What If Betrayed Deku Was Trained by Darth Vader

 

 

 

 

The cold metal of the quirk-suppressing cuffs bit into Izuku Midoriya’s wrists, but the physical discomfort was nothing compared to the suffocating silence of the hallway.

 

He was being marched down the sterile, brightly lit corridors of U.A. High School. On his left was Hound Dog, the usually boisterous guidance counselor now radiating a low, feral growl, his hackles raised. On his right was Shota Aizawa.

 

Eraserhead was not looking at him. That was what terrified Izuku the most.

 

"Mr. Aizawa?" Izuku’s voice was a fragile, trembling thing. It echoed off the lockers—the same lockers where he and his friends had laughed just yesterday. "Sir, please, what's going on? Did a villain attack? Is someone hurt?"

 

Aizawa didn’t flinch. His eyes remained fixed forward, his posture rigid. The capture scarf around his neck seemed wound tighter than usual. When he finally spoke, his voice was utterly devoid of the gruff, underlying affection Izuku had come to rely on. It was a voice carved from ice.

 

"Keep walking, Midoriya. Save it for the Principal."

 

Midoriya. Not ‘Problem Child.’ The formality struck Izuku like a physical blow. A cold dread began to pool in his stomach, heavy and toxic. He tried to search his memory. Had he broken a rule? Had he used his quirk without permission? He had been sleeping in his dorm room when the door was kicked open by the Hound Dog and Ectoplasm, dragging him from his bed before he could even process the intrusion.

 

They reached the heavy oak doors of Principal Nezu’s office. Aizawa pushed them open, and the atmosphere inside hit Izuku like a shockwave.

 

The room was dimly lit, the blinds drawn shut against the afternoon sun. Behind the large mahogany desk sat Principal Nezu. His usually cheerful, beady eyes were dark, unreadable pools. Flanking the desk were towering figures that made Izuku’s breath hitch: Naomasa Tsukauchi, the lead detective of the police force; the President of the Hero Public Safety Commission, an imposing woman with a gaze sharper than a hawk’s; and standing in the corner, enveloped in shadows... All Might.

 

"All Might!" Izuku gasped, a surge of relief flooding his chest. He took a step toward his mentor, his idol, the man who had given him everything. "All Might, what's happening? Why am I in cuffs?"

 

Toshinori Yagi did not move. He stood in his deflated, skeletal form, wearing an oversized yellow suit that suddenly looked more like a shroud. He slowly turned his head away, staring at the floor. He couldn't even look Izuku in the eye.

 

Izuku’s relief shattered, instantly replaced by a blinding panic. "All Might...?"

 

"Sit down, Midoriya," Nezu ordered. It was not a request.

 

Aizawa shoved Izuku roughly into the single wooden chair positioned in the center of the room. Izuku swallowed hard, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

 

"We are going to make this as brief as the law allows," the Commission President began, her voice dripping with bureaucratic disdain. She pressed a button on a remote, and a holographic projector flared to life in the center of the desk. "For the past seventy-two hours, a joint task force between the Commission and the police has been analyzing a series of heavily encrypted data drives recovered from a raid on a League of Villains safe house."

 

Izuku stared at her, uncomprehending. "O-Okay? That's good, right?"

 

"We managed to crack the encryption," Detective Tsukauchi said, his voice heavy with sorrow. He looked at Izuku as if looking at a ghost. "Izuku... I never wanted to believe it. Even when the cipher translated, I argued against it. But the evidence..."

 

"What evidence?" Izuku pleaded, looking frantically between the adults. "Evidence of what?"

 

"Play the file," Nezu said softly.

 

The hologram flickered, displaying a grainy, low-light video feed. It looked like the interior of an abandoned warehouse. In the center of the frame stood a figure.

 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat.

 

It was him.

 

The boy on the screen wore his U.A. uniform, the tie slightly loose, his messy green hair falling over his eyes. He was holding a small, silver flash drive. A moment later, a second figure stepped into the frame from the shadows—Dabi, the blue-flame villain from the Vanguard Action Squad.

 

"You got it?" the Dabi on the screen asked, his voice a lazy drawl.

 

"It wasn't easy," the Izuku on the screen replied. His voice was perfect. The nervous stutter was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating tone that made the real Izuku physically nauseous. "The patrol routes for the U.S.J., the architectural weak points of the training camp, and the security grid for Kamino Ward. It's all here."

 

"Good boy," Dabi sneered, taking the drive. "Shigaraki sends his regards. The boss is pleased with your progress, Midoriya. The heroes won't know what hit them."

 

"Just make sure my mother is kept out of it," the on-screen Izuku said, his eyes narrowing. "That was our deal."

 

The video cut out.

 

Silence descended upon the room, thick and suffocating. Izuku sat paralyzed, his brain short-circuiting as he stared at the space where the hologram had been.

 

"That... that's not me," Izuku whispered. He looked up, his green eyes wide and frantic. "That's not me! It's a fake! It's Toga! She has my blood from the training camp! She must have transformed into me—!"

 

"We thought of that," Aizawa interrupted, his voice lashing out like his binding cloth. "We tested the biometric data of the video. The micro-expressions, the vocal cadence, the skeletal alignment. It matches you flawlessly, Midoriya. Toga's transformations are perfect on a macroscopic level, but psychological profiling shows she cannot perfectly mimic the cold rationality displayed in this and the other six videos we found."

 

"Other six?!" Izuku cried out, straining against his cuffs. "You can't be serious! Mr. Aizawa, you know me! I break my bones to save people! Why would I sell you out to the League?!"

 

"Because you were playing a long game," the Commission President stated coldly. She tossed a thick manila folder onto the desk. "Bank statements routed through dummy corporations in Hosu. Six million yen deposited into an offshore account under your mother’s maiden name. Chat logs traced back to the IP address in your dorm room. You’ve been feeding them information since before the U.S.J. attack."

 

"No! No, I haven't!" Tears finally spilled over Izuku's cheeks. He turned to the detective. "Tsukauchi! Your quirk! Use your quirk! Ask me if I'm a traitor!"

 

Tsukauchi looked down, gripping the edge of the desk. "My quirk detects intentional deception, Izuku. But the Commission brought in a telepathic specialist this morning. They scanned your brainwaves while you slept. The specialist found deep, repressed blocks of trauma and memory suppression. They concluded you've undergone conditioning by All For One to forget your own treason when you aren't actively engaging in it, to bypass polygraphs and truth quirks."

 

Izuku felt the world tilting on its axis. The League hadn't just framed him; they had built a labyrinth of lies so deep, so intricate, that they had weaponized the heroes' own logic against him. The deep-fakes, the planted bank accounts, the spoofed IP addresses... it was a masterclass in character assassination.

 

"It's a lie," Izuku sobbed, the fight draining out of him as the sheer weight of the conspiracy crushed him. He looked desperately to the corner of the room. "All Might... Please. You know my heart. You gave me..." He stopped himself, glancing at the Commission President, remembering the secret of One For All. "You know me. Please."

 

Toshinori finally stepped forward. The shadows clung to his sunken eyes. The man who had once been the Symbol of Peace looked like a hollow, broken shell.

 

"I thought I knew you, Young Midoriya," Toshinori said, his voice trembling—not with anger, but with an agonizing, unfathomable grief. "I looked at you and saw the greatest hero the world had ever known. But the evidence... The blood of the students injured at U.S.J., the blood of the heroes who fell at Kamino... Sir Nighteye..." Toshinori choked on the name. "It's on your hands."

 

"I didn't do it!" Izuku screamed, his voice tearing his throat. "I swear on my life, I didn't do it!"

