What If Deku Was Trained By Lady And Trish

 The wind howling across the rooftop was hollow and indifferent, a harsh contrast to the fiery, desperate hope that had brought Izuku Midoriya to this height just moments before. 

The heavy metal door leading back down into the stairwell had long since clicked shut, sealing away the skeletal, coughing form of the world’s greatest hero. All Might was gone. And with him went the fragile, glass-spun fantasy that Izuku had cradled against his chest for fourteen years. 

“It’s not bad to dream. But you also have to consider what’s realistic, young man.”

The words echoed in the empty air, bouncing off the satellite dishes and the chain-link fences, wrapping around Izuku’s throat until he could scarcely breathe. He stood there, frozen, his scuffed red sneakers rooted to the concrete. His hands hung limply at his sides, one of them still loosely gripping the charred, ruined remains of his Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13 notebook. The burn mark from Katsuki Bakugo’s explosive Quirk was a black, mocking stain on the cover, a physical testament to Izuku’s inherent worthlessness in the eyes of society.

Realistic.

Izuku’s knees finally gave out. He collapsed onto the rough, sun-baked roof, the impact sending a jolt of pain up his shins, but it was nothing compared to the yawning, cavernous ache in his chest. He didn't cry. He had cried so much over the years—when the doctor showed them the X-ray of his toe joint, when his mother had desperately apologized to him while holding him in the dark, when the kids at school realized 'Deku' was going to remain a defenseless target forever. But right now, his tear ducts felt like dry, cracked earth. 

He was empty.

For the first time in his life, Izuku Midoriya wasn't looking at the sky, dreaming of flying. He was looking at the gray, unyielding concrete, realizing he was bound to it. 

Time lost its meaning. The sun began its slow descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple, deep orange, and violent crimson. The bustling sounds of Musutafu city below—the blaring horns, the distant sirens, the hum of millions of people living their superpowered lives—felt like a television left on in another room. He was detached from it all. A Quirkless anomaly in a world of marvels.

Eventually, the chill of the encroaching evening seeped through his black middle school uniform. Izuku slowly pushed himself up. His joints felt stiff, heavy with the gravity of his shattered worldview. He walked toward the door, his hand resting on the cool metal handle for a long moment. 

I should go home, he thought, his internal voice sounding hollow, like a stranger’s. Mom will be worried.

He descended the stairs mechanically, counting the steps, avoiding looking out the windows. When he finally pushed open the door to the ground level, the city greeted him with a wave of humidity and noise. 

Normally, Izuku would take the main thoroughfares, keeping his eyes peeled for villain attacks, hero debuts, or anything he could jot down in his notebooks. Today, the mere thought of seeing a Pro Hero made his stomach churn with a sickening cocktail of grief and embarrassment. He couldn't look at them. He couldn't look at the flashing lights or the vibrant costumes without hearing the definitive, crushing No from his idol.

So, instead of turning right toward the bustling shopping district, Izuku turned left. 

He headed toward the older, industrial sector of Musutafu. It was a labyrinth of abandoned factories, narrow, perpetually shadowed alleyways, and neglected infrastructure left behind when the city modernized to accommodate the rapid rise of Quirks. It wasn't the safest place, especially as twilight bled into night, but it was quiet. No crowds. No heroes. Just the rhythmic dripping of condensation from rusted fire escapes and the flicker of dying neon signs.

Izuku walked with his head down, his oversized backpack feeling heavier than usual. He kicked a stray pebble, watching it skitter into the darkness of an adjacent alley. 

What do I do now? he wondered. Police officer? Firefighter? They have high mortality rates, but... they help people. But even All Might said it was dangerous. Bakugo would laugh himself sick if I told him I was aiming for the police.

His thoughts were violently derailed by a sound. 

It wasn't a gunshot. It wasn't an explosion. It was a wet, clicking, chittering noise, like a massive insect rubbing its mandibles together, accompanied by a low, guttural hiss that made the hairs on the back of Izuku’s neck stand at attention. 

Then came the scream.

It was a sharp, terrified shriek of a woman, abruptly cut short, echoing from the depths of the narrow alleyway to Izuku’s right. 

Before his brain could process the danger, before the newly instilled 'realistic' mindset could hold him back, his body moved. It was a reflex baked into his very DNA. Fourteen years of conditioning, of wanting to save people with a smile, propelled his legs forward. 

Izuku bolted into the alley, his hand instinctively reaching out—

He froze.

The alley was suffocatingly dark, illuminated only by the sickly amber glow of a single, flickering streetlamp at the far end. But the light was enough to illuminate the nightmare before him.

It wasn't a villain. It wasn't a man with a mutation Quirk. Izuku had seen hundreds of mutation Quirks, some terrifying, some beautiful. This was neither. This was an abomination against nature itself.

The creature was roughly the size of a large dog, but its posture was eerily bipedal, hunched over like a withered old man. Its exoskeleton was a sickly, pale white, mottled with crimson stains. It had a grotesque, ant-like head with massive, jagged mandibles that snapped together with the sickening sound of grinding bone. Its abdomen was a bloated, translucent sac, pulsing with a viscous red fluid. In its scythe-like claws, it held a middle-aged woman in a business suit, who had fainted from sheer terror, a small cut on her shoulder bleeding freely. 

The creature was leaning in, its mandibles hovering over the woman’s neck, a long, barbed tongue rolling out from its maw to taste the spilled blood.

Izuku’s breath hitched in his throat. His blood ran cold, turning to ice water in his veins. 

What... what is that? his mind screamed, panic flooding his system. His analytical brain, usually so quick to categorize Quirks, was met with a terrifying void. Mutation? No, it doesn't look human at all. An animal with a Quirk? No, the proportions are completely wrong. It smells like... sulfur and rotting meat.

The creature's head snapped up. It had heard his gasp. Six compound, soulless black eyes locked onto the trembling teenager. 

The monster dropped the unconscious woman, its attention shifting to the fresh, wide-awake prey. It let out a horrific screech that rattled Izuku’s teeth, rearing back on its hind legs. 

Izuku wanted to run. He needed to run. Move! he ordered his legs. Run! Get a Pro Hero! But his legs wouldn't obey. The sheer, primal aura of malice radiating from the creature paralyzed him. This wasn't a person who had made bad choices. This was pure, unadulterated violence incarnate. 

The creature lunged, its scythe-arms raised to impale him.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and threw his arms up in a pathetic attempt to shield himself, waiting for the agonizing tear of flesh. 

I'm sorry, Mom.

BOOM.

The sound was deafening, a percussive shockwave that punched the air out of Izuku’s lungs and shattered the windows of the abandoned warehouse above. The concussive force knocked Izuku flat on his back, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine. 

He didn't feel any pain from claws. He didn't feel anything except the hot gust of wind and the sudden, overwhelming smell of cordite and burning ozone. 

Slowly, coughing through the thick cloud of gray smoke and pulverized brick that now choked the alley, Izuku opened his eyes. 

The creature was gone. In its place was a smoldering crater in the brick wall, splattered with a thick, evaporating black ichor that hissed as it touched the pavement.

Izuku blinked, his vision swimming, trying to make sense of the scene. 

"Tch. Messy," a woman's voice cut through the ringing in his ears. It was a calm, slightly annoyed voice, utterly devoid of the panic one would expect in a dark alleyway monster attack. "I told you to aim for the abdomen, not the head. Now the blood sac is ruptured all over the pavement."

"Oh, relax. It gets the job done, doesn't it?" came a second voice, this one purring with a sultry, amused confidence. "Besides, you're the one who decided to bring out the heavy artillery for a single Empusa."

Izuku slowly propped himself up on his elbows, staring through the dissipating smoke. Two figures stepped into the dim light of the streetlamp. 

The first was a woman who looked like she had stepped straight out of a mercenary magazine, yet carried herself with the casual grace of a runway model. She wore a pristine white button-up shirt, the top buttons undone, revealing a harness of leather holsters. Heavy, military-grade pouches hung from her belt, and dark shorts ended in strapped thigh-high boots. But it was her face and her weapon that drew Izuku's immediate, terrified awe. She had striking, mismatched eyes—one a piercing icy blue, the other a blood red—and a faint scar crossing the bridge of her nose. Resting on her right shoulder with impossible ease was a massive, terrifyingly customized rocket launcher with a bayonet fixed to the front. 

The second woman was a stark contrast, exuding an aura of dangerous, electrifying power. She was clad head-to-toe in form-fitting black leather, a corset-style top accentuating her statuesque figure. Wild, voluminous blonde hair cascaded down her back, catching the faint light like spun gold. But what made Izuku’s breath catch was the red and yellow lightning that literally crackled around her fingertips, arcing across her leather gloves in a mesmerizing, lethal dance.

Pro Heroes? Izuku’s brain rebooted, his analytical habit desperately trying to assert control over his panic. Underground heroes? I don't recognize them. The rocket launcher... a support item? Or a creation Quirk? The blonde woman has an electrification Quirk, similar to Kaminari's, but the color is different, and the output looks highly concentrated—

"Looks like the bait's still breathing," the blonde woman—Trish—said, looking down at the unconscious civilian, then shifting her gaze to Izuku, who was still sprawled on the damp asphalt. A smirk played on her lips behind a pair of stylish sunglasses she had no business wearing in the dark. "And we have a spectator."

"Great. A kid," the woman with the rocket launcher—Lady—sighed, lowering the massive weapon as if it weighed no more than a baseball bat. She glared at Izuku, her heterochromatic eyes narrowing. "Hey, kid. You hurt? If you can walk, get out of here. This isn't a playground."

Izuku scrambled backward, his palms scraping against the rough ground, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I-I-I'm fine!" he stammered, his voice cracking. "W-Who are you? Are you Pro Heroes? That—that thing! It was—"

"Not a villain," Lady cut him off, her tone sharp, brooking no argument. "Forget what you saw. Go home and watch the news about some cape saving a cat."

Before Izuku could process her dismissive words, the temperature in the alley plummeted. The shadows cast by the flickering streetlamp seemed to elongate, stretching unnaturally across the walls. 

