at first. It was peaceful. It was a profound emptiness, a state of un-being where he was no longer a boy without a Quirk, no longer a disappointment, no longer anything at all. 

But deep within the marrow of his shattered bones, deep within the cellular structure of his ruined body, something ancient and powerful woke up.

It was a Quirk that required a blank canvas. It required the complete cessation of biological function to activate. A Quirk that defied the natural order of life and death. 

In the void, Izuku saw a spark. A brilliant, blinding, golden spark of light. It grew, expanding into a roaring inferno that latched onto his consciousness and violently violently dragged him backward.

Izuku didn't want to go back. The void was safe. But the light was merciless.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered. 

CRACK. SNAP. SQUELCH.

On the ground, surrounded by horrified, sobbing children and screaming adults, the broken, bloody body of Izuku Midoriya began to twitch.

The adults who had rushed over recoiled in horror as the impossible occurred before their eyes. The puddle of blood pooling beneath the boy’s head began to move, defying gravity, slithering backward like water reversing down a drain, seeping back into his wounds. 

The sickening angle of his broken neck violently snapped back into place with a loud, percussive pop. Underneath his skin, his shattered ribs shifted, grinding together as the bone knitted itself whole in a matter of seconds. The lacerations on his face and arms sealed shut, leaving smooth, unblemished skin in their wake.

For Izuku, the resurrection was a thousand times worse than the death.

He was violently shoved back into his body, instantly forced to experience the sensory overload of his nervous system rebooting. It was as if every nerve ending in his body had been set on fire and doused in acid. He felt the ghost of his broken bones grinding against each other. He felt the phantom sensation of his blood rushing backward through his veins.

His lungs, perfectly healed, violently expanded. 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. They were wide, bloodshot, and filled with a terror so profound it defied human comprehension. 

He inhaled a massive, desperate gulp of air and let out a scream that tore at his throat—a raw, guttural, animalistic shriek of pure agony that silenced the entire park. He scrambled backward, his small hands tearing at his hair, his chest heaving as he sobbed hysterically. 

"Izuku!" 

His mother’s voice. Inko had been walking home from the grocery store nearby and had heard the commotion. She broke through the crowd, dropping her grocery bags, apples and oranges spilling across the concrete. She fell to her knees, pulling her screaming, thrashing son into her arms.

"I'm here, baby, I'm here! Mommy's here!" she sobbed, rocking him back and forth. 

Izuku couldn't speak. He couldn't articulate the nightmare he had just experienced. He just clung to his mother’s shirt, burying his face in her chest, trembling so violently his teeth chattered. 

A few feet away, Katsuki Bakugo stood frozen. His crimson eyes were wide, staring at the spot on the concrete where Izuku had landed. There was a smear of blood there. Not much, just a trace. But Katsuki had seen it. He had seen Deku’s neck bent backward. He had seen the lifeless glaze in those green eyes. 

Katsuki looked at the small calico kitten, which was currently shaking its coat, perfectly unharmed, having landed safely on top of Izuku’s chest during the fall. 

He looked back at Izuku, who was currently crying in his mother’s arms, without a single scratch on his body.

The paramedics arrived minutes later. They pushed through the crowd, their faces pale as they had been told a child had fallen three stories onto concrete. They approached Inko and Izuku with cervical collars and backboards, expecting a mangled corpse or a paralyzed boy hanging onto life by a thread.

Instead, they found a terrified four-year-old with perfectly stable vitals, unbroken skin, and a rapidly beating heart. 

They checked him over, shining lights in his eyes, feeling along his spine, their expressions shifting from panic to profound confusion. 

"Ma'am," the lead paramedic said, his voice trembling slightly. "Did... did he actually fall from up there?"

"I don't know!" Inko cried, clutching Izuku's hand. "They said he fell! Please, you have to take him to the hospital! You have to check him!"

They loaded Izuku onto the stretcher. He didn't need it, but protocol demanded it. As the ambulance doors closed, blocking out the stunned faces of the playground crowd, Izuku stared up at the bright fluorescent lights of the vehicle's ceiling.

He was alive. He shouldn't be, but he was. The pain was gone, replaced by a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. 

He didn't know it yet, but the boy who wanted nothing more than to be a hero had just awakened a power that would make his life a living hell.

The hospital smelled like rubbing alcohol, bleach, and stale coffee. It was a smell Izuku would become intimately familiar with over the next decade.

He sat swinging his legs on the edge of the examination table, wearing a hospital gown that was two sizes too big. He felt fine. In fact, he felt better than fine. He felt incredibly energetic, as if he had just slept for a full twelve hours. But his mind was a turbulent storm. The memory of the void, the cold, the agonizing snap of his bones—it played on a loop behind his eyelids every time he blinked.

Inko sat in the corner chair, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. 

The door opened, and Dr. Tsubasa walked in. It was the same doctor who had diagnosed Izuku as Quirkless just months prior. But this time, the doctor didn't look bored or apathetic. He looked pale, sweating profusely, holding a thick medical file as if it were a ticking bomb.

"Mrs. Midoriya," Dr. Tsubasa said, his voice hushed. He closed the door behind him and locked it. "We've run the tests. We've run them three times to be absolutely certain."

"Is my baby okay?" Inko asked, standing up quickly. "Is there internal bleeding? Brain damage? Please, doctor, tell me the truth."

"Physically, your son is in perfect health. In fact, he is in peak physical condition for a boy of his age," Dr. Tsubasa said, walking over to the lightbox and sliding a new set of x-rays into place. 

Izuku looked at the black-and-white images of his own skeleton. 

"I don't understand," Inko said, shaking her head. "The witnesses at the park... they said he fell thirty feet. They said he landed on his head."

"He did," Dr. Tsubasa said bluntly. He pointed to the x-ray. "Mrs. Midoriya, I have been practicing medicine in the post-Quirk era for thirty years. I have seen bodies regenerate from severe burns, I have seen severed limbs reattached, and I have seen blood manipulation. But I have never, in my entire career, seen anything like this."

He turned to face them, his expression grave. 

"Your son is not Quirkless. The extra joint in his toe was a red herring. It seems his body’s evolution was focused entirely on a singular, absolute defensive mechanism. A mechanism so extreme that it required a catastrophic trigger to awaken."

Izuku stopped swinging his legs. He tilted his head. "I have a Quirk?" he whispered.

"You do, Izuku," the doctor said softly. He looked at Inko. "Mrs. Midoriya, when Izuku fell... he sustained injuries that were, by all biological metrics, instantly fatal. His neck was broken. His skull was fractured. He suffered massive internal trauma."

Inko gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.

"He died, Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor said, the words hanging in the air like an executioner’s axe. "Your son died on that pavement. But his Quirk... his Quirk refused to accept that state."

Dr. Tsubasa pulled out a tablet and showed them a microscopic video of Izuku's blood cells. 

"We took a sample of his blood and subjected it to extreme trauma in the lab. Heat, acid, radiation. Every time the cell dies, a unique genetic sequence triggers within the nucleus. The cell doesn't just heal; it forcefully reverses its entropy, reconstructing itself flawlessly and infinitely." 

The doctor lowered the tablet. "Izuku possesses a form of Absolute Cellular Regeneration. Immortality, for lack of a better term. Let's classify it as Undying. If he is injured, he will heal. If he is killed, his body will violently reconstruct itself and resurrect him in peak condition."

Silence descended upon the room. It was thick and suffocating.

Inko stared at the doctor, her mind struggling to process the impossible magnitude of what she was being told. "He... he can't die?"

"It appears not," Dr. Tsubasa said. "Or, more accurately, he can die, but he won't stay dead."

A spark of joy, bright and innocent, ignited in Izuku’s chest. A massive smile broke across his freckled face. 

I have a Quirk! he thought, his heart soaring. I have a Quirk, and it's super strong! I'm unkillable! Just like All Might! I can save anyone, and I don't have to worry about getting hurt!

"That's amazing!" Izuku cheered, throwing his arms up in the air. "I can be a hero, Mom! I can be a hero who never loses!"

But Inko wasn't smiling. She was staring at her son with a look of absolute, unadulterated horror. 

The doctor sighed heavily, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Izuku, listen to me very carefully. This Quirk... it is a miracle, yes. But there is a severe caveat."

Izuku lowered his arms, his smile faltering at the serious tone. "A... a caveat?"

"We tested your nervous system," Dr. Tsubasa explained. "Usually, regeneration Quirks come with an innate numbing agent. The body suppresses pain receptors so the user doesn't go into shock while their flesh knits back together. Your Quirk does not have this feature."

The doctor knelt down, looking Izuku directly in his wide green eyes. 

"Izuku, your body will fix itself. But your brain will feel every single second of it. You will feel 100% of the pain of the injury, the pain of dying, and the pain of your body forcefully snapping itself back together. Your Quirk doesn't prevent damage; it only reverses it. And it offers absolutely no offensive power. You have no super strength, no speed, no energy blasts. You are a completely normal human boy... who is cursed to endure lethal damage over and over again."

Izuku’s breath hitched. The memory of the agonizing pain on the pavement flashed through his mind. The searing fire of his bones grinding, the suffocation of his lungs failing, the sheer, unimaginable terror of the void. 

I will feel everything.

"And Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor added, his voice breaking slightly. "You need to prepare yourself. If his cells truly do not age or degrade once they reach a state of maturity... you will outlive him in reverse. He will watch the world turn to dust."

Inko couldn't take it anymore. She collapsed to her knees, burying her face in her hands, and began to wail. It was a sound of profound grief, the sound of a mother mourning the normal, happy life her son would never have. 

Izuku sat on the table, the oversized hospital gown slipping off his shoulder. He looked at his hands. They were small, soft, and completely unblemished. 

He had a Quirk. He got what he wanted. 

So why did he feel like he had just been handed a death sentence?

The return to school was supposed to be triumphant. 

A week had passed since the incident. The news of Izuku’s survival had spread through the neighborhood like wildfire, whispered by housewives in grocery aisles and debated by children on the playground. Some said he was made of rubber. Some said he had an angel watching over him. 

Izuku walked through the school gates on Monday morning with a renewed sense of purpose. He was wearing his bright yellow backpack, his All Might sneakers laced tight. He was nervous, yes. The doctor’s words still echoed in his mind, and he had suffered a few horrific nightmares where he was trapped falling endlessly. But he pushed those thoughts down. 