 

"Enough," Nezu said softly. "Izuku Midoriya. Under the emergency wartime protocols enacted by the Hero Public Safety Commission, your hero license is hereby revoked. You are expelled from U.A. High School. Due to the catastrophic threat you pose, you will bypass a civilian trial and be remanded immediately to Tartarus."

 

Tartarus.

 

The name rang in Izuku's ears like a death knell. The inescapable prison. The darkest pit on Earth, reserved for monsters like All For One and the Hero Killer.

 

"Before you are transported," Aizawa said, stepping behind Izuku and grabbing him by the collar, hoisting him to his feet, "the Commission has decided it is necessary to sever your ties completely. To prevent any of your classmates from becoming radicalized or sympathizing with a traitor."

 

"What are you doing?" Izuku gasped as Aizawa shoved him toward the door. "Where are you taking me?"

 

"To the dorms," Aizawa said grimly. "To face your victims."

 

 

 

The common room of Heights Alliance was dead silent.

 

Class 1-A was gathered in a semicircle. They were all in their uniforms, standing stiffly. As Aizawa marched Izuku into the room, handcuffed and weeping, the reactions were immediate and devastating.

 

Izuku looked at his friends—his family. The people he had bled for.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stood at the front, his hands trembling with suppressed explosions, his red eyes wide with a manic, furious disbelief. Next to him, Shoto Todoroki’s face was an emotionless mask, though frost crept rapidly down his right side, freezing the carpet. Tenya Iida stood at attention, tears streaming down his face from behind his glasses, his jaw clenched so hard it looked ready to break.

 

And Ochaco Uraraka... She had her hands over her mouth, sobbing violently into Mina Ashido’s shoulder.

 

"Guys..." Izuku rasped, his knees threatening to buckle. "Guys, please, it's a mistake. The League framed me. You have to believe me."

 

"Believe you?"

 

The voice was a low, dangerous snarl. Bakugo stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Aizawa didn't stop him. Bakugo grabbed Izuku by the front of his shirt, lifting him slightly onto his toes. The smell of caramel and nitroglycerin was overpowering.

 

"You looked down on me," Bakugo hissed, his voice vibrating with absolute fury and a bizarre, twisted heartbreak. "All this time. You played the stuttering, useless Deku, pretending you were trying to catch up to me, while you were feeding us to those monsters? You set us up at the U.S.J.? You let them take me at the training camp?!"

 

"Kacchan, no! I nearly died trying to save you!"

 

"YOU LIED TO ME!" Bakugo roared, a small explosion popping off his palm and singeing Izuku’s collar. Bakugo threw Izuku backward. Izuku stumbled, falling hard onto the wooden floor.

 

He looked up, searching for a lifeline. "Uraraka... please."

 

Ochaco looked at him, her large brown eyes red and swollen. She looked at him not with the warmth he had cherished since the entrance exam, but with a profound, terrifying fear. As if she were looking at a stranger wearing the skin of her best friend.

 

"You... you knew they were coming to the camp," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Pixie-Bob almost died. Mr. Aizawa almost died. How could you smile with us, Deku? How could you?" She turned her back to him, burying her face in her hands.

 

Izuku felt something inside his chest snap. It wasn't a physical break, but a spiritual one. The tether that connected him to humanity, to heroism, to the light—it snapped, recoiling violently into the depths of his soul.

 

"Iida?" Izuku begged, his voice a pathetic, broken wheeze.

 

Iida adjusted his glasses, his eyes cold. "As Class Representative, I deeply apologize for my failure to see the villain lurking in our midst. You have disgraced the name of heroes, Midoriya. Do not speak to me."

 

One by one, they turned away. Tsuyu wouldn't look at him. Kirishima was crying silently, staring at the floor. Momo looked physically ill. They had been shown the evidence before he arrived. The Commission had laid out the flawless, irrefutable tapestry of lies, and his friends had bought it. The seeds of doubt, planted by his sudden acquisition of a powerful quirk, his mysterious meetings with All Might, his reckless, suicidal behavior... it had all been recontextualized into the actions of a fanatic villain.

 

"Let's go," Aizawa said, grabbing Izuku by the arm and hauling him up.

 

As Izuku was dragged out of the dorms, he looked back one last time. Bakugo was staring at him, his face a mask of absolute hatred.

 

The doors closed, sealing away the light.

 

 

 

Before the armored transport arrived, Izuku was thrown into a small, steel-walled holding room in the basement of U.A.

 

A few minutes later, the door hissed open, and Toshinori stepped inside. He locked the door behind him. The skeletal man leaned against the wall, coughing violently into a handkerchief, pulling it away to reveal a splatter of blood.

 

Izuku sat on the metal bench, his eyes vacant, staring at his chained hands.

 

"They're sending me to Tartarus," Izuku said, his voice devoid of emotion. It was dead. Flat.

 

"Yes," Toshinori said. He walked slowly over to the boy. He didn't offer comfort. He didn't offer a hand. He looked down at Izuku like a man looking at a failed, dangerous experiment.

 

"I didn't do it, All Might."

 

"Stop lying, Midoriya," Toshinori snapped, a sudden, uncharacteristic flash of anger crossing his gaunt face. "The evidence is absolute. Tsukauchi's quirk aside, the Commission's telepath saw the psychic scarring. You were compromised. Perhaps from the very beginning. I... I was a fool."

 

Toshinori sank down onto the bench opposite Izuku, burying his face in his hands. "I was blinded by your desperation. I saw myself in you. But I was wrong. I gave the sacred torch of One For All to a boy whose soul belonged to the darkness."

 

Izuku slowly looked up. The words hit him harder than any blow from Muscular or Overhaul. "You... you think I belong to the darkness?"

 

"You betrayed everything this power stands for," Toshinori said, looking up, his blue eyes cold and hard. "Nana Shimura died for this power. My master. I sacrificed my stomach, my lungs, my life for this power. To keep the world safe from men like All For One. And you sold it to his successor."

 

Toshinori held out his hand. His fingers were trembling.

 

"Give it back."

 

Izuku stared at the outstretched hand. "What?"

 

"One For All," Toshinori commanded, his voice echoing with the authority of the former Number One. "It is a quirk that can be transferred by will. Give it back to me. Now. I will not let you take the legacy of the First into a prison cell. I will find a true successor. Give me a strand of hair."

 

A deep, agonizing pain flared in Izuku’s chest. It was the ultimate rejection. To be stripped of his dream, his friends, his freedom, and now, the very soul that had made him a hero.

 

Izuku slowly raised his handcuffed hands. He reached up toward his messy green hair. He pinched a strand between his fingers and pulled.

 

He held the hair out toward All Might.

 

But as Toshinori reached to take it, something impossible happened.

 

Inside the vestige realm of One For All, chaos erupted. The predecessors, who had watched the tragedy unfold in paralyzed horror, rebelled. They knew the truth. They lived inside Izuku’s soul; they knew its purity, its innocent desperation to save others. They saw the lies of the society that was condemning him.

 

Green lightning—the familiar, comforting spark of Full Cowl—suddenly violently flared around Izuku's arm. But it wasn't just green. Faint, jagged streaks of crimson crackled within the emerald energy.

 

The hair in Izuku's hand instantly incinerated, turning to ash before Toshinori could touch it.

 

Izuku gasped, clutching his chest as a searing heat burned through his veins. The Vestiges were locking the quirk down. They were refusing to leave him. But more than that... they were reacting to the sudden, terrifying shift in Izuku’s own emotional state.

 

"What are you doing?!" Toshinori yelled, stepping back, horrified by the red sparks mingling with the sacred green power.

 

"I... I didn't..." Izuku choked, staring at his hands.

 

Toshinori’s face hardened into a mask of pure disgust. "You refuse. You've corrupted it so deeply that you won't even surrender it. So be it."

