What if deku as leader of the adeptus mechanicus and he's learning the quirk of everyone in the universe of warhammer 40k

 

 

 

 

The first sensation was always the taste of rust.

 

Izuku Midoriya—once a high school student, once a hero-in-training, and now the Supreme Archmagos Explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus—opened his eyes.

 

He did not wake to the soft morning light of Musutafu, Japan. He woke to the suffocating, crimson smog of Mars. The air here was heavy, thick with the metallic tang of oxidized iron, burning promethium, and the cloying, sweet scent of sacred incense.

 

As Izuku’s consciousness returned, the vast array of augmetics woven into his nervous system booted up in a synchronized symphony of clicks, whirs, and low-frequency hums. A cascade of diagnostic runes cascaded across his vision, projected directly onto his retinas by the micro-cogitators implanted at his temples.

 

Respiration: Optimal. Heart rate: Steady. Synthetic neural pathways: Aligned. One For All remnant containment: Stable at 4%.

 

Izuku let out a long, shuddering breath that sounded part human, part hydraulic hiss. He sat up on the slab of polished plasteel that served as his bed. Slowly, he swung his legs over the edge, his bare feet touching the cold, grated floor of his sanctum.

 

He looked down at his hands.

 

His left arm was a masterwork of Martian engineering. Woven from interlocking plates of brushed cerulean adamantium and laced with synthetic muscle-fibers that glowed with a faint, inner emerald light, it was stronger than a hydraulic press and precise enough to thread a microscopic needle. It ended in a hand that was elegantly human in shape, though undeniably machine.

 

His right arm, however, was entirely flesh and bone.

 

It was scarred, violently so. Jagged, pale lines spiderwebbed up his forearm, wrapping around his bicep like a roadmap of ancient, catastrophic trauma. The Tech-Priests of Mars had begged him—sometimes practically demanded, within the bounds of their dogmatic reverence—to let them amputate the damaged limb and replace it with a blessed bionic limb of the Omnissiah.

 

Izuku had refused every time.

 

That arm was his anchor. It was the physical manifestation of his past, the proof that he had once shattered his own bones to save a little girl, to protect his friends, to stand up to monsters. It was the arm that had channeled the power of All Might. In a galaxy of unyielding metal and cold, calculating logic, those scars reminded him of what it meant to be human. To be a hero.

 

He stood up, grabbing a heavy, crimson robe from a nearby stand. The traditional garb of the Adeptus Mechanicus. As he pulled the heavy Martian-red fabric over his shoulders, the hood falling back to reveal his unruly mop of green hair, he caught his reflection in a polished bronze servo-skull that hovered nearby.

 

He looked strange. A bizarre synthesis of a bright-eyed, freckled teenager and a terrifying cyborg warlord. The left side of his jaw was traced with silver cybernetic plating, integrating seamlessly into his skin, leading up to the interface ports behind his ear. Yet his eyes—large, expressive, and a brilliant, striking green—were completely unaugmented. In a culture where the flesh was considered weak, Izuku wore his humanity like a badge of honor.

 

"Servo-Skull Designation: Gamma-9," Izuku murmured, his voice soft but carrying a strange acoustic resonance in the cavernous room.

 

The floating skull, trailing bundles of optical cables, rotated toward him, its lone bionic eye glowing red. Awaiting command, Supreme Archmagos, it buzzed in a burst of harsh binharic cant.

 

"Begin morning recording," Izuku said, walking toward the massive, armaglass window at the end of his chambers. "Subject: Atmospheric composition of Olympus Mons Forge City. Observation: The sulfur particulate count has dropped by 0.4% since I introduced the atmospheric scrubbers based on U.A.'s dome-filtering technology. Note for later: see if we can replicate the ionization effect of Thirteen’s Black Hole quirk to manually devour the smog buildups in the lower manufactorums."

 

Izuku paused, leaning his scarred right hand against the glass. He looked out over his domain.

 

Mars. The Red Planet. The beating, mechanical heart of the Imperium of Man.

 

Below him stretched a cityscape of unimaginable scale. For thousands of miles, the surface was covered in towering spires of black iron, sprawling manufactorums that belched fire into the bruised sky, and labyrinthine trenches glowing with the molten runoff of a trillion forge-fires. Billions of souls—Tech-Priests, Skitarii soldiers, mindless servitors, and indentured menials—toiled ceaselessly in the deafening roar of industry.

 

It had been five years since the Accident.

 

Five years since a villain with an untested, warp-based spatial quirk had accidentally detonated a singularity in the middle of a battle in Musutafu. Izuku, pushing his power to the absolute limit to shield the civilians, had taken the brunt of the blast. He had expected to die. Instead, he had been violently torn through the fabric of reality, tumbling through a dimension of screaming nightmares and kaleidoscopic madness—what he would later learn was the Immaterium, the Warp.

 

He had been spat out onto the rust-dunes of Mars in the 41st Millennium, broken, bleeding, and alone.

 

He should have died there. But Izuku Midoriya was nothing if not adaptable, and he possessed a mind that bordered on the terrifyingly brilliant. Found by a scavenger patrol of Tech-Priests, they had intended to turn his broken body into a mindless servitor. But as he lay on the operating table, half-conscious, he had noticed a fatal flaw in the logic-circuitry of their medical auto-surgeon.

 

Speaking through bloodstained teeth, Izuku had corrected their equations. He had explained the flaw in their energy routing, applying principles of Support Gear engineering he had learned from watching Mei Hatsume for years.

 

The Tech-Priests had frozen in sheer, religious terror. To them, technology was magic. It was dogma. It was not meant to be understood, only replicated and prayed to. To innovate—to invent—was tech-heresy of the highest order.

 

But Izuku didn't just invent. He fixed things. Things that had been broken for ten thousand years. When he repaired a revered, holy relic-engine simply by bypassing its corrupted motherboard with a copper wire and a muttered string of algebraic equations, the local Magos had fallen to his knees.

 

They did not execute him as a heretic. They hailed him as a Prophet of the Motive Force. A living conduit of the Machine God.

 

It was a misunderstanding of cosmic proportions, but it had saved his life. Slowly, using his encyclopedic knowledge of physics, hero support gear, and his desperate need to help people, Izuku had risen through the ranks. He introduced concepts of modularity, safety protocols, and ergonomic efficiency. He refused to let the Mechanicus lobotomize innocent people into servitors in his presence. He fought, he healed, and he built.

 

Now, he was an Archmagos. Untouchable. Revere and feared.

 

And he still had absolutely no idea how to get home.

 

"Well," Izuku muttered to himself, slapping his organic cheeks with both hands to wake himself up—a familiar, distinctly un-robotic gesture. "Can't save the universe if I'm sulking. I have a lot of work to do."

 

Turning away from the window, Izuku strode toward the massive adamantium blast doors of his sanctum. As he approached, the doors hissed apart, detecting his biometric and mechanical signatures.

 

Waiting for him in the corridor was his personal retinue.

 

A squad of ten Skitarii Rangers stood at perfect attention. Their long crimson cloaks were pristine, their galvanic rifles held flush against their chests. These were cyborg soldiers, heavily augmented, their legs replaced with backward-jointed cybernetics that made them look like metallic predators.

 

Leading them was Magos Drusus, a towering Tech-Priest whose humanity was almost entirely hidden beneath layers of cascading red robes, mechadendrites (metallic tentacles), and an array of glowing ocular lenses.

 

"Praise the Omnissiah, Archmagos Midoriya," Drusus chanted, his voice a mechanical monotone that scraped like metal on stone. He bowed low, his mechadendrites twitching in reverence. "The Forge-fires burn bright in your presence. We await your divine calculations."

 

Izuku offered a warm, somewhat bashful smile and bowed back—a gesture that always deeply disturbed the Martian clergy. "Good morning, Drusus! And good morning to all of you too," he added, waving to the silent Skitarii. "You don't need to bow so much, really. I told you, just Izuku is fine."

 

"Negative, Archmagos," Drusus replied rigidly. "To refer to the Prophet of the Forge by a mere flesh-moniker is illogical and borders on blasphemy. Furthermore, your schedule for this diurnal cycle is operating at peak efficiency. You are expected at the grand conclave in three hours to bless the new macro-cannons."

 

"Right, the macro-cannons. I'll be there," Izuku said, falling into step as he began walking down the massive, cathedral-like corridor. The Skitarii fell into perfect formation around him. "But first, Drusus, I need to go to the Containment Labs. We have a new subject arriving today, right? From the Black Ships?"

 

Drusus’s ocular lenses whirred, shifting from green to a hostile, warning amber. "Archmagos... I must protest. The creature you requested from the Inquisition’s tithe is a sanctioned psyker. A mutant. A conduit for the Archenemy. It is a thing of the Warp, prone to demonic possession and madness. To bring such a hazard into the heart of your sanctum defies all acceptable risk-probability matrices."

 

"I understand your concern, Drusus, I really do," Izuku said earnestly, his pace quickening. "But you're looking at it purely as a supernatural threat. I need to look at it scientifically. If the Warp is just an alternate dimension of psychically reactive energy, then a psyker isn't a demon-host... they're just someone with an incredibly volatile, poorly understood Quirk."

 

Drusus paused, his mechanical treads grinding to a halt. "A... 'Quirk', Supreme Archmagos?"

 

Izuku stopped, realizing he had used the term again. It was a habit he couldn't break. In this grim, dark, nightmare universe, everything was classified as either holy, heretical, alien, or demonic. There was no room for nuance, no room for understanding. The Imperium of Man survived on blind faith, ignorance, and extreme violence.

 

But Izuku Midoriya was an analyst. He was a boy who had filled thirteen notebooks studying the superhuman abilities of his peers back home. He had realized early on that the only way he could survive the psychological horror of Warhammer 40k without losing his mind was to treat the universe exactly like he treated his hero notebooks.

 

Orks weren't mindless fungal beasts; they were individuals with a Collective Reality-Warping Quirk. Space Marines weren't demigods of war; they were subjects of a 19-stage Mutant-Type Quirk compilation. And Psykers—the terrifying, magic-wielding mutants of the Imperium—were just people with mental Emitter-type Quirks who desperately needed the right Support Gear to stop hurting themselves.

 

"Yes, Drusus. A Quirk," Izuku said firmly, his emerald eyes flashing with a sudden, intense authority that made the towering Tech-Priest instinctively defer. "A unique biological and spiritual abnormality. If I can understand it, I can stabilize it. The Emperor’s Golden Throne runs on psychic energy, does it not? If we don't understand the mechanics of the mind, how can we ever hope to repair the failing mechanics of the Throne?"

 

Mention of the Golden Throne—the holiest artifact in the Imperium—silenced Drusus’s protests instantly. "Your logic is... beyond my processing capacity, Archmagos. I shall lead you to the Containment Labs."

 

"Thank you," Izuku smiled, the terrifying aura vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

 

As they walked, Izuku reached into his robe with his flesh-and-blood right hand and pulled out a heavy, blocky dataslate. It was heavily modified, reinforced with adamantium, and secured with biometric locks that only his specific genetic code could open.

 

Etched into the back of the metal slate, in careful, handwritten Japanese characters that no one else in the galaxy could read, was a title:

 

Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 40,000.

 

Izuku flicked the slate on. Holographic text hovered in the air before him. He began to scroll through his recent entries, his eyes darting back and forth rapidly as he walked.

 

Page 402: Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines).

Classification: Artificial Mutant-Type Quirk. Sub-type: Bio-Enhancement.

Notes: The gene-seed implantation process is essentially a forced Quirk Awakening via nineteen separate biological organs. The Betcher’s Gland provides an acid-spit Quirk, similar to Mina Ashido's acid, but localized to the salivary glands. The Ossmodula enhances bone density, reminiscent of a minor density-quirk. The trauma of the surgeries is immense. I wonder if the Astartes' rigid psycho-indoctrination suppresses their emotional spectrum, severely limiting their lateral problem-solving skills? They hit hard, like All Might, but they lack the fluid adaptability of someone like Eraserhead.