The wet, clicking sound returned. But this time, it wasn't just one. 

From the darkness deeper down the alley, the shadows began to bubble and tear. It looked as though the very fabric of reality was being sliced open with a rusty knife. Out of these swirling, dark violet portals crawled more of the white, ant-like creatures—three, five, eight of them. 

And they weren't alone.

Rising from the asphalt like corpses escaping shallow graves came humanoid figures wrapped in bandages and chains, carrying massive, rusted scythes. They had no faces, just hollow, glowing red visors where their eyes should be, and exposed, rotting ribs.

"Hell Cainas, too?" Trish clicked her tongue, adjusting her sunglasses. The lightning around her hands intensified, turning into chaotic, branching arcs of destructive energy. "Someone must have opened a small Hellgate nearby. This is a bigger infestation than the client reported."

"More target practice," Lady said smoothly. With a practiced flick of her wrist, she hoisted the rocket launcher, which she called Kalina Ann, back onto her shoulder. In her left hand, she seamlessly drew a heavy-caliber, customized handgun. 

Izuku was paralyzed again, not just by fear, but by the sheer, overwhelming impossibility of the situation. Portals? Undead creatures? Giant bugs? This isn't a villain attack. This is... this is out of a horror movie.

"Kid!" Lady barked, not looking back at him. "I told you to run! Move it!"

The demons charged.

What followed was a spectacle of violence so beautifully choreographed, so devastatingly efficient, that Izuku forgot to breathe. 

Trish moved first. She didn't just run; she seemed to glide, closing the distance between her and the vanguard of the Empusa swarm in a heartbeat. She didn't use a weapon. She was the weapon. She delivered a devastating roundhouse kick to the first creature, the impact echoing like a thunderclap. Red lightning exploded outward from the point of contact, completely vaporizing the creature's upper half. 

She didn't stop. She flowed into a backflip, dodging a swipe from a Hell Caina's scythe, catching the rusted blade between her boots. With a twist of her hips, she wrenched the weapon from the demon's grasp, flipped backward, and landed, throwing a punch that unleashed a localized storm of electricity, frying three demons at once. The air filled with the stench of ozone and burnt, rotting meat.

"Show-off," Lady muttered. 

Izuku watched as Lady took the opposite flank. She didn't rely on supernatural powers. She relied on absolute, unforgiving ballistics. 

A Hell Caina lunged at her. Lady didn't flinch. She sidestepped with economic precision, the heavy scythe missing her nose by an inch. In the same motion, she jammed the barrel of her handgun beneath the creature's chin and fired three times in rapid succession. Bang-bang-bang. The creature’s head disintegrated in a spray of black sand and shadow.

She spun, using the momentum to swing Kalina Ann around like a massive club, the bayonet slicing through an Empusa that tried to flank her. As the beast recoiled, she pulled the trigger on the launcher. A localized blast—not a rocket, but a massive shotgun-like spray of flak—shredded the creature and the two behind it. 

Izuku was mesmerized. His fear was momentarily eclipsed by his hyper-active analytical mind. The notebook was destroyed, but the brain that wrote the thirteen volumes was firing on all cylinders.

They aren't using Quirks—at least, the woman with the guns isn't, Izuku analyzed rapidly, his eyes tracking their movements. Her situational awareness is incredible. She’s counting her shots. The blonde one is using her electrification to enhance her physical strikes, maximizing kinetic transfer. But their opponents... they don't fight like humans. They have no self-preservation. They attack in linear patterns. The ant-creatures telegraph their lunges by rearing back. The scythe-wielders drag their weapons before an overhead strike...

Izuku’s eyes darted across the battlefield. The shadows were thick, the smoke from Lady’s guns obscuring the rear of the alley. 

Above them, on the rusted fire escape of the adjacent building, a shadow detached itself. It was another Hell Caina, but this one hadn't engaged in the frontal assault. It had climbed. And it was positioned directly above Lady, who was currently occupied with a swarm of three Empusas, her back to the fire escape, reloading her handgun with a fresh magazine from her pouch. 

The demon raised its scythe, preparing to drop directly onto her blind spot. 

Izuku didn't think. The words erupted from his mouth, fueled by years of hyper-analyzing combat footage. 

"ABOVE YOU! SIX O'CLOCK! HIGH ANGLE, HEAVY WEAPON!"

Lady didn't turn her head to look. True professionals don't waste time verifying a threat; they react to it. 

Trusting the desperate scream of the boy behind her, Lady aborted her reload, dropped her center of gravity, and executed a flawless combat roll forward, passing straight under the lunging Empusas. 

A split second later, the Hell Caina crashed onto the pavement exactly where Lady had been standing, its heavy rusted scythe burying itself deep into the asphalt, sending sparks flying. 

Before the demon could yank its weapon free, Lady was already coming out of her roll. She jammed the bayonet of Kalina Ann into the ground to anchor herself, spun on her heel, and fired a wire grapple from the launcher's secondary barrel. The grapple struck the Hell Caina in the chest, embedding itself deeply.

"Get over here!" Lady grinned savagely. She yanked the wire, pulling the off-balance demon directly toward her. As it stumbled forward, she drew a second handgun from the small of her back and unloaded the entire clip point-blank into its chest. The demon dissolved into black smoke before it even hit the ground.

Across the alley, Trish finished off the last Empusa with a devastating electrically charged axe kick, splitting the creature down the middle. 

Silence descended upon the alley once more, broken only by the hiss of dissolving demon blood and the rhythmic clicking of Lady reloading her pistols. 

Izuku sat on the ground, his chest heaving, his hands trembling violently. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him feeling sick and exhausted. He had just yelled at a professional... whatever they were. He had intervened. He had probably just gotten in the way. 

I should apologize, Izuku thought frantically. I need to apologize. I could have distracted her. I'm so stupid, I can't even run away properly...

He watched as Lady holstered her weapons. She walked over to the unconscious civilian, checked her pulse, and nodded to herself. Then, slowly, she turned her heterochromatic gaze toward Izuku.

Izuku flinched, fully expecting to be yelled at. Pro Heroes hated it when civilians interfered. Death Arms and Kamui Woods would have chewed him out for endangering himself. 

But Lady didn't yell. She walked toward him, her heavy boots clicking against the pavement. She stopped a few feet away, crossing her arms over her chest, the massive rocket launcher resting comfortably against her back. 

Trish sauntered over as well, pulling off her sunglasses to reveal striking, cat-like green eyes. She looked down at Izuku with a mixture of amusement and genuine curiosity.

"Well, well," Trish purred, placing a hand on her hip. "Color me impressed. Most civilians soil themselves and freeze when they see a Hell Caina. You didn't just freeze. You calculated the drop trajectory."

Lady stared hard at him. Her eyes were piercing, evaluating him not as a frightened child, but as an asset on a battlefield. 

"How did you know it was there, kid?" Lady asked, her voice flat, demanding the truth. "It didn't make a sound. And you were busy having a panic attack."

Izuku swallowed hard, his throat dry. "I... I just..." He forced himself to look at her, intimidated by the scars and the cold professionalism radiating from her. "I watch a lot of hero fights. P-Pro Heroes, I mean. I analyze them. Their patterns, their blind spots. When... when you were fighting, I noticed the demons had highly telegraphed attack patterns. They aren't very smart. And when you were engaged with the three in front... the shadow on the wall shifted. I-I realized one must have climbed up to use gravity for a heavier strike."

Lady and Trish exchanged a look. It was a brief, silent communication that spoke volumes of their long history together. 

"He analyzed a demon's attack pattern while actively hyperventilating," Trish noted, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "That's... new. Usually, they just scream."

"He's observant," Lady conceded, though her tone remained gruff. She stepped closer, looming over Izuku. "But he also just watched us slaughter an infestation of minor demons using highly illegal, unlicensed weaponry and lethal force."

Izuku paled. Illegal? Unlicensed? His eyes darted to the rocket launcher. Oh my god, they aren't underground heroes. They're vigilantes! Or villains! But they saved that woman...

"A-Are you... are you vigilantes?" Izuku whispered, unable to stop the question from spilling out. 

Trish threw her head back and laughed, a rich, melodic sound that seemed completely out of place in the blood-stained alley. "Vigilantes? Oh, sweetie, we are so far beyond your little comic-book laws. We're professionals."

"We're Devil Hunters," Lady stated bluntly. She reached down and grabbed Izuku by the collar of his uniform jacket, hauling him to his feet with surprising strength for someone without a strength-enhancing Quirk. 

"W-Waah!" Izuku yelped, suddenly eye-level with the imposing woman. 

"Listen to me carefully, kid," Lady said, her eyes boring into his. "You just stumbled into a world that your caped crusaders and flashy Pro Heroes don't even know exists. A world that would eat them alive, because they rely too much on their fancy genetic parlor tricks."

Izuku trembled, but for the first time that day, his curiosity overpowered his depression. A world heroes don't know about? Devils?

"You didn't run," Trish observed, stepping closer, circling Izuku like a predator inspecting an interesting piece of prey. She leaned in, sniffing the air near his neck. Izuku flushed bright red, completely frozen. "You reek of fear. You were terrified. But your brain didn't shut down. You processed the threat, calculated the variables, and warned her. You thought through the fear."

"I... I don't have a Quirk," Izuku blurted out, a desperate, pathetic confession. He didn't know why he said it. Maybe he wanted them to know how useless he was before they expected anything from him. Maybe he was just so used to it being his defining trait. "I can't fight. I'm... I'm just a Deku. I can't do anything."

Lady’s expression shifted. The cold, hardened mercenary facade cracked just a fraction, revealing a glint of something akin to understanding. She looked down at his scuffed red shoes, his trembling hands, and the soot smeared across his tear-stained face. 

She let go of his collar, smoothing out his jacket with a rough pat. 

"I don't have a Quirk either, kid," Lady said. 

