What If Deku Was In Twisted Metal

 

 

 

The rain over Musutafu fell in heavy, rhythmic sheets, washing the grime from the industrial district’s neon-lit streets, but it couldn't wash away the tension hanging in the air.

 

Izuku Midoriya crouched on the rusted fire escape of a derelict warehouse, the cold metal biting through the soles of his crimson iron-soled boots. Raindrops shattered against his dark green cowl. He barely blinked, his emerald eyes locked on the thermal scans glowing on his gauntlet’s localized display. Beside him, Katsuki Bakugo tapped his explosive gauntlets impatiently, small sparks hissing as they met the rain.

 

"Stop overthinking it, nerd," Bakugo growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp over the comms. "It’s a low-level trafficking ring. We breach, we blast the fodder, we bag the boss. Five minutes, tops."

 

"We can't rush this, Kacchan," Izuku whispered back, his analytical mind racing through a dozen different scenarios per second. "The intel from Nighteye’s agency said this splinter group of the League of Villains has been trading Trigger variants. But more importantly, their leader, a man named Kuroda, has an uncatalogued Quirk. Uncatalogued means unpredictable. If we just burst in—"

 

"If we just burst in, I’ll blow his uncatalogued face off," Bakugo interrupted, already shifting his weight. "Red Riot is in position at the back. Uravity has the aerial perimeter secured. Are we doing this or are you gonna write a whole essay out here in the cold?"

 

Izuku took a deep breath, the crisp, rain-washed air filling his lungs. He felt the familiar, warm thrum of One For All humming in the center of his chest. It was a wellspring of ancient, inherited power, a sun burning just beneath his ribs.

 

"Alright," Izuku said, his voice hardening with the resolve of a Pro Hero. "On my mark. Three... two... one. Go!"

 

Bakugo didn't wait for the 'Go.' He launched himself off the fire escape, explosions blasting from his palms, rocketing toward the reinforced skylight of the warehouse. Izuku followed a microsecond later. Emerald lightning surged across his body as he activated One For All: Full Cowling at 8%. He leaped, the sheer force of his jump denting the steel fire escape as he propelled himself through the air.

 

The skylight shattered into a million glittering fragments. Bakugo landed like a meteor in the center of the warehouse, instantly taking out three armed thugs with a concussive blast that sent them flying into crates of illegal narcotics. Izuku landed beside him in a crouch, his green lightning illuminating the dim, dust-choked interior.

 

"Pro Heroes! Stand down!" Izuku shouted, his voice echoing off the corrugated steel walls.

 

The warehouse was a hive of chaotic activity. Around twenty men, heavily armed with illicit support gear and various mutation Quirks, scrambled for their weapons. At the far end of the room stood Kuroda, a tall, impossibly gaunt man wearing a sharp crimson suit. His eyes were completely black, devoid of irises or sclera, and a strange, violet energy seemed to bleed from his fingertips like smoke.

 

"Kill them! Don't let them take the shipment!" Kuroda shrieked, backing toward a heavily armored transport van.

 

The ensuing firefight was a blur of coordinated chaos. Bakugo was a force of nature, a whirling dervish of fire and fury, blasting thugs into unconsciousness before they could even draw their weapons. Izuku moved with surgical precision. He darted between gunfire, a streak of green lightning.

 

Trajectory analysis... Izuku thought, sliding under a massive blast of fire from a villain’s hands. Three enemies on the left flank. Distance: fifteen meters.

 

Izuku kicked off the ground, bounding off the warehouse wall, and launched himself into the trio. "Shoot Style!" he called out, twisting mid-air to deliver a sweeping, non-lethal kick that shattered their weapons and sent all three crashing into a stack of empty pallets. They were out cold.

 

"Deku! The boss is making a run for it!" Bakugo yelled over the din of explosions.

 

Izuku whipped his head around. Kuroda had his hand on the door of the transport van, his violet energy swirling violently. But as Izuku moved to intercept, a stray explosive blast from one of Bakugo’s targets knocked a massive overhead crane off its rails. The steel beam swung down, directly toward a huddle of captured, terrified civilian hostages the traffickers had been using for forced labor.

 

Time seemed to slow down. Izuku’s heart hammered against his ribs. Bakugo was too far away. The heroes outside wouldn't make it in time.

 

Without a second thought, Izuku changed his trajectory. He abandoned the pursuit of the boss, pushing One For All to 15%. His boots cracked the concrete floor as he sprinted toward the hostages. He leaped into the air, twisting his body to position himself between the falling steel crane and the civilians.

 

"Smash!" Izuku roared, driving his fist upward. The air pressure from his punch met the falling steel, snapping the massive beam in half and sending the two heavy chunks flying harmlessly to the sides of the room. The civilians screamed, cowering beneath him, but they were safe.

 

Izuku landed heavily, breathing hard. He looked up, expecting to see Kuroda escaping in the van.

 

Instead, Kuroda was standing right in front of him.

 

The villain hadn't run. Seeing Izuku distracted by the rescue, Kuroda had sprinted across the room, his black eyes wide with manic desperation. Both of his hands were glowing with blinding, pulsing violet light.

 

"You heroes," Kuroda hissed, his voice echoing with an unnatural resonance. "Always looking in the wrong direction."

 

"Deku! Move!" Bakugo roared, propelling himself across the room with a massive explosion, but he was too late.

 

Kuroda slammed both of his glowing palms directly into the center of Izuku’s chest.

 

For a moment, nothing happened. Izuku felt no pain, no kinetic impact, no heat. There was only a profound, sudden silence. The sounds of Bakugo’s explosions, the shouting thugs, the rain hitting the roof—it all vanished, replaced by a deafening, high-pitched ringing.

 

Then, the world shattered.

 

It wasn't a metaphorical shattering. The air around Izuku physically fractured like a mirror hit by a sledgehammer. Jagged cracks of pure white light tore through the fabric of the warehouse. Izuku couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. One For All flared wildly within him, fighting against the foreign energy, but the violet light consumed his green lightning.

 

He saw Bakugo reaching out, his eyes wide with uncharacteristic terror, screaming a name Izuku couldn't hear.

 

Then, the shards of reality collapsed inward. Izuku was pulled through the cracks, dragged into a vortex of swirling, kaleidoscopic colors and crushing pressure. It felt as though he were being stretched across a million miles and compressed into a single atom simultaneously. He couldn't scream. He couldn't fight. The dimensional displacement tore at his senses until his consciousness finally surrendered to the void.

 

 

 

Smell. That was the first sense to return.

 

It wasn't the clean, salty air of Musutafu, nor the damp, metallic scent of the warehouse. This smell was thick, oppressive, and nauseating. It was a suffocating cocktail of burning rubber, raw diesel fuel, rust, and something organic and sickeningly sweet. Blood. Old blood and rot.

 

Izuku groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. His head throbbed with a migraine that felt like a localized earthquake behind his eyes. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, the coarse, jagged surface beneath him scraping against his gloves. Asphalt. Broken, crumbling asphalt.

 

"Ugh... Kacchan? Uraraka?" Izuku croaked, his throat feeling like it was coated in sandpaper.

 

He forced himself to his feet, swaying slightly as a wave of vertigo washed over him. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the blurry edges of his vision. As the world came into focus, a cold knot of dread formed in his stomach.

 

He was standing in the middle of a massive, sprawling intersection, but it looked nothing like any city in Japan he had ever seen. The skyscrapers towering above him were monolithic, brutalist structures of blackened steel and stained concrete. Many of the windows were blown out, leaving gaping, jagged holes that looked like missing teeth in giant, skeletal maws. Flickering, erratic neon signs cast a sickly, pallid glow over the streets, advertising brands in a language he couldn't quite read—the letters were English, but chaotic and defaced.

 

The sky above was a bruised, unnatural hue, choked with thick, swirling smog that blotted out the sun, casting the city in a perpetual, grimy twilight. It was raining, but the rain was acidic, leaving a thin, greasy film on Izuku’s hero costume.

 

"Where... where am I?" Izuku muttered, his hands moving automatically to his utility belt. He tapped his earpiece. "This is Deku. Does anyone read me? Bakugo? Eraserhead? Agency dispatch, do you copy?"

 

Only static hissed back at him, sharp and hollow.

 

Izuku’s breathing quickened. He tapped the localized GPS on his gauntlet. The screen flickered, showing only static and a glaring red NO SIGNAL error. The atmospheric sensors, however, were going wild. Toxicity levels in the air were dangerously high, radiation was marginally above baseline, and the ambient temperature was unnaturally warm for a rainstorm.

 

"Okay. Okay, calm down," Izuku muttered to himself, pacing a small circle in the broken intersection. His mind kicked into its familiar, rapid-fire analytical mode, a coping mechanism for the rising panic. "Kuroda’s Quirk. It wasn't an explosive emitter or a physical mutation. It was spatial. Displacement. Teleportation? No, the visual distortion and the sensory deprivation suggest a tear in localized space-time. Did he teleport me across the globe? America? Europe? The architecture looks vaguely Western, maybe a post-industrial city, but the level of urban decay is extreme. Was it a temporal displacement? Am I in the future? A dystopian future caused by a villain takeover?"

 

He looked around. The streets were littered with debris—shattered glass, twisted metal, and the burning husks of overturned civilian cars. But there were no people. No Pro Heroes patrolling, no police sirens in the distance, no civilians rushing to work. It was a ghost town, but a ghost town that felt violently alive.

 

Before Izuku could formulate a plan, a sound tore through the heavy, smog-filled air.

 

It was a low, guttural roar, deep and reverberating, vibrating up through the soles of Izuku's boots. It sounded like a beast, but mechanical. The roar was followed by a high-pitched whine, and then, the unmistakable, staccato rat-tat-tat-tat of heavy caliber machine gun fire.

 

Izuku’s head snapped toward the sound. It was coming from down the grand avenue to his right. The roaring grew louder, accompanied by the screech of tires peeling on wet asphalt and the crunch of smashing metal.

 

Villain attack? Izuku thought, his instincts overriding his confusion. If there’s an attack, there are people in danger. I need to assess the situation and intervene if necessary.

 

He dashed toward the side of the street, taking cover behind the rusted, overturned shell of a city bus. He peered around the edge, his emerald eyes widening at the sight hurtling down the avenue.