 

Toshinori turned toward the door.

 

"Wait," Izuku cried out, sliding off the bench onto his knees, the chains rattling loudly. "Please! Don't leave me! You said you'd be my guide! You said I could be a hero!"

 

Toshinori stopped at the door. He didn't turn around.

 

"You were a mistake, Izuku Midoriya. My greatest failure. Take those embers into the dark and let them die."

 

The heavy steel door slammed shut, the lock engaging with a sickening clack.

 

Izuku was alone.

 

He knelt on the cold floor, his head bowed. For an hour, he simply wept. He wept for his mother, who would have to watch the news and see her son labeled a monster. He wept for Uraraka, for Iida, for Bakugo. He wept for the dream of being a hero, crushed under the boot of a society that cared more for airtight evidence than it did for the truth of a boy’s heart.

 

But eventually, the tears stopped.

 

Because as the moisture dried on his cheeks, the crushing weight of grief began to rot. It began to curdle in the pit of his stomach.

 

They had not even given him a trial. They had bypassed the law. The heroes—the shining paragons of justice—had looked at a few forged videos and a telepath's baseless assumptions, and they had discarded him like trash. All Might, the man who preached about saving everyone with a smile, had looked him in the eye and called him a mistake.

 

A new sensation began to bloom in Izuku's chest. It was hot. It was suffocating.

 

It was absolute, unadulterated hatred.

 

The green sparks around his skin flickered again. But this time, they were swallowed entirely by the jagged, violent crimson lightning.

 

 

 

The transfer to Tartarus was a blur of sensory deprivation.

 

Izuku was placed in a reinforced steel convoy, blindfolded, his ears covered with noise-canceling headphones, and his body strapped to a heavy gurney. He could feel the rumble of the engines, the descent of the helicopter, and then the sickening drop of a high-speed elevator plunging deep into the bowels of the earth.

 

When the blindfold and restraints were finally removed, he was standing in a stark white processing room. Heavily armored guards with rifles aimed at his head ordered him to strip. He was hosed down with freezing water, given an orange jumpsuit, and a heavy, iron collar was clamped around his neck.

 

"Inmate 9430," a guard barked through a helmet speaker. "Move."

 

He was marched down corridors of reinforced glass and black steel. The air was frigid, tasting of copper and sterile chemicals. He saw no other prisoners. The silence was absolute.

 

They reached Sector 4—the lowest, most secure level of Tartarus, suspended above a geothermal abyss. The guards stopped before a massive, solid steel door that bore no windows, only a thick electronic lock.

 

The door hissed open, revealing a cell that was no larger than a closet. A solid metal slab for a bed. A grate in the floor for a toilet. No windows. No lights.

 

"Get in," a guard shoved him.

 

Izuku stumbled into the pitch-black room. Before he could turn around, the heavy steel door slammed shut. The sealing mechanisms engaged with a heavy, final thud.

 

Total darkness.

 

Izuku stood in the blackness. He couldn't see his own hands. He couldn't hear the guards walking away. The isolation was immediate and complete.

 

He crawled forward until his knees hit the metal slab. He curled up on it, pulling his knees to his chest.

 

Days. He didn't know how many passed. Food—a tasteless gray paste—was slid through a slot in the door at random intervals, ruining any sense of time.

 

In the dark, the mind is its own worst enemy. Izuku’s brain replayed the memories in an endless, torturous loop. Uraraka turning her back. Bakugo throwing him to the ground. Aizawa’s icy glare. All Might’s final words.

 

You were a mistake.

 

"I tried," Izuku whispered to the darkness, his voice cracking from disuse. "I broke my body for you. For all of you."

 

He remembered the pain of his arms shattering to save Kota. He remembered the agony of rewriting his own fate to save Eri. He remembered the countless times he had offered up his life on the altar of Hero Society.

 

And for what? To be discarded the moment the illusion of peace was threatened.

 

Hero Society didn't care about truth. They cared about control. They cared about maintaining the status quo. When the League presented them with a convenient scapegoat, the heroes took it eagerly to save face. They were cowards. Hypocrites.

 

"Hypocrites," Izuku hissed.

 

A tremor ran through the dark cell. The iron collar around his neck began to heat up.

 

Izuku closed his eyes, and instead of seeing the smiling face of All Might, he saw flames. He felt a rage so pure, so intoxicating, that it drowned out his sorrow. He didn't want to be a hero anymore. He wanted to tear it all down. He wanted them to feel the agony they had inflicted on him. He wanted to watch the fake pillars of their society crumble into dust.

 

Deep within him, One For All screamed. But the Vestiges were no longer in control. A new power—an ancient, cosmic current that had lain dormant within his bloodline for generations, waiting for a catalyst—awoke.

 

It fed on his pain. It drank his hatred. It was a wellspring of infinite, dark power.

 

Izuku screamed. It was a primal, guttural roar of absolute agony and rage.

 

The red lightning exploded from his body. The quirk-suppressing collar around his neck sparked, short-circuited, and violently shattered into pieces.

 

But Izuku didn't stop. He pushed the red energy outward. From his back, the Blackwhip quirk manifested. But it was no longer the shadowy, ethereal tethers of the fifth user. They erupted as thick, jagged tendrils of pure, solid crimson energy, thrashing wildly against the walls of the cell, gouging deep trenches into the reinforced steel.

 

The sheer force of his hatred rippled outward. It breached the walls of Tartarus. It breached the atmosphere of the planet. It tore through the very fabric of reality, screaming into the void of the multiverse, a siren song of the Dark Side.

 

 

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... or perhaps, simply in a dimension running parallel to the tragedy of heroes and villains.

 

The meditation chamber aboard the Super Star Destroyer Executor was a sphere of sterile white light amidst the oppressive black machinery of the ship. Slowly, the top hemisphere separated with a hiss of pressurized gas, revealing the figure seated within.

 

Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, sat perfectly still.

 

He was not wearing his helmet. The scarred, ruined flesh of Anakin Skywalker was exposed to the conditioned air, a painful reminder of his own failures, his own betrayals.

 

Suddenly, Vader’s eyes snapped open. The pale blue irises instantly bled into a toxic, burning yellow.

 

He gasped, a wet, rattling sound, as a shockwave rippled through the Force. It was not a physical disturbance. It was an emotional one, so massive and violent that it made the bulkheads of the chamber tremble.

 

Vader reached out with his mind, tracing the origin of the tremor.

 

It was distant. Beyond the Outer Rim. Beyond the known galaxy. It was echoing from the World Between Worlds, a tear in the fabric of existence.

 

But what captivated the Dark Lord was not the distance, but the flavor of the anomaly.

 

He tasted betrayal. He felt the crushing weight of a mentor turning his back. He felt the agonizing loss of a woman he loved looking at him with fear. He felt a society built on lies discarding a loyal servant.

 

And then, he felt the rage. A rage so potent it could crack planets.

 

It was a mirror. It was looking into the reflection of Mustafar, into the fires that had birthed Darth Vader.

 

Someone is suffering, the Force whispered to him. Someone has been unmade.

 

Vader reached up, grasping the heavy black dome of his helmet. With mechanical precision, he lowered it onto his collar. The pressure seal hissed, locking into place. The iconic, terrifying mechanical breathing began to cycle.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

He stood up, his massive black cape billowing around him. The dark side swirled around him, eager, hungry.

 

Anakin Skywalker had been betrayed by the Jedi. He had been denied the rank of Master. He had been manipulated by the Republic. He had burned for it.

 

But this nexus of pain... this entity screaming in the void across dimensions... it was raw. Unrefined. A weapon of unparalleled destructive potential, just waiting for a master to forge it.