Izuku’s eyes widened, his jaw dropping. He stared at her, then at the rocket launcher, the pistols, the blood on her boots. "Y-You... you don't? But... you just..."

"I kill monsters that would make your 'All Might' wet his spandex," Lady said evenly, stating it not as a boast, but as a simple, objective fact. "Power doesn't come from a genetic lottery. It comes from here," she tapped her temple, "and here," she tapped her chest, right over her heart. "And a ridiculous amount of high explosives, obviously."

Trish giggled, pulling her sunglasses back down over her eyes. "He's seen too much, Mary. The kid knows demons exist now. We can't just let him wander back to his coloring books. He'll start muttering about it online, the Commission will start digging, and Dante will get annoyed if we bring heat to the shop."

Lady sighed, running a hand through her dark hair, ruffling her bangs. She looked at the unconscious woman on the ground, then back at Izuku. 

"Alright, kid. What's your name?" 

"M-Midoriya. Izuku Midoriya."

"Well, Midoriya," Lady said, turning on her heel and gesturing for him to follow. "You're coming with us."

"W-What? Where?!" Izuku panicked, taking a step back. "I-I need to go home! My mom—"

Trish appeared behind him with terrifying speed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders in a chummy, inescapable grip. She smelled of expensive perfume and ozone. 

"Oh, don't worry, Midoriya! We'll let you call your mom," Trish smiled brightly, practically dragging the bewildered teenager down the alleyway. "But right now, you're going to come back to our office, you're going to drink some soda, and you're going to tell us exactly how you managed to read a Hell Caina's drop-strike in the dark."

"And then," Lady called back over her shoulder, "you're going to help us clean this mess up. Consider it payment for saving your life."

Izuku stumbled along, caught in the grip of the electrifying woman, following the terrifying, Quirkless mercenary into the deeper darkness of the city. 

Hours ago, on a sunlit rooftop, All Might had told him he couldn't be a hero without a Quirk. The symbol of peace had shattered his world. 

But as Izuku looked at the blood on the walls, the fading portals, and the two women who walked through the darkness with fearless, arrogant grace, a new, terrifying, and exhilarating thought sparked in the back of his mind.

Maybe he didn't need to be a hero.

Maybe, just maybe, he could be a hunter.

The waking world returned to Izuku Midoriya not with a gentle dawn, but with the aggressive, buzzing hum of a failing neon sign and the overwhelming scent of pepperoni, stale mozzarella, and high-grade weapon solvent.

Izuku groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. His head throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache, a hangover of pure adrenaline and sheer terror. For a disorienting moment, he didn't know where he was. The ceiling above him wasn't the familiar, glow-in-the-dark-starred ceiling of his bedroom in the apartment he shared with his mother. It was made of tin panels, stained yellow with age and water damage, with a lazily spinning ceiling fan that clicked ominously with every rotation.

He tried to sit up, a sharp spike of protest shooting through his lower back. He was lying on a leather sofa that had seen better decades. It was cracked, peeling, and held together in places by strips of black duct tape. 

"Careful, kid. If you move too fast, your brain might bounce around your skull. You took a pretty hard dive when you tripped over that trash can outside."

The voice was cool, feminine, and utterly nonchalant. 

Izuku’s memories slammed back into him with the force of a freight train. The rooftop. All Might’s deflating form. The crushed dream. The alleyway. The monstrous, ant-like creature with the blood sac. The scythe-wielding horrors rising from the shadows. The explosions. The lightning. The two women who fought like literal war deities. 

He bolted upright, ignoring the dizziness that washed over him, his wide green eyes frantically scanning the room. 

He was in an office, though calling it that felt like a gross mischaracterization. It was a chaotic, sprawling mess that looked like a military surplus store had collided with a frat house. The walls were covered in faded wallpaper, peeling at the corners, partially obscured by corkboards pinned with blurry photographs, maps of Musutafu, and newspaper clippings of bizarre, unexplained incidents. 

Piled high on a massive, scratched oak desk in the center of the room were stacks of unopened mail, manila folders, and empty pizza boxes—at least half a dozen of them, bearing the logo of a local Italian joint. But what truly commanded Izuku’s attention was the hardware.

There were guns. Everywhere.

A pair of heavily modified submachine guns rested casually on a filing cabinet. A pump-action shotgun leaned against a mini-fridge. Bandoliers of massive, terrifyingly large ammunition were draped over the back of a swivel chair like winter scarves. And leaning against the wall, right next to a coat rack holding a dark red trench coat, was the massive, bayonet-tipped rocket launcher he had seen the dark-haired woman wield the night before. Kalina Ann, he remembered her calling it.

"I see you're admiring the decor."

Izuku whipped his head around. Sitting at the desk, her combat boots propped up unceremoniously on a stack of what looked like very important financial documents, was Lady. In the harsh daylight filtering through the slatted blinds, she looked even more intimidating. The stark white of her unbuttoned shirt contrasted with the heavy black leather of her holsters. Her mismatched eyes—one icy blue, one blood red—were fixed on him with a mixture of boredom and vague assessment. She was lazily tossing a silver coin into the air and catching it, the metal glinting in the dusty light.

Across the room, standing by a kitchenette that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the dawn of Quirks, was Trish. She had discarded her leather jacket from the night before, now wearing a tight black tank top and her leather pants. She was pouring herself a mug of coffee that smelled more like crude oil than roasted beans. 

"You've been out for about four hours," Trish said, taking a sip from her mug and making a slight face. "We dragged you back here. Well, I dragged you. Mary refused to carry you."

"I don't do babysitting," Lady replied flatly, catching the coin and slipping it into her pocket. "And my name is Lady. Don't call me Mary in front of the civilians."

"S-Sorry! I'm sorry!" Izuku squeaked, instinctively bowing his head, a habit ingrained from years of apologizing for simply existing. "I-I didn't mean to intrude! Thank you for saving me! I should go, my mom is going to be out of her mind with worry, I—"

He patted his pockets frantically, looking for his phone. It wasn't there. 

"Looking for this?" Lady asked. She reached over to the desk and picked up Izuku's bright yellow, All Might-themed smartphone. The screen was cracked—a casualty of his fall in the alley—but it was still functioning. "It's been buzzing for the last hour. 'Mom' has called about twenty times. We didn't answer. Figured explaining that her kid was hanging out with heavily armed mercenaries in a sketchy part of town wouldn't go over well."

Izuku felt the blood drain from his face. "P-Please, I need to call her."

Lady tossed the phone. Izuku fumbled but caught it. He immediately dialed his mother’s number. It rang half a time before she picked up.

"IZUKU?! Oh my god, Izuku! Where are you?! Are you hurt? There was a villain attack in Tatooin Station, and I saw the news, and I couldn't reach you, and—" Inko Midoriya’s voice was a frantic, tearful rapid-fire of pure maternal panic.

Izuku’s heart ached. He hated making her worry. "Mom! Mom, I'm okay! I'm safe!" 

"Where are you?! It's nearly midnight! Why didn't you answer your phone?!"

"I... I dropped it!" Izuku lied seamlessly, his brain kicking into high gear to invent a plausible scenario. "I dropped it and it cracked, and it stopped working for a bit. I... I was at the library! I fell asleep studying, Mom. The librarian had to wake me up. I'm so sorry."

Lady raised a single, unimpressed eyebrow at him. Trish smirked behind her coffee mug.

"The library? Izuku, you scared half my life away! Get home right this instant! I'm making katsudon, and you are grounded for a week!"

"I'm on my way, Mom. I promise. I'm okay. See you soon." 

He hung up, exhaling a long, shaky breath. He stared at the cracked screen of his phone, the smiling face of All Might on his wallpaper now obscured by a spiderweb of shattered glass. It felt entirely too poetic. 

"Smooth," Trish commented, leaning against the counter. "The 'studying at the library' excuse. A classic. Though you might want to wipe the demon blood off your cheek before you go home and face the music. Hard to explain away black, acidic ichor as an ink stain."

Izuku gasped, rubbing his cheek frantically. His fingers came away with a faint smudge of dark soot. He looked back up at the two women. The reality of the situation was settling back over him like a heavy blanket. 

"What... what were those things?" Izuku asked, his voice barely above a whisper. The question had been burning a hole in his mind since the alleyway. "You called them... demons? But that's... that's mythology. That's religion. Quirks explain everything now. Mutations, transformations, emitter types. There's no such thing as magic or demons."

Lady let out a harsh, barking laugh. It wasn't a happy sound. She swung her legs off the desk and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. 

"Quirks explain everything," she mocked softly, her eyes narrowing. "That's what they teach you in those shiny hero schools, right? The world is neatly categorized. Everything has a scientific explanation, a neat little box you can put a label on. A guy breathes fire? Oh, he just has a specialized gland in his throat. A kid can turn his skin to rock? Just a density alteration Quirk."

She stood up, her presence instantly dominating the messy room. She walked over to the window, peering out through the blinds at the neon-lit streets of Musutafu. 

"The Pro Heroes—your caped crusaders, your Symbols of Peace—they operate in the daylight. They fight bank robbers, megalomaniacs, and disgruntled freaks with superiority complexes. They play by human rules. Even the villains play by human rules. They want money, power, or to change society."

Lady turned back to face him, the crimson eye seeming to catch the low light in a terrifying way. "Demons don't want your money, kid. They don't want to change your society. They want your blood. They want to gorge on human suffering. They are the nightmare that the daylight world forgot."

Izuku was entranced, terrified but unable to look away. "But... why don't the heroes fight them? If they're real, if they're a threat... All Might could—"

"All Might is a hammer," Trish interrupted, walking over and setting her empty mug on the desk. "And he's very good at hitting nails. But demons aren't nails."

Trish hopped onto the corner of the desk, crossing her long legs. "Let me give you a lesson in occult biology, kid. You saw those things in the alley. The Empusas—the bug things—and the Hell Cainas. Those were bottom-feeders. Literal trash-tier demons. Do you know what happens when a Pro Hero with, say, a fire Quirk tries to burn a Hell Caina?"

Izuku shook his head dumbly.