He wasn't Deku anymore. He had a Quirk. He was special. 

When he entered the playground, all eyes turned to him. The chatter died down. The kids parted, creating a path for him as if he were a ghost who had wandered back into the realm of the living. 

Standing by the swingset was Katsuki. 

The blonde boy looked at Izuku, his crimson eyes narrowed in suspicion and something else—something that looked dangerously close to fear. Katsuki had seen Izuku die. He had seen the lifeless eyes. For the past week, Katsuki had been uncharacteristically quiet, haunted by the guilt of having mocked Izuku right before he fell.

"Kacchan!" Izuku called out, offering his usual bright smile. He jogged over to his friend. "I'm back!"

Katsuki didn't smile back. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets. "You... you're not dead."

"Nope!" Izuku beamed, bouncing on his heels. "I went to the hospital! The doctor said I have a Quirk! A real Quirk, Kacchan! It's called Undying! I can't be killed!"

The fear in Katsuki’s eyes vanished, instantly replaced by a fiercely competitive fire. He stepped forward, getting into Izuku’s personal space. "Unkillable? Hah. There's no such thing as an unkillable Quirk. Everyone has a weakness."

"It's true!" Izuku insisted. "I fell, and my body fixed itself! I can be a hero now, Kacchan! We can be heroes together!"

Katsuki stared at him. Then, without a word of warning, he shoved Izuku hard in the chest. 

Izuku stumbled backward, his foot catching on the edge of the sandbox. He fell hard, scraping his palms and knees violently against the coarse gravel. Blood welled up instantly, stinging sharply. 

"Ow!" Izuku winced, tears prickling the corners of his eyes. 

"Let's see it, then," Katsuki demanded, looming over him. "Show me this amazing Quirk."

The crowd of children pressed closer, eager for a show. Izuku sniffled, looking down at his bleeding palms. 

Before his very eyes, the magic happened. The blood stopped flowing. It seemed to retract back into the broken skin. The scraped flesh rapidly stitched itself together, leaving smooth, unblemished skin behind in less than three seconds. The pain flared hot for a moment, an intense stinging sensation, and then vanished. 

A collective gasp echoed around the playground. 

"Whoa!" a kid whispered. "He healed!"

"It's like a video game!" another chimed in. 

Izuku looked up at Katsuki, smiling proudly, expecting to see admiration or respect in his friend’s eyes. He expected Katsuki to say, Wow, Deku, that's an awesome Quirk! 

But Katsuki just stared at Izuku’s healed hands, his expression darkening into a scowl of profound disgust.

"That's it?" Katsuki spat, his voice dripping with venom. 

Izuku’s smile fell. "What?"

"You healed a scrape. Big deal," Katsuki sneered, small explosions popping aggressively in his palms. "Where's the power? Where's the fire, the strength? How are you supposed to fight a villain?"

"I... I can take their hits!" Izuku argued, scrambling to his feet. "I can distract them! I can keep them busy so they don't hurt anyone else!"

Katsuki let out a harsh, barking laugh. He stepped forward and shoved a finger hard into Izuku’s chest. 

"Listen to me, Deku. A hero doesn't just stand there and take hits. A hero fights back. A hero beats the villain into the ground until they stay down! All Might doesn't let the bad guys beat him up; he smashes them with a Detroit Smash!"

Izuku swallowed hard, his heart sinking. "But I... I can save people..."

"No, you can't!" Katsuki shouted, the explosive pops in his hands growing louder. "You're just a meat shield! You don't have any power to save anyone; you only have the power to save yourself! What happens if the villain ignores you and attacks someone else? What are you gonna do? Bleed on them?!"

The words hit Izuku harder than the concrete had a week ago. 

"A hero needs to be strong," Katsuki spat, turning his back on Izuku. He looked over his shoulder, his eyes colder than ice. "You're not a hero, Deku. You're just a punching bag that can't break. You're still useless."

Katsuki walked away. The crowd of children, taking their cue from their leader, began to laugh. They pointed at Izuku, murmuring insults. 

Punching bag. Meat shield. Freak. Useless.

Izuku stood alone by the sandbox. His hands were perfectly healed, without a single scratch. But deep inside his chest, his heart was breaking. And his Quirk, no matter how powerful, didn't know how to heal that.

Growing up with immortality was a unique kind of torture. 

Over the next ten years, Izuku Midoriya learned the true, horrifying cost of his existence. He learned that society, for all its grand talk of heroism and justice, was incredibly cruel to things it didn't understand. 

When a normal child gets bullied, they go home with bruises, black eyes, and split lips. The teachers notice. The parents notice. There is evidence. There is a trail of breadcrumbs that leads to intervention. 

When Izuku Midoriya got bullied, he went home looking pristine. 

The older Katsuki and his cronies got, the more vicious their Quirks became. And the more they realized that Izuku would heal from anything they did, the more they lost their inhibitions. Izuku became the ultimate outlet for their teenage frustrations and violent tendencies. 

Why hold back when punching the Quirkless kid? He'll just heal anyway. 

Izuku learned to dissociate. When they cornered him in the alleyways behind the middle school, when Katsuki’s explosions charred the skin off Izuku’s forearms, Izuku would close his eyes and retreat deep into his own mind. He would bite his tongue until it bled—knowing it would heal in seconds—just to keep himself from screaming. If he screamed, it meant they were winning. 

He felt every degree of the burns. He felt the blistering heat melting his epidermis, the agonizing snap of his ribs when they kicked him against the brick walls, the suffocating terror of his lungs collapsing. 

But within minutes, the flesh would knit back together, pushing out the charred skin like molting snake scales. The broken bones would forcefully, painfully align. He would stand up, dust off his ruined uniform, and walk home. 

His mother tried, at first, to intervene. But how do you press charges for assault when the victim doesn't have a single mark on his body? The teachers dismissed Izuku’s claims. “Midoriya, stop making up stories. You’re perfectly fine. Look at you.”

He was perfectly fine. Physically. 

Mentally, Izuku was a shattered mirror, taped together by a single, desperate delusion: He could still be a hero. 

Because his own Quirk offered no offensive capabilities, he became obsessed with analyzing the Quirks of others. He filled notebook after notebook—Hero Analysis for the Future—documenting strengths, weaknesses, activation requirements, and combat applications of pro heroes and his classmates. If his body was nothing more than an indestructible vessel, his mind had to be the weapon. 

But the constant trauma, the endless cycle of violence and rebirth, warped his psychology in terrifying ways. 

Izuku developed a profoundly skewed sense of self-worth. To a normal person, life was precious. It was a fragile, singular flame that had to be guarded fiercely. To Izuku, his life was cheap. It was an infinite currency that he could spend without a second thought. 

He stopped looking both ways before crossing the street. If a car hit him, it would hurt for a minute, and then he would walk away. 

When a kitchen fire broke out at his middle school during a home economics class, while the other students panicked and fled, Izuku calmly walked directly into the flames to turn off the gas valve. He emerged with third-degree burns over eighty percent of his body. He stood in the hallway, his clothes fused to his flesh, his skin bubbling and smoking, and calmly asked the teacher if they were going to continue the lesson. 

The sheer, unbroken nonchalance with which he endured unimaginable agony terrified his classmates. They stopped seeing him as a human being. To them, he was a glitch in reality. A creepy, unnatural thing. 

"You're a freak, Deku," Katsuki would tell him, slamming him against the lockers. "It's unnatural. You're like a zombie."

Izuku never fought back. He couldn't. He had the muscle mass of a normal middle schooler. If he threw a punch at Katsuki, Katsuki would just explode it. So Izuku took the hits. He endured. 

He endured the burns, the broken bones, the drowning when they held his head underwater in the school pool just to see how long it took for him to resurrect. He endured all of it, cataloging the pain, building a massive, insurmountable tolerance to agony. 

By the time he was fourteen, Izuku had died fifty-eight times. 

He kept a tally in the back of his notebook, a morbid little scorecard.

Death 1: The fall. (Age 4)

Death 12: Hit by a drunk driver while walking home. (Age 8)

Death 27: Drowned in the river trying to save a stray dog. (Age 10)

Death 43: Pushed down the concrete stairs at school. Neck snapped. (Age 12)

Death 58: Electrocuted trying to fix the toaster. (Age 14)

Every time, he returned from the void. Every time, he woke up gasping, his body reconstructing itself flawlessly, his mind bearing the invisible scars of the trauma. 

It was a Monday afternoon, the start of his final year at Aldera Junior High. 

Izuku sat at his desk, staring out the window. The sky was a clear, brilliant blue. The cherry blossoms were beginning to fall, drifting past the glass like pink snow. 

The teacher was droning on about career aptitude tests, tossing a stack of papers into the air and laughing. "But you all want to go to the hero course, right?!" 

The class erupted in cheers, Quirks flashing and popping. Katsuki was leaning back in his chair, his feet resting on the desk, arrogance radiating from him in waves. He was going to UA. He was going to be the number one hero. 

"Oh, Midoriya," the teacher said, looking at a clipboard. "You applied for UA too, right?"

The classroom fell silent. For a second, you could hear a pin drop. 

Then, the laughter started. It wasn't the good-natured teasing of friends. It was a cruel, mocking cacophony that echoed off the walls. 

"Deku? UA?! You've gotta be kidding me!"

"What's he gonna do in the entrance exam? Let the robots run him over until they run out of gas?"

"He's gonna bleed on the villains to gross them out!"

Izuku kept his eyes fixed on the desk, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He didn't blush. He didn't cry. He just let the words wash over him, as meaningless as rain hitting a tin roof. 

Katsuki slammed his hands on Izuku’s desk, an explosion destroying Izuku’s notebook. "You listen to me, Deku," Katsuki snarled, smoke rising from his palms. "You are worse than the rest of these rejects. You don't have a combat Quirk. You don't have a rescue Quirk. You have a freak Quirk. You think UA wants a hero who just stands there and dies? You're a liability."

Izuku looked up at Katsuki. His green eyes were dull, completely devoid of the starry, innocent wonder they had held when he was four. They were the eyes of an old man trapped in a teenager’s body. The eyes of someone who had seen the other side of the veil too many times.