 

Vader strode out of the meditation chamber, the blast doors parting before him. An Imperial officer stood waiting, trembling slightly at the sight of the Sith Lord.

 

"Lord Vader," the officer stammered. "The Emperor has requested a status report on the Rebel fleet movements near—"

 

"Set a course for the Unknown Regions," Vader commanded, his deep, synthesized voice vibrating through the deck plates. "Prepare my personal shuttle. There is a vergence in the Force. A tear in space."

 

The officer blinked, confused. "My Lord? A vergence? What are we looking for?"

 

Darth Vader paused, looking out the massive viewport into the endless sea of stars. He could hear the distant, echoing scream of the green-haired boy in the dark.

 

"An apprentice," Vader said.

 

The Executor altered its course, preparing to tear a hole in reality.

 

In the darkest pit of Tartarus, a boy wept tears of blood, unaware that true power was coming to set him free.

 

 

 

Tartarus was not a prison; it was a tomb. It was a monument to society’s failures, a subterranean fortress built to bury the monsters that the light of the Pro Heroes could not completely burn away. It extended kilometers beneath the ocean floor, a marvel of modern engineering wrapped in titanium, lead, and the darkest secrets of the Hero Public Safety Commission.

 

Commander Hiroshi Tanaka, head of Tartarus’s Sector 4 Security Detail, walked the catwalks above the cell blocks with a steaming cup of synthetic coffee in his hand. Below him lay the most dangerous individuals on the planet. Men and women whose very existence threatened the fragile illusion of peace that All Might had built.

 

Tanaka checked his datapad. The biometric readouts for the inmates were stable. All For One was in deep sedation, his life support systems humming steadily in the core of Sector 1. Stain, the Hero Killer, was pacing in his cryo-cell in Sector 3.

 

But Tanaka’s eyes lingered on the newest entry at the bottom of the list.

 

Inmate 9430. Midoriya, Izuku. Quirk: Superpower (Classification: S-Rank).

 

Tanaka took a sip of his bitter coffee and sighed. He had been a guard at Tartarus for fifteen years. He had looked into the eyes of serial killers, terrorists, and sociopaths. He knew what a monster looked like. When the heavily armed convoy had brought the kid in three days ago, Tanaka had expected to see a mastermind. He had expected to see the cold, calculating eyes of a traitor who had sold U.A. High School to the League of Villains.

 

Instead, he had seen a broken, weeping child.

 

The boy hadn't fought back. He hadn't threatened anyone. He had just sobbed, his green eyes hollow and vacant, muttering the names of his classmates and All Might like prayers to a god that had abandoned him.

 

But that was three days ago.

 

Over the last forty-eight hours, something had changed. The weeping had stopped. In its place, the sensor arrays outside Cell 4-Omega had begun picking up bizarre, inexplicable energy spikes. The quirk-suppressing collar they had put on the boy had malfunctioned catastrophically yesterday, bursting into fragments of scorched metal. When Tanaka had sent a heavily armored response team to subdue the boy, they had found him curled in the corner of the pitch-black cell, unconscious, radiating a jagged, violent red lightning that made the geiger counters in the guards' armor scream.

 

They had replaced the collar with an even heavier model, pumped the room full of quirk-suppressant gas, and doubled the surveillance. But the temperature in Sector 4 had been dropping ever since. A strange, suffocating pressure had settled over the entire wing, a heavy dread that made Tanaka’s teeth ache and his heart palpitate for no reason.

 

"Commander," a voice crackled over his earpiece. It was Sato, the operator in the central monitoring hub.

 

"Go ahead, Sato," Tanaka replied, leaning against the titanium railing.

 

"We're getting some weird readings on the seismic sensors," Sato said, his voice laced with confusion. "Upper levels. Near the primary airlock."

 

Tanaka frowned. "Seismic? Is it an earthquake? We're on a tectonic fault, it wouldn't be the first time."

 

"Negative, sir. It's not tectonic. It's... localized. Like a massive energy discharge, but it's not registering on the quirk-sensor grid. It’s tearing through the ambient temperature. It's reading absolute zero in Airlock Alpha. Sir, the pressure doors are buckling."

 

Tanaka’s blood ran cold. "Is it an extraction? The League?"

 

"I don't know, sir! The cameras in the airlock just went dead. Wait—what the hell is that?"

 

"Sato? Sato, report!"

 

"Sir, the power grid is fluctuating! The backup generators are being drained! It’s like something is sucking the power right out of the—"

 

Sato’s voice cut out in a burst of violent static.

 

A second later, the unthinkable happened.

 

The lights in Tartarus went out.

 

Not just the overhead fluorescent lights. The emergency floodlights, the holographic displays on the catwalks, the biometric readouts on Tanaka’s datapad—everything died. The low, omnipresent hum of the facility’s massive ventilation and life-support systems spun down into complete, deafening silence.

 

Absolute, suffocating darkness swallowed the underground fortress.

 

"All stations, this is Commander Tanaka!" he yelled into his radio, though the earpiece was dead. The internal comms were hardwired, shielded against EMPs. They shouldn't have been down. Nothing should have been able to shut down Tartarus.

 

From the abyss below, the panicked shouts of other guards began to echo in the blackness. The heavy, pressurized doors of the cell blocks, locked by electromagnets, suddenly groaned as the failsafes triggered, plunging into manual lockdown mode.

 

Then, the emergency red backup flares sputtered to life. They were entirely independent, chemical-based lights lining the floor. They bathed the catwalks in a sinister, blood-red glow, casting long, nightmarish shadows against the steel walls.

 

"Form up!" Tanaka barked, drawing his high-caliber assault rifle. He clicked on his under-barrel flashlight, the beam slicing through the dark. "Squads Three and Four, converge on my position! We have a breach in the upper levels! Lethal force is authorized!"

 

Heavy combat boots pounded against the metal grating as a dozen elite Tartarus guards converged around Tanaka. They were the best of the best, equipped with quirk-canceling munitions, riot shields, and their own formidable combat quirks.

 

"Sir," one of the guards, a man with a mutation quirk that gave him the eyes of an owl, whispered. "I can't hear the blast doors. The upper level... it’s completely silent."

 

"Hold the line," Tanaka ordered, aiming his rifle toward the heavy blast doors that led to the central elevator shaft.

 

For a moment, there was nothing but the nervous breathing of the guards and the dripping of condensation. The silence was so profound it felt heavy, pressing against their eardrums like physical weight.

 

Then, they heard it.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

It was faint at first, echoing down the massive elevator shaft. It was a rhythmic, mechanical sound.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Inhale. Exhale.

 

It did not sound human. It sounded like a machine drawing breath, a cold, synthetic wheeze that carried with it an aura of absolute, inescapable doom.

 

The heavy steel blast doors at the end of the corridor, capable of withstanding point-blank artillery fire, suddenly groaned. The metal began to heat up in a perfectly straight, vertical line.

 

Tanaka watched in paralyzed horror as the line glowed cherry-red, then blinding white. Sparks showered onto the floor.

 

Ssssshhhhh.

 

Something was cutting through the meter-thick titanium as if it were warm butter.

 

"Weapons hot!" Tanaka roared, his voice cracking with terror. "Aim for the breach!"

 

The metal groaned agonizingly, and then, with a deafening screech, the two halves of the massive blast door were violently ripped apart. They didn't slide open; they were telekinetically wrenched off their hinges and thrown aside like pieces of paper, crashing into the walls with enough force to shake the catwalk.

 

Through the ruined doorway, a figure stepped into the red emergency light.

 

It was a towering silhouette, clad entirely in black armor. A massive, sweeping cape trailed behind it, seemingly swallowing the ambient light. The figure wore a fearsome, skull-like helmet, its dark, insectoid lenses reflecting the red chemical flares on the floor.