 

Page 815: The Ork Gestalt Field.

Classification: Passive Area-of-Effect Reality Warping Quirk.

Notes: Completely fascinating! The Orks are highly psychic, but they don't know it. Their collective belief alters the laws of physics. If enough Orks believe a vehicle painted red will go faster, the reality-friction coefficient literally drops, making it faster. This is functionally a mass-hallucination that warps reality. If I can design a counter-frequency emitter that projects a psychic 'jamming' signal, causing them to subconsciously doubt their weapons, their guns should logically misfire. Must test this on the next green-tide incursion.

 

Izuku's right hand hovered over the dataslate, his fingers twitching rapidly. Suddenly, a low, rhythmic sound began to emanate from him.

 

“Mutter mutter mutter mutter mutter…”

 

Drusus and the Skitarii exchanged wary, reverent glances. The Archmagos was doing it again.

 

To the Tech-Priests, Izuku’s rapid-fire, incomprehensible muttering was believed to be him communing directly with the Machine God. They called it the "High Binharic Trance." They had no idea he was just thinking out loud, a nervous habit he had carried over from middle school.

 

"If the Warp is a parallel dimension composed entirely of raw emotion and thought, then a psyker is essentially acting as a biological siphon, drawing energy from dimension A to dimension B," Izuku muttered, his eyes glued to the dataslate. "But human brains aren't built to act as dimensional conduits. It’s like pouring a firehose of water through a paper straw. The straw rips. That’s what causes ‘perils of the warp’—the biological hardware fails to contain the ethereal software. So, the solution isn't to suppress the psyker through torture or ignorance, but to provide an external, mechanical grounding mechanism. Like a lightning rod for the mind. If I construct a neural-crown laced with psycho-conductive wraithbone... no, wait, the Inquisition would execute me for using Xenos tech. I'll have to synthesize a crystalline alternative..."

 

"Archmagos," Drusus interrupted carefully. "We have arrived."

 

Izuku blinked, snapping out of his mutter-storm. He looked up.

 

They stood before a set of heavily reinforced, lead-lined doors. The air around them felt unnaturally cold, and the faint scent of ozone hung heavily in the corridor. Two massive combat-servitors, armed with heavy plasma cannons, stood guard.

 

Izuku nodded. He slipped the dataslate back into his robes and stepped forward. The doors groaned open, revealing the stark, brightly lit observation chamber within.

 

Beyond a thick pane of hex-glass—designed to withstand a point-blank tank shell—was a holding cell. The walls were covered in intricate, glowing warding runes meant to suppress psychic activity.

 

Huddled in the center of the cell, chained to the floor by heavy iron manacles, was a human figure.

 

It was a young man, perhaps no older than Izuku. He was painfully thin, his skin a sickly, translucent pale. He wore the ragged, gray uniform of a sanctioned astropath. A thick, metallic blindfold was bolted into the skin around his eyes—the traditional mark of an Astropath whose soul had been soul-bound to the Emperor, a traumatic process that almost always burned out their physical eyes. The boy was shivering violently, his knees pulled to his chest, muttering incoherently to himself.

 

Izuku felt a sharp, painful pang in his chest.

 

He didn't see a dangerous mutant. He didn't see a conduit for demonic possession.

 

He saw a terrified kid who couldn't control his power. He saw Eri, crying in Overhaul’s base. He saw Shoto Todoroki, terrified of his own left side.

 

"Disengage the wards and open the door," Izuku commanded, his voice suddenly hard.

 

Magos Drusus recoiled. "Archmagos! That is madness! The wards are the only thing keeping the Immaterium from leaking through that wretch!"

 

"I said, open the door, Drusus," Izuku repeated, turning his head to look at the Magos. The emerald light in his bionic left arm flared, humming with suppressed, devastating kinetic energy. "I will not conduct an interview through thick glass like he’s an animal in a zoo."

 

Trembling, Drusus keyed the runic pad. The glowing wards on the walls flickered and died. The heavy door to the cell hissed open.

 

"Wait out here. All of you," Izuku ordered the Skitarii. "Keep your weapons lowered. If anyone points a gun at him, I’ll dismantle your cybernetics myself."

 

Izuku stepped into the cell.

 

The moment the wards dropped, the temperature in the room plummeted. Frost began to form on Izuku’s red robes. The air felt greasy, heavy with an unseen pressure. Faint, ghostly whispers seemed to scratch against the inside of Izuku’s skull—the chaotic echoes of the Warp pressing against the edges of reality.

 

The chained boy flinched violently as Izuku approached. Even without eyes, his psychic senses felt the presence entering the room.

 

"No... no, get away," the boy whimpered, his voice raspy and broken. He tried to scramble backward, the chains rattling harshly against the floor. "The Inquisition... the black ships... I didn't mean to. The voices, they won't stop... please, I don't want to burn..."

 

Izuku didn't say a word. He walked to the center of the room and gracefully sank to his knees, sitting cross-legged on the cold metal floor so he was at eye-level with the terrified psyker.

 

Slowly, intentionally, Izuku reached out with his right hand—his human hand. He laid it gently over the cold, trembling, metal-shackled hands of the boy.

 

The psyker gasped, his head snapping up.

 

"Warm..." the boy whispered, shock overriding his terror.

 

"Hi there," Izuku said, his voice soft, kind, and completely devoid of the booming authority of an Archmagos. "My name is Izuku. What's yours?"

 

The boy trembled, his blindfolded face turning toward Izuku as if trying to comprehend the sheer impossibility of what was happening. In the Imperium, psykers were tools. They were monsters. They were never, ever spoken to with kindness.

 

"C-Caelen," the boy stammered. "My designation is Astropath-Minor Caelen."

 

"It's nice to meet you, Caelen," Izuku smiled warmly. "I'm sorry about the chains. I know they're uncomfortable. I'm going to take them off you now, okay?"

 

Outside the glass, Drusus made a choked, robotic noise of sheer panic, but he did not intervene.

 

Izuku shifted his grip. He placed his bionic left hand over the heavy iron padlock securing the chains to the floor. The servos in his arm whined as he casually squeezed. With a horrific crunch of yielding metal, the iron shattered like brittle plastic. Izuku gently pulled the chains away from Caelen’s wrists.

 

Caelen rubbed his bruised wrists, his breath hitching. "You... you shouldn't have done that. I'm dangerous. The Commissars said I'm a ticking bomb. If I lose focus, the Warp... the demons..."

 

"I know it feels that way," Izuku said softly, reaching into his robe and pulling out his dataslate. "But I've spent a lot of time studying people with abilities like yours. Where I come from, we call them Quirks. And there are a lot of Quirks that feel like curses until you learn how to understand them."

 

Caelen tilted his head. "Quirks? I... I do not understand, Lord."

 

"You don't need to call me Lord. Just Izuku," he replied, tapping his dataslate. "Caelen, can you describe to me exactly what it feels like when you try to use your power? Don't worry about theology or the Emperor right now. Just tell me what it feels like physically and mentally."

 

Caelen hesitated, clearly expecting a trap, an interrogation meant to ferret out heresy. But the warmth of Izuku’s hand, the calm, steady rhythm of his heartbeat, projected an aura of absolute safety.

 

"It... it feels like standing at the bottom of a rushing river," Caelen whispered, his voice trembling. "I can hear the water rushing above me. When I need to send a message... an astropathic transmission... I have to open a door in my mind and let the river in. But the water is full of... things. Angry things. Whispering things. If I let too much water in, it burns my veins. It feels like my brain is expanding against my skull."

 

Izuku nodded rapidly, his eyes lighting up with analytical fervor. His right hand began to fly across the holographic keyboard of his dataslate.

 

"Mutter mutter... exactly as I hypothesized... the ‘river’ is the Immaterium, the ‘door’ is the pineal gland acting as a biological gateway... the burning sensation is acute neurological overload due to uncontrolled bio-electric spikes... mutter mutter..."

 

Caelen recoiled slightly. "Lord Izuku? Are you... casting a hex?"

 

"Oh! Sorry! I have a bad habit of thinking out loud," Izuku apologized quickly, his face flushing red. He cleared his throat. "Caelen, your power is incredible. It’s an Emitter-type Quirk of the highest order. But your body is struggling with the recoil. Think of it like a gun—you're firing a massive bullet, but you have no shock absorbers, so the recoil is breaking your arm every time you shoot."

 

"Yes!" Caelen gasped, leaning forward. "Exactly like that!"

 

"The Inquisition’s method of dealing with this is terrible," Izuku said, his voice hardening with a rare, cold anger. "They tell you to suppress it out of fear. But fear weakens the mind. Fear cracks the door open just enough for the water to leak in when you don't want it to. I'm going to help you, Caelen. I'm going to build you something."

 

Izuku stood up, towering over the boy, though his posture remained entirely non-threatening. He tapped a few commands into his bionic arm. A holographic blueprint projected from his wrist into the air between them.

 

"I've been designing a piece of Support Gear," Izuku explained, pointing to the floating, glowing schematic of a metallic halo lined with crystalline nodes. "It's a neural-stabilizer. It sits at the base of your skull. When you open the ‘door’ to the river, this device will act as an overflow valve. It will absorb the excess bio-electric energy and ground it, safely dispersing it into the air as harmless heat. It will stop the burning. It will quiet the voices."

 

Caelen stared blindly at where the hologram was, his jaw dropping. "You... you can fix me?"

 

"You aren't broken, Caelen," Izuku said fiercely, the voice of a true Hero cutting through the gloom of the 41st Millennium. "Your power belongs to you. Not the Warp. Not the demons. I will give you the tools to control it. And once you can control it, you can use it to help people. You can be a hero too."

 

A hero.

 

The word was alien to Caelen. In the Imperium, there were only martyrs and traitors. But as he 'looked' at the glowing green aura of the Archmagos—a soul so blindingly bright, so furiously compassionate that it physically pushed back the shadows of the Warp—Caelen began to cry. Hot tears slipped out from beneath his metallic blindfold, tracing tracks through the dirt on his pale cheeks.

 

For the first time in his miserable life, he didn't feel like a monster.

 

Izuku reached down and gently wiped a tear from the boy's cheek with his human thumb.

 

"Drusus!" Izuku called out over his shoulder, his voice returning to the commanding tone of the Supreme Archmagos.

 

The heavy doors hissed open. Magos Drusus and the Skitarii stood there, weapons still nervously clutched.

 

"Yes, Archmagos?" Drusus asked hesitantly, his ocular lenses scanning Caelen for signs of demonic possession, only to find the boy sitting calmly, weeping quietly.

 

"Have a comfortable room prepared for Caelen in the upper spires. Real food, not corpse-starch. A soft bed. And transport these schematics to my private forge," Izuku ordered, transmitting the data to Drusus’s internal cogitator. "I require three kilos of refined psycho-crystal, a macro-soldering rig, and an uninterrupted power supply. I have support gear to build."

 

"A... a room in the upper spires? For a mutant?" Drusus protested, his logic-circuits shorting out. "Archmagos, the political ramifications with the Inquisition—"

 

"If the Inquisition has a problem with it, tell them they can take it up with my fist," Izuku said calmly. The casual threat, delivered by the man who had single-handedly re-engineered Mars' defense grid, hung heavily in the air. "The Emperor protects, Drusus. But while he sits on the Throne, I do the building. Is that understood?"

 

Drusus bowed deeply. "Your will is the Motive Force, Archmagos."

 

Izuku turned back to Caelen. "Get some rest. I'll have the prototype ready by tomorrow. We'll start your Quirk-training then."

 

"Thank you," Caelen whispered, bowing his head to the floor. "Thank you, Lord Izuku."

 

As Izuku strode out of the containment cell, the heavy lead-lined doors hissing shut behind him, he pulled his dataslate back out. He opened a new file, his fingers moving rapidly.

 

Project: Aegis-Mind.

Client: Astropath Caelen.

Goal: Neural stabilization and Quirk counseling.