"They need people to protect the civilians, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "If I stand in front of the villain, the villain hits me instead of someone else. I can buy time."

"You're pathetic," Katsuki spat, snatching Izuku’s ruined notebook and tossing it out the third-story window. "If you want to be a hero so bad, why don't you take a swan dive off the roof? Maybe in your next life, you'll get a Quirk that actually does something."

The class went dead silent at that. Suicide baiting was a line, even for them. 

But Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't react with horror or sorrow. 

He just tilted his head, looking at Katsuki with a calm, unnerving serenity. 

"I already tried that, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, so only the two of them could hear. "When I was ten. From the roof of my apartment building. Six stories."

Katsuki froze, the color draining from his face. 

Izuku offered a small, broken smile. "It took exactly four seconds for me to hit the ground. My femur shattered and pierced my heart. It took twenty-two seconds for my body to push the bone back in and restart my pulse. It was the forty-first time I died."

Katsuki took a step back, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and revulsion. He looked at Izuku as if he were staring at a monster, an aberration of nature. He didn't say another word. He just turned and walked quickly out of the classroom, the rest of his lackeys following in uneasy silence. 

Izuku remained at his desk, alone in the room. 

He sighed, standing up and grabbing his yellow backpack. He needed to go find his notebook in the koi pond. 

He walked down the stairs, out of the building, and fished his sodden, burnt notebook out of the water. He brushed a few fish scales off the cover, the title Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13 barely legible. 

He began the walk home, taking the shortcut under the bridge. 

He pulled out his phone, pulling up the old, familiar video of All Might’s debut. The video that had started it all. The hero standing amidst the flames, laughing, holding civilians safely in his massive arms. 

“Fear not, citizens! Hope has arrived! Because I am here!”

Izuku stopped walking. He looked at the screen, and then he looked at his own reflection in a puddle on the concrete path. He saw a skinny boy with messy green hair, sunken eyes, and a posture that screamed defeat. 

"A hero," Izuku whispered to himself. 

Katsuki was right. A hero needed to win. A hero needed to fight. 

All Izuku could do was endure. He was a shield with no sword. A wall that could be knocked down infinitely, but never strike back. What good was an immortal body if he lacked the strength to pull a child out from under the rubble? What good was endless life if he couldn't stop a villain from killing someone else while they were busy torturing him?

He closed his eyes, clenching his fists. The familiar sting of self-loathing coiled in his gut. 

He hated his Quirk. He hated it with every fiber of his being. He would gladly trade his immortality for a single spark of fire, a single ounce of telekinesis. He would trade his infinite lives for one, single, fragile life where he actually had the power to make a difference.

He didn't want to be the boy who couldn't break. He wanted to be the boy who could protect. 

A sudden, foul smell hit his nose. It smelled like raw sewage and rotting garbage. 

Izuku opened his eyes. The manhole cover a few feet away from him was rattling violently. Suddenly, it exploded into the air, clattering against the concrete of the tunnel. 

From the dark, fetid depths of the sewer, a massive, gelatinous mass of dark green sludge erupted outward. It coalesced into a towering, shifting blob of liquid muscle, two massive, bloodshot eyes and a jagged mouth full of yellow teeth forming in the center. 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," the Sludge Villain gurgled, its voice wet and guttural. "Perfect."

Izuku didn't run. He didn't panic. He just stared at the villain, his heart rate barely elevating. 

A normal kid would be screaming. A normal kid would be sprinting for their life. 

But Izuku Midoriya was not normal. His threat assessment was irreparably broken. He calculated the mass of the villain, the lack of solid physical structure, and deduced that blunt force trauma wouldn't work. The villain would likely attempt to suffocate him to take over his body. 

Suffocation, Izuku thought analytically. Death by hypoxia. That’s around four minutes of intense chest pain, followed by loss of consciousness, followed by brain death. Resurrection will take approximately fifteen seconds, pushing the sludge out of my respiratory system via forceful exhalation.

He was already planning his resurrection before the fight had even begun. 

The Sludge Villain lunged forward, a massive tendril of liquid snapping out like a whip, wrapping tightly around Izuku’s torso and lifting him into the air. 

"Don't fight it, kid," the villain hissed, forcing a thick appendage of sludge up Izuku’s nose and into his open mouth. "It'll only hurt for about 45 seconds. Then, it'll all be over. You're a hero to me!"

The sludge flooded Izuku’s windpipe, tasting like copper and sewage. The oxygen was cut off instantly. His lungs burned, screaming for air that wasn't there. 

Izuku didn't thrash. He didn't claw at his throat. He just hung there, suspended in the air, enduring the agony with a terrifying, vacant calm. 

It will be over soon, Izuku thought, the edges of his vision beginning to darken. And then, I'll wake up. I always wake up.

He closed his eyes, letting the darkness take him. 

He was ready to die for the fifty-ninth time. 

But destiny, it seemed, had a different plan for Izuku Midoriya on this particular afternoon. Because just as his heart gave its final, desperate beat, the cover of the sewer erupted with a massive explosion of force. 

A colossal figure shot out of the darkness, landing in a heroic crouch that cracked the concrete beneath his boots. 

Izuku, on the very edge of death, forced his eyes open. Through the murky, sickening green of the sludge, he saw a mountain of muscle wrapped in a white t-shirt and cargo pants. He saw bright blonde hair standing up like two rabbit ears. 

"Fear not, kid!" a voice boomed, rich, deep, and echoing with unyielding confidence. 

The man stood up, rearing back a fist that seemed to pull the very air in the tunnel toward it. 

"Because I am here!"

And for the first time in his life, as All Might unleashed a shockwave that obliterated the sludge villain and sent Izuku tumbling safely to the ground, the boy who couldn't break felt a glimmer of something he hadn't felt in ten years. 

Hope.

Izuku Midoriya did not die in the tunnel. 

It was a close thing. His vision had tunneled down to a pinpoint, his lungs had seized, and his heart had begun the painful, stuttering flutter that preceded cardiac arrest. The Sludge Villain’s vile, sewage-tasting body had coated the inside of his trachea, a suffocating blanket of invasive pressure. Izuku had been ready for the darkness. He had prepared his mind for the inevitable, agonizing snap of his cells forcefully re-knitting themselves. 

But then, the wind had changed. 

A localized hurricane, born from sheer physical strength, tore through the confined space of the underpass. The sludge was ripped from Izuku’s throat with the force of a vacuum, scattering across the concrete in a thousand dark green splatters. 

Izuku hit the ground, hacking violently, his hands clutching his throat as he dragged sweet, unimpeded oxygen into his burning lungs. He wasn't dead. He hadn't died. But the residual pain in his chest was a stark reminder of how close he had been to adding tally mark number fifty-nine to his notebook. 

"Thought we lost you there!" a booming voice echoed. 

Izuku’s tear-filled eyes snapped upward. The coughing fit died in his throat. 

There, standing in the dim light of the tunnel, was a literal god among men. Towering over seven feet tall, practically vibrating with raw power and an unyielding aura of safety, was All Might. The Number One Hero. The Symbol of Peace. He was holding two large plastic soda bottles, casually sweeping the scattered remnants of the Sludge Villain into them. 

"Apologies for getting you caught up in my villain hunt!" All Might declared, flashing a smile so bright it seemed to illuminate the dark concrete. "I usually don't make mistakes like this, but I'm in a new city and well, I got a little turned around! Hahaha!"

Izuku stared. His brain, usually a hyper-active engine of analysis and murmurs, flatlined. It was him. The man from the video. The man who had been the anchor of Izuku’s fragile sanity for a decade. 

"Ah! My notebook!" Izuku scrambled up, ignoring the lingering burn in his chest. He grabbed his waterlogged, burnt journal from the ground. "P-Please! An autograph!"

He flipped it open, only to find a massive, sprawling signature already taking up two full pages. 

"He already signed it!" Izuku shrieked, bowing so furiously his spine popped. "Thank you! Thank you! This will be a family heirloom! A treasure for generations!"

"Well, I must be off!" All Might announced, patting his pockets to ensure the bottles were secure. "Take care, young man! Stay out of trouble!"

"Wait!" Izuku panicked. The hero was already turning, his massive legs bending to prepare for a jump. "Already? But I... I have to ask you something!"

"A pro hero is always fighting time, my boy!" 

All Might leaped. The force of his jump cracked the concrete beneath him, sending him rocketing out of the tunnel and into the sky like a fired missile. 

But the aerodynamic drag was suddenly slightly heavier than he expected. 

All Might looked down, his perpetual smile twitching in alarm. There, clinging desperately to his pant leg, his face rippling from the G-force of the wind, was the green-haired middle schooler. 

"Hey, hey, hey! Let go!" All Might shouted over the roaring wind. "Your fanaticism is too much! If you let go now, you'll die!"

"If I let go now, I'll definitely die!" Izuku screamed back, his eyes watering. Well, Izuku thought morbidly, I won't stay dead. But the fall from this height will break every bone in my body, and I really don't want to feel my spine reconstruct itself today! "Please! I just have one question!"

All Might sighed, scanning the skyline. "Fine! Just close your eyes and hold your breath!"

A few terrifying moments later, All Might touched down on the roof of a three-story commercial building. Izuku released his death grip on the hero's leg, collapsing onto the sun-baked tar, his legs turning to jelly. He panted heavily, his adrenaline crashing.

"Good grief," All Might grumbled, turning his back. "If you knock on the door, someone will eventually let you down. Now, I really must be going—"

Suddenly, the hero stopped. A violent, sickening cough wracked his massive frame. Smoke, thick and white, began to pour off his body, obscuring him entirely. 

Izuku, catching his breath, looked up. "Wait! All Might, you can't leave! I have to know—"

The smoke cleared. Izuku blinked. He rubbed his eyes and blinked again. 

The towering, invincible Symbol of Peace was gone. In his place stood an emaciated, skeletal man with hollow cheeks, sunken blue eyes, and limbs so thin they looked like they might snap in a stiff breeze. He was swimming in clothes that were several sizes too large, wiping a trail of blood from his mouth.

Izuku let out a high-pitched, terrified scream. "An impostor! You deflated! Where's All Might?!"

The skeletal man sighed heavily, slumping against the roof's railing. "I am All Might. You know how guys at the pool suck in their gut to look tough? It's like that."