 

Two vehicles were tearing down the road at breakneck speeds, locked in a violent, high-speed duel. But these weren't normal cars, and this wasn't a standard car chase.

 

The vehicle in the lead was a heavily modified, midnight-black muscle car. It looked like a classic 1970s Dodge Charger, but it had been bastardized into a machine of war. Thick, welded steel plates covered the windows, leaving only narrow slits for the driver to see out. Jutting from the hood were two massive, twin-barrel Gatling guns, currently spinning and spitting long tongues of yellow flame. The back of the car was heavily dented, trailing thick black smoke.

 

Chasing the muscle car was something out of a nightmare. It was a dune buggy, stripped down to a rusted roll cage, its engine entirely exposed in the back, roaring like a dying god. The buggy was covered in vicious, foot-long rusted steel spikes. Bolted to the roof was a crude, jury-rigged missile launcher.

 

Izuku watched in horror as the dune buggy swerved wildly, avoiding a volley of machine-gun fire from the muscle car that tore chunks out of the concrete buildings around them. The buggy’s driver—a massive man wearing a leather harness and a welding mask—slammed his hand onto a red button on his dashboard.

 

With a deafening whoosh, a crude, unguided missile shot from the buggy's roof. It streaked through the air, leaving a trail of white smoke, and slammed into the side of an abandoned storefront just inches from the muscle car. The explosion was massive, sending a shockwave down the street that rattled Izuku’s teeth. A shower of flaming bricks and shattered glass rained down on the road.

 

The muscle car swerved, its tires shrieking, spinning a full 180 degrees to face the buggy while still sliding backward under its own momentum. The driver gunned the engine, and the front grille of the muscle car suddenly glowed bright orange. A stream of liquid fire—napalm—erupted from a hidden flamethrower in the bumper, washing over the front of the dune buggy.

 

The buggy burst through the flames, blackened but unstopped, its driver howling with maniacal laughter that echoed down the desolate avenue.

 

"What... what is this?" Izuku whispered, his breath catching in his throat.

 

In his world, villains used their Quirks to cause destruction, and support items were heavily regulated. But this? This wasn't Quirk combat. This was vehicular warfare, brutal and unrestrained. These weren't villains trying to steal money or make a political point. This looked like absolute, senseless murder for the thrill of it.

 

Where were the police? Where was the military?

 

As Izuku watched the deadly dance of the two machines, his keen eyes caught movement in his peripheral vision.

 

Across the street from Izuku’s hiding spot, nestled in the shadows of a collapsed subway entrance, was a figure. Izuku squinted through the rain and the smoke. It was a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. She was dressed in ragged, grease-stained overalls, her face smeared with soot and engine oil. She wore a heavy toolbelt slung low on her hips and had a pair of cracked welding goggles pushed up into her messy, short-cropped brown hair.

 

She was clutching a heavy, canvas sack that clinked with scavenged metal parts, and she looked absolutely terrified.

 

The flaming dune buggy had swerved off the main road to avoid another burst of machine-gun fire from the muscle car. Its spiked tires chewed through the sidewalk, tearing up the concrete as it fishtailed wildly. It was hurtling directly toward the collapsed subway entrance. Directly toward the girl.

 

The driver in the welding mask saw her. Izuku saw the driver’s head turn. Instead of hitting the brakes, the driver revved the engine, pointing the spiked bumper of the buggy right at the girl. The maniacal laughter rose above the roar of the engine. He wasn't just out of control; he was aiming for her.

 

The girl dropped her sack of scavenged parts, pressing herself flat against the iron grate of the subway entrance. She squeezed her eyes shut, raising her arms in a futile gesture to protect herself from the multi-ton wall of spiked metal bearing down on her.

 

Izuku didn't think. He didn't analyze. The hero’s instinct—the fundamental drive that had compelled a Quirkless middle-schooler to run toward a Sludge Villain to save a bully—took complete control.

 

His body moved on its own.

 

Green lightning erupted around Izuku, brighter and more violent than before. The power of One For All flooded his veins, illuminating the grimy, darkened street with a brilliant, emerald flare.

 

"Full Cowling... Twenty Percent!" Izuku roared.

 

He pushed off the ground with explosive force, shattering the pavement beneath his iron soles. He crossed the four-lane avenue in a fraction of a second, a blur of green and red.

 

Distance: forty meters. Speed of the vehicle: approximately eighty kilometers per hour. Time to impact: less than two seconds, Izuku’s mind calculated in the microsecond he was airborne.

 

He landed right in front of the girl, placing himself squarely between her and the roaring, spiked dune buggy.

 

The buggy was less than ten meters away.

 

Izuku realized in a heartbeat that simply grabbing the girl and jumping away was too risky. The buggy’s speed and width, combined with the chaotic spray of debris, meant a high probability of shrapnel hitting her if they were caught in the slipstream. He couldn't dodge. He had to stop the vehicle.

 

He planted his feet wide, digging the iron treads of his boots deep into the cracked concrete. He drew his right arm back, clenching his fist until the leather of his glove creaked. The green lightning around him intensified, the raw kinetic energy whipping the rain away from his body in a sphere of pressure.

 

Through the windshield of the buggy, the masked driver saw the glowing green boy. The driver didn't brake; he slammed his foot down harder on the accelerator, expecting the boy to be turned into a smear on the pavement.

 

"Detroit..." Izuku yelled, his voice cutting through the roar of the engine. He thrust his arm forward just as the spiked bumper reached him. "...SMASH!"

 

Izuku’s fist didn't just hit the dune buggy; it hit the very concept of the vehicle’s momentum.

 

The impact was cataclysmic. When the knuckles of his gauntlet connected with the heavy steel engine block housed behind the bumper, a massive, concussive shockwave of air pressure exploded outward. The sound was like a thunderclap detonating at ground zero.

 

The front of the dune buggy crumpled inward instantaneously, the reinforced steel folding like cheap origami paper. The kinetic force of Izuku's punch arrested the vehicle's forward momentum entirely in a microsecond. But the laws of physics demanded the energy go somewhere.

 

The back half of the buggy, still propelled by its own violent speed, buckled upward. The entire vehicle flipped end-over-end, catapulting straight up into the air over Izuku’s head. It spun wildly, a chaotic blur of spikes and tires, before slamming down hard onto its roof fifty feet down the street. It skidded across the wet asphalt, shedding sparks and flaming debris, until it crashed heavily into a concrete barricade and lay still, hissing and smoking.

 

The shockwave from the punch had blown all the smog and rain away from the immediate area, creating a perfectly clear, circular pocket of air.

 

Izuku stood frozen in his punch-follow-through stance, his right arm extended, steam rolling off his heated muscles. He slowly lowered his arm, the green lightning fading to a soft, flickering glow. He winced slightly, rolling his shoulder. 20% was still a strain without proper warm-up, but it held.

 

He turned around slowly.

 

The girl was sitting on the ground, having fallen backward. Her welding goggles had slipped down around her neck. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes wide as saucers, staring at Izuku as if he were a god that had just descended from the heavens. She looked from Izuku, to the smoking, mangled wreck of the buggy down the street, and back to Izuku.

 

"A-Are you... are you okay?" Izuku asked, his voice softening instantly. He offered her a gentle, reassuring smile and extended a gloved hand. "I’m sorry if I scared you. You're safe now."

 

The girl didn't take his hand. She scrambled backward, pressing herself harder against the iron grate, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

 

"What... what the hell are you?" she stammered, her voice thick with a harsh, unidentifiable accent. She spoke English, which Izuku understood thanks to his intensive study at U.A., though the slang sounded gritty and strange. "Are you a cyborg? A... a mutant? How the hell did you just punch a three-ton War-Buggy into orbit?"

 

"I’m not a cyborg," Izuku said gently, keeping his hands visible and non-threatening. He stepped forward slightly. "My name is Izuku Midoriya. My hero name is Deku. I’m a Pro Hero... well, a hero-in-training from U.A. High School. I’m here to help."

 

"A... hero?" The girl spat the word as if it tasted like ash. She looked at him with a mixture of profound confusion and deep suspicion. "There ain't no heroes in this city, Greenie. Not anymore. The cops are all bought, the military is a joke, and the only people who patrol the streets are the psychos looking to score a kill."

 

Izuku frowned, his heart sinking. "What city is this? Where am I? I was in Musutafu, Japan, and there was an incident with a Quirk..."

 

"Japan?" The girl blinked. "Look, I don't know what kind of drugs you're on, or what a 'Quirk' is, but you're in Midtown. And you just made a massive mistake."

 

"Mistake?" Izuku looked back at the wrecked buggy. "I couldn't let him run you over! Is the driver...?"

 

Izuku’s eyes widened in panic. He had hit the engine block specifically to avoid hitting the cockpit, and he had aimed the kinetic shockwave to flip the car rather than crush the driver, but the crash was still severe. He had sworn to himself, mirroring the ideals of All Might and the laws of hero society, never to take a life.

 

He dashed past the girl and ran toward the overturned buggy.

 

"Hey! Don't go near that!" the girl yelled, scrambling to her feet.

 

Izuku ignored her. He reached the smoking wreck and crouched down by the crushed driver's side window. The door was wedged shut, the roll cage severely bent. Inside, hanging upside down from his harness, was the massive man in the welding mask.

 

Izuku ripped the steel door off its hinges with a sharp tug, tossing it aside. He reached in and checked the man's pulse. It was strong, steady. The man was unconscious, bleeding from a gash on his forehead and nursing what looked like a broken arm, but he was alive.

 

Izuku let out a massive sigh of relief, his shoulders slumping. "He's alive. He's just knocked out."

 

"You're glad?"

 

Izuku turned. The girl had followed him, standing a few feet away, clutching a heavy monkey wrench from her toolbelt like a weapon. She looked at him as if he had just sprouted a second head.

 

"Why the hell didn't you finish him?" she asked, her tone entirely serious. "That's Buzzsaw. He's got thirty confirmed kills in the arena alone. He was gonna smear me across the pavement for a ten-point pedestrian bonus. You had him dead to rights, and you let him live?"

 

Izuku stood up, drawing himself to his full height. His emerald eyes were hard, resolute. "I am a hero. Heroes don't kill. We save people, and we stop villains so they can face justice. Killing him would make me no better than him."