 

Izuku walked through the cavernous halls of his forge city, the rhythmic stomping of his Skitarii guards echoing around him. He looked up at the towering, grim arches of the Martian ceiling, painted in shadows and bathed in the harsh red light of industry.

 

This universe was dark. It was cruel, bloody, and built on the bones of trillions of innocent people. It was a galaxy that believed hope was a weakness, that innovation was a sin, and that hatred was the only shield against the dark.

 

But Izuku Midoriya gripped his human right hand into a fist, feeling the phantom warmth of One For All thrumming in his veins.

 

He was Deku. He was the hero who always did his best.

 

If this universe thought it could crush humanity beneath the weight of despair, it was dead wrong. He was going to analyze every alien, every mutant, every demon, and every god. He was going to build the greatest support items the galaxy had ever seen. He was going to fix the Golden Throne.

 

He was going to save them all.

 

I am here, Izuku thought, a fierce, unbreakable smile spreading across his scarred face. And I'm just getting started.

 

 

 

The ash-wastes of the Forge World Hephaestus Secundus were not a place meant for organic life. The atmosphere was a toxic soup of promethium smog, suspended heavy metals, and particulate glass that would shred the unprotected lungs of a baseline human in minutes. The sky above was a bruised, permanent twilight of sickly orange and chemical purple, utterly devoid of stars.

 

For the Adeptus Mechanicus, it was a paradise of industry. For Supreme Archmagos Izuku Midoriya, it was a perfect testing ground.

 

"Magos Drusus, parameter check," Izuku’s voice crackled over the encrypted local vox-network. He stood atop a raised promontory of slag-rock, his crimson robes whipping wildly in the caustic wind. His unaugmented green eyes were shielded behind a pair of sleek, master-crafted visors—modeled heavily after Mei Hatsume’s old goggles, albeit forged from plasteel and laced with targeting cogitators.

 

Below him, spread out across the desolate gray plains, were three cohorts of Skitarii Vanguard. They moved in terrifying, mechanical unison, their radium carbines held at the ready.

 

"Atmospheric pressure nominal. Rad-saturation at acceptable lethal parameters," Magos Drusus’s binharic voice droned from the vox-bead in Izuku’s ear. Drusus was stationed in a mobile command crawler three klicks away. "Supreme Archmagos, I must reiterate my confusion regarding this test. The Vanguard are already equipped with the Omnissiah’s blessed weaponry. To alter their armaments is... unorthodox."

 

"Innovation requires a little unorthodoxy, Drusus," Izuku replied, a smile evident in his voice despite the grim surroundings. "The radium carbines are effective, yes, but they passively irradiate the very Skitarii wielding them. It’s a net loss of combat efficiency and, frankly, a terrible occupational hazard. The new 'Suppression-Field Projectors' I’ve equipped Beta-Cohort with are designed to neutralize biological targets without permanently rendering the battlefield a toxic wasteland or killing our own men. Let’s see how they handle."

 

Izuku tapped a command into his bionic left arm. "Release the targets."

 

From a series of heavily armored bunkers a mile away, the blast doors slammed open. A horde of rogue, decommissioned battle-servitors—hulking masses of vat-grown muscle and crude iron plating, programmed only to charge and destroy—poured out onto the plains. There were hundreds of them, bellowing mindless war-cries as they sprinted toward the Skitarii lines.

 

"Beta-Cohort, engage," Izuku ordered calmly.

 

The Skitarii did not raise their traditional firearms. Instead, they hoisted heavy, tubular rifles that Izuku had spent the last three months personally designing. The weapons hummed with a deep, bass frequency. When they fired, there was no flash of gunpowder or searing beam of plasma.

 

Instead, shimmering, translucent rings of kinetic energy erupted from the barrels.

 

Izuku’s eyes tracked the projectiles—modeled after the concussive rings generated by Nejire Hado’s Wave Motion Quirk, synthesized through localized gravity manipulators, his brain supplied.

 

The kinetic rings slammed into the charging servitors. The results were instantaneous. Instead of blowing the targets apart, the kinetic force distributed evenly across the servitors' mass, striking with the impact of a charging rhinoceros. The front line of servitors was lifted completely off their feet and hurled backward, smashing into the ranks behind them. The sheer concussive shockwave scrambled their crude neurological processors, dropping them to the dirt in a twitching, incapacitated mass.

 

No blood. No radiation. Total suppression.

 

"Fascinating," Izuku muttered, whipping out his adamantium dataslate with his human hand and typing frantically. "Energy dispersion is operating at 92% efficiency. The recoil on the Skitarii is negligible due to the shock-absorbing pneumatics I installed in their shoulder joints. If I can tweak the frequency, I might be able to use these to incapacitate rioting civilian populations without causing lethal casualties..."

 

"Supreme Archmagos," Drusus interrupted, his voice tight. "We have an anomaly on the auspex. High-orbit voidship signature detected. It is descending rapidly into the atmosphere. Astartes designation."

 

Izuku stopped typing. He blinked, pushing his goggles up into his messy green hair. "Astartes? Space Marines? Here?"

 

"Affirmative. A Strike Cruiser bearing the heraldry of the Salamanders Chapter has entered high orbit. They are deploying a Thunderhawk gunship directly to your coordinates. They transmitted a priority clearance code. They are here to requisition heavy armor units for an upcoming campaign in the neighboring sub-sector."

 

Izuku’s heart did a strange, fluttering leap. He had read about the Adeptus Astartes, of course. His dataslates were filled with fragmented Imperial records, holy texts, and blurry pict-captures of the Emperor’s Angels of Death. But to actually see one?

 

Before Izuku could respond, the bruised sky above them tore open.

 

The roar of the Thunderhawk gunship was deafening, a physical pressure that vibrated in Izuku’s teeth. The massive, brick-like aerospace craft punched through the smog on columns of blue fire. It was painted a deep, vibrant emerald green, adorned with golden iconography of roaring drakes, hammers, and fire. The ship hovered over the ash-wastes, kicking up a massive dust storm, before heavily extending its landing gear and slamming into the earth.

 

Izuku watched, utterly spellbound.

 

The assault ramp hissed and lowered heavily to the ground. From the darkened interior of the gunship, massive silhouettes began to emerge.

 

When Izuku had read that Space Marines were large, his mind had abstractly pictured something akin to Endeavor or All Might in his muscle form. But seeing them in reality was something else entirely.

 

They were giants. Standing nearly eight feet tall, entirely encased in hulking suits of Mark X Tacticus power armor, they moved with a terrifying, liquid grace that completely belied their immense bulk. The ceramite plates of their armor were painted that same vivid emerald green, contrasting sharply with the bleak gray of the Forge World. As the lead warrior removed his helmet, Izuku gasped.

 

The Space Marine’s skin was the color of obsidian, pitch-black and seemingly absorbing the ambient light. His eyes were solid, burning rubies, glowing with a literal inner fire.

 

To a normal Imperial citizen, this visage was meant to inspire religious awe and paralyzing terror.

 

To Izuku Midoriya, it was the coolest thing he had ever seen in his life.

 

Izuku’s eyes practically turned into literal stars. His bionic arm twitched with suppressed excitement. The biological divergence! The physical scale! The armor integration!

 

The giant walked forward, his heavy footfalls crushing the slag-rock into powder. Two other Space Marines followed closely behind him. One wore the white pauldron and narthecium gauntlet of an Apothecary—the Chapter’s medics and genetic custodians.

 

Izuku practically bounded down the promontory, much to the alarm of his Skitarii guards, who scrambled to form a protective perimeter around him.

 

The lead Space Marine stopped, looking down at the diminutive, green-haired youth in the red robes. The giant crossed his arms over his chest, his massive gauntlets clanking against his chest-plate.

 

"I am Captain N'Keln of the Salamanders 3rd Company," the giant rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. He looked at Izuku, then at the heavily armed Skitarii, and finally back to Izuku, noting the Supreme Archmagos insignia etched into Izuku’s cybernetics. N'Keln’s burning red eyes narrowed in slight confusion. He had met many Archmagi—usually terrifying, towering amalgams of metal, tentacles, and tread-units who spoke only in static. He had never met one who looked like a smiling teenage boy.

 

"Greetings, Archmagos. We come seeking an audience with the Fabricator of this world to negotiate a resupply of Vindicator siege tanks. I assume you can point me to your superior?"

 

"You're looking at him!" Izuku beamed, thrusting his human hand forward for a handshake.

 

Captain N'Keln stared at the small, scarred hand for a long moment. Space Marines did not shake hands. But, humoring the eccentric priest, N'Keln gently extended two massive, armored fingers and carefully grasped Izuku’s hand.

 

"You are the Supreme Archmagos of this Forge World?" N'Keln asked, skepticism leaking into his deep voice.

 

"Izuku Midoriya, at your service! Or, well, at the Omnissiah’s service, but you know what I mean," Izuku rambled, his eyes darting frantically all over N'Keln’s armor. "Oh wow. Wow! Mark X armor! The servo-motors in your joints, they're practically silent. Are you using a localized grav-suspensor field to offset the ceramite weight, or is your biological muscle density just that high? I’ve read about the Black Carapace, but seeing the neuro-sync nodes perfectly aligning with your armor’s interface is incredible! It’s like a permanent, full-body Support Item!"

 

N'Keln blinked, entirely taken aback. Beside him, the Apothecary shifted uncomfortably.

 

"Your... your physical density," Izuku continued, his right hand suddenly producing his dataslate from thin air, his fingers flying across it. The low, rhythmic buzzing of his muttering began. "If the Ossmodula organ increases bone density to the point where your ribcage fuses into a solid bulletproof plate, then your marrow production must be severely restricted unless your secondary heart works in tandem with the Biscopea to radically alter your hematopoiesis... it’s brilliant! It’s an artificial Mutant-Type Quirk compilation!"

 

"A... what?" N'Keln asked, glancing at his Apothecary.

 

"Apothecary! Oh my goodness, you're the Apothecary!" Izuku suddenly sidestepped the massive Captain, zooming straight up to the white-armored medic. Izuku looked up at the towering giant, his green eyes wide with professional admiration. "I have so many questions for you! Is it true about the Betcher’s Gland? Can you really spit corrosive acid? How does the glandular lining not dissolve your own esophagus? Is it a localized mucous membrane secretion, similar to Mina Ashido’s acid quirk back home? Does the Ph-balance change based on your diet?"

 

Apothecary T'Kell, a veteran of two centuries of brutal warfare, who had stared down Tyranid Hive Tyrants without flinching, took half a step back from the hyperactive teenager.

 

"Archmagos," T'Kell began, his deep voice laced with profound confusion. "The Betcher’s Gland is a sacred gift of our Primarch, Vulkan. Its holy bio-alchemy is... it is a matter of gene-seed purity. I do not know who this 'Mina Ashido' is, nor do I comprehend this 'Quirk' terminology. Are you... are you inquiring about the sacred anatomy of the Astartes?"

 

"Yes! Exactly!" Izuku said, practically vibrating. He tapped his dataslate. "Listen, I’m a bit of an analyst. Where I’m from, a lot of people had unique biological mutations that gave them incredible powers. We called them Quirks. Some people could shoot explosions from their sweat, some had engines in their legs. We studied them to make them better heroes."

 

N'Keln frowned. "Mutations? Archmagos, the Astartes are not mutants. We are the Emperor’s engineered perfection. To call us mutants borders on heresy."

 

Izuku waved his hands defensively. "No, no, no! I don't mean 'mutant' like the chaotic, warp-corrupted kind! I mean it purely in a genetic, biological sense! A forced, artificial, positive mutation! I mean, you have nineteen extra organs! That’s essentially stacking nineteen different Mutant-Type Quirks into a single human body. The strain on your cellular structure must be immense. Does your cellular telomere degradation accelerate due to the constant regeneration from the Larraman's Organ?"

 

Apothecary T'Kell stared at Izuku. The theological and dogmatic jargon of the Mechanicus usually gave him a headache. But this... this boy wasn't speaking in dogma. He was speaking in pure, unfiltered, highly advanced bio-science.