"No way..." Izuku whispered, his reality fracturing. 

All Might slid down the railing, sitting on the tar roof with a groan of profound exhaustion. He pulled up his oversized white t-shirt. Izuku gasped. Covering the entire left side of the hero's torso was a horrific, jagged scar. It looked like a crater, a mass of angry purple and red tissue radiating out from a central, sunken point.

"Five years ago," All Might said, his voice quiet, stripped of the booming bravado. "An enemy did this to me. My respiratory system was nearly destroyed. I lost my whole stomach. All the surgeries have worn me down. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day. The rest of the time... I look like this."

Izuku stared at the wound. His mind instantly cataloged it. He had experienced horrific injuries himself—he had been impaled, crushed, and burned—but his body always reset. This man, the greatest hero in the world, had taken a lethal blow and kept the damage. He was carrying it every single day. 

"Why are you showing me this?" Izuku asked softly. 

"Because you need to understand reality," All Might said, fixing his piercing, hollow eyes on the boy. "You asked if you could ask me a question. What is it?"

Izuku swallowed hard. The wind howled softly across the roof. This was it. The moment of truth. He looked down at his unblemished, scarred-less hands. 

"Can someone like me be a hero?" Izuku asked, his voice trembling. "I... I have a Quirk. But it's not a combat Quirk. It's an Immortality Quirk."

All Might’s eyebrows rose slightly in surprise. "Immortality?"

"My cells have absolute regeneration, but only when I sustain lethal or catastrophic damage," Izuku explained, the clinical terms rolling off his tongue like a rehearsed script. "If I am killed, my body forcefully resurrects me in peak condition. I can't be permanently destroyed."

All Might stared at the boy. "That... is an incredibly rare and powerful defensive ability, young man. Why would you doubt your potential?"

Izuku gripped the fabric of his trousers, his knuckles turning white. "Because I don't have an offensive power. I'm just a normal kid. No super strength, no speed, no energy blasts. And..." He took a shuddering breath. "My Quirk doesn't numb pain. I feel one hundred percent of the injuries. I feel myself die, and I feel my bones snap back together when I revive."

All Might visibly stiffened. The hero, who had endured unimaginable pain himself, felt a cold chill run down his spine at the boy's words. 

"My whole life," Izuku continued, tears welling in his eyes, "everyone has told me I'm just a meat shield. A punching bag. They say a hero has to be able to beat the villain, to strike back. I can't strike back. All I can do is stand in front of the villain and let them kill me over and over again so they don't hurt anyone else. Can... can someone who only has a cheap life to throw away... can I stand on the same stage as you?"

The silence that followed was deafening. 

Izuku waited for the smile. He waited for the booming, confident voice to tell him, Yes, young man! Your spirit is heroic!

But All Might didn't smile. The skeletal man looked down at his own scarred hands, his expression heavy with the burden of reality. 

"No," All Might said quietly. 

Izuku’s breath hitched. The word hit him like a physical blow, a kinetic strike straight to his un-beating heart. "No?"

"Young man," All Might said, his tone gentle but uncompromisingly firm. "Hero work is not just about a willingness to sacrifice yourself. It is about the ability to secure a victory. It is about saving lives, not just surviving."

All Might stood up, walking closer to Izuku. "If you have no offensive power, what happens when a villain traps a civilian under a collapsed building? Can your immortality lift the concrete? No. What happens when a villain decides to ignore you entirely because they know they can't kill you, and instead slaughters the hostages around you? You would be forced to watch, powerless to stop them."

Izuku looked down, tears freely spilling over his cheeks, hitting the tar roof with quiet taps. 

"And consider the psychological toll," All Might continued, his voice echoing with genuine sorrow. "If your strategy is to let yourself be brutally murdered in front of civilians to buy time... you will traumatize the very people you are trying to save. A child doesn't want to watch their savior's neck get snapped, even if he gets back up. A hero must be a symbol of peace, a pillar of reassurance. You cannot be a beacon of hope if your method of heroism is a visceral display of horror."

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. It was exactly what Katsuki had said. It was exactly what the teachers had said. But hearing it from All Might... it finalized it. It was an objective, indisputable truth. 

"I'm sorry, young man," All Might said gently. "Your willingness to endure pain for others is noble. It truly is. But a pro hero must be equipped to defeat the evil, not just endure it. If you want to help people, become a police officer. A firefighter. A paramedic. Those are fine, honorable professions. But as a pro hero? You would be a liability on the battlefield, and the psychological damage you would inflict on yourself and others would be devastating."

All Might turned, walking toward the heavy metal door that led down into the building. "It's not bad to dream. But you have to consider what's realistic. Your life isn't cheap, kid. Don't throw it away just because it comes back."

The heavy metal door clicked shut. 

Izuku was alone on the roof. 

The silence was absolute. The hope that had sustained him for ten years—the fragile, desperate delusion that if he just took enough beatings, he could be a hero—shattered into a million irreparable pieces. 

He didn't scream. He didn't wail. He just stood there, entirely hollow. 

He was Deku. The useless one. The glitch. The punching bag. 

He slowly walked toward the door, his movements robotic. He pushed it open and began the long descent down the stairwell. Each step felt like walking through molasses. 

Become a police officer. A paramedic. 

But the police relied on heroes. Paramedics cleaned up after heroes. If he was in those roles, and a villain attacked, he would still just be the immortal meat shield. Nothing changed. He was cursed to walk the earth, unable to defend anyone, unable to even grant himself the mercy of a permanent end. 

He exited the building, stepping out onto the bustling streets of Tatoin Shopping District. He didn't know where he was going. He was just putting one foot in front of the other, dissociating from his own body. 

BOOM.

A massive explosion rattled the storefront windows. 

Izuku blinked, pulled out of his spiraling thoughts. He looked up. Plumes of thick, black smoke were rising into the sky a few blocks away. The smell of burning rubber, ozone, and burnt sugar filled the air. 

Burnt sugar.

Izuku knew that smell. He had lived with that smell singeing his skin for a decade. It was the smell of Katsuki’s nitroglycerin sweat. 

Without thinking, Izuku’s feet began to move. He ran toward the smoke. It wasn't hero instincts; it was a deeply ingrained, almost Pavlovian response. Where Kacchan was exploding, trouble followed. 

He pushed through a growing crowd of onlookers, coming to a halt at the police barricade. 

His eyes widened in sheer horror. 

The Tatoin Shopping District was a warzone. Fires raged out of control, licking the sides of the buildings. Shards of glass and chunks of asphalt littered the street. And in the center of the chaos, swelling to an enormous size, was the Sludge Villain. 

He dropped the bottles, Izuku realized, his stomach dropping into his shoes. When I grabbed his leg... All Might dropped the bottles! This is my fault!

But that wasn't the worst part. 

Thrashing violently in the center of the gelatinous mass, his face half-submerged in the suffocating muck, was Katsuki Bakugo. 

Katsuki was firing off massive explosions from his palms, desperate, panicked blasts that were only serving to ignite the surrounding buildings and feed the villain’s chaos. But the sludge just absorbed the impacts, reforming instantly. 

"It's no use!" Death Arms, a pro hero with super strength, shouted from the sidelines, coughing on the smoke. "I can't get a grip on this guy! It's like punching pudding!"

"And he's got a hostage!" Kamui Woods gritted his teeth, holding back civilians. "His Quirk is a terrible match for mine! My wood will catch fire if I get close!"

Mt. Lady stood helplessly at the edge of the street. "I need two lanes to maneuver! I can't fit down there without crushing the civilians!"

Izuku stared. The pros... they were doing nothing. They were standing there, offering excuses, waiting for someone with a better Quirk matchup to arrive. 

He looked at Katsuki. 

The explosions were growing weaker. Katsuki’s face was turning purple. The sludge was creeping up his nose, into his mouth, exactly as it had done to Izuku in the tunnel. 

Through the chaos, through the smoke and the fire, Katsuki’s crimson eyes locked onto Izuku’s green ones. 

Katsuki’s eyes were wide, bloodshot, and filled with a raw, unfiltered terror. It was a look Izuku had never seen on his childhood friend's face. The arrogant, invincible boy who thought he was going to be Number One was drowning. He was dying. 

He's pleading, Izuku realized. He's asking for help.

“Your life isn't cheap. Don't throw it away just because it comes back.” All Might’s words echoed in Izuku’s mind. “You would be a liability.”

If Izuku went out there, he couldn't beat the villain. He had no strength. He couldn't pull Katsuki out. All he could do was die. 

But as Izuku watched the sludge fully cover Katsuki’s mouth, cutting off his last supply of oxygen, a terrifying realization washed over him. 

My life IS cheap, Izuku thought, his expression flattening into a mask of pure, absolute resolve. It's infinite. Kacchan's life only happens once. I have endless coins to feed the machine. He only has one.

Izuku Midoriya ducked under the police tape. 

"Hey! Kid, get back here!" Death Arms bellowed, reaching out to grab him. 

But Izuku was already sprinting. He didn't run with the chaotic, flailing panic of a child. He ran with a terrifying, singular focus. He didn't grab his backpack to throw it. He didn't look for a weapon. He was the weapon. He was the shield.

"Deku?!" Katsuki’s muffled, gargled voice barely registered through the sludge. 

The Sludge Villain noticed the boy charging at him. A massive, jagged grin split the liquid mass. "You! The brat from the tunnel! You came back to be my meat suit?!"

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

As the Sludge Villain reeled back a massive tendril to swat him away, Izuku dove forward. He didn't aim for the villain’s eyes. He didn't aim to strike. He dove headfirst directly into the central mass of the villain, right where Katsuki was trapped. 

The impact was sickening. Izuku plunged into the fetid, suffocating liquid. It was freezing cold and smelled of rot. 

"What are you doing, you idiot?!" the villain roared, his internal structure disrupted by the sudden addition of a second body. 

Izuku found Katsuki in the dark muck. The blonde boy was thrashing, his eyes rolling back in his head. Izuku forced his hands upward, wedging his forearms violently between the dense sludge and Katsuki’s face. He pushed, using every ounce of his meager middle-school strength to create a tiny, two-inch pocket of air around Katsuki’s mouth and nose. 

Katsuki gasped, sucking in the polluted, smoky air of the alleyway, choking and coughing. 