 

The girl stared at him in utter disbelief. Then, she let out a short, barking laugh, shaking her head. "Oh, man. You are... you are not from around here. Justice? You think there are courts left to try guys like Buzzsaw? You think there are prisons that can hold them? You just signed your own death warrant, Greenie."

 

"What do you mean?" Izuku asked, stepping closer to her. "What is this place? Why are there no police? Why are people fighting in armored cars in the middle of the street?"

 

The girl sighed, lowering the wrench slightly, seemingly convinced that Izuku wasn't going to hurt her. She looked him up and down—the bright green and red costume, the metal soles, the earnest, terrifyingly naive look in his eyes.

 

"My name is Spark," she said, her voice dropping to a weary murmur. "And you, Izuku-Deku or whatever you called yourself, just stepped right into the middle of the Twisted Metal tournament."

 

"Twisted... Metal?" Izuku repeated the words, they felt heavy, soaked in dread.

 

"Yeah," Spark said, gesturing broadly to the ruined city around them. "It's an underground vehicular combat tournament. The biggest, bloodiest demolition derby in the world. Psychopaths, murderers, mercenaries, and freaks from all over the globe come here, modify their cars with military-grade hardware, and hunt each other down in the streets. No rules. No speed limits. Last man driving wins."

 

Izuku was horrified. "Why? Why would anyone participate in something so barbaric? For money?"

 

"Money is useless," Spark scoffed. "They do it for the Prize. The guy who runs the tournament... he's not normal. He's got power. Real, dark power. He promises that whoever survives and wins Twisted Metal will be granted exactly one wish. Anything they desire. Wealth, power, revenge, a girl, a resurrected loved one. Anything. He snaps his fingers, and it happens."

 

Izuku’s mind raced. A wish? A reality-altering power? Could this man's Quirk be similar to the dimensional displacement that brought me here? If he can grant any wish... he could wish me back home.

 

"Who runs this tournament?" Izuku asked, his voice intense. "Who has this power?"

 

Before Spark could answer, the ambient noise of the city changed.

 

The rumble of the muscle car from earlier had faded into the distance, but a new sound began to permeate the air. It was a low electronic hum, a frequency that made the fillings in Izuku’s teeth vibrate.

 

All down the avenue, the flickering, broken neon signs suddenly went dark. The streetlights shut off. The entire block was plunged into deep shadows, illuminated only by the smoldering fires of the wrecked dune buggy.

 

Then, high above them, a massive electronic billboard attached to the side of a skyscraper flickered to life.

 

Izuku and Spark both snapped their heads up to look at it.

 

The billboard didn't display an advertisement. Instead, the screen flared with aggressive white static, accompanied by a screeching audio feedback loop that made Izuku cover his ears. The static coalesced, forming an image that made the blood freeze in Izuku’s veins.

 

It was the face of a man, but a man who had been subjected to unimaginable horrors. The left side of his face was relatively normal, handsome in a sharp, aristocratic way, with a slicked-back mane of dark hair. But the right side of his face was a ruin of severely burned, scarred, and melted flesh. His right eye was completely missing, leaving a hollow, dark socket, while his left eye burned with a manic, hellish intelligence. He wore a pristine white tuxedo jacket, which only made his disfigurement more jarring.

 

"Citizens of our beautiful, bleeding city!" The man’s voice boomed from hidden speakers echoing across the concrete canyons. His voice was smooth, charismatic, yet dripping with a sinister, theatrical malice. "And welcome, drivers, to the inaugural night of this year's Twisted Metal!"

 

"That's him," Spark whispered, taking a step backward, terrified of the screen. "That's Calypso."

 

Izuku stared at the billboard, activating his cowl's built-in recorder out of habit, analyzing the man.

 

"The rules, as always, are delightfully simple," Calypso continued, a cruel smile stretching across his scarred face. "Drive fast. Shoot straight. Survive. To the victor goes the spoils—one single wish, limited only by your own wicked imaginations."

 

Calypso paused, and the camera on the billboard seemed to zoom in slightly. His singular, piercing eye seemed to look down, straight through the lens, directly at the intersection where Izuku and Spark stood.

 

"However," Calypso purred, leaning forward, "it seems we have an unexpected interloper this evening. A mysterious newcomer who prefers to use his fists rather than a firearm."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. He's watching us. He saw what I did.

 

The billboard screen split. On the left was Calypso’s face. On the right, grainy, black-and-white security footage played. It showed an overhead view of the intersection. It showed Izuku glowing green, dashing in front of Spark, and punching the dune buggy into the air.

 

"A truly spectacular display of kinetic force!" Calypso laughed, a sound like glass grinding against glass. "A pacifist who destroys a three-ton war machine with a single blow, yet leaves the driver breathing. How... uniquely pathetic."

 

Izuku clenched his fists, glaring up at the screen. "I won't let you force people to kill each other for your amusement!" Izuku shouted, though he knew Calypso couldn't hear him.

 

"To the mysterious boy in green," Calypso said, his tone turning dark, addressing the camera directly. "You have interfered with my tournament. You have disabled one of my contestants. By the sacred, unwritten laws of Twisted Metal, that makes you a participant."

 

"What?" Spark gasped. "No, no, no. He can't do that. You don't even have a car!"

 

"You want to save people, little hero?" Calypso mocked, reading the costume and the intent perfectly. "You want to survive? You want to go back to wherever it is you came from? There is only one way. You must play my game. Find a vehicle. Arm yourself. And enter the arena."

 

Calypso leaned back, spreading his arms wide.

 

"Welcome to Twisted Metal, boy. I wager you won't survive the night. But oh, what a show your demise will make! I am Calypso, and I thank you for playing!"

 

The screen dissolved back into white static, then clicked off entirely. The neon signs flickered back to life, casting the street in their sickly glow once more.

 

Silence descended on the intersection, save for the rain and the hiss of the dying engine nearby.

 

Izuku stood frozen, the weight of the situation crashing down on him. He was trapped in a hyper-violent dimension run by a reality-warping psychopath. He was a target in a death game where the participants drove tanks and heavily armed cars. He had no support, no Pro Heroes to back him up, and no way home unless he played the game and won the wish.

 

He looked down at his hands. He had One For All. He had his training. He had the spirit of a hero. But could he fight an entire city of motorized murderers without crossing his own moral lines? Could he win a deathmatch without dealing death?

 

He turned to Spark. The girl was staring at him, shaking her head slowly.

 

"You're dead, Greenie," she said softly. "Every psycho in this city just saw your face on the Jumbotron. By midnight, there’s gonna be a dozen heavily armed drivers hunting you down to claim the bounty for killing the new guy."

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He thought of All Might. He thought of his mother. He thought of the terrified look on Spark’s face when the car was bearing down on her.

 

He uncurled his fists and looked Spark dead in the eye, his gaze burning with an unshakeable, optimistic fire that felt entirely alien in this dark world.

 

"You're a mechanic, right?" Izuku asked, gesturing to her toolbelt and the bag of scavenged parts.

 

Spark blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor. "Yeah. So?"

 

"You said I need a vehicle to compete," Izuku said, walking toward her. "I need to win this tournament to get home. And I need to make sure Calypso can't hurt anyone else while I do it. But I don't use guns. And I don't kill."

 

Spark stared at him, her jaw practically hitting the floor. "You're crazy. You're actually insane."

 

"Maybe," Izuku smiled, the iconic, reassuring smile of a hero. "But I have a proposition for you, Spark. You build me a car. The fastest, toughest, most durable car you can make out of the scrap in this city. You be my co-driver and mechanic."

 

"Why the hell would I do that?" Spark demanded, crossing her arms defensively. "That’s suicide!"

 

"Because," Izuku said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty, "if you help me win... when I get the wish from Calypso, I’ll wish for whatever you want. I'll get you out of this city. I'll give you a safe, happy life. I promise you."

 

Spark looked at the boy. He was small, clad in ridiculous colors, and spouting fairy tales in a city built on blood and exhaust fumes. By all logic, he was going to be roadkill by sunrise.

 

But then she looked over his shoulder at the dune buggy he had folded in half with a single punch. She remembered the blinding green light and the absolute, fearless way he had stood between her and death.

 

For the first time in her life, living in the shadow of Calypso’s games, Spark felt something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

 

Hope.

 

She sighed, rubbing her soot-stained forehead, and bent down to pick up her sack of scavenged parts.

 

"Alright, Izuku-Deku," Spark muttered, shouldering her bag. "You want to play Twisted Metal without a gun? Fine. I know a chop-shop a few blocks from here. But if we're gonna build a ride that can survive the psychos in this town, we're gonna need a hell of a lot of armor."

 

Izuku’s smile widened. He nodded firmly. "Lead the way."

 

As the two of them walked away from the burning wreckage, disappearing into the neon-lit smog of the dystopian city, the distant, roaring hum of engines echoed through the concrete canyons. The tournament had begun, and the green newcomer had just entered the fray.

 

Out of the frying pan of the League of Villains, Izuku Midoriya had leaped directly into the roaring, nitrous-injected fire of Twisted Metal. And he was ready to go Plus Ultra.

 

 

 

The city of Midtown didn’t sleep; it festered.

 

Izuku Midoriya followed Spark through a labyrinth of narrow, trash-choked alleyways, his red iron-soled boots making soft, deliberate squelches against the oil-slicked pavement. Above them, the skeletal fire escapes of towering, blackened tenement buildings crisscrossed like iron webbing, blocking out the sickly, smog-filtered moonlight. The distant, rhythmic concussions of heavy artillery and the high-pitched squeal of tires echoed down the concrete canyons, a constant, grim symphony that made Izuku’s muscles remain coiled with tension.

 

"Keep your head down, Greenie," Spark hissed over her shoulder, her grease-stained face barely visible in the gloom. "The scav-gangs come out after the first broadcast. They’re like vultures looking for the scraps of whatever the drivers leave behind."

 

"I'm keeping an eye out," Izuku whispered back. His emerald eyes darted from shadow to shadow, his analytical mind processing every detail of this nightmarish world.