 

"The... the Larraman cells act instantaneously to seal wounds," T'Kell replied, drawn into the conversation despite his reservations. "It does not accelerate cellular aging. Our genetics are stable. But... how do you know the precise terminology of our biology? Such things are deeply guarded secrets, even from the Priesthood of Mars."

 

"Oh, I read the archives," Izuku smiled brightly. "And then I extrapolated the data based on basic physiological limitations. It’s fascinating! For example, your Melanchromic Organ! It alters your skin pigmentation to protect against radiation, right? That’s why your skin is black and your eyes are red. It’s a hyper-reactive melanin defense mechanism! But what I want to know is—"

 

Izuku was cut off by a sudden, ear-splitting shriek that tore through the toxic sky.

 

It was a sound like tortured metal and screaming souls. Izuku’s bionic ear instantly dampened the decibels to prevent his eardrum from rupturing, but he still winced.

 

Captain N'Keln’s demeanor instantly shifted from confused to lethal. He slapped his helmet over his head, the vox-grille snapping into place with a hiss. He reached over his shoulder and unslung a massive, ancient combi-flamer.

 

"Contact!" N'Keln roared.

 

Above them, the sky seemed to shatter like glass. A jagged tear in reality opened—a Webway portal, glowing with an unearthly, sickening violet light.

 

From the tear poured a swarm of sleek, jagged, impossibly fast aerospace craft. They looked like scythes made of dark metal, covered in cruel barbs and pulsing with antigravitic energy.

 

"Drukhari!" Apothecary T'Kell bellowed, drawing a massive chainsword that roared to life with the sound of a chainsaw on steroids. "Dark Eldar! They are conducting a realspace raid!"

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He had read about the Dark Eldar. Sadistic, impossibly fast xenos who raided Imperial worlds not to conquer, but to take slaves back to their nightmare city of Commorragh to torture for all eternity.

 

The Drukhari raiders descended on the ash-wastes like a flock of predatory birds. There were dozens of Venom skimmers and Raider transport barges. They moved with a jerky, hyper-kinetic agility that defied physics, dodging the sudden, heavy anti-air fire that began to erupt from the Skitarii lines.

 

"Archmagos! Seek cover!" N'Keln ordered, stepping in front of Izuku and raising his combi-flamer. "This is a slaving raid! They are after your Tech-Priests and Skitarii!"

 

Slaves.

 

The word echoed in Izuku’s mind. A cold, absolute fury settled over his heart. He remembered Overhaul. He remembered Eri trembling in the dark. He remembered the feeling of utter powerlessness when someone treated human beings as things to be used and discarded.

 

Izuku Midoriya did not seek cover.

 

"Drusus!" Izuku barked into his vox-bead, his voice dropping the friendly, nerdy tone entirely. It became the voice of the Supreme Archmagos. The voice of a Hero. "Shift all Skitarii units from testing protocols to lethal engagement. Anti-air formations, pattern Delta-Nine."

 

"Complying, Archmagos!" Drusus replied over the din of battle.

 

The Dark Eldar swept low over the plains. From the decks of their raiders, tall, lithe, terrifyingly graceful aliens clad in spiked armor began to pour fire into the Imperial ranks. Splinter-rifles—weapons that fired microscopic shards of neuro-toxin—hissed through the air.

 

A Skitarii near Izuku took a splinter to the shoulder. Despite his armor, the toxin breached his synthetic bloodstream. The cyborg collapsed, screaming in blinding, absolute agony as his nervous system was set on fire.

 

"Apothecary! Tend to him!" N'Keln shouted, firing his bolter. Massive, rocket-propelled explosive rounds tore into the sky, detonating against the kinetic shielding of a Drukhari Venom skimmer.

 

But the Drukhari were too fast. They were designed for this exact type of chaotic, high-speed warfare. A Raider transport banked sharply, defying gravity, and descended right toward Izuku’s command squad. Standing on the prow of the ship was a Drukhari Archon, wielding an agonizer whip that crackled with dark energy.

 

"Astartes," the Archon hissed, his voice amplified by his ship’s speakers, dripping with sadistic glee. "And a high-ranking machine-priest. You will sing beautiful songs on the torture racks of Commorragh."

 

The Archon leapt from the flying ship, aiming to land directly on Izuku, his whip raised to sever the Archmagos’s organic arm.

 

N'Keln turned to intercept, but he was too slow. The alien’s speed was unnatural.

 

Target acquired, Izuku thought.

 

To Captain N'Keln, the Archon’s movement was a blur of dark metal. To Izuku, whose brain had spent years analyzing the hyper-speed movements of heroes like Gran Torino, Tenya Iida, and Katsuki Bakugo, the Archon’s trajectory was a simple physics equation.

 

Velocity. Angle of descent. Center of gravity.

 

Izuku didn't step back. He stepped forward.

 

One For All: Full Cowling - 5%.

 

Emerald lightning violently erupted around Izuku’s organic right arm and his legs. The faint, ghostly power of the ultimate Quirk surged through his human biology, interfacing seamlessly with his cybernetics. The micro-cogitators in his brain overclocked, processing the combat data in a microsecond.

 

The Archon brought the whip down.

 

Izuku pivoted on his heel, dodging the lethal strike by a fraction of an inch. As the Archon’s momentum carried him forward, Izuku planted his left cybernetic foot, the pneumatic pistons in his leg hissing as they locked into the bedrock.

 

"Shoot Style: Martian Smash!" Izuku roared.

 

Izuku swung his right leg in a devastating, sweeping arc. The kick connected squarely with the Archon’s chest-plate.

 

The sound of the impact was like a cannon going off. The force of One For All, combined with the hydraulic reinforcement of Izuku’s synthetic muscles, shattered the Archon’s highly advanced ghost-plate armor instantly.

 

The Dark Eldar warlord didn't just fall; he was launched horizontally like a missile. He flew over a hundred feet through the air, crashing violently through the hull of his own crashed Venom skimmer and lying motionless.

 

Captain N'Keln slowly lowered his bolter, staring at the diminutive Archmagos. The Space Marine’s tactical displays were screaming with anomalous energy readings coming from the boy.

 

"What in Vulkan’s name was that?" N'Keln rumbled.

 

"Just a little kinetic redirection," Izuku said, the green lightning fading from his skin. He tapped his visor. "Their speed is their Quirk—their biological advantage. But they rely entirely on linear momentum from their gravity-skimmers to maintain it. Break their momentum, you break their advantage."

 

Izuku turned his attention back to the sky. The Drukhari swarm, seeing their Archon utterly annihilated by a single blow from a 'weak' human, wavered in confusion.

 

Izuku pulled his dataslate out again. "Drusus! Interface with my visor’s cogitator! I'm transmitting a predictive algorithmic flight-path!"

 

Izuku watched the erratic, jerky movements of the Dark Eldar skimmers. He didn't just watch where they were; he watched how they moved. He noted the slight delay in their anti-grav thrusters before a banking turn. He noted their preference for sweeping left-handed arcs to maximize their splinter-rifle fire.

 

Analyzing. Predicting. Categorizing.

 

"Got it," Izuku muttered. "They aren't moving randomly. It’s an evasive pattern based on prime-number sine waves. They think we can’t track the math. Drusus! Tell the Beta-Cohort anti-air batteries to adjust their firing vectors. Do not fire at the ships. Fire exactly forty meters ahead of their current trajectory at a 32-degree elevation! Box them in!"

 

"Calculations received, Archmagos. Firing."

 

A massive volley of Imperial flak and laser fire erupted from the Skitarii lines. It looked, to the untrained eye, as though they were firing at empty sky.

 

A second later, the Dark Eldar skimmers abruptly changed course, jerking violently to the left—and flew directly into the wall of Imperial fire.

 

Explosions rocked the sky. Three Raiders were shredded instantly, their flaming wreckage raining down onto the ash-wastes. Four Venoms spiraled out of control, their anti-grav suspensors blown to slag.

 

The Drukhari, realizing that their uncrackable evasive patterns had just been perfectly predicted by a Mechanicus priest in a matter of seconds, broke. The sadistic courage of the Dark Eldar evaporated. The remaining skimmers pulled straight up, rocketing back toward the Webway portal.

 

"They are fleeing!" Apothecary T'Kell shouted. "Cowards!"

 

"Let them go," Izuku breathed, his chest heaving. Using One For All, even at 5%, still strained his human half immensely. He rubbed his scarred right arm, feeling the phantom aches of old battles. "Our priority is the wounded. Apothecary, please! I have Skitarii down. The splinter-toxin is neuro-reactive. We need to administer counter-agents immediately!"

 

N'Keln and T'Kell watched as the Supreme Archmagos—a man who theoretically commanded enough firepower to sterilize the entire planet, a man who had just correctly calculated the impossible evasive vectors of a xenos strike force in his head—sprinted over to a fallen, low-ranking Skitarii soldier and dropped to his knees in the dirt to tend to him.

 

Space Marines were biologically engineered to know no fear. They were psycho-indoctrinated to feel little in the way of awe for mortals. But as Captain N'Keln watched the green-haired boy frantically applying a tourniquet to a cyborg soldier with his bare, scarred human hands, he felt a profound sense of respect.

 

N'Keln walked over, his massive shadow falling over Izuku.

 

"Archmagos Midoriya," N'Keln said softly.

 

Izuku looked up, his hands covered in synthetic Skitarii blood. "Yes, Captain?"

 

"You fight with the strength of a giant, and you calculate war with the mind of a Primarch," N'Keln said, striking his breastplate in a formal Salamander salute. "But more importantly, you possess the heart of a protector. The Salamanders value the lives of the innocent above all else. It is... incredibly rare to find a member of the Priesthood of Mars who shares that philosophy."

 

Izuku wiped his brow, leaving a streak of soot across his forehead. He gave N'Keln a bright, genuine smile. "A hero’s job is to protect people, Captain. Whether that’s with a gun, a medical kit, or a notebook. It’s just what you do."

 

N'Keln nodded slowly. "I see. If you still wish to study our 'Quirk' biology... Apothecary T'Kell and I would be honored to answer your questions on the voyage to your forge. Within the bounds of Chapter security, of course."

 

Izuku’s eyes lit up like supernovas. He practically leaped to his feet, pulling his dataslate out with lightning speed. "Really?! Oh, thank you! Okay, okay, so, the Multi-lung! I have so many theories! If it can process toxic atmospheres, does it utilize a chemical scrubber membrane or a biological filtration cilia? And your sweat glands! If the Melanchromic organ—"

 

As Izuku began to hyper-mutter, pacing circles around the bemused Space Marines, Apothecary T'Kell leaned toward his Captain.

 

"He is... eccentric, Captain," T'Kell whispered over the private vox-channel. "His terminology is baffling. He speaks of genetics as if they were parlor tricks."

 

"He is eccentric," N'Keln agreed, watching Izuku frantically sketching a diagram of an Astartes lung on his dataslate. "But look at his men."

 

T'Kell looked. The Skitarii, who normally operated as mindless, terrified automatons under the lash of their Tech-Priest masters, were looking at Izuku Midoriya not with mechanical obedience, but with genuine, human devotion.

 

"He sees the universe differently than we do, Apothecary," N'Keln murmured. "He looks at the horrors of the galaxy and sees puzzles to be solved. He looks at mutants and sees 'Quirks' to be understood. He is entirely unburdened by the darkness of our time."

 

N'Keln smiled beneath his helm.

 

"Let him ask his questions, T'Kell. I believe the Archmagos might just be the exact kind of madness this Imperium desperately needs."

 

 

 

The void of space around the Forge World of Tiberius Prime was a graveyard of impossible physics.

 

Standing on the strategium deck of his personal Mechanicus Ark Mechanicus, The Emerald Analysis, Supreme Archmagos Izuku Midoriya stared through the massive armaglass viewport. His scarred, organic right hand rapidly tapped a rhythm against the hilt of his holstered macro-spanner, while his bionic left arm was hardwired via mechadendrite cables directly into the ship's auspex-cogitators.