"Deku?!" Katsuki yelled, his voice raw, his eyes wide in disbelief as he saw Izuku buried in the sludge beside him. "What the hell are you doing?! Get out of here!"

Izuku couldn't answer. To create the air pocket for Katsuki, Izuku had to surrender his own. The sludge rushed into Izuku’s open mouth, flooding his windpipe, filling his lungs with toxic, heavy liquid. 

"You want to be the hero, kid?!" the Sludge Villain shrieked, furious that his prize hostage was getting oxygen. "Then die for him!"

The pressure inside the sludge intensified exponentially. The villain constricted its liquid muscles around Izuku, crushing him with the force of a hydraulic press. 

Izuku felt his ribs groan under the pressure. The oxygen deprivation was immediate and severe. His lungs burned like they were filled with battery acid. The darkness encroached, swift and merciless. 

Katsuki watched in horror as Izuku’s green eyes wide, blood vessels popping in the sclera, turning them a horrific shade of red. 

"Deku!" Katsuki screamed. "Stop! Get out!"

Izuku looked at Katsuki, and even through the agonizing pain, even as his ribs began to crack under the pressure, Izuku smiled. It wasn't a confident All Might smile. It was a sad, broken, reassuring smile. 

It's okay, Kacchan, Izuku thought, though he couldn't speak. I don't break.

CRACK.

Izuku’s ribcage shattered. The broken bone fragments punctured his already drowned lungs. His heart stopped. 

Izuku Midoriya died for the sixtieth time. 

His body went limp in the sludge. Katsuki felt the resistance of Izuku’s arms give way. The sludge immediately began to crush back against Katsuki’s face. 

"NO!" Katsuki roared, firing an explosion blindly into the muck, tears tearing at his eyes. "DEKU! DEKU, WAKE UP!"

It took exactly three seconds. 

Deep within the crushed, drowned corpse of Izuku Midoriya, the immortality sequence activated. The cellular reconstruction was instantaneous, violent, and explosive. 

Izuku’s body arched violently within the sludge. His shattered ribs snapped back into place with a percussive POP that reverberated through the liquid. His lungs forcefully expelled the sludge, sending a shockwave of kinetic energy outward that visibly rippled the villain’s body. 

Izuku gasped, a massive, desperate intake of air, shoving his arms forward with renewed, peak-condition strength, re-establishing the air pocket for Katsuki. 

The pain hit Izuku like a freight train. The phantom sensation of his ribs breaking and un-breaking, the burning acid of suffocation—it all hit his nervous system simultaneously. He let out a muffled, agonizing scream that bubbled through the sludge. 

"What the hell are you?!" the Sludge Villain shrieked in genuine terror. He had felt the boy die. He had felt the heartbeat stop. And then, the body had forcefully repaired itself inside him. "Die! Just die!"

The villain constricted again, this time aiming for Izuku’s neck. A tendril wrapped tight around Izuku’s throat, snapping his cervical spine with a sickening CRUNCH. 

Izuku died for the sixty-first time. 

Three seconds later, he resurrected. The neck snapped back into place. Izuku gasped, his hands once again rigidly holding back the sludge from Katsuki’s face, maintaining the human wedge. 

"Stop..." Katsuki sobbed, the arrogant bravado entirely stripped away, replaced by the traumatizing horror of watching a boy he had tormented literally die and come back to life inches from his face. "Deku, stop it! You're feeling it! I know you're feeling it! Get out!"

Izuku died for the sixty-second time as the villain crushed his skull. 

He resurrected, the bone knitting together in a flash of heat. 

Sixty-three. Suffocation. 

Sixty-four. Internal hemorrhaging. 

Sixty-five. Drowning. 

Izuku became a machine. A broken, traumatized machine trapped in a loop of unfathomable agony. He didn't fight back. He didn't try to punch the villain. He simply used his body as an indestructible pillar, locking his arms in place, forcing the villain to kill him over and over and over again so that Katsuki could keep breathing. 

The pro heroes watched in stunned, horrified silence. 

"What... what is happening?" Mt. Lady whispered, her hands covering her mouth. "The villain keeps crushing him... but he keeps moving."

"He's using his own deaths to buy the hostage time," Kamui Woods realized, his wooden mask failing to hide his profound disturbance. "He's letting himself be killed."

In the crowd, hidden among the onlookers, a skeletal man watched the scene unfold. 

All Might clutched his bleeding side, his blue eyes wide with a horror he hadn't felt since his battle with All For One. 

He watched the quirkless—no, the immortal—boy he had just rejected throw himself into a meat grinder. He watched Izuku’s body go limp, only to violently snap back to life, gasping in agony, just to keep his hands locked in place to protect a boy who had likely bullied him his entire life. 

“Can someone who only has a cheap life to throw away... can I stand on the same stage as you?”

All Might felt a sickening wave of shame wash over him. 

He was a pro hero. He was the Symbol of Peace. And he was standing in the crowd, worrying about his time limit, worrying about his missing stomach, while a fourteen-year-old boy was enduring the pain of death on a continuous loop because no one else would step up.

Pathetic, All Might thought, his blood boiling, his quirk singing in his veins. I lectured him on what it takes to be a hero. I told him he was a liability. But look at him. He has no power. He knows the agony that awaits him. And yet, his body moved before he had time to think!

Izuku died for the sixty-sixth time. 

As he resurrected, his mind began to fray. The sensory overload was too much. The pain of dying six times in two minutes was tearing at his sanity. His vision blurred with tears and blood. He couldn't feel his arms anymore. He just knew he couldn't move them. If he moved them, Kacchan would die. 

Just endure, Izuku thought, his mind retreating into a dark, quiet corner as his body prepared for death number sixty-seven. I am a shield. I won't break.

"I really am pathetic." 

The voice boomed through the alleyway, cutting through the crackle of the fires and the screams of the villain. 

Izuku felt the sludge around him shift violently. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. 

There, bursting from the crowd in a cloud of steam, muscles bulging, steam rising from his skin, was All Might. The hero grabbed the Sludge Villain with hands the size of boulders. 

"I told you the traits that make a champion," All Might roared, blood spewing from his mouth, ignoring the agonizing tear in his own chest. "But I failed to live up to my own ideals! A pro should always put his life on the line!"

All Might pulled his right arm back. The air around his fist began to warp and distort from the sheer pressure. 

"DETROIT..." 

The villain shrieked, trying to flee, but All Might’s grip was absolute. 

"...SMASH!"

All Might threw the punch. He didn't hit the villain directly; he punched the air in front of it. The resulting shockwave was apocalyptic. 

A hurricane-force gale erupted in the narrow street. The Sludge Villain was instantly obliterated, his liquid body atomized by the sheer kinetic force. The fires on the surrounding buildings were snuffed out in an instant. The clouds above the city parted, split wide open by the updraft, and a sudden, brief shower of rain began to fall on the Tatoin Shopping District. 

Izuku and Katsuki were thrown to the ground, rolling across the asphalt. 

Izuku came to a halt against a police barricade. He lay there, staring up at the sky. He was alive. He was perfectly, completely healed. Not a single scratch on his body. 

But as his nervous system finally caught up with the trauma of what he had just done, Izuku violently rolled onto his side and vomited onto the concrete. His entire body began to shake, tremors wracking his limbs as he curled into a tight ball, hyperventilating. 

Katsuki sat a few feet away, coughing violently, soot and sludge clinging to his clothes. He looked over at Izuku. The arrogant sneer was gone. Katsuki just stared at the trembling, sobbing boy, his own chest heaving, the reality of what Izuku had sacrificed for him burning into his mind like a brand. 

"He... he changed the weather," an onlooker whispered in awe. 

All Might stood tall in the center of the street, steam rising from his massive frame, panting heavily. He looked over his shoulder at Izuku, his expression unreadable. 

The aftermath was a blur. 

The pro heroes descended upon the boys once the villain was contained. Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady surrounded Izuku. They weren't praising him. They were furious, and visibly unsettled. 

"What is wrong with you?!" Death Arms scolded, pointing a massive finger at Izuku. "Do you have a death wish?! You threw yourself into a hostage situation with no offensive Quirk! You just let the villain crush you! Do you have any idea how traumatizing it is for pros to watch a kid get killed in front of them?!"

"He has an immortality Quirk," an officer noted, looking at a tablet. "Midoriya Izuku. Registered as Undying."

"I don't care if he's made of titanium!" Kamui Woods snapped. "You don't throw your life away like that! You got in our way! You could have escalated the situation!"

Izuku sat on the curb, his arms wrapped around his knees. He didn't argue. He didn't defend himself. He just stared blankly at the asphalt. 

I know, Izuku thought numbly. I know it's ugly. I know it's traumatizing. I'm just a meat shield.

A few yards away, other heroes were praising Katsuki. "Amazing endurance, kid! Your Quirk is incredibly powerful! Once you hit high school, you'll be an amazing sidekick!"

Katsuki ignored them. He pushed past the heroes, his boots scuffing heavily on the road, and walked over to where Izuku was sitting. 

The pros fell silent, expecting the explosive boy to yell at the reckless one. 

Katsuki stood over Izuku. He looked at Izuku’s unblemished neck, remembering the sickening crunch he had heard just minutes ago. He looked at Izuku’s chest, remembering the sound of shattering ribs. 

Katsuki’s fists clenched at his sides. He opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to yell. He wanted to call Deku a freak, to tell him he didn't need his help. But the words died in his throat. 

"Deku," Katsuki forced out, his voice hoarse. 

Izuku didn't look up. 

"I..." Katsuki swallowed hard. He looked away, his jaw tight. "I didn't ask you for help. But... I... I owe you. You stupid, immortal freak."

Katsuki turned on his heel and walked away, his shoulders tense, leaving Izuku alone on the curb. It wasn't a 'thank you'. But from Katsuki Bakugo, it was a seismic shift in reality. 

Thirty minutes later, the police allowed Izuku to leave. 

He walked home alone. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the suburban streets. He felt incredibly tired. Not physically—his body was in perfect, peak condition, as it always was after a resurrection—but his soul felt like it had been dragged over broken glass. 

Six deaths. Six times he had felt his life violently ripped away and forcefully jammed back in. 

He stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. 

"I am here!" 