"Nothing," Trish smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Because Hell Cainas are forged in the fiery pits of the Underworld. Fire is a Tuesday to them. What about a hero with super strength? Sure, they could punch an Empusa in half. But what happens when they face a Shadow? A demon that literally exists as a two-dimensional silhouette until it solidifies to skewer you? You can't punch a shadow. And while your heroes are busy trying to figure out how to arrest it, the demon has already decapitated them."

Izuku felt sick. His mind, trained to analyze combat, was rapidly running simulations based on this new information. He imagined Mt. Lady trying to grapple a giant demon, only for it to melt through her hands. He imagined Kamui Woods trying to bind a creature made of hellfire, his wooden tendrils turning to ash instantly. 

"Pro Heroes," Lady continued, walking back to her desk, "rely on public image. They have rules of engagement. They have laws preventing excessive force. They arrest people. You cannot arrest a demon, Midoriya. You eradicate it. Period. If the public found out that there are immortal, bloodthirsty monsters lurking in the shadows that their shiny heroes are utterly unequipped to fight, there would be mass hysteria. So, the government pretends they don't exist, the heroes remain blissfully ignorant, and we get paid to clean up the mess in the dark."

Izuku looked down at his hands. They were shaking again. He clenched them into fists, trying to stop the tremors. 

A whole other world, he thought. A world where Quirks aren't the ultimate power. A world where All Might's smile means nothing.

"Why did you bring me here?" Izuku asked softly, looking up. "If this is a secret... why didn't you just leave me in the alley after you saved me? Or wipe my memory? I don't know, whatever it is secret organizations do."

Lady snorted, picking up a slice of cold pizza from a box and taking a bite. "We aren't a secret organization, kid. We're an independent contracting firm. 'Devil May Cry: Japan Branch'. The main office is stateside. We're a franchise, essentially."

She chewed, swallowed, and pointed the crust at him. "As for why we brought you here... you impressed Trish. And, annoyingly, you impressed me."

Izuku blinked. "I... I did?"

"Don't let it go to your head," Lady warned. "You were crying, shaking, and making a noise like a dying seal. But you didn't freeze. Most people, when faced with an existential horror that breaks their understanding of reality, their brains blue-screen. They shut down. You didn't. You analyzed the threat vector of a creature you had never seen before and accurately predicted a blind-spot ambush."

"I just... I've spent my whole life watching fights," Izuku mumbled, reaching for his ruined notebook, which was sitting on the edge of the coffee table. He traced the scorch mark left by Bakugo. "I take notes. I analyze Quirks. It's... it's a habit."

"It's a survival trait," Trish corrected. "You have a tactical mind. A very, very fast one. In our line of work, brains keep you alive a lot longer than brawn."

Izuku stared at the scorched notebook. The words of All Might rang in his ears, louder than the failing neon sign outside. 

I cannot simply say, "You can become a hero even without power."

If you desire to help people, becoming a police officer is always an option.

It's not bad to dream. But you also have to consider what's realistic.

All his life, he had been told that his lack of a Quirk made him less than human. A glass doll in a world of steel. Bakugo had told him to take a swan dive off a roof. The teachers ignored him. Society pitied him or scorned him. And the man he idolized most in the universe had looked at his fragile, desperate heart and told him to give up.

But here, sitting in a filthy office surrounded by deadly weapons and cold pizza, were two women who had just slaughtered a horde of monsters. Two women who operated outside the laws of the superhuman society that had rejected him. 

Izuku looked up. His green eyes, usually so large and expressive with nervous energy, were suddenly startlingly focused. The tears were gone. The trembling had stopped. 

He looked at Lady. He looked at the massive rocket launcher, Kalina Ann. He looked at the heavy pistols on her desk. He remembered her words from the alleyway. I don't have a Quirk either, kid.

"Can I..." Izuku started, his voice cracking. He swallowed hard and tried again, forcing the words out, pouring every ounce of his shattered soul into the question. "Can I be a hero... without a Quirk?"

The silence that followed was heavy. The ticking of the ceiling fan seemed to echo like a metronome. 

Trish leaned forward, her playful demeanor vanishing, replaced by a scrutinizing, intense gaze. 

Lady stopped chewing her pizza. She slowly lowered the crust back into the box. She wiped her hands on a napkin, never breaking eye contact with Izuku. She didn't look at him with pity. She didn't look at him with the gentle, condescending sympathy that All Might had used. 

She looked at him the way a blacksmith looks at a piece of raw, unshaped iron. 

Lady stood up. She walked around the desk and approached the coat rack. She grabbed Kalina Ann by its thick leather strap and hauled the massive, terrifying weapon over to Izuku. 

She slammed the blunt end of the rocket launcher into the wooden floorboards right in front of Izuku’s feet with a heavy THUD that rattled his teeth. 

"Look at this," Lady commanded, her voice dropping an octave, carrying the weight of a thousand battles. 

Izuku looked at the weapon. Up close, it was a masterpiece of lethal engineering. The metal was scratched and scarred, the barrel smelled of sulfur, and the bayonet was wickedly sharp. 

"Can you be a hero?" Lady scoffed, a dark, cynical smile twisting her lips. "I hate that word. 'Hero.' It's a marketing term. It's a word they print on lunchboxes and billboards to sell merchandise and make civilians feel safe in their beds. Heroes are restricted. Heroes worry about collateral damage, public opinion, and their ranking on a stupid billboard chart."

She leaned down, bringing her face close to his, her mismatched eyes blazing with a fierce, terrifying intensity. 

"Kid, I kill gods for a living without a superpower," Lady said, her words slicing through the air like a knife. "I have stared down demon kings that could swallow this city whole, and I have blown their brains out. I don't use magic. I don't use Quirks. Quirks are a crutch. They make people lazy. They make people rely on a genetic lottery instead of their own grit."

She tapped the cold steel barrel of Kalina Ann. 

"Lead, leverage, and absolute, unforgiving violence. That is a guarantee. You want to save people? You want to protect the innocent from the things that go bump in the night? Then you don't need a Quirk. You need discipline. You need a massive arsenal. And you need the willpower to look a nightmare in the eyes and pull the trigger."

Lady stood back up, hoisting the rocket launcher back onto her shoulder with effortless ease. 

"So, don't ask me if you can be a hero," she concluded coldly. "Ask me if you can survive. Ask me if you can be a Hunter."

Izuku’s breath hitched. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but this time, it wasn't out of fear. It was a profound, overwhelming surge of adrenaline. 

All Might had told him to be realistic. Lady was offering him reality. A bloody, terrifying, brutal reality, but one where a Quirkless nobody could stand on equal footing with monsters. Where an ordinary human could kill gods. 

He looked at his hands. They were calloused from writing, soft from a lack of physical training. He was scrawny. He was weak. He was a Deku. 

But his mind... his mind had seen the blind spot. His mind had calculated the drop. 

"I want to survive," Izuku said. The words surprised him. They didn't shake. They didn't waver. They came out with a quiet, undeniable absolute. He looked up, meeting Lady's terrifying gaze without flinching. "I want to learn. Teach me."

Trish let out a low whistle. "Well, look at that. The puppy has teeth after all."

Lady stared at him for a long, agonizing moment. She was looking for the lie. She was looking for the naive fanaticism of a hero fanboy. But she didn't find it. She found the desperate, hungry determination of a starving animal that had just been offered a piece of meat.

"You're a middle schooler," Lady said bluntly. "You have homework. You have a mother. You have zero physical conditioning. You probably can't even lift one of my handguns without breaking your wrist, let alone handle the recoil."

"I'll train! I'll do whatever it takes!" Izuku pleaded, leaning forward, ignoring the ache in his back. "I'll run every day! I'll lift weights! I'm smart, you said it yourself! I can analyze enemies, I can... I can..." He scrambled for something, anything to offer them. "I can be useful!"

Lady sighed heavily, rubbing the bridge of her nose, right over her scar. "Trish, tell me why this is a terrible idea."

"Because he's a minor and if he dies, it's a massive liability?" Trish offered helpfully, examining her manicured nails. "Because Dante will laugh at us for taking on an apprentice? Because bringing a kid into the Underworld is basically child abuse?"

"Right. All valid points," Lady nodded. 

Izuku’s face fell. The window was closing. He had reached for it, and now they were shutting it. "P-Please..."

"However," Trish continued, her tone shifting seamlessly, "he is smart. Smarter than any of the meatheads we usually hire for reconnaissance. And, more importantly..." 

Trish glided over to the desk, shoving aside a pile of empty pizza boxes to reveal a terrifying stack of papers. They were covered in complex grids, official Japanese government seals, and dense, bureaucratic kanji. 

"...we have a massive problem, Mary," Trish said, tapping the papers. 

Lady groaned, a sound of pure, unadulterated despair escaping her lips. "Don't remind me."

Izuku blinked, confused by the sudden shift in tone. "What... what are those?"

"That, kid, is the greatest demon of them all," Lady said grimly, staring at the paperwork with more fear than she had shown the Hell Cainas. "The Japanese National Tax Agency."

"We've been operating this branch for a year," Trish explained, crossing her arms. "And apparently, bringing unregistered, heavy military ordnance into the country, getting paid by untraceable offshore accounts, and blowing up private property during 'pest control' incurs some hefty fines. Not to mention, neither of us can read Japanese legal jargon worth a damn. What the hell is a 'Furusato Nozei'? A hometown tax? We don't have a hometown in Japan! Are we supposed to send them fruit?"

Izuku blinked rapidly. His brilliant, analytical mind shifted gears so violently it gave him whiplash. "Furusato Nozei? Oh, no, that's a tax deduction system. You donate to a municipality, and they send you a gift, like local wagyu beef or fruit, and you get a deduction on your income and residence taxes. It's actually highly beneficial if you're in a high tax bracket..." 

He trailed off as he realized both women were staring at him with wide, almost reverent eyes. 

"He understands it," Lady whispered, as if she had just witnessed a miracle. 

"He speaks the language of the bureaucracy demon," Trish agreed, nodding solemnly. 