 

"Error. Logic paradox detected," the ship's synthesized voice droned over the strategium vox-casters. "Thrust-to-mass ratio of designated Xenos vessel is negative. Aerodynamic cohesion is non-existent. Probability of sustained void-flight: Zero percent."

 

"And yet," Izuku murmured, his green eyes reflecting the chaotic explosions occurring thousands of miles away, "they're flying."

 

"It is the blasphemy of the Greenskin, Supreme Archmagos," Magos Drusus stated from his station a few yards away. The towering, heavily augmented priest’s mechadendrites writhed in agitation. "The Ork relies on crude, primitive mimicry of holy technology. Their vessels are scrap-metal abominations fueled by xenos excrement and heretical arrogance. It is an insult to the Motive Force that they do not spontaneously detonate."

 

Izuku sighed, unplugging his arm from the console. The cables retracted smoothly into his forearm plating with a soft hiss. He pulled out his heavily armored dataslate, flipping it open to a blank page.

 

He looked back out at the Ork fleet orbiting the besieged Forge World. Even from this distance, they were an assault on the senses. They were not ships in any traditional sense. They were colossal, jagged asteroids and hollowed-out Imperial freighters haphazardly welded together with what looked like pure spite. Giant, spiked prows painted with crude, leering faces made of chipped paint and dried blood stared into the void. Massive, oversized thrusters jutted out at entirely asymmetrical angles.

 

According to every law of physics Izuku had learned—both back at U.A. High School and from the downloaded archives of Mars—those ships should have ripped themselves apart the moment their engines fired. The structural shear alone would turn the hulls into shrapnel. There was no life support. There were no navigational thrusters.

 

"They don't detonate," Izuku muttered, pacing back and forth across the deck, the dataslate hovering in front of his face. His right hand blurred as he wrote. "Mutter mutter... if the thrust-to-mass ratio is zero, then the propulsion isn't strictly mechanical. It’s localized reality-warping. The structural integrity isn't maintained by welds; it’s maintained by a localized, passive suspension of kinetic laws. But how? It’s not localized gravity-quirk like Uraraka's, because the mass is still interacting with external projectiles. It’s... subjective physics. The physics only apply based on the observer's perception..."

 

"Archmagos?" Drusus asked, his ocular lenses zooming in on his commander. "You are entering the High Binharic Trance again."

 

"Sorry, Drusus! Just thinking out loud!" Izuku said cheerfully, though his brow remained furrowed in intense concentration. "Patch me through to the surface. I need to speak to the local commander. I need to see this anomaly up close."

 

Tiberius Prime was a world that produced artillery. For three thousand years, its entire crust had been hollowed out and replaced with stamping presses, macro-forges, and assembly lines churning out the mighty Earthshaker cannons of the Astra Militarum.

 

Now, the surface was covered in a rolling sea of green.

 

Izuku’s heavily armored gunship touched down in the central courtyard of High-Forge Secundus, the last bastion of Imperial resistance on the northern continent. The air was thick with the smell of cordite, burning promethium, and a strange, musty scent like rotting mushrooms—the unmistakable spore-stench of the Orks.

 

The moment the assault ramp lowered, the deafening roar of war hit Izuku like a physical blow. The constant, rhythmic booming of Imperial artillery trying to hold back the green tide shook the bedrock.

 

Waiting for him at the landing pad was Fabricator-Minor Vane. Vane was in bad shape. Half of his mechadendrites had been sheared off by something massive and serrated. His crimson robes were stained black with oil and blood, and his primary vocal-emitter was sparking violently.

 

"P-praise the Omnissiah," Vane stuttered, bowing awkwardly as Izuku marched down the ramp, flanked by a cohort of his personal Skitarii Vanguard. "Supreme Archmagos Midoriya. We... we did not expect the Prophet of Mars to answer our distress astropathic choir personally. We are unworthy."

 

"You requested aid, Fabricator Vane. A hero always answers a call for help," Izuku said firmly, walking past the bowing priest and immediately striding toward the massive, heavily fortified parapets overlooking the valley below. "Report. What’s our situation?"

 

Vane hurried to keep up with Izuku’s brisk pace. "Dire, Archmagos. The Ork Waaagh! is led by Warboss Skumgrod the Iron-Smasha. They made planetfall three standard weeks ago. We calculated our defensive grids would hold them at the Magma-Trenches for six months. They breached it in four days."

 

"How?" Izuku asked, leaping nimbly up a flight of ferro-crete stairs to the command bunker atop the wall.

 

"It defies logic!" Vane cried out, his vocal-emitter whining. "They drove their vehicles straight into the lava! According to all thermal-kinetic data, their crude buggies should have melted in 2.4 seconds! But they painted them red, Archmagos! Red! And somehow, the sheer velocity they achieved allowed them to skip across the surface of the molten rock like stones on a pond! It is xenos sorcery! A blasphemy against the laws of thermodynamics!"

 

Izuku reached the parapet and looked down through a pair of high-powered macro-binoculars.

 

The valley below was a nightmare. Millions of Orks—hulking, green-skinned beasts packed with slabs of muscle, clad in crude, rusty armor—swarmed like angry ants. Among them rolled towering, smoke-belching war machines. Giant, bipedal mechs made of garbage—Gargants and Killa Kans—stomped through the ruins of Imperial outposts.

 

Izuku zoomed in on a specific skirmish at the edge of the Mechanicus defense line.

 

An Ork 'Mekboy'—their equivalent of an engineer—was aggressively screaming at a massive, multi-barreled cannon mounted on a flatbed truck. The cannon had clearly taken a direct hit from Imperial plasma fire. The receiver was a melted slag of iron. The ammunition belt was severed. The firing pin was entirely absent. Functionally, it was a paperweight.

 

Through the binoculars, Izuku watched the Mekboy smack the ruined cannon with a massive wrench. The Ork yelled something incomprehensible, jammed a severed belt of absurdly large bullets into the melted receiver, and pulled a trigger that wasn't connected to anything.

 

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

 

The melted cannon roared to life, violently spitting out high-caliber shells that shredded a squad of Imperial Skitarii, despite having no internal mechanism capable of firing them.

 

Izuku lowered the binoculars, his emerald eyes wide, his pupils dilated with absolute, unadulterated awe.

 

"It shouldn't work," Fabricator Vane groaned in despair. "Our logic-engines cannot comprehend it. They fight with broken weapons. They heal from fatal wounds just because their 'Painboyz' staple armor plating over their skin. It is madness."

 

"It’s not madness, Vane," Izuku whispered, pulling his dataslate from his robes. His human hand trembled slightly—not with fear, but with the adrenaline of pure scientific discovery. "It’s a Quirk."

 

"A... what?"

 

"Where I come from, I knew a hero named Star and Stripe," Izuku said, his voice dropping into a rapid, rhythmic mutter as his fingers flew across the dataslate screen. "Her Quirk was called New Order. She could impose new rules onto reality just by touching something and speaking its name. If she said 'the air is solid,' the air became solid. She forced reality to bend to her will through sheer, absolute declaration."

 

Izuku turned toward the valley, pointing a scarred finger at the roaring green tide.

 

"The Orks are doing the exact same thing, but on a subconscious, collective scale! It's a Passive Area-of-Effect Reality Warping Quirk! A psychic gestalt field! They don't know they have magic. They just think things work a certain way. 'Red goes faster.' 'Yellow makes bigger explosions.' 'This gun works because it looks like a gun.' Because millions of them believe it simultaneously... the psychic pressure of their collective belief actually rewrites the laws of physics in their localized area!"

 

Vane and Drusus stared at the Supreme Archmagos as if he had grown a second head.

 

"Archmagos," Drusus said slowly. "You are suggesting that the Ork menace alters the fabric of the universe through sheer... imagination? Such a hypothesis is... it is absurd."

 

"Is it any more absurd than a gun with no firing pin shooting bullets?" Izuku shot back, his eyes blazing with the fierce intellect of Deku the Analyst. "Look at them! The Waaagh! isn't just a military campaign, it’s a self-sustaining psychic ecosystem! The more of them gather, the stronger the belief gets, the more physics breaks down!"

 

Izuku began to pace the bunker rapidly, his boots clanking against the metal floor.

 

"If their weapons run on belief... if their reality is dictated by what they collectively assume to be true..." Izuku muttered, a massive, slightly terrifying smile spreading across his face. "Then the opposite must also be true. If belief is their power source, then doubt is their kryptonite."

 

"Doubt, Archmagos?" Vane asked, his mechadendrites drooping in confusion.

 

Izuku spun around, slapping his dataslate into his palm. "Fabricator Vane! The Orks have fought the Mechanicus for millennia. They know who we are. They call us 'Cog-Boyz'. They believe we are the masters of machines, right?"

 

"They... they possess a crude, superstitious fear of our technology, yes," Vane admitted. "They believe our 'magic boxes' control the machine spirits."

 

"Perfect," Izuku grinned. "Drusus! I need you to gather every single long-range vox-caster, holographic projector, and acoustic-siren on this Forge World. I want them rigged to the highest points of the Magma-Trench defense line. I need the Fabricator's engineering corps to immediately synthesize a massive localized jamming frequency—but not a real radio jammer. I need a visual and audio spectacle. Give me flashing red lights, loud siren wails, and the biggest holographic projection of the Mechanicus Cog-symbol you can muster."

 

"To what end, Supreme Archmagos?" Drusus asked, his logic-circuits struggling to keep up with Izuku’s lateral thinking.

 

"We are going to put on a show," Izuku said, his green eyes flashing with determination. "A hero doesn't just punch the villain. Sometimes, you have to outsmart them. We are going to convince the Orks that we possess a super-weapon that permanently breaks their guns. If we can put on a convincing enough display... their own subconscious Quirk will do the rest."

 

 

 

Three hours later.

 

The assault on High-Forge Secundus began with a sound that shook the tectonic plates of Tiberius Prime.

 

“WAAAGH!”

 

Millions of Orks roared in unison, a guttural, terrifying sound that physically vibrated in Izuku’s chest. Standing at the vanguard of the Imperial defense lines, Izuku watched the green tide surge forward.

 

He was out of his standard Mechanicus robes. Instead, he wore a heavily modified set of powered carapace armor, painted in the dark green and black of his old hero costume. His bionic left arm hummed with suppressed kinetic energy, the synthetic muscle fibers glowing brightly. In his human right hand, he gripped a massive, master-crafted Omnissian Power Axe, modified to double as a kinetic-discharge hammer.

 

Around him, thousands of Skitarii Rangers locked their weapons, ready to die for the Machine God.

 

Leading the Ork charge was Warboss Skumgrod the Iron-Smasha. The Ork was the size of a hab-block. He was encased in rusted, impossibly thick mega-armor, wielding a power-klaw that could snip a battle tank in half.

 

"ERE WE GO! ERE WE GO! STOMP DA COG-BOYZ!" Skumgrod bellowed, his voice amplified by crude loudspeakers bolted directly into his own skull.

 

The Orks charged into range. Thousands of crude guns, shootas, and massive cannons leveled at the Imperial line. If they fired, the sheer volume of lead and plasma would obliterate the Mechanicus defenders in seconds.

 

"Drusus! Now!" Izuku screamed into his vox.

 

Suddenly, the sky above the battlefield erupted.

 

Thousands of high-yield luminen-flares shot into the sky, exploding into blinding, strobe-light flashes of crimson. Every single siren on the Forge World wailed simultaneously—a high-pitched, terrifying, mechanical shriek that drowned out even the Orks' roaring.

 

From the colossal spires of the macro-forges, massive holographic projectors flared to life. They didn't project the face of the Emperor. They projected a colossal, mile-wide, glowing red icon of a shattered gear—the symbol of a broken machine.

 

Then, Izuku’s voice boomed across the entire valley, amplified a million times over by the vox-network. He didn't speak in high-gothic or binharic cant. He spoke in the harshest, loudest, most aggressive tone he could muster, mimicking the cadence he had heard Katsuki Bakugo use a thousand times.