 

The architecture was a mishmash of gothic revival and brutalist industrialism, as if a thriving metropolis had been bombed, rebuilt with scrap metal, and left to rust. There were no bright billboards advertising hero agencies, no cheerful mascots, no clean parks. The few people Izuku managed to spot were huddled deep in the shadows of doorways—gaunt, terrified civilians clutching makeshift weapons, eyes wide with the hollow stare of the perpetually hunted.

 

It made Izuku’s chest ache. This is a world without an All Might, he thought grimly. A world without a Symbol of Peace to hold the darkness at bay. When fear becomes the baseline, society collapses into this... a warzone of pure survival.

 

Spark stopped in front of what looked like a collapsed, graffiti-covered loading dock behind an abandoned meatpacking plant. A rusted, corrugated steel door, bent out of shape and secured by thick iron chains, blocked their path. Spark pulled a heavy, custom-made plasma cutter from her toolbelt, flicked a switch, and burned through the lock with a shower of blue sparks.

 

She hauled the heavy chain off and pushed the door, which ground open with a metallic shriek. "Inside. Fast."

 

Izuku slipped through the gap, and Spark quickly hauled the door shut behind them, throwing a heavy deadbolt into place. They were in total darkness for a moment, the smell of damp earth, stale diesel fuel, and oxidized iron overwhelming Izuku's senses.

 

Spark hit a switch on the wall. A row of flickering, buzzing fluorescent lights sparked to life, illuminating a massive underground chamber.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. They were standing in an old, subterranean subway maintenance depot. The tracks had been paved over with cracked concrete, but the sheer scale of the place was staggering. Rusted subway cars lined the far walls, gutted and repurposed for storage. The center of the room, however, was a mechanic’s paradise—or nightmare.

 

Tools of every conceivable shape and size hung from pegboards bolted to the stone walls. Workbenches were buried under mountains of carburetors, alternators, pistons, and heavy-duty steel plating. In the center of the room sat a massive hydraulic lift, currently supporting the rusted skeletal frame of a dune buggy. The floor was a mosaic of oil stains, scattered lug nuts, and tangled power cables.

 

"Welcome to the sanctuary," Spark said, tossing her canvas sack of scavenged parts onto a workbench with a heavy metallic clatter. She pulled her welding goggles down around her neck and ran a grimy hand through her short brown hair. "It ain't the Ritz, but it's reinforced with three feet of concrete and lead-lined on the ceiling. Calypso’s orbital scanners can't pierce it, and the drivers don't know it's here."

 

"It's incredible," Izuku breathed, walking toward a workbench. He traced his gloved hand over a massive, intricate V8 engine block that was currently in the process of being rebuilt. "You did all this yourself? You can't be much younger than I am."

 

"I'm sixteen," Spark said, walking over to a mini-fridge and tossing Izuku a dented can of lukewarm water. She cracked one open for herself and took a long swig. "And yeah, I did it myself. You learn fast when you have to. My folks were mechanics. Ran a legitimate shop up on 5th Avenue."

 

"Were?" Izuku asked gently, catching the water can.

 

Spark’s expression hardened, her eyes dropping to the oil-stained floor. "Three years ago. The Twisted Metal tournament rolled through our sector. A driver named Warthog—drives a military transport—got boxed in by Sweet Tooth outside our shop. Sweet Tooth launched a volley of napalm. Missed Warthog. Hit the shop. Building came down in seconds."

 

She gripped the aluminum can tight enough to dent it. "I was in the basement fetching a wrench. I survived. They didn't. In this city, you either become a victim, you become a driver, or you become a grease monkey for the underground to survive. I chose the wrench."

 

Izuku stepped forward, the familiar, empathetic sorrow welling up in his chest. "Spark... I'm so sorry. That’s awful. That driver, Sweet Tooth... the Pro Heroes didn't arrest him? The police didn't investigate?"

 

Spark let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Greenie, you gotta stop with that 'police and heroes' fairy tale. I don't know what dimension or padded cell you crawled out of, but here, Calypso is the law. The cops are either on his payroll to block off streets for the drivers, or they're in the tournament themselves trying to wish crime away."

 

Izuku took a deep breath, setting his water down. He looked around the garage until he spotted a battered, grease-stained notebook and a stub of a pencil sitting near a soldering iron. "May I?" he asked, pointing to it.

 

Spark shrugged. "Knock yourself out."

 

Izuku grabbed the notebook, flipping past pages of gear ratios and suspension schematics to a blank page. His mind was racing, kicking into its familiar, hyper-analytical gear. He began to mutter rapidly under his breath, his hand flying across the page.

 

"Subject: Calypso. Quirk equivalent: Reality Warping / Wish Granting. Parameters: Unknown, but seemingly boundless. If he has the power to grant any wish, it implies a mastery over matter, energy, and possibly localized space-time. If Kuroda's dimensional displacement Quirk ripped me out of my reality, Calypso's power might be the only anchor point strong enough to reverse the polarization of the dimensional tear and send me back. But the activation requirement is winning the tournament. The tournament requires a vehicle. A vehicle requires lethal force. Paradox..."

 

Spark stared at him, her brow furrowed. "Are you... casting a spell? What is wrong with your mouth?"

 

Izuku snapped out of his muttering trance, a blush creeping up his freckled cheeks. "Sorry! It's a habit. I analyze things by thinking out loud. I was just processing the rules of the tournament."

 

He turned to face her, his expression turning deadly serious.

 

"Spark, you said Calypso grants a wish to the winner. Have you ever seen it happen? Is it real, or just a trick to get people to kill each other?"

 

Spark hopped up onto an empty metal crate, swinging her legs. "It's real. Every year, on Christmas Eve, the final match happens. The survivor drives up to Calypso’s tower. The whole city watches the broadcast. We've seen guys wish to rule the world, wish for unlimited wealth, wish to bring back the dead."

 

"And he does it?"

 

"He does," Spark nodded slowly, a dark shadow crossing her face. "But Calypso... he's a demon. A trickster. He grants the wish exactly as it's worded, but he always finds a loophole to screw the winner over. A guy wishes to be the fastest driver in the world? Calypso turns him into a hood ornament on a supersonic jet. A guy wishes to never be hurt again? Calypso traps him in a two-foot-thick block of solid titanium. He gives you what you ask for, but he makes you regret it."

 

Izuku tapped the pencil against his chin. A malicious reality-warper who relies on semantic loopholes, he noted internally. That means the wish must be ironclad. Airtight. No room for interpretation.

 

"I can handle Calypso's wordplay," Izuku said firmly, thinking of all the legal contracts and Quirk registries he had studied for hero law. "But first, we have to get to him. Which brings us to the deal."

 

Izuku walked over to the center of the room, standing under the bright fluorescent lights. "I told you I'd wish you out of here if you built me a car. Are you in?"

 

Spark looked at him. She looked at his ridiculous costume, his earnest face, and remembered the sheer, terrifying power he had unleashed on the avenue.

 

"I'm in," Spark said, hopping down from the crate. "But we have a massive problem, Deku. You said you don't kill. You said you don't use guns."

 

"That's right," Izuku said, crossing his arms. "I am a hero. My job is to protect life, not take it. I won't murder people for a ticket home."

 

Spark threw her hands in the air. "Then how the hell do you expect to win Twisted Metal?! The other drivers aren't going to pull over and have a polite chat! Outlaw uses a SWAT truck packed with omni-directional C4! Mr. Grimm rides a motorcycle and fires literal souls at people! Sweet Tooth drives an ice cream truck that transforms into a mech! If we roll out there with no guns, we are going to be turned into a fine red mist in five minutes!"

 

"I didn't say we wouldn't fight," Izuku countered, stepping closer, his eyes burning with tactical intensity. "I said we wouldn't kill. There is a difference, Spark. We just have to change the parameters of vehicular combat."

 

He slammed his open notebook onto the workbench, spinning it around so Spark could see his frantic sketches.

 

"Look," Izuku pointed to a crude drawing of a car. "Standard Twisted Metal doctrine relies on overwhelming ballistic force to pierce armor and destroy the cockpit, killing the driver. We don't need to destroy the cockpit. We just need to disable the vehicle's mobility or incapacitate the driver."

 

Spark leaned in, squinting at the notebook. "Okay... how?"

 

"First, speed and maneuverability," Izuku said, tapping the paper. "We can't out-armor a tank, so we have to out-drive it. I need something small, light, and incredibly fast. A rally car frame. All-wheel drive, high suspension travel. We avoid the heavy artillery."

 

"A rally car," Spark mused, her mechanic's brain starting to engage despite her skepticism. "I can work with that. But light armor means one missile and we're toast."

 

"That's where I come in," Izuku said. "My power... my Quirk... it generates a massive amount of kinetic energy and localized air pressure. You saw what I did to that buggy. If you can reinforce the chassis of the car—specifically the frame, the suspension, and the bumpers—to withstand extreme internal stress, I can use my power through the car."

 

Spark’s jaw dropped. "Wait. You want to channel that... that green lightning stuff into the frame of a car? And use it as a battering ram?"

 

"Exactly," Izuku grinned, a slightly unhinged, Bakugo-esque competitive spark flashing in his eyes. "We don't need missiles. I am the missile. If I brace myself in the driver's seat and release a shockwave of kinetic energy at the exact moment of impact, we can hit an enemy vehicle with the force of a freight train without damaging our own engine. We can flip them, crush their axles, or send them spinning out of control. Non-lethal takedowns."

 

Spark stared at him for a long, silent moment. "You are out of your damn mind."

 

"Can you build it?" Izuku asked.

 

A slow, wicked grin spread across Spark’s soot-stained face. The sheer mechanical absurdity of the challenge was too tempting for a gearhead to resist. "I'm gonna need titanium strut braces. A reinforced roll cage welded directly to the unibody. And shock absorbers thick enough to stop a falling elevator. But... yeah. I can build it."

 

"Good," Izuku said. "But we need more than just ramming. We need defense. No guns, but what about non-lethal countermeasures?"

 

"I've got smoke screens," Spark said, pacing around the shop, her hands gesturing wildly as she began to mentally catalog her inventory. "I can rig oil slicks to the rear bumper. Caltrops to shred tires. Oh! And I've got a heavy-duty winch and a harpoon gun I stripped from a tow truck. We could spear a car and drag it into obstacles!"

 

"Perfect," Izuku nodded enthusiastically, furiously writing down her ideas. "Capture and control. What about electronics? Can we disable their weapons?"