Izuku jumped as All Might suddenly lunged out from an adjacent alleyway, striking a heroic pose. "Hahaha! Taking a shortcut, my boy!"

Before Izuku could react, the hero coughed violently, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth as he deflated back into his skeletal form. He wiped his mouth, groaning in pain. 

Izuku stepped back, his eyes wide. "All Might? Why are you following me? Were you... waiting for me?"

All Might straightened up, his hollow blue eyes locking onto Izuku. The hero took a step forward, and to Izuku’s absolute shock, All Might bowed. The Number One Hero bent at the waist, lowering his head to a middle schooler. 

"I come to you with an apology, a correction, and a proposal," All Might said, his voice solemn and heavy with respect. 

"An... apology?" Izuku stammered, his hands waving frantically. "No, you don't have to apologize! You were right! I got in the way! The pros scolded me! I'm just a liability!"

"The pros are blind to the truth," All Might interrupted, standing tall, his eyes fierce. "If I had not heard your story... if I had not watched what you did... I would have been a fake hero today. I was terrified of my own limit. I stood in the crowd, making excuses. But you..."

All Might pointed a bony finger at Izuku. 

"You had no power to defeat that villain. You knew the agonizing pain that awaited you. You knew you would suffer horribly. And yet... out of everyone in that crowd, out of all the pros with flashy combat Quirks... you were the only one whose feet moved."

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. Tears, hot and unbidden, welled in his eyes. 

"You didn't just survive today, young man," All Might said gently. "You weaponized your own suffering to save a life. You built a wall out of your own bones to protect a boy who despises you. That... is the essence of heroism. Self-sacrifice, pushed to its absolute, terrifying limit."

Izuku collapsed to his knees, his hands covering his face. The tears spilled over, tracing tracks through the soot on his cheeks. For ten years, he had been told he was a freak. A glitch. A punching bag. And now, the man he idolized more than anyone else in the world was validating his existence. 

"You told me earlier that you have no offensive power," All Might said, walking closer. "You told me you were just a vessel that couldn't break. Well... what if I gave you the power to strike back?"

Izuku sniffled, looking up through his fingers. "G-Give me power? What do you mean? You can't give someone a Quirk."

"Ah, but that is where you are wrong," All Might smiled, a genuine, warm smile. "My Quirk was passed down to me like a sacred torch. It is a power that stockpiles the raw strength of its users, passing from one generation to the next, growing stronger with every iteration. It is called... One For All."

All Might extended a hand toward Izuku. 

"I have been searching for a successor. Someone worthy of inheriting this power. I thought I needed someone strong. But today, I realized I need someone who understands the weight of a life. Someone who knows the value of endurance."

All Might’s expression turned deeply serious. 

"I must warn you, young Midoriya. One For All is an immense, volatile power. It requires a vessel that can handle the blowback. If a normal, unprepared person tried to use it at one hundred percent, the sheer kinetic energy would blow their limbs clean off their body. They would be irreparably destroyed."

Izuku stared at All Might’s outstretched hand. His brilliant, analytical mind connected the dots in a fraction of a second. 

If a normal person used it, it would blow their limbs off.

My body forcefully reconstructs lethal damage.

I have absolute regeneration.

Izuku looked up at All Might, his green eyes widening as the terrifying synergy of the two Quirks dawned on him. 

"My body," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling. "It can't be irreparably destroyed."

"Exactly," All Might said, his eyes practically glowing in the dim light. "Your Quirk... it is the ultimate, unbreakable vessel. If you inherit One For All, you won't have to hold back. You could unleash the full, devastating power of the Symbol of Peace with every single strike."

All Might knelt down, looking Izuku dead in the eye. 

"But I know the cost. I know your Quirk doesn't numb the pain. I know that every time you use my power, you will feel your bones shatter and your flesh tear apart before it heals. It will be an existence of unimaginable agony." 

All Might held out his hand. 

"So I ask you, Izuku Midoriya. Are you willing to embrace that pain? Are you willing to break yourself over and over again, to wield the power to save others? Will you inherit my Quirk?"

Izuku looked at the hero’s hand. 

He thought of the void. He thought of the sixty-six times he had died. He thought of the agonizing fire of his cells reconstructing. 

He thought of the Sludge Villain. If he had possessed One For All today, he wouldn't have had to drown. He wouldn't have had to die. He could have just thrown a punch, and it would have been over. Yes, the punch would have shattered his arm. Yes, it would have hurt like hell. But he would have won. 

He wouldn't be a meat shield anymore. He would be a sword that reforges itself every time it strikes. 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He reached out and gripped All Might’s hand tightly. 

"I'll do it," Izuku said, his voice dropping an octave, devoid of fear. "I've been dying my whole life for nothing. I think it's time I start dying to win."

All Might smiled, a fierce, proud grin. He pulled Izuku to his feet. 

"Then let the training begin, young Midoriya. You have ten months until the UA Entrance Exam. We are going to build your vessel into a weapon the likes of which this world has never seen."

The dawn air at Dagobah Municipal Beach Park was thick with the scent of brine, oxidized iron, and rotting seaweed. It was a graveyard of forgotten things. Mountains of rusted refrigerators, crushed cars, shattered televisions, and waterlogged furniture stretched across the sand, forming a metallic, jagged coastline that choked the natural beauty of the ocean. 

To the rest of the city, it was a municipal failure, a dumping ground for the lazy and the apathetic. 

To Toshinori Yagi—the skeletal man known to the world as All Might—it was a crucible. 

Toshinori stood on the boardwalk, the sea breeze ruffling his oversized clothes. He held a thick stack of papers in his hand, a meticulously calculated schedule titled the Aim to Pass: American Dream Plan. It detailed caloric intake, sleep cycles, and progressive weight-lifting routines designed to build a normal teenage boy into a powerhouse over the course of ten months. 

He looked down at the fourteen-year-old boy standing beside him. 

Izuku Midoriya was staring at the towering mountains of trash, his green eyes wide but strangely vacant. He was wearing an old, faded t-shirt and gym shorts, looking entirely too small and fragile for the monumental task ahead of him. 

"This is it, young Midoriya!" Toshinori announced, coughing into his fist before striking a dramatic pose, albeit in his deflated form. "Your training ground! Over the next ten months, you are going to clean this entire beach. Every tire, every washing machine, every scrap of metal!"

Izuku blinked, his gaze sweeping over the thousands of tons of debris. "All of it?"

"All of it!" Toshinori affirmed. He walked down the wooden steps onto the sand, gesturing broadly. "One For All is not a Quirk that can be handed over lightly. It is a stockpiled amalgamation of physical power, kinetic energy, and the unified will of eight previous wielders. It is a raging torrent of power."

Toshinori turned back to Izuku, his sunken blue eyes turning deadly serious. 

"If I were to give you my Quirk right now, in your current physical state... your body would be completely unable to handle the sheer, explosive force of it. If you tried to throw a punch, the kinetic blowback would violently rip your limbs from your torso. You would explode from the inside out."

Toshinori waited for the boy to flinch. He waited for the fear to set in, for the realization of the danger to temper the boy's eagerness. That was the normal reaction. That was the healthy reaction.

Instead, Izuku simply tilted his head. He pulled out a small, worn notebook from his pocket and clicked a pen. 

"Explode from the inside out," Izuku muttered, rapidly jotting down notes. "Total catastrophic tissue failure. Kinetic shockwave destroying the skeletal structure and liquifying the muscular system. Okay. So... if I use it at one hundred percent, my arm gets blown off."

He looked up at Toshinori, his expression entirely devoid of fear. "But it wouldn't kill me. Or, well, it would kill me from the blood loss and systemic shock, but my Quirk would just reconstruct the arm. It would hurt a lot, but the arm would come back."

Toshinori felt a cold, unsettling chill run down his spine. The boy had spoken of his own violent dismemberment with the casual, detached tone of someone discussing the weather. 

"Midoriya..." Toshinori started, his voice thick with unease. "The goal is not to rely on your Immortality Quirk to survive One For All. The goal is to build your body into a proper vessel so that you don't explode in the first place! Your Quirk is a safety net, yes. But you must not treat it as a primary strategy. You told me yourself that you feel every ounce of the pain. I will not have you tearing yourself apart on my behalf."

"Right. A proper vessel," Izuku agreed, nodding quickly, though his eyes were still scanning the trash piles, calculating weights and mass. "I need muscle mass. I need bone density. I need to be able to contain the power."

Toshinori handed Izuku the thick stack of papers. "This is the American Dream Plan. I've tailored it for you. We will progressively overload your muscles, ensuring you get adequate rest to allow the micro-tears in your muscle fibers to heal, thus building mass over time. It will be grueling, but it is safe."

Izuku took the packet. He flipped through the pages, his eyes darting across the schedules. Rest days. Eight hours of sleep. Caloric surpluses. It was a perfect, scientifically sound regimen for a normal human being. 

"Ten months," Izuku murmured. "The UA Entrance Exam is in exactly three hundred days."

"It will be tight, but if you stick to the plan, you will be ready," Toshinori smiled, hoping to instill some of his trademark confidence into the boy. 

Izuku looked at the towering mountain of trash. Then he looked at his own thin, unblemished arms. 

Micro-tears, Izuku thought. Muscle hypertrophy occurs when the body repairs damage to the muscle fibers. The plan gives me rest days to heal those micro-tears.

An idea began to form in Izuku's mind. A terrifying, dark, and ruthlessly efficient idea. 

My Quirk doesn't just heal me when I die. It repairs catastrophic damage instantly. It forcefully returns my body to peak condition. If a normal person needs forty-eight hours to heal muscle tears... how long do I need?

"Okay, All Might," Izuku said, slipping the packet into his backpack. "I understand. I'll get to work."

"Excellent! Start with the smaller debris around the perimeter! We will work our way up to the heavy appliances!" Toshinori instructed, sitting down on a nearby cooler. 

Izuku walked toward the edge of the water. He didn't start with the smaller debris. He walked straight past the scattered tires and plastic crates, coming to a halt in front of a massive, waterlogged commercial double-door refrigerator. It was half-buried in the wet sand, easily weighing over four hundred pounds. 