 

"LISTEN UP, YOU GREEN IDIOTS!" Izuku’s voice thundered, the sheer volume causing the charging Orks to falter, looking up at the sky in confusion.

 

"I AM THE SUPREME GEAR-MASTER! AND I JUST PUSHED THE JAM-BUTTON!"

 

Izuku raised his bionic arm high into the air. With a dramatic, theatrical flair, he slammed his fist down onto a massive, hastily constructed red button on a console in front of him.

 

The console did absolutely nothing mechanically. But it sent a signal to thousands of hidden sonic-emitters scattered across the valley.

 

CLIK-CLAK. FIZZLE.

 

A highly amplified, incredibly realistic sound of grinding gears, snapping firing pins, and fizzling plasma coils echoed across the entire battlefield. It sounded exactly like millions of guns suddenly breaking at once.

 

Izuku stood tall, projecting absolute, unshakeable confidence. "YOUR MAGIC DAKKA IS BROKEN! I BROKE IT! NONE OF YOUR GUNS WORK ANYMORE!"

 

Down in the valley, a million Orks stopped in their tracks.

 

The Gestalt Field was a delicate thing. It required absolute, unthinking confidence. If an Ork believed his gun worked, it worked.

 

But suddenly, the sky was flashing red. The terrifying Cog-Boyz were screaming about a "Jam-Button." The undeniable, physical sound of breaking guns echoed in their massive, green ears.

 

And Orks, for all their brutality, were incredibly impressionable.

 

"Boss?" a heavily armed Ork Nob grunted, looking down at his massive, four-barreled heavy bolter. "Da Cog-Boy sez 'e pushed da Jam-Button."

 

"Don't listen to 'im, ya git!" Skumgrod roared, though even he looked nervously at his own custom-built mega-blasta. "It's a trick! Shoot 'em! GIVE 'EM ALL DA DAKKA!"

 

The Ork Nob pulled the trigger of his heavy bolter.

 

In reality, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the weapon. It was fully loaded and mechanically functional in its own crude way. But the Nob doubted it. The theatrical display, the loud mechanical grinding noises, and Izuku’s absolute authority had planted a single seed of doubt in the Nob’s mind.

 

Maybe the Jam-Button is real.

 

The Ork Nob squeezed the trigger.

 

Click.

 

The gun didn't fire.

 

The Nob stared at it in horror. "Zog me! Da Jam-Button is real! My shoota is busted!"

 

That panic was a virus. It spread through the Ork ranks faster than the speed of light. The Gestalt Field—the psychic web connecting every Ork in the valley—suddenly shifted its reality-warping parameters.

 

Millions of Orks squeezed their triggers.

 

Millions of guns clicked, fizzled, and died. Plasma coils melted into useless slag. Ammunition belts turned to brittle rust. Massive artillery cannons simply sighed and drooped. Because the Orks collectively believed that the Supreme Gear-Master had jammed their weapons, the universe instantly re-wrote its laws to make it true.

 

The entire Ork Waaagh! had just been functionally disarmed by a teenager with a megaphone and a holographic projector.

 

On the parapet, Fabricator Vane fell to his knees, weeping binary tears of sheer religious awe. "The Omnissiah’s wrath... he has silenced the xenos by his very word..."

 

"It's not magic, it's psychology!" Izuku yelled back, a massive, adrenaline-fueled grin on his face. He drew his Power Axe, green lightning beginning to crackle around his organic right arm and legs.

 

"All Skitarii units!" Izuku commanded, his voice cutting through the stunned silence of the battlefield. "They are disarmed! Engage in close combat! Drive them back!"

 

The Skitarii, emboldened by what they perceived as a literal miracle, charged down the slopes with their galvanic rifles blazing, drawing their shock-mauls and power-swords.

 

Down in the valley, Warboss Skumgrod smashed his own broken gun against a rock in a blind fury.

 

"ZOGGIN' HUMIE TRICKS!" Skumgrod bellowed, his massive jaw jutting forward. He pointed his colossal Power-Klaw directly at the small, green-haired boy leading the Imperial charge. "IF DA DAKKA DON'T WORK, WE'LL CRUMP 'EM IN MEE-LEE! WAAAGH!"

 

Skumgrod charged. He was a terrifying sight, ten feet of corded green muscle and rusted iron, charging like a runaway freight train directly at Izuku.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't order his Skitarii to intercept. He had analyzed the Ork command structure. If you kill the Warboss in a duel, the Waaagh! breaks. The boy who had once fought Tomura Shigaraki and Overhaul was not about to be intimidated by a giant, angry mushroom.

 

"Drusus, keep the Jam-frequency broadcasting!" Izuku yelled, sprinting forward to meet the Warboss.

 

One For All: Full Cowling - 8%.

 

Emerald lightning wrapped around Izuku like a second skin. The synthetic muscles in his bionic arm whirred to maximum output. He bounded over the rubble, moving with a speed that left afterimages in the toxic air.

 

"I'M GONNA SQUISH YA, LITTLE COG-BOY!" Skumgrod roared, bringing his massive, crackling Power-Klaw down in a crushing overhead strike meant to turn Izuku into a red paste.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He planted his boots, twisting his hips, and brought his Power Axe up.

 

"Detroit..." Izuku muttered, his bionic arm and his One For All-empowered legs perfectly synchronizing.

 

The Power-Klaw met the Power Axe.

 

The impact created a shockwave that shattered the ferro-crete beneath them for fifty yards in every direction. Dust and debris exploded outward into a massive crater. Skitarii and Orks alike were thrown off their feet by the sheer concussive force.

 

Skumgrod’s eyes widened in sheer, uncomprehending shock. The tiny, fragile-looking human had not been squished. In fact, Izuku was holding the Warboss’s blow at bay with a single, glowing left arm.

 

"How are ya so strong?!" Skumgrod grunted, pushing down with all his might, the servos in his mega-armor whining in protest.

 

"Because," Izuku gritted his teeth, his green eyes burning with the light of a true hero, "I understand how your power works! You rely entirely on your size and belief to intimidate your enemies! But intimidation doesn't work on me!"

 

Izuku shifted his stance, using his incredible agility to slide out from under the blade bind. Before the massive Warboss could adjust his balance, Izuku vanished.

 

He reappeared directly above Skumgrod, suspended in the air. Izuku spun, channeling the kinetic energy of One For All into his right leg, augmenting it with the pneumatic thrusters built into his cybernetic boots.

 

"...SMASH!"

 

Izuku’s heel slammed directly into the back of Skumgrod’s iron-plated skull.

 

The force of the blow was cataclysmic. Skumgrod the Iron-Smasha, a warlord who had slaughtered entire Space Marine squads, was driven face-first into the bedrock with the force of a falling meteor. His mega-armor shattered like cheap glass. The ground buckled, creating a secondary crater.

 

Izuku landed gracefully a few feet away, his axe resting on his shoulder, breathing heavily but unharmed.

 

The battlefield went dead silent, save for the wailing of the fake sirens.

 

Millions of Orks stared at the crater. Their massive, invincible Warboss was knocked out cold, buried head-first in the dirt, entirely bested in single combat by a 'humie' who was a quarter of his size.

 

The Gestalt Field shifted again.

 

The sheer, overwhelming belief in Skumgrod’s invincibility shattered. In its place, a new belief took hold in the collective Ork psyche.

 

The Green Cog-Boy is da strongest.

 

An Ork Nob near the front dropped his broken chopper. He looked at Izuku, shivering slightly. "Da boss is crumped. Da green humie is da new boss..."

 

Panic, genuine and terrifying, finally seized the Ork horde. Their guns were broken by the Jam-Button. Their Warboss was humiliated in a single blow. The Waaagh! was broken.

 

"LEG IT! DA GREEN HUMIE IS TOO DEADLY!" a Boy in the back screamed.

 

Like a dam bursting, the green tide turned and ran. Millions of Orks scrambled over each other, desperate to get back to their scrap-ships, fleeing in absolute terror from Izuku Midoriya.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the crater, watching them retreat. He deactivated Full Cowling, letting out a long, exhausted breath. He wiped a smudge of oil and soot from his cheek, reaching into his robes with his human hand to pull out his dataslate.

 

"Supreme Archmagos," Drusus approached cautiously, his mechadendrites twitching in reverence. Behind him, thousands of Skitarii and Fabricator Vane were falling to their knees, praising the Omnissiah. "The xenos route is complete. The planet is saved. You have... you have weaponized their own blasphemy against them."

 

"I weaponized their Quirk, Drusus," Izuku smiled, his eyes locked on his dataslate as he rapidly typed. "It’s a fundamental rule of hero work. A Quirk is just a tool. If an enemy’s tool is a hammer, you don't fight them with a hammer. You make the hammer too heavy for them to lift."

 

Izuku tapped the screen, finalizing his entry.

 

Page 815 Update: The Ork Gestalt Field.

Status: Highly susceptible to psychological warfare and aggressive confidence. If you convince them their reality is broken, their Quirk does the work for you. Note: Warbosses have incredibly thick skulls. Upgrade shock-absorbers in cybernetic boots before attempting another Detroit Smash on an Ork.

 

Izuku looked up at the sky, where the massive holographic gear still glowed red against the smog.

 

"Alright, Drusus," Izuku said, turning his back on the fleeing horde, already thinking about his next project. "Call the orbital fleet. Have them sweep up the Ork stragglers. Then, I need to look at Fabricator Vane’s artillery schematics. I noticed a 4% inefficiency in their plasma-coil heat dispersion. If I reroute the coolant pipes using a localized zero-G suspensor field..."

 

Drusus bowed deeply. "Your mind is a marvel of the Motive Force, Archmagos."

 

"No, Drusus," Izuku laughed softly, tapping his head. "Just doing my best to go Plus Ultra."

 

 

 

The Sanctum of the Emerald Hand, Izuku Midoriya’s personal laboratory at the apex of his Martian Forge spire, was usually a place of rhythmic, comforting noise. The hum of plasma-forges, the clicking of macro-calculators, and the soft, constant string of muttered equations from the Supreme Archmagos himself formed a symphony of progress.

 

Today, however, the Sanctum was dead silent.

 

Standing in the center of the reinforced armaglass testing chamber was Astropath Caelen. The young psyker no longer wore the ragged, filthy robes of an Imperial prisoner, nor was he chained to the floor. He wore a pristine, comfortable tunic of Martian red. Resting snugly at the base of his skull, woven into the hair behind his ears, was a delicate crown of silver and pale green psycho-crystal. The Aegis-Halo.

 

"Alright, Caelen," Izuku’s voice came through the chamber’s vox-caster, soothing and steady. "Heart rate is nominal. Cortisol levels are down. How does the 'river' feel today?"

 

Inside the chamber, Caelen took a deep breath. Despite his metallic blindfold, his posture was relaxed, a stark contrast to the terrified, shaking boy Izuku had met weeks ago. "It feels... calm, Izuku. The water is still there. I can feel the current of the Immaterium. But the whispers... they’re muffled. Like they’re behind a thick pane of glass. I am not burning."

 

"Excellent!" Izuku beamed from the control console, his bionic left arm rapidly adjusting a series of dials while his organic right hand scribbled notes on his ever-present dataslate. "The psycho-crystal nodes are absorbing the excess bio-electric feedback just as I hypothesized! Okay, let’s try a minor projection. A simple telepathic push. Send me a picture of an apple. Just the concept of it."

 

Caelen nodded. He raised a hand, his fingers twitching slightly.

 

Normally, an astropathic transmission required choir-chambers, agonizing focus, and the risk of a daemon ripping through the psyker’s skull. But with the Aegis-Halo acting as a mental lightning rod, stabilizing the horrific recoil of his power, Caelen simply pushed.

 

In Izuku’s mind, a clear, crisp image of a red apple bloomed. There was no pain, no ghostly screaming, no scent of sulfur. Just an apple.