 

Spark stopped pacing. She looked at Izuku, a gleam in her eye. "If you want to shut down their guns, you need an EMP. An electromagnetic pulse generator. But those are strictly military tech. You can't just find those in a scrapyard."

 

"Where can we find one?" Izuku asked.

 

Spark sighed, pointing a thumb toward the ceiling. "There's an old Midtown Police impound lot about twenty blocks from here. It was taken over by a scav-gang called the Rust Eaters. They hoard high-end tech. I heard rumors they managed to salvage a prototype riot-control EMP from a SWAT van. But the lot is heavily guarded. Dozens of guys with automatic weapons."

 

Izuku cracked his knuckles, the green lightning sparking faintly around his fingers. "A heavily guarded compound full of illegal weapons and thugs? Sounds like a standard Tuesday for a U.A. student."

 

 

 

The rain had intensified into a torrential downpour by the time Izuku and Spark reached the perimeter of the Rust Eaters’ impound lot.

 

They lay on their stomachs on the flat roof of a decaying diner across the street, peering through the downpour at the compound. It was a sprawling expanse of crushed cars, surrounded by a twenty-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Harsh halogen floodlights swept across the lot. Izuku counted at least fifteen armed guards patrolling the perimeter, wielding everything from rusted AK-47s to crude, jury-rigged flamethrowers.

 

In the center of the lot sat a massive, corrugated metal garage.

 

"The EMP will be in there, along with the high-end chassis we need for the rally car," Spark whispered, passing Izuku a pair of cracked binoculars. "But Deku, look at the numbers. We can't just walk in there. If they spot us, they'll turn us into Swiss cheese."

 

Izuku adjusted the binoculars, his eyes sweeping the patrol routes. He was already calculating timing, blind spots, and the structural integrity of the surrounding scrap piles.

 

"I don't plan on walking," Izuku murmured. "I need you to stay here. When I open the main gate from the inside, bring the heavy lifter truck from the alley. We’ll load the chassis and the EMP and get out before they know what hit them."

 

"Deku, you're one guy without a gun," Spark hissed, grabbing his arm. "They will kill you."

 

Izuku turned to her, pulling his green cowl over his head, the metal mouthpiece sliding into place. The slits of the mask gave his eyes an intimidating, shadowy depth.

 

"I'm not just a guy," Izuku said, his voice dropping into the authoritative, confident tone of a Pro Hero. "I am Deku. Just be ready with the truck."

 

Before Spark could protest further, Izuku slipped off the edge of the roof.

 

He didn't fall. He activated Full Cowling at 5%, a low, sustainable output. He landed on the wet asphalt below with barely a whisper, his iron soles absorbing the impact perfectly.

 

Izuku dashed across the street, moving faster than the human eye could track in the darkness. He reached the chain-link fence just as the sweeping floodlight passed over his previous position. He didn't climb the fence; he leaped straight over it, clearing the razor wire by a good three feet, and landed silently on the roof of a crushed sedan inside the lot.

 

Three guards approaching from the left flank, Izuku thought, his ears picking up the crunch of gravel over the rain. Two on the catwalk above the garage. I need to take out the perimeter silently to avoid triggering an alarm.

 

Izuku melted into the shadows of the scrap piles, moving like a phantom. This was basic stealth training under Eraserhead. Keep a low profile, control your breathing, strike with precision.

 

The first guard walked past a towering pile of rusted tires, humming a tuneless song, an assault rifle slung lazily over his shoulder.

 

Izuku dropped from the tires, inverted. He wrapped his legs around the guard's neck and twisted, using the man's own momentum to send him crashing softly to the muddy ground. Before the guard could yell, Izuku tapped a pressure point on the man's neck, sending him instantly into unconsciousness.

 

One down.

 

Izuku moved like a striking viper through the maze of cars. He didn't use flashy punches or loud smashes. He used martial arts, precision strikes, and his Quirk-enhanced speed. A guard turning a corner was met with a swift, brutal palm strike to the solar plexus that knocked the wind out of him, followed by a chop to the vagus nerve. Two guards chatting by a burning barrel were suddenly yanked backward into the darkness by Izuku's hands, their heads softly knocked together before they were gently laid on the ground.

 

Within four minutes, the outer perimeter was completely silent. Ten guards lay unconscious, zip-tied with the heavy-duty plastic cuffs Izuku always carried in his utility belt.

 

Izuku approached the central garage. The large rolling door was closed, but a smaller side door was cracked open, spilling yellow light into the rain.

 

He crept to the door and peered inside.

 

The interior was a mechanic's chop-shop. Five thugs were sitting around a table playing cards, their weapons resting against the walls. In the center of the room sat exactly what Spark had asked for: the pristine, stripped-down chassis of a high-performance, all-wheel-drive rally car. It looked like a hybrid between a Group B rally legend and a modern street racer, painted a faded, primer gray.

 

Sitting on a workbench near the car was a heavy, metallic cylinder covered in warning labels and thick copper coils. The SWAT EMP.

 

Perfect, Izuku thought.

 

He didn't bother with stealth anymore. He needed to clear the room fast before they could sound a general alarm.

 

Izuku stepped into the doorway. "Excuse me!" he called out loudly.

 

The five thugs jumped, knocking over their chairs. They stared at the kid in the green bunny-eared costume standing in the doorway of their heavily fortified base.

 

"What the hell?" the leader, a guy with half his face replaced by chrome plating, snarled. "Who let the circus freak in?"

 

"I'm commandeering that chassis and the EMP device in the name of... well, in the name of surviving this horrible city," Izuku said politely. "If you surrender now, I won't have to hurt you."

 

The thugs looked at each other, then burst into roaring laughter. Three of them lunged for their shotguns leaning against the wall.

 

Izuku sighed. "The hard way, then."

 

Green lightning flared violently in the cramped garage.

 

"Shoot Style: Manchester Smash!"

 

Izuku launched himself into the air, flipping forward. He brought his iron-soled heel down in a devastating axe kick, striking the heavy wooden table in the center of the room. The impact shattered the table into splinters and sent a localized shockwave through the concrete floor, knocking all five thugs off their feet and sending them flying into the walls.

 

Before they could recover, Izuku was a blur of motion. He darted from man to man, delivering precise, non-lethal strikes that shattered their weapons and left them groaning and unconscious on the floor. The entire fight lasted less than six seconds.

 

Izuku stood up, brushing a speck of sawdust off his shoulder. He walked over to the main garage door and hit the control panel, sending the heavy metal shutter rolling upward with a clatter.

 

Outside, the heavy lifter truck—a heavily armored tow truck Spark had stolen from an alley—came rumbling into the lot, its headlights cutting through the rain. Spark backed it up right to the edge of the garage.

 

She jumped out of the cab, wielding her monkey wrench like a club, looking wild-eyed and ready for a fight. She stopped dead when she saw the five unconscious thugs, the shattered table, and Izuku standing calmly next to the rally car chassis.

 

"You... you took out the whole camp?" Spark stuttered, looking at the bodies. "Without firing a shot?"

 

"I told you," Izuku smiled beneath his mask. "I'm a hero. Now, let's load this up before anyone else shows up."

 

Working together, they used the garage's overhead crane to lift the heavy rally car chassis onto the flatbed of the tow truck. Izuku carefully picked up the heavy EMP cylinder, cradling it like a baby, and strapped it into the passenger seat of the truck.

 

As they drove away from the Rust Eaters' compound, leaving the unconscious guards in the rain, Spark looked at Izuku sitting in the passenger seat, his green cowl pulled back down, his freckled face looking thoughtful.

 

"You know," Spark muttered, shifting gears as they tore down the empty avenue back toward the sanctuary, "I'm starting to think you might actually survive the night, Greenie."

 

"We're going to do more than survive, Spark," Izuku said, looking out at the dystopian skyline. "We're going to win."

 

 

 

The next eighteen hours were a blur of sparks, grease, screaming power tools, and the smell of ozone.

 

Back in the underground sanctuary, Izuku and Spark worked like possessed demons. It was a fusion of two entirely different disciplines: Spark’s gritty, survivalist mechanical genius and Izuku’s hyper-advanced understanding of physics, kinetic stress, and Quirk mechanics.

 

"Weld the roll cage directly to the strut towers!" Izuku shouted over the roar of the plasma cutter, looking at his notebook. "If I channel twenty percent of my power into the floorboards, the torque will snap the frame in half unless the kinetic energy has a pathway to travel through the chassis and out the front bumper!"

 

"I'm layering three inches of titanium-carbide plating over the engine block!" Spark yelled back, her face covered by the welding mask, showering the garage in blinding blue sparks. "But it's going to make the car front-heavy! You'll understeer into a wall on the first turn!"

 

"Then we widen the wheelbase and drop the suspension!" Izuku replied, grabbing a heavy wrench and sliding under the rear axle. "And install the EMP generator in the trunk for weight distribution! We can wire the activation switch directly to the steering wheel!"

 

They were a perfect team. Izuku lacked the technical skills to build an engine, but his raw physical strength meant he could lift engine blocks and hold massive steel plates in place with one hand while Spark welded them. Spark, in turn, translated Izuku's crazy ideas into functional machinery.

 

They stripped the rally chassis down to its absolute core. They rebuilt the engine, boring out the cylinders and attaching a massive, twin-scroll turbocharger they had scavenged from a wrecked street racer. The engine roared with a terrifying, throaty growl that shook dust from the ceiling when they finally fired it up.

 

They layered the exterior in heavy, angular steel plating, turning the sleek rally car into a brutalist, armored wedge. They removed the headlights, replacing them with thick steel grilles and high-intensity, blinding LED light bars meant to disorient opponents.

 

At the front of the car, they installed the masterpiece: The Ram. It was a massive, cow-catcher-style bumper made of solid, reinforced tungsten-steel. But Izuku had modified the mountings. He wrapped the connection points in shock-absorbing dense rubber, and wired thick, conductive copper cabling from the floorboards of the driver's seat directly to the front bumper.

 

"When I activate my Quirk, the energy will travel through my boots, down the conductive plates, and concentrate at the tip of the ramming bumper," Izuku explained, wiping a streak of oil from his forehead. "Instead of me punching the cars, the car itself will deliver a localized Detroit Smash upon impact."