Toshinori sat up straight. "Midoriya, no! That's too heavy for your current—"

Izuku ignored him. He wedged his small hands under the rusted metal base of the refrigerator. He planted his feet in the sand, bent his knees, and pulled. 

Nothing happened. The fridge didn't budge a millimeter. 

Izuku gritted his teeth. He didn't adjust his grip. He didn't step back. He simply pulled harder. 

He pulled with everything he had. He forced his muscles past the point of strain, past the point of warning. He demanded his body to do something it was biologically incapable of doing. 

Snap.

It sounded like a thick rubber band breaking. 

Izuku let out a sharp, choked gasp, dropping to his knees. The bicep in his right arm had literally torn away from the bone under the immense, impossible tension. A violent spasm wracked his arm, and he clutched it, his face paling as the agonizing fire of a ruptured muscle tore through his nervous system.

Toshinori leaped up from the cooler, sprinting across the sand in a panic. "Midoriya! I told you it was too heavy! You've torn a muscle! We need to get you to a hospital—!"

"Wait," Izuku gasped, his eyes squeezed shut, sweat beading on his forehead. "Just... wait a second."

Toshinori froze, watching in absolute horror. 

Beneath Izuku's skin, a grotesque, rippling movement occurred. The torn muscle fibers, detecting a catastrophic failure, activated the Immortality sequence. The muscle violently violently forcefully knitted itself back together. It didn't just heal; it reinforced itself. 

The process took exactly four seconds. 

Izuku let out a long, shuddering breath, opening his eyes. The pain vanished, replaced by the familiar, eerie sensation of peak physical restoration. He looked at his right arm. It wasn't visibly larger yet, but the muscle felt denser. Tighter. 

He stood up, wiping the sweat from his forehead. 

"Did you see that, All Might?" Izuku asked, his voice chillingly calm. "It healed. And it feels stronger."

Toshinori was paralyzed, his mouth slightly open. "You... you purposely tore your own bicep."

"Muscle hypertrophy requires damage and repair," Izuku stated factually, turning back to the massive refrigerator. "The American Dream Plan is based on a human healing rate. But I'm not bound by that. I don't need rest days. I don't need forty-eight hours to recover from micro-tears."

Izuku wedged his hands under the refrigerator once more. 

"If I cause macro-tears... if I destroy the muscle completely... my Quirk will rebuild it instantly."

"Midoriya, stop!" Toshinori yelled, the sheer psychological horror of the boy's logic hitting him like a physical blow. "That's insane! The pain—!"

"I am used to the pain," Izuku said, his voice dropping to a dead, hollow monotone. 

He pulled again. 

This time, a sickening series of pops echoed across the beach. Izuku screamed—a raw, visceral sound of pure agony—as the muscles in his back, shoulders, and legs simultaneously ruptured under the impossible load. He collapsed face-first into the wet sand, a broken, twitching mess. 

Toshinori fell to his knees beside the boy, his hands hovering over him, terrified to touch him. "Izuku! Stop this! This isn't training, this is torture!"

On the sand, Izuku's body writhed. The sickening sound of flesh knitting together, of tendons snapping back onto bone, filled the air. Ten seconds later, Izuku pushed himself up off the sand. He was panting heavily, tears of pain streaming down his cheeks, but his eyes were locked on the refrigerator with an unyielding, terrifying obsession. 

"Again," Izuku whispered, blood dripping from his bitten lip. 

He grabbed the refrigerator. He pulled. His muscles tore. He screamed. He collapsed. He healed. 

Over and over and over again. 

For Toshinori Yagi, the first month at Dagobah Beach was a waking nightmare. 

He had faced the most horrific villains the world had to offer. He had looked All For One in the eyes and fought until his own organs were destroyed. But nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared him for the psychological trauma of watching a fourteen-year-old boy systematically torture himself to death every single morning. 

Izuku Midoriya did not train like a human being. He trained like a machine caught in a glitching, horrific loop. 

He would tie thick, rusted ropes around a pickup truck buried in the sand. He would strap the harness to his chest and walk forward. He would pull until the skin on his chest was flayed open by the coarse rope, until his leg bones fractured under the pressure of his own leverage. He would drop dead, bleeding out into the sand, and Toshinori would have to watch, paralyzed by a sickening mixture of guilt and horror, as the boy resurrected minutes later. 

“This is my fault,” Toshinori thought, sitting on the boardwalk one rainy morning in November, watching Izuku repeatedly crush his own ribs trying to lift a steel I-beam. “I told him he was a meat shield. I told him he needed to be a vessel. He internalized it completely. He doesn't see himself as a person anymore. He sees himself as clay that needs to be beaten into a mold.”

The physical results were undeniable, and that was the most terrifying part. 

Izuku’s biological cheat code was working. Because he was bypassing the human need for rest and recovery, his muscle mass was expanding at an exponential, impossible rate. By month three, the scrawny, fragile boy was gone. His shoulders had broadened, his arms were corded with dense, incredibly tough muscle, and his core was built like a brick wall. 

But his eyes... his eyes were dying. 

The constant, unmitigated barrage of pain was taking a severe toll on Izuku’s mind. He rarely smiled anymore. He barely spoke. He would arrive at the beach at 4:00 AM, strip off his shirt, and walk directly to the heaviest object he could find. He had essentially lobotomized his own survival instincts. 

It came to a head in late December, during the dead of winter. 

The air was freezing, snow dusting the jagged peaks of the trash piles. Izuku was attempting to clear a massive cluster of crushed cars that had fused together from rust. He had managed to get under the frame of a rusted-out sedan, using his legs to leg-press the vehicle out of the sand. 

Toshinori, wrapped in a thick coat, was pacing the boardwalk, his anxiety gnawing at his missing stomach. 

"Midoriya, that's enough for today!" Toshinori called out, his breath pluming in the freezing air. "Your heart rate is entirely too high! You need to stop!"

Izuku didn't hear him. The boy was in a state of severe tunnel vision. The weight of the car was immense. He pushed upward. The muscles in his thighs bulged, tearing and instantly healing in a rapid, horrifying staccato rhythm. 

But the strain wasn't just on his muscles anymore. 

To lift the car, Izuku’s cardiovascular system was working in massive overdrive. His blood pressure skyrocketed to lethal levels. 

Toshinori watched as Izuku suddenly went rigid. The boy's eyes rolled back into his head. A sickening, wet thud resonated from within Izuku's chest—the sound of his left ventricle literally rupturing under the catastrophic pressure. 

Izuku’s grip failed. The rusted sedan slammed down, crushing the boy into the sand beneath two tons of steel. 

"IZUKU!" 

Toshinori didn't think. He didn't care about the pain in his side or his time limit. He instantly bulked up into his muscular form, dropping from the boardwalk like a meteor. He grabbed the rusted sedan and hurled it into the ocean with a furious roar. 

He fell to his knees in the freezing sand. 

Izuku lay there, utterly motionless. His lips were blue. His chest was still. Blood trickled from his nose. 

Toshinori reached out, his massive hands trembling violently. He placed a hand on the boy's chest. There was no heartbeat. 

"No, no, no," Toshinori chanted, his voice breaking. He knew the boy was immortal. He knew the Quirk would bring him back. But the visceral reality of seeing a child—his student, his successor—lying dead in the snow because of his own training regimen broke something deep inside the Symbol of Peace. 

I am a monster, Toshinori thought, tears freezing on his cheeks. I gave him a goal he is literally dying to achieve.

Three agonizing minutes passed. 

Then, the golden spark of the Undying Quirk activated. 

Izuku’s chest violently heaved upward as the ruptured heart forcefully reconstructed itself, sealing the torn ventricle and jump-starting the electrical rhythm with a massive jolt. 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. He violently gasped, a horrible, wet, choking sound as he inhaled the freezing winter air. He immediately curled into a tight fetal position, clutching his chest, a raw, primal scream tearing from his throat. The pain of a heart attack and subsequent resurrection was blinding. It felt like his chest cavity was filled with molten lead. 

He thrashed in the sand, sobbing hysterically, his fingers digging into his own flesh. 

Toshinori couldn't bear it anymore. He powered down, returning to his skeletal form, and pulled the thrashing, screaming boy into his arms. He wrapped his long, thin limbs around Izuku, holding him tightly against his chest, rocking him back and forth in the snow. 

"I've got you," Toshinori choked out, burying his face in Izuku’s wild green hair. "I'm here. It's over. I'm here."

Izuku’s screams slowly downgraded into ragged, exhausting sobs. He clung to Toshinori’s shirt, his whole body trembling violently from the systemic shock. 

They sat there for a long time, the Number One Hero and the immortal boy, shivering together in the graveyard of trash. 

When Izuku’s breathing finally leveled out, he slowly pulled back. His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale and smeared with wet sand. He looked at the spot where the sedan had been. 

"I almost had it," Izuku whispered, his voice incredibly weak. "I just... my heart gave out. If I reinforce the cardiovascular walls, I can lift it. I just need to die a few more times to build the tolerance."

He moved to stand up. 

Toshinori grabbed him by the shoulders, his grip tight and unyielding. 

"No," Toshinori said, his voice hard, trembling with a fierce, paternal anger. 

Izuku blinked, confused. "All Might? I have to keep going. The exam—"

"I don't care about the exam!" Toshinori shouted, the volume startling Izuku into silence. 

Toshinori looked at the boy, his blue eyes blazing with a mixture of fury and profound sorrow. "Look at yourself, Izuku! Look at what you are doing! You just suffered a catastrophic myocardial infarction! Your heart exploded in your chest! And your first thought is that you need to die a few more times?!"

"It's the only way to build the vessel!" Izuku argued, a desperate, almost manic edge to his voice. "You said One For All would blow me apart! If I don't build my body up, I won't be able to use it! I have a Quirk that lets me cheat the system, All Might! Why shouldn't I use it?!"

"Because you are not a machine!" Toshinori roared, shaking the boy slightly. "You are a human being, Izuku! Your life has value!"

"My life is cheap!" Izuku screamed back, shoving Toshinori away, scrambling backward in the sand. "It's always been cheap! It doesn't matter how many times I break, because I always come back! Everyone told me I was just a meat shield! A punching bag! Even you told me I was a liability! So what if I have to endure a little pain?! What if I have to die a thousand times on this beach?! If it makes me strong enough to save someone, then it's worth it!"