 

And in its right hand, it held a weapon of pure, crackling crimson light. A blade of contained plasma that hummed with a hungry, aggressive resonance.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

Paaah-kurrr.

 

"Halt!" Tanaka screamed, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Identify yourself! Stand down or we will open fire!"

 

The dark giant did not speak. He did not slow his pace. He simply continued walking down the catwalk toward them, his crimson blade held low at his side.

 

"Fire!" Tanaka commanded.

 

The corridor erupted in a deafening cacophony of gunfire. Dozens of high-caliber armor-piercing rounds, designed to shred through Gigantomachia’s skin, tore through the air toward the intruder.

 

What happened next shattered Tanaka’s understanding of reality.

 

The dark figure didn't dodge. He didn't activate a shield quirk. He simply raised his empty left hand.

 

The bullets stopped in mid-air.

 

Dozens of rounds hung suspended in the space between the guards and the towering intruder, vibrating with kinetic energy, trapped in an invisible, impenetrable wall.

 

Tanaka stopped firing, his eyes wide behind his tactical visor. "What... what is this?"

 

The dark figure clenched his outstretched fist.

 

The bullets violently redirected, firing back at the guards with twice the velocity. Three guards screamed as their own ammunition tore through their body armor, throwing them backward over the railing into the abyss below.

 

"Quirks! Use your quirks!" Tanaka yelled, stepping back.

 

A guard stepped forward, his hands erupting into a torrent of white-hot fire, blasting a stream of inferno down the hallway.

 

Darth Vader continued to walk. As the flames washed over him, he simply parted them with a casual wave of his hand. The Force manipulated the very oxygen in the air, creating a vacuum bubble around him. The flames danced harmlessly off his black armor, illuminating the terrible majesty of the Sith Lord.

 

With a flick of his wrist, Vader reached out through the Force.

 

The fire-wielding guard suddenly choked, his flames dying instantly. He dropped his hands to his throat, his boots lifting off the metal grating. He was suspended in the air, legs kicking wildly, clawing at his neck as an invisible vice crushed his windpipe. A sickening snap echoed over the gunfire, and the guard was tossed aside like a broken doll.

 

"Fall back! Fall back!" Tanaka screamed, firing blindly as he retreated down the corridor.

 

Vader accelerated. He moved with a terrifying, fluid grace that belied his massive, armored frame. He closed the distance in a heartbeat.

 

The crimson lightsaber swung.

 

It was a beautiful, terrible arc of light. It sliced through riot shields, through reinforced Kevlar, through bone and flesh without a whisper of resistance. A guard raised his rifle to block; the plasma blade sheared through the weapon and the man’s chest in a single, fluid motion. Cauterized wounds meant there was no blood, only the sickening smell of burnt ozone and searing meat.

 

Vader became a whirlwind of dark destruction. He did not fight like the villains Tanaka had seen on the news. There was no grandstanding, no maniacal laughter, no wasted movement. There was only the cold, mechanical efficiency of an executioner.

 

A guard with a super-strength quirk charged Vader, swinging a fist that could shatter concrete. Vader didn't even look at him. He simply sidestepped, severed the man’s arm at the shoulder with a flick of his wrist, and then used the Force to shove the screaming man through the reinforced glass of the control room.

 

Within ninety seconds, thirty of Tartarus’s elite guards lay dead or dying.

 

Tanaka was the last one standing. He backed up until his spine hit the solid steel wall at the end of the cell block corridor. His rifle was empty. His hands were shaking so violently he dropped it.

 

The Sith Lord stood before him, the red glow of the lightsaber illuminating the dark lenses of his mask.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

"W-What are you?" Tanaka whispered, tears of absolute terror freezing on his cheeks. "Are you with All For One? The League?"

 

Vader stared down at the trembling man. When he spoke, his voice was a deep, resonant boom that vibrated in Tanaka’s bones. It was a voice devoid of humanity, synthesized and cruel.

 

"I am the architect of your end," Vader stated.

 

Vader raised his lightsaber and plunged it straight through the command console beside Tanaka, destroying the master lock for the cell block. He didn't even bother to kill the Commander. The sheer, dismissive apathy was somehow more terrifying than death. Tanaka slumped against the wall, weeping in terror, as the towering phantom stalked past him, moving deeper into the bowels of Sector 4.

 

He was heading for Cell 4-Omega.

 

 

 

Inside the pitch-black confines of his cell, Izuku Midoriya was drowning.

 

The darkness of the cell was absolute, but the darkness inside his mind was infinitely deeper. He lay curled on the freezing metal floor, shivering uncontrollably.

 

He hadn't slept since he arrived. Every time he closed his eyes, the nightmare looped. Uraraka’s look of disgust. Bakugo’s explosive rage. All Might’s cold, dead eyes as he demanded One For All back.

 

You were a mistake.

 

The words echoed in his skull, overlapping, multiplying, turning into a cacophony of voices.

 

His body was in agony. The new, heavier quirk-suppressing collar around his neck was digging into his skin, injecting a steady stream of chemical depressants into his bloodstream. It was supposed to keep him docile. It was supposed to sever his connection to his quirk.

 

But it wasn't working.

 

Because the power that was currently boiling inside Izuku Midoriya was no longer just a quirk.

 

The Vestige realm of One For All, usually a serene, starlit void where the past users resided, had become a warzone. The predecessors were trapped behind a wall of static and fire. They were screaming, trying to reach him, trying to pull him back from the precipice. But Izuku’s own fractured psyche had locked them out. His pain was too great. His sense of betrayal had formed a psychic scar so deep that it warped the very foundation of the stockpiled power.

 

Instead of the comforting, green light of the predecessors, Izuku felt a cold, ancient current rising from the darkest corners of his soul. It was a power he had never felt before, yet it felt intimately familiar. It felt like standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss and realizing the abyss was a part of him.

 

It fed on his anger. It whispered to him in the dark.

 

They abandoned you, the cold voice hissed in his mind. They used you to fight their wars, and when you became inconvenient, they threw you into the dark to rot.

 

"I did everything right," Izuku whispered to the empty cell, his throat raw. "I smiled. I saved them."

 

And their smiles were lies. Their justice is a pageant. They are weak, bound by their own hypocrisy.

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, his hands balling into fists. He thought of the Commission. He thought of the deep-fake videos. The people who were supposed to find the truth had eagerly accepted a lie because it was easier than facing the reality of their own vulnerability.

 

Hatred, pure and unadulterated, flared in his chest.

 

Suddenly, the heavy chemical depressants in his blood meant nothing. The quirk-suppressing collar beeped frantically.

 

A violent, jagged arc of crimson lightning erupted from Izuku’s skin. It illuminated the tiny cell in flashes of blood-red light. The collar sparked, hissed, and then cracked.

 

Before it could detonate, the power in the cell entirely failed.

 

The omnipresent hum of Tartarus died. The ventilation stopped. The absolute silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.

 

Izuku slowly uncurled, sitting up on the metal floor. The red lightning continued to dance across his skin, illuminating his own pale, gaunt face in the reflection of the polished steel walls. He looked at his hands. The power wasn't just physical anymore. He could feel the world around him.

 

He could feel the terrified heartbeats of the guards on the upper levels. He could feel the dense, stagnant water of the ocean pressing against the titanium hull of the prison.

 

And then, he felt something else.

 

A presence.

 

It was moving down the corridor outside his cell. It felt like a walking black hole, a vortex of suffering, anger, and immense, suffocating power. The sheer density of the aura made Izuku gasp for breath. It felt like his own hatred, magnified a billion times over, refined over decades into a perfect, razor-sharp weapon.

 

Then came the sounds.