Lady turned back to Izuku. The cold, mercenary demeanor was gone, replaced by the desperate look of a business owner facing an audit. 

"Midoriya," Lady said slowly, pointing a finger at him. "You're good with numbers? Organization? Bureaucracy?"

"I... yes?" Izuku stammered. "I mean, I organize hero statistics, collateral damage reports, and Quirk registry laws in my notebooks. I have a pretty good grasp on civic law and accounting. My mom is a paralegal, she taught me some stuff."

Lady and Trish exchanged another look. This one was entirely different from the one in the alley. This was the look of two predators who had just found a golden goose.

Lady walked over to Izuku and leaned down, placing both hands on his shoulders. Her grip was iron-tight. 

"Alright, kid. Here is the deal," Lady said, her tone dead serious. "We will train you. I will break your body down and rebuild it into something that won't shatter when a demon breathes on it. Trish will teach you how to fight, how to move, and how to survive."

Izuku’s eyes widened, his heart soaring. "Really?!"

"On three conditions," Lady interrupted, holding up three fingers. 

Izuku nodded rapidly. "Anything."

"One. You do not neglect your civilian life. You go to school, you get good grades, and you keep your mother happy. We operate in the shadows. The best way to hide is in plain sight. You act like a normal, boring, Quirkless kid during the day."

"Understood!"

"Two. You do not tell a soul about what we do. Not your mom, not your teachers, not your explosive little friend who burned your notebook. If the Pro Heroes or the Commission catch wind of us, I will personally throw you into a Hellgate. Clear?"

"C-Crystal clear!" Izuku gulped. 

"Three," Lady pointed to the terrifying stack of paperwork on her desk. "You are now the official administrative assistant, secretary, and chief financial officer of Devil May Cry: Japan Branch. You will do our taxes. You will balance the ledger. You will catalog our ammunition expenses. You will clean the office, throw away the pizza boxes, and you will do it all as an unpaid intern."

Izuku stared at the paperwork. He stared at the pizza boxes. He stared at the two most terrifying, awe-inspiring women he had ever met. 

They were offering him hell. Physical hell, emotional hell, and bureaucratic hell. 

"Do we have a deal, kid?" Lady asked, extending her right hand. Her palm was calloused, scarred, and wrapped in a fingerless leather glove. 

Izuku looked at her hand. He thought of U.A. High School, the pinnacle of hero academies. He thought of the entrance exam, ten months away. An exam that was supposedly impossible to pass without a powerful Quirk. 

I don't have a Quirk, Izuku thought, a smile slowly creeping onto his face, wiping away the last vestiges of the insecure, broken boy from the rooftop. I have lead and leverage.

Izuku reached out and grasped Lady’s hand. Her grip was crushing, but Izuku held on tight. 

"We have a deal, Lady," Izuku said, his voice ringing with newfound conviction. 

"Good," Lady smirked, a genuine, dangerous smile. "Welcome to the Underworld, Midoriya. Training starts tomorrow at 0500 hours. Don't be late, or I'll shoot you."

"She's not joking," Trish called out from the kitchenette, pouring herself another mug of toxic-looking coffee. "She shot the last guy who was late. In the leg, but still."

Izuku swallowed nervously, the reality of what he had just agreed to sinking in. "Right. 0500. Got it."

"Now," Lady said, releasing his hand and gesturing broadly to the chaotic disaster of an office. "Get a garbage bag. The pepperoni is starting to attract actual roaches, not just the demonic kind."

As Izuku grabbed a black trash bag and began awkwardly shoving stale pizza crusts and empty ammo boxes into it, he couldn't help but laugh. It was a small, breathy chuckle at first, but it grew until he was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. 

He wasn't going to be a Pro Hero in spandex, smiling for the cameras. He wasn't going to have a flashy Quirk or a merchandise line. 

He was going to be an accountant for a pair of hyper-violent demon hunters. 

And for the first time in his fourteen years of life, Izuku Midoriya felt like he had a future. 

  

The walk home was a blur. The city of Musutafu was quiet, the late-night commuter trains rumbling softly overhead, casting long, moving shadows across the pavement. The air was cool, carrying the scent of impending rain.

Izuku walked with a bounce in his step that hadn't been there in years. His backpack still felt heavy, but the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders, replaced by a different kind of pressure—the pressure of expectation. 

0500 hours, his mind buzzed. I need to set my alarm. I need to stretch. I should probably research basic physical conditioning. Lady said she's going to break me down. I need to be ready.

He reached his apartment complex, jogging up the stairs to the third floor. He paused outside his door, taking a deep breath to compose himself. He couldn't let his mother see the manic excitement in his eyes. He had to play the part. The normal, boring, Quirkless kid. 

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. "I'm home!"

"Izuku!" 

Inko Midoriya practically flew out of the kitchen, enveloping her son in a crushing hug. She was a slightly plump woman with green hair identical to his own, and right now, her face was red from crying. 

"I was so worried!" she sobbed into his shoulder. "The news... there was a sludge villain, and a boy was taken hostage! I thought... I thought..."

Izuku froze. A sludge villain? The memory of the creature under the bridge earlier that day flashed in his mind. The one All Might had saved him from. Did it escape? Did it attack someone else?

"I'm fine, Mom. I promise," Izuku said gently, hugging her back. "I was at the library the whole time. I didn't see any villains."

Inko pulled back, holding him by the shoulders, her eyes scanning him for injuries. She noticed the smudge of soot on his cheek that he hadn't quite managed to wipe off. "What happened to your face? You're filthy!"

"Just... fell asleep on an old newspaper at the library," Izuku lied smoothly, offering a sheepish, apologetic smile. "The ink rubbed off. I'm sorry for making you worry, Mom. My phone broke, I couldn't call."

Inko sighed, her shoulders slumping as the adrenaline left her system. "Oh, Izuku. I'm just glad you're safe. The world is so dangerous. Even with all these heroes... sometimes it feels like it's not enough."

Izuku thought of the Hell Cainas rising from the shadows, unbothered by the daylight heroes. You have no idea, Mom, he thought. 

"I made katsudon," Inko sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's cold now, but I can heat it up."

"I'd love that, Mom. Thank you."

Later, sitting at the small dining table, Izuku ate his favorite meal in silence. The television was on in the background, playing the late-night news recap. 

"...and in incredible news today, local middle school student Katsuki Bakugo showed immense bravery when held hostage by a villain with a sludge-type Quirk! Despite the danger, the young man held out until the Symbol of Peace, All Might himself, arrived to deliver a devastating Detroit Smash! Pro Heroes on the scene praised Bakugo's powerful Explosion Quirk, noting his bright future..."

Izuku stopped chewing. He stared at the screen, watching the footage of Bakugo, surrounded by pro heroes, looking angry and arrogant. He watched All Might stand tall, posing for the cameras, the crowd cheering his name. 

A day ago, seeing that broadcast would have crushed Izuku. It would have sent him spiraling into a deep depression. He would have looked at Bakugo, his childhood bully, being praised as a future hero, and felt the familiar, suffocating weight of his own inferiority. He would have looked at All Might and felt the sting of his rejection.

But now? 

Izuku took another bite of his katsudon. He felt... nothing. 

Well, not exactly nothing. He felt a profound sense of detachment. He was looking at a play being performed on a stage. It was flashy, it was loud, and the actors were very good at their jobs. But it wasn't the real world. 

The real world was dark. It was bloody. It smelled of sulfur and ozone. And in the real world, an explosion Quirk wouldn't save you from a demon that could cut through reality itself. In the real world, All Might's smile couldn't burn away the shadows.

Enjoy the spotlight, Kacchan, Izuku thought, his green eyes reflecting the harsh light of the television screen. Enjoy playing by the rules.

Izuku finished his meal, washed his dishes, and kissed his mother goodnight. He went into his room and closed the door. 

His room was a shrine to All Might. Posters covered the walls, action figures lined the shelves, and limited-edition bedsheets adorned his mattress. It was a monument to a dream that had died on a rooftop that afternoon. 

Izuku stood in the center of the room. He didn't tear the posters down in a fit of rage. He didn't smash the figures. That would be a waste of energy. Instead, he walked over to his desk, opened his bottom drawer, and pulled out a fresh, unlined notebook. 

He sat at his desk, picked up a pen, and stared at the blank page. 

He didn't write Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 14. 

Instead, with neat, precise strokes, he wrote: 

Devil May Cry: Japan Branch.

Entity Analysis & Tactical Countermeasures.

Vol. 1.

Underneath the title, he began to sketch from memory. He drew the Empusa, detailing the mandibles, the blood sac, and the exoskeleton. He noted its linear attack patterns and its vulnerability to heavy kinetic trauma. 

Next, he sketched the Hell Caina. He drew the rusted scythe and the faceless visor. He wrote down Lady's tactical maneuver—the use of a grapple to manipulate the enemy's center of gravity before delivering lethal force. 

He worked for hours, his mind racing, connecting dots, analyzing the physics of Trish's electric strikes and the ballistics of Lady's weaponry. He was building a new foundation. A new database for a war that no one else knew was happening.

When he finally checked the clock, it was 3:00 AM. 

He had exactly two hours before he had to report to the office for training. 

Izuku closed the notebook, set his alarm for 4:30 AM, and lay down in his bed. He stared at the All Might poster on his ceiling, the hero's bright, confident smile beaming down at him. 

I'm sorry, All Might, Izuku whispered into the darkness. You told me to be realistic. You told me I couldn't be a hero.

Izuku closed his eyes, a small, confident smirk crossing his face. A smirk that looked terrifyingly similar to the one Trish wore right before she kicked a demon in half. 

Watch me.

The alarm clock didn't buzz; it shrieked. 

At 4:30 AM, the world outside the Midoriya apartment window was a canvas of oppressive, pitch-black silence. The streetlights of Musutafu flickered a sickly amber, casting long, undisturbed shadows across the empty pavement. To the rest of the city, this was the dead of night. To Izuku Midoriya, it was the beginning of the rest of his life. 