 

"I got it!" Izuku cheered, practically bouncing on his heels. "Caelen, that was perfect! Your Quirk control has improved by over three hundred percent! The output is stable, and the halo is successfully venting the excess warp-bleed as harmless thermal radiation! You’re doing amazing!"

 

Caelen smiled—a genuine, youthful smile that made him look like a normal teenager rather than a doomed mutant. "Thank you. I... I never thought I could use my gifts without fear. You truly are a miracle worker."

 

"Just good support gear and a little training," Izuku said warmly, reaching for the chamber release button.

 

Suddenly, Caelen gasped.

 

The young psyker stumbled backward, his hands flying to his head, his face contorting in sudden, absolute terror.

 

"Caelen?!" Izuku shouted, his hero-instincts instantly flaring. He slammed the emergency release, the armaglass doors hissing open. Izuku sprinted into the chamber. "What's wrong? Is the halo malfunctioning? Are you overloading?"

 

"No!" Caelen screamed, falling to his knees and curling into a ball. He was hyperventilating, his pale skin turning ash-gray. "It’s gone! The river... the river is gone! The light is gone! It’s empty! Everything is empty!"

 

Izuku froze. His tactical cogitators scanned the room, but there was no warp anomaly. No daemon manifesting.

 

Then, Izuku felt it.

 

It started as a creeping sensation at the base of his neck, like the physical manifestation of a shadow. The ambient temperature in the Sanctum plummeted, not from a drop in heat, but from a sudden, violent draining of life.

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. Deep within the core of his soul, the glowing, multi-colored embers of One For All—the vestiges of the past users that he had carried across dimensions—suddenly flickered, went dim, and fell completely silent. The comforting warmth he always felt in his chest was abruptly smothered by an oppressive, suffocating void.

 

It felt like the universe had suddenly turned its back on him.

 

A wave of profound, instinctual nausea washed over the room. Outside the chamber, Magos Drusus and the Skitarii honor guard began to stagger. The cyborg soldiers, usually devoid of emotion, gripped their heads, letting out low bursts of binharic static that translated to pure panic. Drusus fell to one knee, his mechadendrites going limp.

 

"Anathema..." Drusus choked out, his vocal-emitter grinding. "The soulless... the void..."

 

The heavy adamantium doors of the Sanctum did not open. They were blown off their hinges by a localized melta-charge.

 

Smoke poured into the laboratory, carrying with it a scent of cold ozone and dust. Through the smoke, a procession marched into Izuku Midoriya’s private sanctum.

 

Leading the group was a man clad in ornate, baroque power armor, draped in a heavy black cloak lined with crimson. His face was a map of severe, cruel angles, dominated by a cybernetic eye and a sneer of absolute authority. On his chest rested the wrought-iron rosette of the Inquisition.

 

"Supreme Archmagos Izuku Midoriya," the man’s voice boomed, carrying the weight of a thousand execution orders. "I am Lord Inquisitor Rostov of the Ordo Hereticus. By the authority of the Golden Throne, you are ordered to stand down and submit to immediate holy audit."

 

Izuku slowly stood up, placing himself securely between the shivering Caelen and the Inquisitor.

 

"Lord Inquisitor," Izuku said, his voice level, though his mind was racing. "Blowing up the door to a Supreme Archmagos's laboratory on Mars is a diplomatic incident of the highest magnitude. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

 

"Do not play coy with me, machine-priest," Rostov spat, stepping into the room. "The Inquisition has watched your rapid, unnatural ascension. We have watched you peddle your 'innovations'—a word that reeks of tech-heresy. We have watched you alter the sacred biology of the Skitarii. And now, my spies inform me that you harbor an unsanctioned mutant in your very chambers, playing with the powers of the Archenemy as if it were a child's toy."

 

Rostov gestured to Caelen, who was whimpering on the floor. "You have defied the dogmas of Mars, Midoriya. The Fabricator-General may protect you because your heresy produces weapons, but the Inquisition sees the corruption taking root in your soul."

 

"I’m not harboring a mutant, I'm providing medical treatment to a patient," Izuku replied firmly, his emerald eyes narrowing. "And my 'innovations' have increased Imperial survival rates in this sector by forty-two percent. I haven't broken any laws, Inquisitor."

 

"The law of the Imperium is whatever I decide it is," Rostov smiled coldly. "I knew the Priesthood of Mars would be stubborn. I knew you might attempt to use your dark, warp-tainted technologies against me. So, I did not come alone. I brought the ultimate sanction."

 

Rostov stepped aside.

 

From the smoke, two figures emerged.

 

The moment they stepped into the room, the oppressive, soul-crushing weight in the air magnified a thousandfold. The Skitarii guards collapsed completely, their augmetics failing as their human brains suffered massive psychological trauma. Magos Drusus vomited synthetic nutrient-paste onto the floor, curling into a fetal position.

 

Even Izuku felt his knees buckle slightly. The aura of wrongness radiating from the two figures was staggering. It wasn't just fear; it was the biological, instinctual revulsion of a living soul being pressed against an absolute, consuming vacuum.

 

The first figure was a nightmare of Imperial assassination. A Culexus Assassin. Clad in a skin-tight synskin suit composed of strange, shifting materials, the assassin possessed no visible face. Instead, its head was encased in a massive, terrifying, skull-like helmet known as the Animus Speculum. The single, cyclopean eye of the helmet pulsed with a sickening, negative light.

 

The second figure was a woman.

 

She was tall, clad in master-crafted golden power armor that rivaled the Adeptus Custodes in its sheer artistry. A heavy, fur-lined cloak draped over her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back into a tight topknot, and the lower half of her face was concealed behind a high, metallic gorget. She carried a massive, two-handed executioner's greatsword resting effortlessly over one shoulder.

 

She was a Knight-Centura of the Sisters of Silence. The Anathema Psykana. The Emperor’s Left Hand.

 

She was a Blank. A Pariah. A human born utterly devoid of a soul in the Immaterium. To look upon her was to look into an open grave. To stand near her was to feel the warmth of the universe die.

 

Rostov watched Izuku with malicious glee, waiting for the young, eccentric Archmagos to break. To the Inquisitor, the Pariah aura was a blunt instrument of terror. Psykers like Caelen were driven instantly insane by it. Normal humans were crushed by depression, nausea, and paralyzing dread.

 

Rostov waited for Izuku Midoriya to fall to his knees, vomit, and beg for the Emperor’s mercy.

 

Izuku blinked.

 

He looked at the Culexus Assassin. He looked at the Sister of Silence.

 

He felt the utter emptiness in his chest, the complete suppression of the One For All vestiges, the sudden grounding of all ambient psychic energy in the room.

 

Izuku’s brow furrowed. He tilted his head.

 

No Quirk connection.

No vestiges.

A complete suppression of abnormal biological and ethereal abilities.

A field of absolute negation.

 

Suddenly, Izuku Midoriya did not feel dread. He didn't feel the suffocating terror of the void.

 

He felt... nostalgic.

 

The sudden, jarring absence of his Quirk factor felt exactly like a pair of glowing red eyes staring at him from behind a capture-scarf. It felt exactly like a grumpy, sleep-deprived teacher standing at the front of Class 1-A, instantly shutting down the chaotic quirks of his students with a single, tired glare.

 

It felt like safety.

 

"Eraserhead..." Izuku whispered, his eyes widening.

 

"What was that, heretic?" Rostov sneered, expecting a plea for mercy.

 

Izuku completely ignored the Lord Inquisitor. The fear vanished from his face, replaced instantly by the terrifying, hyper-focused intensity of Deku the Analyst.

 

With a smooth, practiced motion, Izuku reached into his crimson robes with his human hand and whipped out his adamantium dataslate.

 

"Oh my goodness," Izuku breathed, his eyes shining like supernovas as he began to walk directly toward the two Blanks, leaving the safety of the chamber.

 

Rostov frowned. "Wait. Stop right there. The aura should be paralyzing you!"

 

"Mutter mutter mutter... it’s an Anti-Quirk! An Area-of-Effect Erasure aura!" Izuku began to speak at a mile a minute, pacing a rapid circle around the utterly baffled Sister of Silence and the silent Culexus Assassin. "The psychic nullification isn't a weaponized attack, it’s a passive biological state! If the Warp is a parallel dimension of psychic energy, then standard humans have a tether to it. Psykers have a massive tether. But you... you have no tether at all!"

 

Izuku practically shoved his face inches from the Sister of Silence, staring intently at her eyes above her metallic collar.

 

The Knight-Centura, whose name was Verity, froze. Her hand instinctively tightened on the hilt of her greatsword.

 

In her twenty-five years of life, Verity had known exactly two reactions from other human beings: absolute, pants-wetting terror, or violent, hateful disgust. Even the High Lords of Terra could not look her in the eye. Even Lord Inquisitor Rostov stood a safe twenty paces back, wearing a null-dampener on his belt to tolerate her presence. She was an abomination. A necessary evil. A soulless freak.

 

But this boy... this heavily augmented, green-haired Archmagos... was looking at her as if she were a marvel of the universe.

 

There was no fear in his eyes. There was no disgust. There was only pure, unadulterated, breathtaking wonder.

 

"You possess a recessive genetic mutation that completely severs the biological-to-ethereal link!" Izuku continued, his fingers blurring across his dataslate. "It’s a Pariah Gene! You are the biological equivalent of my old homeroom teacher, Mr. Aizawa! He could erase Quirks just by looking at someone, temporarily severing their Quirk-factor from their nervous system. But you... you just naturally project a field of absolute normality!"

 

Izuku spun around to face the Culexus Assassin, pointing the stylus of his dataslate at the horrifying Animus Speculum helmet.

 

"And you! That helmet!" Izuku analyzed, shaking his head critically. "That’s a terrible piece of Support Gear! Let me guess, the Inquisitor forces you to wear that to 'focus' your anti-aura into a weaponized beam, right? But the psychic feedback loop it requires must cause you agonizing migraines! It’s like forcing a water-hose through a pinhole. It builds up pressure until it hurts the user! Why would they build it like that when a simple omni-directional dampener-matrix would allow you to channel the aura without the cranial trauma?"

 

The Culexus Assassin, a being trained from birth to be a merciless, emotionless killing machine, actually took half a step backward in sheer confusion.

 

"Midoriya!" Inquisitor Rostov roared, finally snapping out of his shock. He drew a master-crafted bolt pistol, aiming it directly at Izuku’s head. "You are completely ignoring the gravity of your situation! You are surrounded by the Anathema! I will have you burned at the stake for your tech-heresy and your mutant sympathies!"

 

Izuku stopped pacing. He slowly turned his head to look at Lord Inquisitor Rostov.

 

When Izuku Midoriya dropped the 'fanboy' persona and slipped into the mindset of a Supreme Archmagos—of a Hero staring down a villain—the shift was terrifying. The temperature in the room didn't drop; it spiked. The ambient kinetic energy in Izuku’s bionic arm hummed with a vicious, lethal frequency.

 

"Put the gun away, Inquisitor," Izuku said softly, his voice echoing with a dark, commanding gravity. "Before I make you eat it."

 

Rostov laughed, though it sounded slightly forced. "You threaten me? I have a Culexus Assassin and a Sister of Silence! Your Skitarii are paralyzed! Your psyker-pet is useless! You are powerless!"

 

"I don't need a Quirk, or the Warp, or my Skitarii to break your jaw, Rostov," Izuku replied evenly, taking a slow step toward the Inquisitor. "You brought individuals who negate supernatural abilities. You thought this would weaken me. But you forgot one crucial detail."

 

Izuku raised his scarred, organic right fist. He clenched it tightly.

 

"I grew up Quirkless. I spent the first fourteen years of my life fighting without powers. The aura they project doesn't hurt me. It just levels the playing field to pure, baseline physics. And mechanically speaking? My bionic left arm can punch through the hull of a battlecruiser. You brought a dampening field to a fistfight."

 

Rostov hesitated. His eyes flicked to Izuku’s massive cybernetic arm, then back to the boy’s fiercely determined green eyes.