 

The distant echoes of gunfire. The panicked screams of the Tartarus guards. The unmistakable, sizzling hum of something slicing through the air, followed by the heavy thud of bodies hitting the floor.

 

The chaos was drawing closer.

 

Izuku dragged himself backward until his back hit the far wall of his cell. His breath hitched in his throat. Was it an assassin? Had the Hero Commission decided that life in Tartarus was too much of a risk? Had they sent someone to silence him permanently? Or was it the League of Villains, coming to mock him, to finish the job and recruit the broken pieces of the boy they had destroyed?

 

The screams outside ceased.

 

The silence returned, but it was no longer empty. It was filled with a terrifying, rhythmic sound just on the other side of his cell door.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Izuku stared at the massive, seamless steel door of his cell.

 

Suddenly, the center of the door began to glow. A pinpoint of cherry-red heat appeared, rapidly expanding into a blinding white.

 

Sssssshhh.

 

A blade of pure, crackling crimson plasma pierced straight through a meter of solid, quirk-resistant steel.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened, the red lightning around his own body flaring defensively.

 

The plasma blade was dragged downward with agonizing slowness, melting the steel like wax. It carved a massive, glowing rectangular outline into the vault door. The heat radiating into the tiny cell was intense, drying the sweat on Izuku’s forehead.

 

With a final, sickening crunch of melting metal, the blade was withdrawn.

 

For a second, nothing happened.

 

Then, an invisible force slammed into the heavy steel block that had been cut out of the door. The massive slab of metal, weighing several tons, was blasted inward. It flew across the tiny cell, smashing into the wall mere inches from Izuku’s head with a deafening crash, embedding itself into the bulkhead.

 

Izuku scrambled away, coughing violently as the cell filled with smoke and the stench of molten metal.

 

He looked toward the smoldering doorway.

 

Standing in the breach, framed by the red emergency flares of the hallway, was a nightmare.

 

The towering, black-armored figure stood perfectly still. The mechanical breathing echoed off the scorched walls of the cell. The dark lenses of the helmet fixed upon Izuku, studying him.

 

Izuku stared back, paralyzed. He was a fanboy who had cataloged every hero and villain in the world since he could hold a pencil. He knew the silhouette of every major player in the superhuman society. But the entity standing before him belonged to no registry. This was no quirk. This was something ancient.

 

The giant stepped into the cell. He deactivated the crimson blade, the hilt snapping onto his belt with a metallic click.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

"You are broken," the synthesized, booming voice declared. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, echoing in the cramped space.

 

Izuku swallowed hard, pressing himself against the cold wall. "Who... who are you? Did they send you to kill me?"

 

Vader did not answer immediately. He stood towering over the boy. Through the Force, Vader probed the child’s mind. He peeled back the layers of fear and confusion.

 

What Vader found made the dark corners of his soul stir with dark satisfaction.

 

He saw the memories. A quirkless boy, bullied and beaten. A false idol offering a fleeting taste of power. A desperate struggle to prove his worth. And then, the ultimate betrayal. He saw the faces of the boy's friends, turning away in disgust. He felt the crushing, suffocating agony of a heart shattered by the people it had sworn to protect.

 

But beneath the sorrow, Vader found the prize.

 

A wellspring of raw, untamed power. It was intertwined with the boy’s biological anomaly—a "quirk," they called it in this primitive reality—but the foundation was undeniable. The boy was fiercely, violently sensitive to the Force. And his trauma had ripped the door to the Dark Side wide open.

 

"They sent me to kill no one," Vader finally spoke, his voice vibrating with dark authority. "I am Darth Vader. And I have crossed the veil of the cosmos because I felt your rage screaming into the void."

 

Izuku blinked, his mind struggling to process the impossible words. "My... my rage?"

 

"Your pain," Vader corrected. He took a slow, deliberate step closer. "You have been cast down by those you called allies. You gave them your blood, your bone, your very essence. And in return, they branded you a traitor and buried you in the dark."

 

Izuku flinched. The words struck his deepest, rawest wounds with surgical precision. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes, not of sadness, but of the boiling, indignant anger he had felt right before the door was breached.

 

"They lied," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling. "They believed a lie. I wanted to save them... I wanted to be a hero."

 

"A hero," Vader scoffed, the mechanical vocoder distorting the word into a curse. "A meaningless title. A comforting illusion peddled by the weak to govern the strong. Look at what your 'heroes' have built. A society fragile enough to be shattered by a handful of fabricated images. They preach justice, yet they deny you a trial. They preach peace, yet they lock you in a cage to suffocate on your own despair."

 

Vader raised a black-gloved hand and pointed at Izuku’s chest.

 

"They do not fear your supposed treason, boy. They fear your power. They fear what they cannot control. And because they could not control you, they discarded you."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. Red lightning—violent and uncontrollable—sparked across his knuckles. He looked down at his hands, watching the crimson energy arc. It was true. Aizawa hadn't even listened to him. Nezu had expelled him without a second thought. All Might...

 

All Might had demanded his power back, calling him a mistake.

 

"I trusted him," Izuku choked out, a sob tearing through his throat. "I trusted All Might with my life."

 

"And he betrayed you," Vader said smoothly, leaning into the boy's psychological fracture. "Just as the Jedi betrayed me. They demand subservience. They demand you sacrifice your passions, your emotions, your very self upon the altar of their 'greater good.' And the moment you show a flicker of true strength, they label you a monster."

 

Izuku looked up, locking eyes with the dark lenses of Vader’s mask. "You... you were betrayed too?"

 

"I was the Chosen One of my Order," Vader said, the truth of Anakin Skywalker bleeding through the mechanical coldness. "I won their wars. I saved their Republic. Yet they denied me. They lied to me. They feared my potential, so they sought to keep me chained in the name of peace."

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

"Peace is a lie," Vader stated, reciting the ancient code of the Sith, his voice echoing with terrible majesty. "There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken."

 

Vader extended his right hand, the black leather creaking slightly. The gesture was an exact mirror of the one All Might had offered on the rooftop all those months ago. But where All Might had offered a fleeting, burdensome dream of heroism, Vader was offering something entirely different.

 

"Your 'Symbol of Peace' is a hypocrite who builds castles on sand," Vader said. "Heroism only treats the symptoms of a diseased galaxy. It reacts to chaos. True peace cannot be protected; it must be enforced. It is achieved only through absolute order. Through control."

 

Izuku stared at the extended, mechanical hand.

 

The red lightning around his body began to stabilize, no longer thrashing wildly, but crackling with a focused, intense frequency. The whispers in his mind—the voices of the past users of One For All, begging him to resist—were abruptly silenced, drowned out by the roaring ocean of the Dark Side.

 

He thought of the dorms. He thought of Bakugo’s explosive rage, Uraraka’s tears of fear. They were gone. That life was dead. The boy named Deku had died the moment the door of Tartarus slammed shut.

 

If Hero Society was so fragile that it could be weaponized against him by a few villains... if the Pro Heroes were so incompetent that they couldn't see the truth right in front of them... then the society did not deserve to exist. It needed to be torn down. It needed to be remade.

 

"What do you want from me?" Izuku asked, his voice dropping an octave, the childish tremor vanishing entirely.

 

"I offer you a choice," Vader rumbled, sensing the boy's surrender to the darkness. "You may remain in this cell. You may cling to the pathetic ideals of a society that threw you away, and you may rot in the dark as a forgotten martyr."

 

Vader’s hand remained extended.

 

"Or, you may rise. You may take my hand, embrace the power of the dark side, and become my apprentice. Together, we will tear down this corrupt world. We will eradicate the chaos of villains and the hypocrisy of heroes. We will bring absolute Order."