Izuku’s hand shot out from beneath the All Might-themed duvet, slapping the snooze button with a frantic, uncoordinated desperation. He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. 

0500 hours, Lady had said. Don't be late, or I'll shoot you.

He hadn't thought she was joking then, and in the cold, unforgiving quiet of the early morning, he was absolutely certain she wasn't. 

Izuku threw off the covers. The cold air hit his skin, but it did nothing to quell the nervous heat radiating from his core. He dressed quickly, abandoning his usual middle school uniform for an old, oversized gray hoodie, a pair of worn-out sweatpants, and the sturdiest pair of red running shoes he owned. He moved like a ghost through the apartment, wincing at every creak of the floorboards, terrified of waking his mother. Inko Midoriya was a heavy sleeper, but the maternal instinct of a mother whose son had nearly been attacked by a villain the day before was not to be underestimated.

He slipped out the front door, the lock clicking shut with a soft, final snick. 

The run to the Devil May Cry: Japan Branch office was supposed to take thirty minutes at a brisk walk. Izuku sprinted it in fifteen. His lungs burned, his legs ached, and his throat tasted like copper by the time the flickering neon sign of the shop came into view. 

It was exactly 4:55 AM. 

Izuku stood outside the heavy, reinforced oak door, trying to catch his breath. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, raised a trembling fist, and knocked. 

The door swung open instantly, as if the person on the other side had been standing right behind it with their hand on the knob. 

Lady stood in the doorway. She was dressed down from her usual mercenary gear, wearing a tight black tank top, military-fatigue cargo pants, and heavy combat boots. Her dark hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, and her mismatched eyes—one icy blue, one blood red—pierced through the morning gloom like twin lasers. She held a steaming mug of black coffee in one hand and a heavily modified, terrifyingly large stopwatch in the other. 

She looked him up and down, taking in his heaving chest, his flush face, and his oversized, baggy clothing. 

"Four fifty-six," Lady stated, her voice a low, gravelly rasp that suggested she wasn't entirely a morning person. "You have four minutes to spare. Good. I hate digging bullets out of the drywall."

"I... I ran," Izuku panted, bracing his hands on his knees. 

"I can tell. You look like you're about to cough up a lung," Lady said, stepping aside. "Get inside. The pizza boxes from last night aren't going to throw themselves away, and the tax ledger is waiting on your desk. You have exactly thirty minutes to clean the front room and categorize the receipt shoebox before physical conditioning begins."

Izuku blinked. "Wait, I'm cleaning before training?"

"You're the intern, Midoriya," Lady smirked, taking a sip of her coffee. "Welcome to the real world. Grab a trash bag."

The next thirty minutes were a blur of frantic janitorial and clerical work. Izuku discovered that cleaning up after two hyper-lethal demon hunters was a hazardous task. He found half-eaten slices of pepperoni pizza jammed behind filing cabinets, a live incendiary grenade rolling loose in the bottom of a desk drawer, and a stack of receipts written entirely in Italian that Trish had apparently shoved into a boot box. 

Through it all, his analytical mind worked overtime. He categorized the receipts by date and expenditure, rapidly translating the yen to USD in his head, creating a mental spreadsheet of their overhead costs. Ammunition, weapon solvent, property damage payoffs, pizza, hair care products for Trish... their profit margins are incredibly narrow considering the hazard pay, he noted mentally, jotting down a rough ledger on a scrap of paper. 

At exactly 5:30 AM, Lady slammed a hand down on his desk. 

"Time's up, accountant," she barked. "Outside. Back alley."

Izuku scrambled to his feet and followed her out the back door of the shop, which led into a sprawling, fenced-in junkyard that the DMC branch apparently owned—or at least, permanently squatted in. The yard was filled with rusted cars, stacked shipping containers, and piles of discarded industrial machinery. 

Sitting in the middle of the dirt clearing was a canvas tactical vest. It looked thick, heavily padded, and utilitarian. 

"Put it on," Lady ordered. 

Izuku approached the vest. He picked it up—or rather, he tried to. As his hands gripped the shoulder straps and he pulled, his muscles strained, and the vest barely lifted an inch off the ground. 

"W-What is in this?!" Izuku gasped, using both hands to haul it upright. It felt like it was made of solid lead. 

"Steel plates and high-density sand," Lady replied, casually leaning against a rusted car hood. "Forty-five pounds in total. That is roughly the weight of a standard tactical loadout—twin handguns, spare magazines, a primary heavy weapon, grappling gear, and basic survival rations. If you are going to be a Devil Hunter, you will never fight empty-handed. Therefore, you will never train empty-handed."

Izuku gritted his teeth, hoisted the vest up, and managed to slip his arms through the holes. The moment the weight settled on his shoulders, his knees buckled. He let out a strained groan, his spine curving under the immense pressure. He felt like he was being crushed into the dirt. 

"Stand up straight, Midoriya," Lady snapped, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Posture is everything. If you hunch, your lungs compress. If your lungs compress, you run out of oxygen. If you run out of oxygen in front of a Hellbat, you die. Chest out, shoulders back."

Trembling violently, Izuku forced his body upright. His legs were shaking so hard his knees were knocking together. 

"Good," Lady said. She pointed to a towering stack of wooden crates at the far end of the junkyard. "Those crates contain Trish's specialized lightning-rod ammunition. They weigh sixty pounds each. I need them moved from that corner to the basement door of the shop. There are twenty of them."

Izuku stared at the crates, then at the distance—easily a hundred yards of uneven, debris-strewn dirt. "Y-You want me to carry those... while wearing this?"

"I want you to sprint with them," Lady corrected, pulling the stopwatch from her pocket. "If you drop one, or if you take longer than forty-five minutes, I'll add ten pounds to your vest tomorrow."

"But—"

"Go!"

Izuku moved. It wasn't a sprint. It was a staggering, agonizing lurch. 

The first crate nearly tore his arms from their sockets. By the third crate, his hands were blistered from the rough wood. By the tenth crate, his vision was swimming with black spots, his breath tearing through his throat like shattered glass. 

I can't, his mind screamed. I'm Quirkless. I'm weak. I can't do this.

But every time he thought about dropping the crate, every time his knees threatened to give out, he remembered the look in Lady's eyes the night before. Ask me if you can survive.

He thought of U.A. High School. He thought of Bakugo’s mocking laughter. He thought of All Might telling him to give up. 

A dark, stubborn ember ignited in his chest. Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, let out a primal, ragged yell, and forced his legs to keep moving. 

When he finally dropped the twentieth crate by the basement door, Izuku collapsed into the dirt. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. Every muscle fiber in his body was screaming in sheer, unadulterated agony. He vaguely registered the sound of Lady's heavy boots walking toward him. 

"Forty-four minutes and ten seconds," Lady said, looking down at her stopwatch. She didn't offer a hand to help him up. She didn't offer praise. "Pathetic. But you didn't quit. Get up, Midoriya. We have parkour basics next."

Izuku let his head fall back against the dirt. Parkour? I can't even stand.

"I said get up!" Lady barked, kicking the sole of his shoe. "Demons don't give you a five-minute water break when you're tired!"

Izuku groaned, rolled over, and forced himself onto his hands and knees. 

The first month was, quite simply, hell. 

Lady's training philosophy was brutal, pragmatic, and entirely devoid of the flashy romanticism associated with Pro Hero training. She didn't care about how strong Izuku was; she cared about how hard he was to kill. 

"You are human," Lady lectured him one morning, balancing on the edge of a three-story rooftop while Izuku clung to a fire escape, gasping for air. "You do not have a hardening Quirk. You do not have an impact-absorption Quirk. If a Hell Caina hits you with a scythe, you don't block it. You don't try to catch it. You will be cut in half. Your only defense is not being there when the blade falls."

To that end, she forced him to learn parkour. Not the flashy, flip-heavy parkour seen in energy drink commercials, but pure, utilitarian urban traversal. 

She taught him the mechanics of momentum. She forced him to memorize the tensile strength of different building materials—brick, rusted iron, aluminum siding—so he knew what could hold his weight during a vault. 

"Everything is a fulcrum, Midoriya," she yelled as he repeatedly slammed his shins into a concrete wall trying to master a wall-run. "Use physics, not muscle! Your brain is a supercomputer, stop letting your panic override your calculations! Map the route before your feet leave the ground!"

Izuku applied his analytical Quirk-obsessed brain to his own body. He started muttering not about heroes, but about kinetic energy, center of mass, and trajectory arcs. 

He failed. Constantly. He fell off dumpsters, he misjudged gaps between shipping containers, he scraped the skin off his palms, and he collected a tapestry of deep purple bruises that covered his body from the neck down. 

But slowly, agonizingly, the weak, stuttering boy began to adapt. 

By the end of the fourth week, Izuku wasn't staggering under the weight of the forty-five-pound vest. He was walking normally. By the fifth week, he was jogging. 

His body, forced into a state of constant survival, began to change. The soft, baby fat of his youth melted away, replaced by lean, dense, wire-cord muscle. He wasn't bulking up like a bodybuilder; he was compressing. He was building the physique of a gymnast crossed with a long-distance runner—built for endurance, explosive speed, and structural integrity. 

But Lady's physical conditioning was only half the battle. The harder part was breaking his mind. 

  

It happened during the second month, on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon in the junkyard. 

"Hand-to-hand basics," Lady announced, tossing a pair of heavy, padded sparring gloves at his head. Izuku caught them clumsily. Lady wasn't wearing gloves. Her hands were wrapped in athletic tape. 

"Trish is the martial arts expert," Lady said, bouncing lightly on her toes, her fists raised in a loose, unorthodox guard. "She'll teach you how to look good doing it. I'm going to teach you how to not die doing it. Come at me."

Izuku swallowed hard. He put on the gloves and raised his fists, adopting a standard boxing stance he had seen on television. He stepped forward, telegraphing a right hook. 