 

Spark whistled low, shaking her head. "If this works, Deku, you're going to hit them so hard their ancestors will feel it."

 

Finally, it was time for countermeasures. They installed the EMP generator in the rear, rigging it to a set of heavy-duty capacitors that would allow for three localized, 50-meter electromagnetic blasts before needing a recharge. They rigged the rear bumper to drop high-tensile steel caltrops, and installed a heavy winch and harpoon gun on the passenger side, to be operated by Spark.

 

By the time they were finished, the sun was setting somewhere above the smog layer.

 

The car sat in the center of the garage, resting on heavy-duty, puncture-resistant off-road tires. They had painted it a matte, dark military green, with two sleek, black racing stripes running down the center, mirroring Izuku's hero costume. It didn't have the terrifying, psychopathic aesthetic of the other Twisted Metal vehicles. It looked clean, tactical, and incredibly dangerous.

 

"She’s a beauty," Spark whispered, leaning against the fender, totally exhausted but glowing with pride. "She needs a name, Deku. You can't enter Twisted Metal in 'Car Number One'."

 

Izuku looked at the vehicle. He thought of his mentor, the man who had passed down his power. He thought of the heavy responsibility of carrying that legacy.

 

"The Green Mantle," Izuku said softly.

 

"The Green Mantle," Spark nodded, testing the words on her tongue. "I like it. Sounds classic."

 

Izuku walked over to the passenger side, opening the heavily armored door for Spark. "Get in. It's time to register."

 

Spark climbed into the passenger seat, strapping herself into the five-point racing harness. She pulled a bulky, heavily modified laptop from beneath the dashboard and booted it up. She attached a thick cable from the laptop to a jury-rigged radio antenna sticking out of the car's roof.

 

Izuku climbed into the driver's seat. He strapped himself in, his hands gripping the custom-molded steering wheel. The pedals beneath his iron boots felt perfectly placed. He closed his eyes, let One For All hum lightly through his body, and felt a deep, resonant connection with the machine. It wasn't just a car; it was an extension of his will to protect.

 

"I'm hacking into Calypso's broadcast frequency," Spark said, her fingers flying across the keys. "He keeps an open channel for new challengers during the first 48 hours of the tournament. Bypassing the encryption... masking our exact location... and... we're in."

 

The digital display on the dashboard flickered, turning into a screen of harsh white static.

 

A moment later, the static cleared, revealing the burned, horrific face of Calypso. He was sitting in what looked like a lavish, gothic throne room, holding a crystal glass of dark red wine.

 

"Ah," Calypso's voice echoed through the car's internal speakers, smooth and dripping with patronizing amusement. "The unauthorized broadcast. Let me guess... is it the little green boy who thinks he can punch a car?"

 

Izuku leaned forward, glaring into the dashboard camera. "My name is Deku. And I'm officially entering the Twisted Metal tournament."

 

Calypso burst into laughter, throwing his head back. "Marvelous! Utterly marvelous! I was hoping you'd survive the night. I see you've found yourself a mechanic, and... oh my, a vehicle. But tell me, boy, where are the guns? Where are the missiles? Do you plan to sternly lecture the other drivers to death?"

 

"I don't need guns to beat your game, Calypso," Izuku said, his voice cold and unwavering. "I'm going to win this tournament, and I'm going to claim the wish. And when I do, I'm going to make sure you never hurt anyone again."

 

Calypso stopped laughing. He leaned in close to his camera, his one good eye narrowing, burning with a dangerous, demonic light.

 

"Big words for a child playing in a graveyard," Calypso sneered. "You think your little parlor tricks and your self-righteous morality will save you? The drivers in this tournament are monsters, boy. They will tear your metal shell apart, they will feast on your flesh, and they will burn your soul. You cannot win a war of annihilation without becoming a monster yourself."

 

"Watch me," Izuku challenged.

 

Calypso stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then, his wicked smile returned, sharper than before.

 

"Very well, 'Deku'," Calypso said, raising his glass in a mock toast. "You are officially registered. Your vehicle, The Green Mantle, is now on the hunting boards. Every driver in the city just received your telemetry. The pacifist in the demolition derby. I give you... three hours before your spirit breaks, or your body is reduced to ash. Let the games begin!"

 

The screen cut to black.

 

Instantly, the car's radar system pinged loudly. Red dots began to appear on the digital map on the dashboard, closing in on their sector from all directions.

 

"Well, you pissed him off," Spark gulped, gripping the handle of her harpoon gun control rig. "We've got company inbound. Four vehicles heading our way."

 

Izuku reached down, his hand wrapping around the heavy gear shift. His emerald eyes narrowed, locking onto the heavy steel doors of the underground garage. He channeled One For All into his legs, feeling the energy arc down through the conductive pedals into the very soul of the car.

 

The engine roared, a deafening, mechanical battle cry that echoed off the concrete walls.

 

"Hold on tight, Spark," Izuku said, slamming the car into first gear. "It's time to go Plus Ultra."

 

He dropped the clutch, and The Green Mantle launched forward like a cannonball, tearing out of the underground sanctuary and straight into the nightmare of Twisted Metal.

 

 

 

 

The transition from the relative safety of Spark’s underground sanctuary to the absolute madness of Midtown’s streets was instantaneous, like plunging headfirst into a frozen lake.

 

The Green Mantle burst from the hidden loading dock, its tires screaming against the wet, debris-littered asphalt. The twin-scroll turbocharger under the reinforced hood whined like a banshee, a high-pitched mechanical shriek that harmonized with the deep, concussive roar of the heavy V8 engine. Izuku Midoriya gripped the custom-molded steering wheel, his iron-soled boots dancing across the pedals with the precision of a seasoned combatant.

 

"We’ve got company! Fast company!" Spark shouted over the deafening engine noise, her eyes glued to the modified tactical laptop bolted to the dashboard. The green radar screen was alive with crimson dots, pinging rapidly as they closed in on their position. "Three... no, four blips on the scanner! They’re converging on our coordinates!"

 

Izuku’s emerald eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. Through the thick, armored slits that replaced the rear windshield, he could see the distant sweep of harsh halogen headlights cutting through the toxic smog. The sounds of other engines—some high and whiny, others deep and rumbling—echoed off the decaying skyscrapers, creating a terrifying, omnipresent surround sound of impending violence.

 

"Calypso didn't waste any time," Izuku muttered, his mind instantly compartmentalizing the fear, shoving it down, and replacing it with pure, hyper-focused analysis. He tapped the button on the steering wheel, engaging the all-wheel drive. "Where are they coming from, Spark?"

 

"Two from the north, coming down 5th Avenue. One from the east alleys. The last one is flanking us from the west overpass," Spark read off the telemetry, her grease-stained fingers flying across the keyboard to adjust the radar’s zoom. "They’re trying to box us in! If they trap us in these narrow grid streets, they'll crossfire us into scrap metal!"

 

"We need open space, but with enough environmental cover to break their line of sight," Izuku reasoned rapidly. His brain superimposed a mental map of the city he had studied on Spark's terminal earlier. "We can't out-armor them in a standing firefight. We need a dynamic battlefield."

 

"Head south!" Spark yelled, pointing a wrench toward the shattered windshield. "Two miles down! The Starlight Megamall! It’s an abandoned commercial sector. The lot is huge, and the building itself is hollowed out. Plenty of cover, plenty of ways to lose them!"

 

"Hold on!" Izuku warned.

 

He downshifted hard, the gearbox clunking heavily, and jerked the steering wheel to the right. The Green Mantle drifted violently around a corner, the rear tires kicking up a massive spray of stagnant rainwater and shattered glass. The heavy, tungsten-steel ramming bumper smashed through the rusted husk of a burned-out sedan blocking the intersection, sending the wreck spinning away like a discarded toy. Izuku barely felt the impact; Spark’s suspension modifications absorbed the shock flawlessly.

 

They tore down the avenue, weaving through the apocalyptic traffic of derelict cars and fallen debris. Izuku felt the familiar, warm thrum of One For All humming in his chest, ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice. But he held it back. He needed to test the limits of the car first. He had to become one with the machine.

 

Behind them, the pursuing vehicles came into view.

 

Through the side mirror, Izuku caught his first glimpse of a true Twisted Metal contender. It was a sleek, heavily modified Nissan Silvia drift car, painted a violent, blinding neon orange. Twin flamethrowers were mounted to the hood, and the rear wheels were cambered for extreme, sideways mobility. On the radar, Spark had tagged it as Firebug.

 

To their left, bursting through a chain-link fence, was a monstrous, lifted Ford F-250 pickup truck. It rode on massive tractor tires, its bed loaded with a custom-built, multi-tube launcher that looked capable of firing mortar shells or explosive barrels. A heavy steel cattle bruiser was welded to the front. The tag read Gargantua.

 

The third vehicle, Slicer, was a low-profile sports coupe that darted between the heavier cars like a shark, its wheel hubs extended to house spinning, titanium buzzsaws capable of shredding tires and armor alike.

 

"They're gaining!" Spark yelled, looking back. "Firebug is right on our tail!"

 

"Let him," Izuku said calmly. "I need to see how they move."

 

A sudden, blinding jet of liquid fire erupted from the neon orange drift car. The napalm stream washed over the rear bumper of The Green Mantle, illuminating the dark interior of the cabin with an ominous orange glow. The heat was instantaneous, but Spark’s titanium-carbide plating held strong, deflecting the thermal energy away from the fuel tank.

 

"He's trying to melt our rear tires!" Spark warned, coughing as the smell of burning rubber and ozone filled the cabin. "Drop the caltrops?"

 

"Not yet," Izuku commanded, his eyes darting between the mirrors and the road ahead. "If we drop them now, he’ll just drift around them. His turning radius is too tight. Wait for the bottleneck."

 

Up ahead, the skeletal remains of the Starlight Megamall loomed out of the smog. It was a massive, sprawling structure of shattered glass domes, decaying concrete pillars, and faded, 1980s neon signs that buzzed erratically. A heavy, militarized barricade of concrete dividers and rusted shipping containers blocked the main road, forcing all traffic into the massive, multi-level parking structure and the mall's ground-floor grand entrance.