 

"Furthermore," Izuku continued, his voice cold and analytical, "If you shoot a Supreme Archmagos of Mars in his own Sanctum, the Fabricator-General will instantly sever the weapons tithe to the Ordo Hereticus. Your fleets will run out of ammunition in three months. Your power armor will fail from lack of sacred oils. You will be stripped of your Inquisitorial rosette by your own peers for gross diplomatic incompetence. So, I suggest you holster your weapon, Lord Inquisitor."

 

Checkmate.

 

Izuku had laid out the political and physical realities with such blunt, irrefutable logic that Rostov was trapped. The Inquisitor’s face turned an ugly shade of purple. His hand shook. Slowly, painfully, he lowered the bolt pistol and holstered it.

 

"This is not over, Midoriya," Rostov hissed venomously. "Your innovations are a danger to the Imperium. I will find the heresy in your work. I will find the warp-taint in your machines. And when I do, I will burn this entire spire to ash."

 

"You’re welcome to look," Izuku said, his demeanor instantly flipping back to cheerful. "All my blueprints are open-source to the Mechanicus. But you won't find any warp-taint. Because I use the scientific method, not magic."

 

Rostov turned on his heel, his cloak swishing furiously. "Assassin! With me!"

 

The Culexus silently melted back into the shadows, following the Inquisitor.

 

Rostov paused at the ruined doorway, looking back at the Sister of Silence. "Knight-Centura Verity. You are to remain here on Mars. You will attach yourself to the Archmagos’s retinue. You will be the eyes of the Inquisition. Watch his every move. If he displays even a hint of demonic corruption, you have my authority to sever his head."

 

Verity did not speak—she was sworn to the Vow of Tranquility. She simply gave a short, crisp nod, her face an unreadable mask.

 

Rostov stormed out, leaving Izuku alone with the terrified Skitarii, the weeping psyker, and the deadliest woman in the sector.

 

As Rostov’s footsteps faded, the oppressive aura remained, though it felt slightly less malicious without the Inquisitor’s intent driving it. Drusus was still gasping on the floor. Caelen was hyperventilating in the corner.

 

Izuku looked around, then looked at Verity.

 

Verity stood perfectly still, her greatsword resting at her side. She expected the Archmagos to order her to leave the room. She expected him to curse her presence. She expected the familiar, crushing weight of isolation.

 

Instead, Izuku gave her a gentle, highly apologetic smile.

 

"I'm so sorry about this, Miss Verity," Izuku said sincerely, scratching the back of his neck with his human hand. "My colleagues are a bit sensitive to your... well, your aura. Do you mind if we step into my adjoining office so I can help Caelen and Drusus recover?"

 

Verity blinked. Miss Verity? Did he just apologize to her for the weakness of his own men?

 

Slowly, carefully, she raised her hands. Wearing heavy golden gauntlets, she began to move her fingers in a rapid, complex series of gestures. It was Thoughtmark—the battle-sign language of the Silent Sisterhood.

 

I am the Anathema, Verity signed, her movements sharp and defensive. I bring the void. Do not mock me, machine-priest. I know my presence is a torture to your organic minds. I will stand in the corridor.

 

Izuku watched her hands intently. His eyes lit up with recognition.

 

I'm not mocking you, Izuku signed back.

 

Verity’s heart skipped a beat. She stared at him, utterly stunned. He wasn't using Thoughtmark perfectly—his syntax was slightly different, blending elements of Japanese Sign Language he had learned back on Earth to communicate with deaf heroes—but it was close enough for them to perfectly understand each other.

 

"You... you can speak with your hands?" Izuku said aloud, while simultaneously signing. "That’s amazing! Where I’m from, heroes use sign language all the time to communicate silently in stealth situations, or to speak with civilians who are hard of hearing. Your dialect is incredibly efficient for combat scenarios!"

 

Verity stood frozen. No one outside the Sisterhood and the Custodes knew Thoughtmark. And no one, no one, had ever smiled at her while using it.

 

How do you know the silent speech? Verity signed, her hands trembling imperceptibly. Who are you?

 

"I’m Izuku," he smiled, bowing slightly. "And I know a little bit of everything if it helps me understand people better. Please, come into my office. I want to ask you so many questions about your Pariah Gene. If you're going to be part of my team, I want to make sure your Support Gear is fully optimized for your comfort."

 

My... comfort? Verity signed, bewildered.

 

"Of course! That heavy armor looks great for defense, but the weight distribution around the shoulders looks like it causes massive lower back strain over long deployments," Izuku muttered, already walking toward a side door, waving for her to follow. "And if your anti-quirk aura is constantly active, you must suffer from severe social isolation. That can lead to severe psychological burnout! We need to make sure you have a proper support system..."

 

Verity watched the green-haired boy walk into the next room, still muttering to himself about her armor’s weight distribution.

 

She looked down at her hands. The hands that had executed rogue psykers. The hands that everyone in the galaxy flinched away from.

 

For the first time since she was a little girl ripped from her parents' arms by the Black Ships, Verity did not feel like a monster. She felt like a person.

 

Slowly, she sheathed her massive greatsword. She stepped over the groaning form of Magos Drusus and followed Izuku Midoriya into his office.

 

 

 

The office was a chaotic mess of blueprints, half-constructed mechanical prototypes, and towering stacks of dataslates. Izuku cleared off a chair by unceremoniously sweeping a pile of metal gears onto the floor, offering the seat to Verity.

 

Verity remained standing, her posture rigid, her eyes scanning the room for threats. It was a deeply ingrained habit.

 

I am ordered to observe you for heresy, Verity signed, her face remaining a stoic mask. I am your jailer, Archmagos. Why are you treating me like an honored guest?

 

Izuku sat on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs slightly. He looked at her not with the cold calculation of the Mechanicus, but with the boundless, empathetic depth of a true Hero.

 

"Because you didn't ask to be born with the Pariah Gene, Verity," Izuku said softly, speaking aloud and signing simultaneously so she wouldn't have to break eye contact. "You were born with a Quirk—a mutation—that makes people afraid of you. And because they're afraid of you, they weaponize you. They tell you that you're nothing but the Anathema. A tool to be used against psykers."

 

Verity’s golden armor shifted slightly as her breath hitched. He was piercing through her armor without lifting a blade.

 

"I know what it’s like to be treated differently because of the way you were born," Izuku continued, looking down at his scarred right hand. "For a long time, I was Quirkless. In my world, that meant I was fundamentally broken. People looked at me like I was a burden. Like I was useless. I know the pain of isolation."

 

Izuku looked back up, meeting Verity’s eyes.

 

"But I had a mentor who told me that I could be a hero. He told me that my worth wasn't defined by what I lacked, but by what I chose to do," Izuku smiled, a radiant, warm expression that completely neutralized the oppressive chill of her aura. "You aren't a monster, Verity. Your ability to erase supernatural phenomena? That’s a hero's Quirk. You are the ultimate shield against the Warp. You protect people from daemons and madness. In my eyes, that makes you incredible."

 

Verity stared at the boy.

 

A single, rogue tear escaped her eye, sliding down her cheek before disappearing behind her metallic gorget. She quickly wiped it away, her lifetime of stoic conditioning warring with the overwhelming, alien sensation of being accepted.

 

Inquisitor Rostov sent me to find your ruin, Verity signed, her movements slower, more deliberate now. He wants me to find evidence of tech-heresy so he can burn you.

 

"I know," Izuku chuckled softly. "Rostov is a bully. He uses fear to control people. But a society built on fear will eventually collapse under its own weight. I'm trying to build something better. A system where we understand our powers, rather than just fear them. And honestly? Having you here is the greatest gift Rostov could have given me."

 

Verity tilted her head. How so?

 

"Because Caelen needs a teacher," Izuku said, gesturing back toward the laboratory. "He’s a psyker trying to learn how to control his Quirk. But if he loses control, the consequences are catastrophic. With you here, your aura acts as the ultimate safety net. If Caelen’s power flares out of control, you can instantly neutralize it just by standing near him. You are the perfect counter-measure. You two are a perfect training team!"

 

Verity’s mind reeled. The Anathema and the Psyker. The Wolf and the Sheep. It was anathema to Imperial doctrine. They were supposed to hate each other. She was supposed to kill him if he stepped out of line.

 

But Izuku didn't see enemies. He saw pieces of a puzzle. He saw potential.

 

You want me to protect the mutant? she signed, disbelief coloring her movements.

 

"I want you to help a kid learn how to not hurt himself," Izuku corrected gently. "And in return, I want to help you. Let me look at your armor. Let me build you a dampening-cloak that you can toggle on and off, so you can interact with normal people without making them sick. You deserve a life outside of being a weapon, Verity."

 

Verity looked at the supreme Archmagos of Mars. She looked at his messy green hair, his horrific scars, and his brilliant, kind eyes.

 

The Sisterhood of Silence swore their oaths to the Emperor of Mankind. They were his silent watchers, his soulless blades. But the Emperor was a rotting corpse on a golden chair, cold and distant.

 

This boy was alive. And he possessed a soul so bright, so fiercely compassionate, that it cut through the endless, suffocating darkness of her Pariah curse like a beacon.

 

Verity slowly raised her hands. She formed the sign of the Aquila over her chest—the traditional Imperial salute—and then dropped to one knee, bowing her head deeply.

 

It was not the bow of a spy. It was the bow of a Knight swearing absolute, unwavering fealty to a new Lord.

 

I am the Anathema, Verity signed, looking up at him from her kneeling position. I am the Silent Blade. But if you wish to build a world where the cursed can be heroes... then my blade is yours, Izuku Midoriya. I will watch your back. And I will not let the Inquisition touch you.

 

Izuku stepped forward, ignoring the chill of her aura, and gently placed his human hand on her armored shoulder.

 

"Welcome to the team, Verity," Izuku smiled brightly. "Now, stand up! We have a lot of work to do. I need to take the measurements for your new armor, and then I want to show you my theories on how the Pariah gene interacts with localized reality-warping fields! Oh, do you like katsudon? I synthesized a Martian equivalent using grox-meat and genetically modified soy, and I think it’s pretty close to the original!"

 

As Izuku began to hyper-mutter, pulling out his dataslate and pacing around her, Verity stood up.

 

A tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched the corners of her lips behind her metallic collar.

 

For the first time in the grim darkness of the far future, the Sister of Silence felt something completely alien to the 41st Millennium.

 

She felt hope.

 

 

 

Later that evening, after Verity had been shown to a newly requisitioned room in the upper spires (much to the terror of the local servitors), Izuku sat alone in his sanctum.

 

He pulled out his heavily encrypted dataslate, the back etched with the words Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 40,000.

 

He opened a new page.

 

Page 902: The Pariah Gene (Blanks / Sisters of Silence).

Classification: Passive Anti-Quirk / Erasure Aura.

Notes: The Pariah Gene completely severs the host from the Immaterium. It functions identically to Eraserhead's Quirk, but operates on a localized Area-of-Effect rather than line-of-sight. The psychological recoil on normal humans is severe, likely due to the sudden deprivation of ambient ethereal energy.

 

Psychological Profile: Subjects of this gene are subjected to horrific systemic abuse and isolation due to their aura. They are starved for basic human empathy. Note to self: Verity responds well to logic and genuine kindness. Ensure daily check-ins. Begin fabrication of the 'Aizawa-Dampener' matrix to allow her to suppress her own aura in social situations.

 

Izuku paused, looking out the massive armaglass window at the toxic, bruised sky of Mars.

 

The Inquisition was coming for him. Rostov would not forget this humiliation. The political game was escalating, and Izuku knew that his mechanical brilliance would eventually not be enough to shield him from the dogmatic fury of the Imperium.

 

But as he looked down at his scarred right hand, he didn't feel afraid.

 

He had an Astropath learning to control his power safely. He had Skitarii who fought with loyalty rather than programmed fear. And now, he had a Sister of Silence watching his back.

 

He was building an agency. A team.

 

"We're getting there, All Might," Izuku whispered into the quiet hum of the laboratory. "One step at a time. Plus Ultra."