 

Izuku looked at Vader. He felt the terrifying, immense power radiating from the Sith Lord. It was a power that answered to no law, to no commission, to no false idol.

 

Slowly, agonizingly, Izuku pushed himself off the wall. He stood up. His orange prison jumpsuit was stained with sweat and soot. He was bruised, malnourished, and exhausted.

 

But his eyes—once wide, bright, and full of emerald hope—were different. The green irises had fractured. They were ringed with a sickly, burning, sulfurous yellow.

 

Izuku Midoriya reached out.

 

He didn't hesitate. He grabbed Darth Vader’s mechanical hand. The grip was firm, sealing a pact written in the blood of betrayal.

 

"I will not be a victim anymore," Izuku said, his voice cold and resolute.

 

"No," Vader agreed, his hand closing around the boy's, cementing the bond of Master and Apprentice. "You will be a conqueror."

 

Vader turned, his cape swishing violently in the cramped space. He walked out of the ruined cell, stepping over the molten steel block. "Come. We have much to do, my apprentice. Your training begins now."

 

Izuku followed. As he stepped out of the cell and into the blood-red lighting of the Tartarus corridor, he didn't look back.

 

He stepped over the bodies of the guards Vader had slaughtered. He felt no pity. He felt no remorse. He looked at their broken forms and saw only the foot soldiers of a corrupt system that had tried to bury him.

 

As they walked down the catwalk toward the ruined blast doors, the red lightning of One For All flickered around Izuku's arms, syncing perfectly with the rhythmic, mechanical breathing of his new Master.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

Paaah-kurrr.

 

The Breathing in the Dark had found its echo. The Sith had returned, and the world of heroes was utterly unprepared for the eclipse that was about to fall upon it.

 

 

 

 

The sky above Jaku City was a bruised, necrotic purple, choked by a perpetual canopy of ash and toxic dust. Months ago, this place had been the epicenter of a catastrophic battle between the Pro Heroes and the Paranormal Liberation Front. Tomura Shigaraki had awakened here, unleashing a wave of Decay that had wiped a third of the city off the map. Now, it was a quarantined wasteland, a grave of pulverized concrete, twisted rebar, and silent, lingering death. The government had walled it off, declaring it a dead zone.

 

For Darth Vader, it was the perfect crucible.

 

A sleek, angular Imperial shuttle—stolen from the World Between Worlds, its hyperdrive jury-rigged to breach the dimensional veil—sat silently in the center of a massive crater. The loading ramp was lowered, resting on a bed of gray, calcified dust.

 

Izuku Midoriya stumbled down the ramp, his knees buckling the moment his boots hit the ash. He fell forward, catching himself on his hands. He was still wearing the orange Tartarus jumpsuit, now stained with sweat, grease, and the blood of the guards he had stepped over. The air was thin, tasting of sulfur and pulverized bone. He coughed violently, his lungs burning.

 

Behind him, the heavy, rhythmic breathing of his new Master descended the ramp.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

Vader’s massive black boots crunched against the ash. The dark cape dragged over the ruined earth, undisturbed by the toxic wind. Vader stopped beside the gasping boy, looking out over the desolate expanse of the ruined city. To the Sith Lord, the devastation was a familiar, comforting canvas. It reminded him of the glassed plains of Mandalore, or the obsidian shores of Mustafar.

 

"Look upon this ruin, my apprentice," Vader commanded, his synthesized voice echoing across the silent crater.

 

Izuku forced himself to look up, his yellow-ringed eyes watering from the ash. He saw the shattered husks of skyscrapers in the distance, leaning against each other like broken teeth. He remembered seeing this on the news. He remembered the heroes who had died here. A few days ago, the sight would have filled him with a profound, aching sorrow.

 

Now, he felt only a cold, hollow emptiness, quickly filling with an ambient, buzzing anger.

 

"The villains did this," Izuku rasped, his throat dry.

 

"No," Vader corrected, looking down at him. "Weakness did this. The villains were merely a symptom. The heroes allowed this city to fall because they fight with half-measures. They value restraint over victory. They fight to apprehend, not to conquer. This city is a monument to their failure."

 

Vader raised a gloved hand. A jagged slab of concrete, weighing several tons, ripped itself out of the ground fifty yards away and hovered in the air, vibrating with trapped kinetic energy.

 

"Power without the will to dominate is nothing but wasted potential," Vader said, closing his fist. The massive slab imploded, instantly crushed into fine dust that rained down upon the ruins. "You have possessed immense power, Izuku. But you have wielded it like a child playing with a toy, bound by the pathetic moralities of a dead society. That ends today."

 

Izuku slowly pushed himself to his feet. He looked at his scarred hands. The legacy of One For All—the shattered bones, the torn ligaments—was mapped across his skin. He had destroyed himself to save a world that had ultimately spat in his face.

 

"What do you want me to do, Master?" Izuku asked. The title felt strange on his tongue, replacing the reverence he had once held for All Might, but he leaned into it. It was a tether to his new reality.

 

"I will strip away the hero they built," Vader said, turning to face him. The dark lenses of the mask stared into Izuku's fractured soul. "I will tear away your mercy, your hesitation, and your compassion. I will break you down to your absolute foundation. And from that rubble, a Sith will rise."

 

Vader deactivated the shuttle's repulsorlifts and locked the ramp. He tossed a heavy canvas sack into the ash at Izuku's feet. It landed with a metallic clatter.

 

"Pick it up," Vader ordered. "We walk to the center of the ruins. You will not use your 'quirk.' You will rely only on the Force. If you fall, I will not help you. If you die, it means you were unworthy of the power you carry."

 

Izuku grabbed the heavy sack. It was filled with the remnants of his old life—confiscated support gear he had seen Vader retrieve from the Tartarus evidence locker. Iron soles, his Air Force gloves, shattered pieces of his costume. It weighed at least eighty pounds.

 

Vader turned and began to walk into the jagged wasteland. He moved at a relentless, driving pace.

 

Izuku hoisted the sack over his shoulder, biting his lip as his exhausted muscles screamed in protest. He took a step, sinking ankle-deep into the loose ash, and began to follow the breathing in the dark.

 

 

 

The first three days on Jaku Island were a blur of absolute agony.

 

Toshinori Yagi had trained Izuku by making him clean a beach. Gran Torino had trained him through high-speed sparring and culinary discipline. Nighteye had trained him with foresight and paperwork.

 

Darth Vader trained him with pain.

 

Vader’s methods were barbaric, designed to simulate the unforgiving brutality of the Dark Side. There were no water breaks. There was no encouragement. There was only the relentless, crushing weight of Vader’s expectations and the omnipresent threat of death.

 

"Defend yourself!" Vader roared, his voice cutting through the howl of a toxic windstorm.

 

Izuku was standing on the precarious ledge of a ruined overpass, surrounded by jagged rebar. He was blindfolded with a strip of cloth torn from his prison jumpsuit. He was exhausted, dehydrated, and bleeding from a dozen minor cuts.

 

Suddenly, a chunk of masonry the size of a bowling ball slammed into his ribs from the left.

 

Izuku cried out, stumbling dangerously close to the edge of the eighty-foot drop. Before he could recover, a rusted steel beam swept the back of his knees, sending him crashing onto the hard concrete.

 

"You are relying on your physical senses!" Vader’s voice boomed from the swirling ash, omnidirectional and terrifying. "Your eyes can be blinded. Your ears can be deafened. Your quirk requires physical exertion. The Force requires none of these. Feel the currents! Feel my intent!"

 

Izuku gasped, clutching his bruised ribs. He tried to summon the familiar green lightning, trying to wrap himself in Full Cowl to endure the blows.

 

No!

 

An invisible grip wrapped around Izuku’s throat, lifting him into the air. He choked, clawing at his neck as he was suspended above the abyss.