 

"Calypso forces the arenas," Spark explained quickly, noticing Izuku looking at the barricades. "Once you cross into a designated zone during a skirmish, automated gates drop. It's a localized deathmatch. We go in there, we can't leave until they're dead, or we are."

 

"Then we make sure everyone walks away," Izuku said, his voice hardening with resolve.

 

He slammed his foot on the accelerator. The Green Mantle roared up the curved on-ramp of the mall's grand entrance, smashing through the reinforced glass doors of the front pavilion. The car caught air, flying over a dried-up, marble fountain, before crashing down heavily onto the polished tile floor of the central promenade.

 

Behind them, the three pursuing vehicles burst through the glass in a shower of glittering shards, their engines roaring like beasts unleashed in a cage.

 

As soon as the fourth vehicle crossed the threshold, massive, blast-resistant steel shutters slammed down over the entrances and exits. The heavy metallic THUD echoed through the sprawling, cavernous mall. They were locked in.

 

Izuku immediately threw the car into a J-turn, spinning The Green Mantle 180 degrees so they were facing their pursuers, skidding to a halt near the center of the massive food court.

 

"What are you doing?!" Spark shrieked, gripping the roll cage. "You just stopped!"

 

"Information gathering," Izuku muttered rapidly, his eyes narrowing as the three enemy vehicles fanned out across the promenade, revving their engines. His brain kicked into overdrive, processing the geometry of the mall, the acoustics, the friction coefficient of the polished tile, and the visual specs of the enemy cars.

 

"Okay, Firebug's Nissan. Rear-wheel drive, modified for drifting. Excellent cornering but terrible traction on straightaways, especially on this slick tile. The flamethrowers are mounted low, meaning they have limited vertical range. The fuel lines run along the exterior chassis—a critical vulnerability. Gargantua, the pickup. High center of gravity. Massive kinetic force, but poor suspension stability on hard turns. The barrel launcher in the back requires the driver to be stationary or moving in a straight line to aim accurately. Slicer, the sports coupe. Front-wheel drive. The buzzsaws on the hubs add significant unsprung weight, which means the steering rack will suffer from understeer at high speeds..."

 

Spark stared at him, her jaw hanging open. Izuku was literally whispering a rapid-fire tactical thesis while three heavily armed murder-machines prepared to turn them into Swiss cheese.

 

"Deku! Less muttering, more driving!" Spark screamed as Gargantua revved its engine, the multi-tube launcher in its bed swiveling to aim directly at them.

 

"Right!" Izuku snapped out of his trance.

 

With a deafening THOOM, a heavy steel barrel packed with high explosives shot out of the pickup truck's launcher, arcing through the air toward them.

 

Izuku didn't just drive away; he calculated the exact parabolic arc of the projectile. He slammed the car into reverse, dumping the clutch. The Green Mantle shot backward just as the barrel landed exactly where their hood had been a microsecond before.

 

The explosion was catastrophic. A massive fireball engulfed the food court, vaporizing plastic tables and shattering the surrounding storefront windows. The shockwave rocked The Green Mantle, but the heavy armor absorbed the brunt of it.

 

"Split them up!" Izuku yelled, throwing the car back into first gear and spinning the wheel. "Gargantua takes too long to reload. Let's take out the fastest one first! Slicer!"

 

Izuku gunned the engine, tearing down the right concourse of the mall, heading toward the high-end retail district. As predicted, Slicer took the bait. The sleek sports coupe shot forward, its titanium buzzsaws spinning up with a terrifying, high-pitched whine that set Izuku’s teeth on edge. The coupe was incredibly fast, closing the gap in seconds.

 

"He's coming up on the left!" Spark yelled, watching the side mirror. "He’s trying to chew through our axles!"

 

"Hold on!"

 

Izuku feinted to the left, acting as if he were trying to block the pass. Slicer immediately swerved to the right to undertake them, the buzzsaws inching dangerously close to The Green Mantle's heavy tires.

 

"Now!" Izuku yelled.

 

He slammed his foot on the brake, turning the wheel sharply to the left, initiating a controlled, high-speed spin. The Green Mantle's heavy rear end swung out. Because Slicer had over-committed to the right-side pass at over ninety miles an hour, the sudden braking of Izuku's car completely threw off the coupe's trajectory.

 

Slicer tried to correct, but the heavy, spinning buzzsaws on the front wheels caused massive understeer on the slick mall tiles. The sports coupe lost traction entirely. It spun out of control, screeching across the concourse, before slamming violently, driver-side first, into a massive, reinforced concrete pillar supporting the second floor.

 

The impact was brutal. The sports car wrapped around the pillar, the airbags deploying instantly with a puff of white smoke. The buzzsaws ground to a halt, sparking against the concrete before dying completely.

 

Izuku slowed The Green Mantle down, keeping his eyes on the wrecked coupe.

 

"Is he...?" Spark breathed, looking out the window.

 

Izuku tapped his gauntlet against the steering wheel. "The cabin is intact. The airbags deployed. He’s unconscious, maybe a few broken ribs from the lateral G-force, but he’s alive. One down."

 

"You... you didn't even touch him," Spark said, awe creeping into her voice. "You literally just out-drove him into a wall."

 

"Physics is the best weapon we have," Izuku replied, shifting gears. "But we can't celebrate yet."

 

A roar of flames illuminated the concourse behind them. Firebug came drifting around the corner, leaving trails of burnt rubber on the tiles. The driver, a maniac in a fire-retardant suit and a gas mask, had realized his straight-line speed was lacking and was using the mall's wide corridors to maintain momentum through constant drifts.

 

"Napalm incoming!" Spark yelled as the Nissan's flamethrowers ignited.

 

A wave of liquid fire washed down the corridor, setting clothing racks, mannequins, and kiosks ablaze. The heat inside The Green Mantle spiked instantly.

 

"Spark! The EMP!" Izuku shouted, weaving through the burning debris. "The flamethrowers rely on electronic fuel injection pumps! If we fry his electronics, he loses his primary weapon!"

 

"We only have three charges!" Spark reminded him, her hand hovering over the detonator switch wired to the dashboard. "And the range is only fifty meters! He's keeping his distance, trying to roast us from afar!"

 

"Then I'll bring him to us," Izuku said, his eyes locking onto a set of wide, escalators leading up to the second floor.

 

"Deku, no. Tell me you are not looking at those escalators," Spark pleaded, seeing his gaze.

 

"Brace yourself!"

 

Izuku wrenched the steering wheel hard. The Green Mantle crashed through the metal safety barriers and hit the upward escalator at sixty miles an hour. The heavy off-road tires chewed up the metal stairs, sending sparks and shrapnel flying in every direction. The car bucked and violently shook, but the suspension ate the impact. They launched off the top of the escalator, catching air, and slammed down onto the second-floor promenade, right in the middle of a defunct department store.

 

Firebug didn't hesitate. The drift car followed them up the adjacent, downward escalator, the driver laughing maniacally over his external speakers. The Nissan caught air, landing heavily on the second floor, directly behind them.

 

"He's in range!" Spark screamed.

 

"Hit it!"

 

Spark slammed her fist onto the red button on the dash.

 

In the trunk of The Green Mantle, the heavy SWAT capacitor discharged. A silent, invisible wave of electromagnetic energy pulsed outward in a fifty-meter sphere. It passed through the burning department store, shattering the remaining neon lights and instantly killing the power to the surrounding slot machines and registers.

 

The wave hit Firebug. The Nissan’s headlights instantly died. The engine sputtered, misfired, and choked as the electronic control unit was fried. Most importantly, the electronic fuel pumps feeding the flamethrowers completely shut down. The streams of fire died into pitiful puffs of black smoke.

 

"His guns are down!" Spark cheered. "But he still has momentum!"

 

Despite the dead engine, the Nissan was still hurtling toward them at high speed due to its previous drift. The driver, realizing he was weaponless, decided to use his car as a battering ram, aiming straight for Izuku’s driver-side door.

 

Izuku didn't flinch.

 

Time to test the bumper, he thought.

 

He didn't drive away. He slammed on the brakes, spun the steering wheel, and pointed the heavy tungsten-steel ramming bumper directly at the incoming, powerless Nissan.

 

Izuku closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He pulled One For All from his core, visualizing the power not as an explosion, but as a focused, directed current. He channeled the energy down his legs, through his iron-soled boots, and straight into the conductive copper plates woven into the floorboards.

 

Green lightning erupted inside the cabin, illuminating Spark’s terrified face. The energy surged through the car's chassis, traveling instantly to the reinforced front bumper.

 

"Smash!" Izuku yelled, bracing his arms against the steering wheel.

 

The two cars collided. But it wasn't a normal crash.

 

The moment Firebug’s front bumper touched The Green Mantle’s ram, the kinetic energy stored in the tungsten steel released outward in a localized shockwave. The sound was like a cannon firing inside a tunnel.

 

The Nissan didn't crumple. Instead, the sheer, concussive force of the One For All shockwave lifted the entire front end of the drift car off the ground. The kinetic repulsion sent the Nissan flying backward, flipping it cleanly onto its side. It skidded across the department store floor, crashing through three rows of glass display cases before coming to a halt, resting heavily on its passenger side doors.

 

The heavy armor of The Green Mantle hadn't sustained a single scratch.

 

Spark slowly lowered her hands from her face, staring at the overturned Nissan. The driver was trapped inside, banging his fists angrily against the windshield, clearly unhurt but entirely immobilized.

 

"Holy... crap," Spark whispered, looking down at Izuku’s glowing legs. "You actually made a Quirk-powered battering ram. That was incredible!"

 

"Two down," Izuku breathed heavily, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. Channeling the power through the car required a different kind of focus than doing it through his own body. It was draining. "But we still have the heavyweight."

 

As if on cue, a massive explosion rocked the second floor.

 

The reinforced concrete floor twenty yards ahead of them suddenly blew upward in a shower of dust and rebar. From the gaping hole in the floor, Gargantua emerged. The massive Ford F-250 had driven up a maintenance ramp and literally blasted its way through a weak point in the floor using its barrel launcher.

 

The truck roared onto the second-floor promenade, blocking the only exit. It sat perfectly positioned at the end of a long, narrow concourse bordered by impassable, steel-shuttered storefronts on both sides.

 

There was nowhere to turn. Nowhere to drift.