Izuku stood up, gesturing wildly to the mountains of trash. 

"I'm just trash, All Might! I'm just a broken thing that can't be thrown away! But if I do this... if I break myself enough times... maybe I can be forged into a hero!"

Toshinori stared at the boy. The raw, unfiltered self-hatred pouring out of Izuku was devastating. It laid bare ten years of relentless bullying, of societal rejection, of being treated as a disposable object. 

Toshinori stood up slowly. He didn't yell. He didn't lecture. He walked over to Izuku and, to the boy's absolute shock, he dropped to his knees in the snow. 

"All... All Might?" Izuku stammered, stepping back. "What are you doing? Please stand up."

"I wronged you, Izuku," Toshinori said softly, his head bowed. "On that roof, when I told you your life was cheap if you couldn't secure a victory. I spoke out of arrogance. I spoke from the perspective of a man who was born with power. I didn't understand the profound, unimaginable burden you have carried."

Toshinori looked up, his eyes shining with unshed tears. 

"Your life is not cheap. Your pain is not meaningless. And you are not trash. You are a brave, selfless young man who has endured more agony in fourteen years than most pro heroes endure in a lifetime. But listen to me very carefully."

Toshinori stood up, placing both hands on Izuku's shoulders, forcing the boy to look him in the eye. 

"A hero saves people. But a true hero... a Symbol of Peace... must also save themselves. If you destroy your mind in the pursuit of power, you will have nothing left to give the people you are trying to protect. If you continue this horrific cycle of torture, you will become a monster who feels nothing. And a hero who cannot feel, cannot empathize."

Izuku stared at him, his lip trembling. "But... the vessel..."

"We will build the vessel," Toshinori said firmly. "But we will build it as humans. From this day forward, I am instituting a new rule. If you die, even once, training is over for the day. You are forbidden from weaponizing your own death to speed up the process."

Izuku’s eyes widened. "But we'll run out of time!"

"Then we run out of time!" Toshinori countered fiercely. "I would rather you fail the entrance exam than watch you lose your humanity on this beach. You are going to learn how to endure the weight without breaking. You are going to learn how to respect your own limits, even if your Quirk erases them. Do you understand me?"

Izuku looked into Toshinori’s eyes. He saw the genuine, raw terror there. He saw that the Number One Hero wasn't looking at him as a vessel, or as a meat shield. He was looking at him as a child. As his child. 

The dam broke. 

Izuku fell forward, burying his face in Toshinori’s coat, and began to cry. Not the screams of physical agony, but the deep, racking sobs of a boy who was finally being told that he didn't have to hurt himself to be loved. That he didn't have to die to be valuable. 

Toshinori hugged him back, resting his chin on the boy's messy green hair. 

"I've got you, my boy. We're going to do this the right way."

The next seven months were a completely different kind of challenge. 

With the 'cheat code' of his Quirk forbidden, Izuku had to learn how to actually lift the weight. He had to learn form, leverage, and patience. The physical gains slowed down drastically, but the psychological healing began. 

Toshinori was constantly by his side, correcting his posture, encouraging him, and, most importantly, pulling him back when he pushed too hard. There were still accidents. A rusted pipe would snap, crushing Izuku's leg, or a stack of tires would collapse on him. He still died three times over those seven months. But it was no longer intentional. It was no longer a strategy. 

And slowly, the light returned to Izuku’s eyes. He began to smile again. He began to talk about hero analysis, muttering under his breath as he dragged refrigerators across the sand. He began to view his body not as a disposable tool, but as a temple being built brick by careful brick. 

Spring arrived. The cherry blossoms bloomed in the city, signaling the final countdown to the UA Entrance Exam. 

It was 6:00 AM on the morning of the exam. 

Toshinori drove his red truck toward Dagobah Beach. He parked on the street and walked up to the edge of the boardwalk. 

He stopped, his breath catching in his throat. 

The beach was gone. 

Or rather, the trash was gone. Where once stood towering mountains of rusted metal and rotting appliances, there was now a pristine, uninterrupted expanse of white sand stretching down to the gently rolling waves of the ocean. The horizon was ablaze with the fiery orange and gold hues of the rising sun, reflecting off the water like a mirror. 

And standing at the very edge of the water, silhouetted against the dawn, was Izuku Midoriya. 

He wasn't a scrawny, fragile boy anymore. He stood tall, his back straight, his shoulders broad. He was shirtless, and his physique was nothing short of miraculous. Dense, perfectly sculpted muscle covered his frame, hard-earned through sweat, blood, and unimaginable pain. He looked like a young gladiator, carved from marble and forged in fire. 

Izuku tilted his head back, staring up at the rising sun, and let out a raw, triumphant scream that echoed across the empty beach. 

It wasn't a scream of pain. It was a scream of victory. A declaration to the universe that he had endured, that he had survived the crucible, and that he was ready. 

Toshinori smiled, a tear slipping down his gaunt cheek. He bulked up into his muscular form and leaped down onto the sand, his boots hitting the ground with a heavy thud. 

Izuku turned around, panting heavily, his face breaking into a massive, radiant smile. 

"All Might! I did it! I cleaned it all!" Izuku cheered, wiping sweat from his brow. 

"You didn't just clean it, young Midoriya," All Might laughed, his booming voice full of overwhelming pride. "You went beyond the parameters of the plan! You cleared the entire area! Look at yourself! You have built a vessel worthy of the power!"

Izuku looked down at his own hands. They were calloused and rough, but they were strong. He clenched his fists, feeling the dense power in his forearms. He wasn't a meat shield anymore. He was a warrior. 

"You've proven your resolve, Izuku," All Might said, his expression turning solemn. He reached up and plucked a single strand of brilliant blonde hair from his head. 

He held it out toward the boy. 

"It is time. The power of One For All requires DNA to be transferred. It cannot be taken by force, only given willingly. I give this to you, Izuku Midoriya. Eat this."

Izuku stared at the golden strand of hair. The culmination of ten months of agony, of ten years of suffering, was suspended between the hero's fingers. 

He didn't hesitate. He didn't question it. 

Izuku took the hair, placed it in his mouth, and swallowed hard. 

It tasted like copper and static electricity. 

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Izuku gagged slightly, holding his throat. "I don't feel any different."

"Hahaha! It will take a few hours for your stomach acids to break down the DNA and for the power to integrate into your cellular structure!" All Might explained, returning to his deflated form with a cough. "You should head home, shower, and get to the exam! The power will be ready when you need it."

"Thank you, All Might," Izuku said, bowing deeply. "For everything. For believing in me when no one else would."

"Go, young man," Toshinori smiled softly. "Show the world what you are made of."

The walk to UA High School felt like a dream. 

Izuku had showered, put on his Aldera Junior High uniform, and bid a tearful goodbye to his mother. Inko had cried, overwhelmed by how much her son had changed, how strong and confident he looked. She didn't know the horrific details of his training, only that he had worked incredibly hard. 

As Izuku walked through the bustling streets toward the massive, glass-and-steel monolith of UA, he began to feel it. 

It started as a low, humming vibration in his core, right beneath his sternum. It was warm, like swallowing a hot cup of tea on a winter morning. But the warmth rapidly escalated into a burning, brilliant heat that spread outward through his veins. 

He could feel the power. It was staggering. It felt as though a localized sun had been implanted in his chest, radiating immense, volatile kinetic energy throughout his entire nervous system. He flexed his right hand, and a tiny, crackling spark of golden lightning danced across his knuckles. 

He gasped, stopping on the sidewalk, staring at his hand in awe. 

He had an offensive Quirk. For the first time in his life, he wasn't just an unkillable target. He had the power to strike back. 

But as he stared at the golden lightning, his brilliant, analytical mind—the mind that had obsessively cataloged Quirks and physics for a decade—began to run the numbers. 

All Might had warned him about the blowback. He had warned him that the sheer kinetic energy of One For All, if used at 100%, would blow a normal person's limbs off. Izuku had built his vessel to be strong, yes. His muscle density was incredible. But One For All was the accumulated power of nine generations. It was a power designed to level city blocks. 

Even with this vessel, Izuku realized, a cold dread washing over the euphoria. It won't be enough to contain a 100% smash. Not yet. I'm too young. The bones will still shatter. The muscles will still explode.

He stood at the grand entrance gates of UA High School, the towering archway casting a long shadow over him. Hundreds of other hopeful students were walking past him, chatting nervously, showing off their flashy Quirks. 

Izuku looked at his right arm. He vividly remembered the agonizing pain of tearing his bicep on the refrigerator. He remembered the feeling of his ribs snapping. 

If he used One For All today, in the heat of battle, he wouldn't know how to regulate the output. It was an untamed beast. If he threw a punch, he would likely use 100%. 

The recoil would instantly destroy his arm. The bone would splinter into a thousand pieces, shredding the muscle tissue and exploding out of his skin. 

And then... his Immortality Quirk would activate. 

It would detect the catastrophic damage. It would instantly, forcefully, and violently reconstruct the obliterated arm, returning it to peak condition in a matter of seconds. 

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. 

He possessed a terrifying, god-like synergy. 

One For All gave him an infinitely destructive bullet. Undying gave him an infinitely regenerating gun. He could fire the weapon at maximum capacity, over and over and over again. He could unleash the power of the Symbol of Peace continuously, without ever having to worry about permanent bodily damage. 

He had unlimited ammo. 

But the price... the price was experiencing the excruciating, blinding torture of his limbs detonating and regenerating every single time he pulled the trigger. Every punch would be an agonizing death of a limb. 

A normal person would be paralyzed by the prospect. A normal person would refuse to use the power, terrified of the horrific pain that awaited them. 

Izuku Midoriya closed his eyes. 

He thought of Kacchan drowning in the sludge. He thought of the terrified faces of the civilians. He thought of All Might, missing his stomach, coughing up blood, yet still smiling through the agony to save people. 

Pain was an old friend. Pain was the currency he had spent his entire life dealing in. What was a little more pain, if it meant he could finally, truly save someone?

Izuku opened his eyes. They were hard, resolute, and completely devoid of fear. 

I will break, Izuku thought, stepping forward into the courtyard of UA High School, the golden power humming in his veins. I will break a thousand times. I will tear myself to shreds. I will endure the torture.

But I will never be useless again.