Lady didn't block it. She simply wasn't there. She slipped beneath his arm, grabbed him by the belt of his sweatpants, and effortlessly hurled him over her hip. Izuku slammed onto his back in the dirt, the wind knocked out of his lungs. 

"Terrible," Lady sneered, standing over him. "You announced your attack with your shoulders, your footwork is incredibly loud, and you're aiming for a clean knockout. Get up."

Izuku scrambled up, coughing. He tried again. This time he feinted with his left and threw a right cross. 

Lady parried it with an open palm, stepped inside his guard, and drove her knee squarely into his stomach. Izuku folded in half, dry-heaving. 

"You're fighting like a Pro Hero, Midoriya," Lady sighed, sounding genuinely disappointed. "You're fighting like there's a camera crew watching and a referee waiting to call a foul. You're trying to be noble."

Izuku gasped for air, clutching his stomach. "Isn't... isn't fighting fair... the right thing to do?"

Lady's eyes darkened. She stepped forward, grabbed Izuku by the collar, and hauled him to his feet. 

"Fair?" she hissed, her voice venomous. "Let me tell you about 'fair.' When I was your age, I watched my father sacrifice my mother to gain demonic power. Do you think that was fair? Do you think the demons that rip families apart in the dead of night care about Marquis of Queensberry rules?"

Izuku stared at her, wide-eyed, the air freezing in his lungs. He had never heard her speak about her past. The raw, jagged pain in her voice was terrifying.

Lady shoved him backward. "Heroes fight fair because they have the luxury of overwhelming power. They have Quirks that let them control fire, ice, and gravity. You don't. You have a pair of scuffed shoes and a brain. If you fight fair against a creature that is ten times stronger than you and wants to eat your heart, you will die. Honor gets you killed. Pragmatism keeps you breathing."

She walked back to her starting position. "Now. Come at me again. And this time, act like I'm trying to kill you. Act like you want to survive."

Izuku wiped the dirt from his mouth. His analytical mind began to race. She's faster than me. She's stronger than me. I can't out-punch her. I have to change the variables. I have to break the rules.

He raised his fists. But this time, his eyes weren't locked on her face. They were scanning the environment. 

He charged. Lady braced for another punch, preparing to counter. 

But Izuku didn't punch. At the last second, he dropped his center of gravity, sliding into the dirt like a baseball player stealing second base. His hand scooped up a massive handful of loose, dry dust and gravel. 

He whipped his arm up, hurling the dirt directly into Lady's face. 

Lady flinched, her eyes snapping shut instinctively, her hands coming up to shield her face. "Gah—!"

It was a window of half a second. 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He launched himself upward from the slide, driving his shoulder squarely into her midsection, wrapping his arms around her waist, and using his momentum to tackle her to the ground. 

They hit the dirt in a tangle of limbs. Izuku instantly scrambled up, raising his padded fist, hovering it an inch above her face. He was panting heavily, his heart pounding in his ears. 

Lady lay on her back, blinking the dust out of her eyes. She looked at his fist hovering over her face. She looked at the dirt smeared across her shirt. 

For a terrifying second, Izuku thought she was going to pull out her gun and shoot him for real. 

Instead, a slow, predatory grin spread across Lady's face. She let out a sharp bark of laughter. 

"Pocket sand," Lady chuckled, wiping her eyes. "A classic. Beautiful execution, kid. You broke my line of sight, utilized the environment, and followed through with a takedown."

She sat up, dusting herself off, looking at him with genuine approval. 

"That is how a Devil Hunter fights, Midoriya. You bite, you scratch, you throw dirt, you aim for the eyes, the throat, and the groin. If you find yourself in a fair fight, it means your tactics suck. Never fight fair. Understand?"

Izuku lowered his fist, a fierce, burning pride welling up in his chest. For the first time in his life, he hadn't just survived an encounter; he had won. 

"I understand," Izuku said, his voice steady. 

  

Back home, keeping his double life a secret was becoming a Herculean task. 

Inko Midoriya was a perceptive woman. She noticed that her son was leaving the house before the sun came up and returning just in time to shower before school. She noticed that his oversized clothes were starting to fit tighter across the shoulders. 

And she definitely noticed the grocery bills. 

"Izuku, honey," Inko said one evening, standing in the kitchen, holding a massive, empty rice cooker. "That was your fifth bowl of katsudon. And you ate an entire carton of eggs for breakfast. Are you... are you having a growth spurt?"

Izuku froze, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. "Uh... yeah! Yes, Mom. Just... growing boy stuff!"

Inko walked over, her brow furrowed in maternal concern. She reached out and gently squeezed his upper arm. Her eyes widened. Beneath the fabric of his long-sleeved shirt, his arm felt like carved wood. 

"Izuku," Inko said slowly. "What have you been doing?"

Izuku’s mind raced. He couldn't tell her about the demons. He couldn't tell her about the forty-five-pound vest, or Lady throwing him off roofs, or Trish teaching him how to dislocate joints. 

"I joined a gym," Izuku lied, looking her straight in the eye with a practiced, calm demeanor he had learned from Lady. "A... a really intense cross-training gym. In the warehouse district. The trainers are really strict, but they're helping me get in shape for the U.A. Entrance Exam."

Inko’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes welling with tears. But this time, they weren't tears of sorrow for her Quirkless son. They were tears of overwhelming relief. 

For the last year, she had watched Izuku wilt like a dying flower. She had seen the depression, the self-loathing, the hollow look in his eyes every time a hero was mentioned on TV. 

But looking at him now, he was different. The perpetual slouch was gone. He sat straight-backed. His green eyes were bright, focused, and thrumming with a quiet, intense confidence. He looked healthy. He looked alive. 

"Oh, Izuku," Inko sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck. "I'm so proud of you! I was so worried about you, but look at you! You're working so hard!"

Izuku hugged her back, feeling a twinge of guilt for the lie, but knowing it was necessary. "Thanks, Mom. I promise... I'm going to pass that exam."

I'll pass it, Izuku thought, staring at the wall over her shoulder. But not the way anyone expects.

  

The physical transformation was only half of Izuku's value to the Devil May Cry branch. His true worth became apparent at the desk. 

Between bouts of vomiting from exhaustion and icing his bruised ribs, Izuku sat at the massive oak desk in the office, surrounded by mountains of paperwork. 

He applied the same hyper-obsessive, analytical zeal he used for Quirk analysis to Japanese corporate law, tax codes, and import regulations. 

"Okay, Lady, look at this," Izuku said one afternoon during month two. He was wearing his reading glasses, pointing a pen at a complex spreadsheet on his laptop screen. Lady and Trish were leaning over his shoulders, staring at the numbers like they were an alien language. 

"You've been classifying the purchase of heavy ordinance from the stateside branch as 'Private Military Expenditure,' which subjects it to a massive 40% import tariff under the Hero Commission's vigilante suppression laws," Izuku explained rapidly, tapping the screen. 

"Because that's what it is," Lady grunted. "Guns and rockets."

"Yes, but..." Izuku smirked, a very Trish-like expression. "If we reclassify the Devil May Cry Japan Branch not as a private military firm, but as a 'Pest Control and Demolition Consultancy'..."

Trish gasped dramatically. "Oh, my god. He's a genius."

"...then Kalina Ann's rockets can be legally classified as 'Specialized Demolition Charges,' and your handguns can be classified as 'Industrial Pest Abatement Tools,'" Izuku finished, adjusting his glasses. "Which drops the import tariff to 8%. Furthermore, because you frequently destroy abandoned properties during fights, we can claim 'Hazardous Urban Renewal Deductions' under municipal code 402B. I just saved you roughly two million yen in back taxes and future imports."

Silence reigned in the office. 

Lady stared at the spreadsheet. Then she stared at Izuku. 

Slowly, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a thick wad of yen, peeled off a ten-thousand-yen bill, and slammed it onto his forehead. 

"Buy yourself something nice, accountant," Lady said, her voice filled with profound reverence. "You just earned your keep for the rest of the year."

Trish ruffled his green hair affectionately. "I told you keeping the puppy was a good idea, Mary."

  

The climax of Izuku's first three months of training arrived without warning. 

It was a Friday night. Month three was drawing to a close. Izuku had arrived at the office expecting the usual routine: ledger review, heavy lifting, and getting thrown into the dirt by Lady. 

Instead, Lady tossed him a black duffel bag. 

"Gear up," Lady said. She was fully decked out in her hunting attire—the white shirt, the heavy boots, and her holsters loaded with sidearms. She wasn't carrying Kalina Ann, however. She was carrying a pump-action shotgun. 

"Where are we going?" Izuku asked, catching the bag. It was heavy. 

"Field trip," Lady replied tersely. "Sector 4. Abandoned textile factory."

Izuku’s heart spiked. "A hunt? Are there demons? Am I... am I supposed to watch?"

"You're not watching," Lady said, walking out the door. "You're participating. Sort of."

Trish was waiting outside, leaning against the side of a rusted, nondescript black van. She tossed Lady the keys. "Have fun, you two. Try not to break all his bones, Mary. I need him intact for next month's combat training."

Lady grunted, getting into the driver's seat. Izuku scrambled into the passenger side, clutching the duffel bag to his chest. 

The drive to Sector 4 was tense and silent. The area was a sprawling graveyard of industrial decay on the outskirts of Musutafu. The factory was a massive, hulking silhouette of shattered windows, rusted steel beams, and collapsed roofing, illuminated only by the pale moonlight. 

Lady parked the van a block away. She killed the engine and turned to Izuku. 

"Open the bag."

Izuku unzipped the duffel. Inside was his standard forty-five-pound weighted vest, a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves, and a climbing harness with a fifty-foot spool of high-tensile wire and a carabiner. 

But what caught his eye was a smaller, padded box. He opened it. 

Inside was a paintball gun. It was heavily modified, stripped of its brightly colored casing, painted matte black, and modeled to feel exactly like a real submachine gun. Next to it were three magazines filled with bright neon pink paintballs. 

"I don't understand," Izuku said, looking up. 

Lady racked the pump of her shotgun. The metallic clack-clack echoed loudly in the cab of the van. 