 

The driver of Gargantua, a massive brute covered in tribal tattoos, laughed over his PA system. "End of the line, Greenie! Ain't no fancy driving gonna save you from a fifty-gallon drum of C4!"

 

The heavy, multi-tube launcher in the bed of the truck whined as it locked onto The Green Mantle.

 

"Deku," Spark’s voice trembled. "We're boxed in. He's got the high ground, and we don't have enough room to dodge a blast in this corridor."

 

Izuku stared down the long concourse at the massive truck. His mind raced through a thousand calculations per second. The EMP was recharging. The caltrops were useless against those tractor tires. The harpoon couldn't pierce that heavy armor.

 

"Spark," Izuku said, his voice eerily calm, devoid of all panic. It was the voice of the boy who had leaped at the Sludge Villain. "Unbuckle your harness. Get down in the footwell. Cover your head."

 

"What? Deku, what are you doing?!"

 

"Just do it!" Izuku commanded, a flash of absolute authority in his tone.

 

Spark didn't argue. She unclipped her five-point harness and curled into a tight ball in the passenger-side footwell, covering her head with her arms.

 

Izuku reached to his left. He grabbed the heavy, armored handle of his driver-side door.

 

He didn't hit the brakes. He slammed the accelerator to the floor.

 

The Green Mantle roared to life, its tires biting into the tile, launching straight down the corridor, directly toward the waiting barrel launcher of Gargantua.

 

"You wanna play chicken, kid?! Let's play chicken!" the truck driver roared, slamming his hand down on the firing mechanism.

 

With a deafening THOOM, a massive, explosive barrel shot out of the launcher. It arced perfectly down the corridor, a flying harbinger of death, aimed directly at the windshield of The Green Mantle.

 

Time seemed to slow to a crawl for Izuku. The world faded away, leaving only the hum of the engine, the glow of the approaching explosive, and the green lightning dancing across his skin.

 

He pushed One For All to 8%. Full Cowling.

 

Distance to projectile: 30 meters. Speed of vehicle: 85 miles per hour. Trajectory: Center mass.

 

Izuku kicked the heavy, armored driver-side door open. It swung wide, fighting against the wind resistance.

 

He didn't unbuckle his seatbelt. He kept his left hand firmly gripping the steering wheel, his right foot pinned to the accelerator. With immense physical strength, he leaned his upper body entirely out of the moving vehicle, hanging suspended over the rushing tile floor.

 

Distance to projectile: 15 meters.

 

Izuku pulled his left leg up, resting his iron-soled boot against the door frame. He channeled all of the 8% output of One For All into his right leg.

 

Distance to projectile: 5 meters.

 

"Shoot Style..." Izuku whispered to the roaring wind.

 

He swung his glowing right leg down, kicking the solid concrete floor of the mall while the car was moving at eighty-five miles an hour.

 

"...STOMP!"

 

The iron sole of his boot struck the floor. The kinetic impact of a One For All kick, combined with the sheer forward momentum of the heavy, armored car, created an impossible physics event.

 

The force of the kick against the unyielding floor acted as a violent, instantaneous fulcrum. The entire left side of The Green Mantle was vaulted violently upward.

 

The car didn't just swerve; it launched into a perfect, high-speed, airborne barrel roll.

 

Izuku pulled himself back into the cabin, slamming the door shut just as the world spun upside down.

 

The massive explosive barrel flew exactly through the space where The Green Mantle had been a microsecond before. It passed harmlessly underneath the upside-down, spinning rally car, sailing down the empty corridor before detonating against a distant wall.

 

"Holy shit!" the driver of Gargantua screamed, his eyes widening in sheer terror as a three-ton armored rally car came spinning through the air directly over his windshield.

 

The Green Mantle completed a full 360-degree lateral rotation in mid-air. The heavy suspension shrieked in protest as the four off-road tires slammed back down onto the concrete, perfectly behind the massive pickup truck.

 

Izuku fought the steering wheel, the car fishtailing wildly from the insane landing, but his Quirk-enhanced reflexes allowed him to regain control instantly. He slammed the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt, facing the rear of the pickup truck.

 

Inside the cabin, Spark slowly peeked her head over the dashboard, her face pale as a sheet. "Are we... are we dead? Did we just do a kickflip in a tank?"

 

"Spark! The Harpoon!" Izuku yelled, not missing a beat.

 

The driver of Gargantua was panicking. He was trying to throw the massive truck into reverse to crush them, the gears grinding violently.

 

Spark leaped up into her seat, grabbing the control rig for the harpoon winch. She didn't aim at the truck. She looked up. Directly above the heavy pickup truck hung a massive, multi-tiered, wrought-iron and crystal chandelier, a remnant of the mall's former glory.

 

Spark fired.

 

With a pneumatic hiss, the heavy steel harpoon shot out from the side of The Green Mantle. It sailed over the pickup truck and embedded itself deeply into the heavy steel chain suspending the chandelier from the glass ceiling.

 

"Winch it!" Izuku shouted.

 

Spark hit the retract button. The heavy-duty winch on the side of their car screamed as it pulled the high-tensile steel cable tight. The sheer pulling force of the winch snapped the rusted chain holding the chandelier.

 

With a sound like a collapsing cathedral, the massive, two-ton iron chandelier plummeted from the ceiling.

 

It crashed directly down onto the cab and engine block of Gargantua. The front wheels of the heavy truck exploded under the sudden, immense weight. The engine block cracked, hissing steam and leaking oil. The roof of the cab buckled inward, trapping the driver safely, but entirely immobilizing the vehicle.

 

Silence suddenly descended upon the Starlight Megamall, broken only by the hiss of steam, the crackle of localized fires, and the heavy, rhythmic breathing of Izuku Midoriya.

 

The Green Mantle sat idling quietly behind the crushed behemoth.

 

Izuku slowly released his grip on the steering wheel. His hands were shaking. His right leg throbbed with a dull ache from the sheer force of the Shoot Style kick he had delivered to the concrete, but he ignored it.

 

He unbuckled his harness and opened his door.

 

"Deku, wait! Where are you going?!" Spark asked, her heart still hammering against her ribs.

 

Izuku stepped out of the car. The air was thick with smoke and dust. He walked slowly toward the crushed pickup truck. The heavy iron chandelier covered the front half of the vehicle. Izuku knelt down, peering through the shattered passenger-side window.

 

The massive, tattooed driver was pinned beneath his steering wheel. He was bloodied, bruised, and cursing loudly, but he was alive. His eyes widened as the kid in the green bunny suit peered into the window.

 

"You... you little freak," the driver coughed, spitting blood onto the dashboard. "What the hell kind of driving was that? Finish it! Put a bullet in me and take the kill!"

 

Izuku looked at the man. He felt a pang of deep sorrow for the absolute desensitization of this world, where men begged for death as a matter of course.

 

"No," Izuku said simply, his voice echoing in the ruined concourse. "I told you. I'm a hero. Heroes don't kill."

 

He turned his back on the trapped driver and began walking back toward his car.

 

Suddenly, a strange sound echoed through the mall. It wasn't the sound of engines or gunfire. It was the sound of a crowd.

 

Thousands of voices, projected through hidden speakers embedded in the mall's architecture, suddenly erupted. But they weren't cheering. They were booing. A massive, cacophonous wave of jeers, hisses, and angry shouts filled the air.

 

Izuku stopped, looking around the empty mall in confusion.

 

The massive digital billboards that had once advertised clothing brands flickered to life. The static cleared, revealing the scarred, aristocratic face of Calypso, seated in his dark throne room. He was staring directly into the camera, a look of profound, disturbing fascination on his face.

 

The boos from the hidden speakers slowly died down as Calypso raised a single, elegantly manicured hand.

 

"Well, well, well," Calypso’s voice boomed through the mall, smooth and silken. "It seems I owe the audience an apology. I promised them a slaughter, and instead, they were treated to a... ballet. A pacifist's dance of destruction."

 

Izuku glared up at the screens, standing firmly next to The Green Mantle. "I disabled them. The match is over, Calypso. Open the gates."

 

Calypso leaned forward, his one good eye wide, dissecting Izuku’s every micro-expression. "You spared them. You went to extraordinary, near-suicidal lengths to preserve the lives of men who would have happily mounted your head on their hoods. Slicer is unconscious. Firebug is trapped. Gargantua is pinned. No blood spilled. No souls reaped."

 

Calypso let out a slow, dry chuckle that made Izuku's skin crawl.

 

"The crowd hates it, of course," Calypso continued, gesturing vaguely off-screen. "They demand meat. But I... I am fascinated. You are an anomaly, 'Deku'. A glitch in my perfect system of chaos. You actually believe your ridiculous ideals can survive the fires of Twisted Metal."

 

"They will," Izuku said, his voice ringing with absolute, unyielding conviction. "Because my ideals aren't just words. They are actions. And I will prove to you, to this whole city, that you don't have to become a monster to win."

 

Calypso stared at the boy. For a fleeting second, the amusement vanished from his face, replaced by something dark, ancient, and deeply malignant. But the charismatic mask quickly slid back into place.

 

"We shall see, little hero," Calypso purred. "You survived Stage One. But the minnows are done playing. The sharks have smelled blood in the water. Enjoy your victory. It will be your last."

 

The screens flickered back to black.

 

Deep within the mall, the heavy steel barricades slowly ground open, revealing the smog-choked city streets beyond.

 

Spark climbed out of the car, walking over to Izuku. She looked at the three disabled, non-lethal wrecks, then looked at the boy standing beside her.

 

"You did it," Spark whispered, shaking her head in disbelief. "You actually beat them without firing a single gun. I didn't think it was possible."

 

Izuku turned to her, offering a small, exhausted, but genuine smile. "I had a great mechanic. The car handled perfectly, Spark."

 

He looked back out at the dark, sprawling city of Midtown. The radar on the dashboard inside was currently clear, but Izuku knew it wouldn't last. The tournament was just beginning. The real monsters were still out there.

 

"Come on," Izuku said, climbing back into the driver's seat. "Let's find a place to lay low and repair the armor. We've got a long night ahead of us."

 

As The Green Mantle drove slowly out of the ruined mall, leaving the disabled drivers cursing in the dark, the legend of the green pacifist began to whisper its way through the underground of Twisted Metal. A spark of hope had been ignited in a world of rust and blood.