"My shotgun is loaded with high-velocity rubber slugs," Lady said calmly. "They are non-lethal. However, if I shoot you with one, it will crack your ribs, break your skin, and hurt more than anything you have ever experienced in your life."

Izuku swallowed, his mouth suddenly completely dry. "Okay..."

"Your objective," Lady pointed a finger at the sprawling, multi-level nightmare of the abandoned factory, "is to reach the roof of that main building. You will put on the weighted vest. You will take the paintball gun. You have three magazines."

She checked her watch. 

"I am going to enter the factory first. I will give you a five-minute head start. Once five minutes are up, I am going to hunt you."

Izuku stared at her in absolute horror. "You're... you're hunting me?"

"I am the demon," Lady stated, her eyes utterly devoid of warmth. "I am faster than you. I am a better shot than you. If you try to fight me head-on, I will shoot you. If you panic and freeze, I will shoot you. If I see you at all, I will shoot you."

She leaned in close. "You have two ways to win, Midoriya. Reach the roof before I catch you. Or, hit me with a single pink paintball. Just one. Do either of those things, and you pass Phase One of your training."

Lady opened the van door and stepped out into the night. "Five minutes, kid. Better start running."

She vanished into the shadows. 

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded Izuku's veins. He had exactly three hundred seconds. 

He didn't freeze. The training kicked in. His hands moved automatically, stripping off his jacket, strapping on the heavy weighted vest, snapping the climbing harness around his waist, and grabbing the modified paintball gun. 

He checked the magazine, clicked it into place, and bolted out of the van. 

The factory was a labyrinth of rust, debris, and suffocating darkness. The moonlight barely penetrated the shattered skylights, casting jagged, terrifying shadows across the factory floor. The air smelled of mold and old oil. 

Izuku hit the ground running. His weighted vest pressed against his chest, but his legs, hardened by three months of agony, carried the weight with a powerful, driving stride. 

Think, he commanded his racing heart. Think like a Hunter.

She expects me to run straight for the stairs to get to the roof. It's the most direct route. That means she'll cut off the stairwells. I have to find an alternate route up. The elevator shafts? No, too enclosed. If she catches me in there, I have nowhere to dodge.

He looked up. The factory floor was crisscrossed with massive steel catwalks, suspended three stories in the air. Many of them were broken, hanging by rusted cables. 

Verticality, Izuku thought. I need to use the wire.

He ducked behind a massive industrial lathe, his breathing shallow and controlled. He checked his watch. 

Four minutes and thirty seconds left of his head start. 

Izuku moved silently, placing his feet carefully to avoid crunching glass. He needed a trap. If he just ran, she would eventually catch him. She was a professional tracker. He couldn't outrun her, but maybe he could outsmart her. 

He unspooled a length of wire from his harness. He tied one end to a heavy, discarded metal pipe resting near a doorway leading to the main factory floor. He ran the wire across the floor, looping it around a support pillar, and held the other end. 

He waited. 

The silence of the factory was deafening. Every drop of water, every gust of wind rustling the metal siding sounded like a gunshot. 

Five minutes.

"Ready or not, kid," Lady's voice echoed through the cavernous space. It didn't sound like it was coming from one direction; it bounced off the walls, designed to disorient him. "The monster is loose."

Izuku pressed his back against the cold steel of the lathe. 

Clack-clack.

The sound of the shotgun racking was terrifying. 

Footsteps. Soft, rhythmic, heavy-booted footsteps. They were approaching his sector. She wasn't running. She was stalking. 

Izuku peeked around the corner of the machine. He saw her silhouette moving through the shadows, shotgun raised, her eyes scanning the darkness. She was moving toward the doorway where he had set his trap. 

Wait for it, Izuku thought, his finger tightening on the wire. Wait for the fulcrum point.

Lady stepped through the doorway. 

Izuku yanked the wire with all his might. 

The heavy metal pipe, pulled off-balance, came crashing down from its perch above the doorframe, falling directly toward Lady's head. 

It was a perfect ambush. 

And she didn't even flinch. 

Without looking up, Lady smoothly side-stepped the falling pipe. It crashed into the concrete floor exactly where she had been standing a millisecond before. 

Instantly, her shotgun swiveled toward the pillar where the wire originated. She didn't hesitate. She fired. 

BANG!

The rubber slug struck the concrete pillar, sending a shower of pulverized dust and stone shrapnel over Izuku. The impact sounded like a bomb going off. 

"Nice try with the kinetic trap!" Lady yelled, racking the shotgun again. "But demons have peripheral vision! You need a faster trigger!"

Izuku didn't wait. The moment she fired, he abandoned his cover. He sprinted toward the wall. 

"There you are," Lady said, her voice terrifyingly calm. 

She fired again. The rubber slug whistled past Izuku's ear, so close he felt the wind of its passage, smashing into the wall ahead of him. 

Izuku didn't flinch. He hit the wall with his leading foot, using the momentum of his sprint to run two steps up the vertical surface—a perfect wall-run. He pushed off, back-flipping over a rusted conveyor belt, landing in a roll on the other side just as a third slug shredded the conveyor belt where his torso had been. 

He was moving faster than he ever had in his life. The forty-five-pound vest felt like a second skin. His brain was processing trajectory, angles, and cover in real-time. 

He scrambled up a pile of stacked crates, firing his paintball gun blindly behind him to force Lady into cover. 

Thwip-thwip-thwip!

The neon pink paintballs splattered against the machinery near her. Lady ducked, allowing Izuku the precious second he needed. 

He reached the top of the crates. The broken catwalk was fifteen feet above him. 

He unclipped the carabiner from his harness, aimed, and threw it with precision born of a thousand failed attempts in the junkyard. The carabiner hooked securely onto the rusted steel railing of the catwalk above. 

Izuku didn't pause to check the knot. He leaped off the crates, trusting the gear. 

He swung through the air like a pendulum, his stomach dropping. Below him, Lady stepped out from cover, tracking his swing with the shotgun. 

"Too slow in the air, kid!" she yelled. 

Izuku swung his body weight violently to the side, altering his trajectory mid-air. Lady fired. The slug grazed the heavy canvas of his weight vest, the sheer kinetic force of the grazing hit spinning him like a top in the air. It felt like he had been punched in the ribs by a heavyweight boxer. 

He gritted his teeth against the pain, letting go of the wire at the apex of his swing. He flew over the railing, crashing hard onto the rusted metal grating of the catwalk. 

He rolled to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his side, and began sprinting down the catwalk toward the roof access ladder at the far end of the factory. 

He could hear Lady below, rapidly scaling the support beams with terrifying agility. She was climbing like a predator. 

Izuku reached the end of the catwalk. The roof access ladder was ten feet away, separated by a massive gap where the catwalk had collapsed. 

Below him, Lady crested the edge of the catwalk, racking her shotgun. 

"End of the line, Midoriya!" 

Izuku looked at the gap. He looked down at Lady. 

He didn't have time to use the wire. If he jumped, he would be a sitting duck in mid-air. 

Never fight fair, Lady's voice echoed in his head. Use the environment.

Izuku looked down at his feet. The metal grating of the catwalk was rusted, held together by corroded bolts. 

Izuku didn't raise his paintball gun. Instead, he unlatched the heavy canvas weighted vest from his chest. 

Lady raised her shotgun, aiming center mass. 

With a primal scream, Izuku hurled the forty-five-pound vest straight down at the corroded section of the catwalk between him and Lady. 

The heavy vest smashed into the weakened grating with the force of a wrecking ball. The rusted bolts sheared off with a screech of tearing metal. 

The entire ten-foot section of the catwalk collapsed, plummeting toward the factory floor in an avalanche of twisted steel and dust. 

Lady, caught entirely by surprise as the floor in front of her vanished, had to throw herself backward to avoid falling with it. Her shotgun shot went wild, blasting a hole in the ceiling. 

Izuku didn't wait to watch the carnage. Free of the forty-five pounds, he felt like he could fly. He took a running start, leapt across the newly widened gap, caught the rungs of the access ladder with both hands, and scrambled up with frantic, desperate speed. 

He hit the heavy metal door, shoved it open, and spilled out onto the roof. 

The cool night air hit him like a physical blow. The city lights of Musutafu glittered in the distance, a beautiful, stark contrast to the dark nightmare of the factory. 

Izuku lay on his back on the gravel roof, staring up at the stars, his chest heaving, his muscles burning with lactic acid, his ribs throbbing where the slug had grazed him. 

He had done it. He had reached the roof. 

A moment later, the roof access door slowly creaked open. 

Lady stepped out. She was covered in dust, her hair was a mess, and she looked thoroughly annoyed. She carried the shotgun resting casually over her shoulder. 

She walked over to where Izuku lay panting on the ground. She looked down at him. 

"You dropped my training vest down a three-story shaft," Lady said flatly. 

Izuku gulped, trying to catch his breath. "Y-You... you said use the environment. It was... heavy."

Lady stared at him for a long, agonizing moment. Her mismatched eyes were unreadable in the moonlight. 

Then, she let out a long sigh, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a single neon pink paintball. 

She tossed it onto his chest. 

"You passed Phase One," Lady said, a faint, genuine smile touching the corners of her mouth. "You're not completely useless anymore, kid."

Izuku picked up the paintball, his fingers trembling. A wave of profound, exhausting relief washed over him. He started to laugh. It was a breathless, crazy laugh. 

"Get up," Lady commanded, turning toward the edge of the roof. "We're going to get pizza. And you're paying for it with your tax-deduction bonus."

Izuku sat up. He looked at his hands. They were calloused, scraped, and wrapped in tape. He touched his ribs, feeling the bruise forming. 

He wasn't a hero. He didn't have a Quirk. 

But as he stood up on that roof, looking out over the city he was learning to protect from the shadows, Izuku Midoriya realized something far more important. 

He was dangerous. 

"Coming, Lady," Izuku smiled, his green eyes flashing in the dark. 

Phase One was over. Bring on Phase Two.