 

"I told you to cast that crutch aside!" Vader growled, stepping out of the ash, his outstretched hand maintaining the Force choke. "Your quirk is a biological mutation, a physical anomaly. It is finite. The Force is infinite. It binds the galaxy together. Stop reaching for the physical! Reach into your anger! Use your hatred to see me!"

 

Izuku kicked his legs, his face turning purple. The primal panic of suffocation set in. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't focus.

 

Use your hatred.

 

Izuku closed his eyes behind the blindfold. He stopped fighting the physical grip on his throat. He forced his mind to bypass the panic and dive into the darkness he had found in Tartarus.

 

He pictured Class 1-A. He pictured Aizawa’s cold dismissal. He pictured the sneer on Dabi’s face in the deep-fake video. He pictured All Might, asking for a strand of hair to take back his dream.

 

A spark ignited in his chest. It wasn't the heroic determination to save; it was the violent, burning desire to destroy the source of his pain. To survive so that he could make them suffer.

 

Suddenly, the world shifted.

 

Behind the blindfold, Izuku didn't see light, but he felt the environment snap into sharp, high-definition focus. He felt the rusted rebar vibrating in the wind. He felt the cold, jagged chunks of concrete scattered around him.

 

And directly in front of him, he felt a massive, towering inferno of dark energy. Vader.

 

Izuku snarled, baring his teeth. He didn't try to pull Vader’s hand away. Instead, he channeled his boiling anger into a telekinetic strike.

 

With a guttural scream, Izuku pushed.

 

A shockwave of raw, unrefined Force energy blasted outward from Izuku's body. It caught Vader completely by surprise. The invisible grip on Izuku's throat shattered. The shockwave hit Vader’s armored chest, sending the massive Sith Lord sliding backward three feet, his boots leaving deep trenches in the concrete.

 

Izuku dropped to the ledge, landing on his hands and knees, gasping for toxic air, tearing the blindfold off his face. He looked up, expecting to be struck down for attacking his master.

 

Vader stood completely still. The red lenses of his helmet stared at the boy.

 

Slowly, Vader lowered his hand.

 

"Good," Vader rumbled, the word carrying a dark, profound satisfaction. "Your hatred is a blade. But right now, it is dull and unwieldy. We will sharpen it."

 

The training did not stop. It escalated.

 

Over the next week, Vader pushed Izuku beyond the limits of human endurance. He forced him to run through the collapsing ruins while Vader casually hurled massive debris at him. When Izuku tried to dodge using his physical speed, he was crushed. He only survived by tapping into the Force to anticipate the trajectory of the attacks, using telekinesis to bat away boulders and steel girders.

 

Vader taught him the nature of the Dark Side. He taught him that peace was a stagnant lie, and that conflict was the only true catalyst for evolution.

 

"They told you that a hero must be selfless," Vader said one night as they sat by a meager fire built from shattered wood. Izuku was shivering, staring into the flames, nursing a dislocated shoulder that Vader had snapped back into place. "They told you that your desires must be subjugated for the needs of the many. That is the philosophy of a slave."

 

Izuku watched the flames dance, his yellow-ringed eyes reflecting the firelight.

 

"The Dark Side is the ultimate expression of the self," Vader continued, pacing around the fire. "It demands that you acknowledge your passions, your fears, your hatreds, and use them as fuel. You do not serve the Dark Side, Izuku. You command it. Just as you will command the society that cast you out."

 

Izuku tightened his grip on his knees. "Bakugo... he always thought he was better than me. He thought he was destined to rule. And they all believed him."

 

"Then you will show them the true face of power," Vader replied. "You will show them what a true ruler looks like."

 

 

 

The breaking point arrived on the tenth day.

 

Vader had led Izuku to the center of the Jaku crater, to a massive, circular depression where Shigaraki’s Decay had been most concentrated. The air here was heavy, oppressive, and saturated with the lingering psychic echoes of mass death. It was a dark side nexus, a wound in the earth that bled negative energy.

 

"Today, we merge your biological anomaly with the true power of the Dark Side," Vader announced, standing at the edge of the crater. "Your 'quirk' is a reservoir of stockpiled energy. But it is tainted by the weak, pathetic spirits of its past wielders. They are parasites, clinging to your soul, holding you back from your true potential."

 

Izuku knew what Vader meant. Ever since Tartarus, the Vestiges of One For All had been in a state of constant, panicked agitation. They hammered against the walls of his subconscious, trying to break through the dark fog that Izuku had wrapped around his mind. He could feel Nana Shimura’s tears. He could hear the First User’s desperate pleas.

 

Izuku, please! This isn't you! You're a hero!

 

"I can hear them," Izuku muttered, grabbing his head, a migraine spiking behind his eyes. "They won't stop screaming."

 

"Then silence them," Vader commanded. "Summon your power. All of it. Do not hold back. Do not restrain the lightning. Let the Dark Side flood the reservoir."

 

Izuku stood in the center of the crater. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and reached inward.

 

He didn't envision the microwave or the egg from his early training. He envisioned a dam. A massive, cracking dam holding back an ocean of boiling blood.

 

He shattered the dam.

 

"GRAAAAAHH!"

 

Izuku screamed as the power exploded from him. But something was horribly, violently wrong.

 

In the past, activating One For All felt like a warm, empowering current of electricity running through his veins. But now, as he forced the power through the lens of his hatred and the ambient dark side energy of the nexus, it felt like swallowing glass and liquid fire.

 

The green lightning of Full Cowl erupted, but it was immediately infected. Thick, jagged veins of crimson energy tore through the emerald light, consuming it. The air around Izuku cracked like a whip. The ground beneath him began to spiderweb, the concrete turning to dust under the sheer, oppressive gravity of his aura.

 

Within his mind, Izuku was violently pulled into the Vestige realm.

 

But it was no longer a peaceful void with starry skies and floating chairs. The sky was bleeding. The realm was tearing apart, engulfed in a raging storm of red and black fire.

 

The past users were standing before him, not sitting calmly in their thrones. They looked terrified.

 

"Ninth!" Yoichi Shigaraki, the First User, stepped forward, his ethereal body glitching. "Stop this! You are corrupting the core! You are destroying the legacy!"

 

"Legacy?" Izuku snarled. His avatar in the vestige realm was no longer a glowing child. He stood tall, clad in shadowy armor that mirrored Vader's, his eyes burning with toxic yellow fire. "Your legacy got me thrown into a box! Your legacy is a lie!"

 

Nana Shimura rushed forward, tears streaming down her face. "Izuku, this man is a monster! He is manipulating your pain! We know you're innocent! We know your heart!"

 

"Then why didn't you save me?!" Izuku roared, his voice echoing with the distorted, booming resonance of the Dark Side. "Where was this power when they chained me?! Where was this power when All Might demanded it back?!"

 

Daigoro Banjo, the Fifth User, grimaced, summoning his Blackwhip in the realm to try and restrain the dark storm. "Kid, you gotta calm down! You're letting the darkness consume the stockpiled energy! If you do this, there's no going back!"

 

"I don't want to go back!"

 

Izuku raised his hand. In the real world and in the vestige realm simultaneously, he reached out to the darkest, most violent emotion in his heart.

 

He activated Blackwhip.

 

But it was no longer Daigoro’s quirk.

 

In the real world, the power tore out of Izuku’s back with a sickening, tearing sound. But they were not ethereal tethers of shadowy energy.

 

Six massive, jagged tendrils of solid, crackling crimson energy erupted from his spine. They were thick, covered in razor-sharp barbs, and they writhed with a horrifying, sentient malice. They looked like the appendages of a demonic beast, dripping with red dark side plasma.

 

In the vestige realm, the dark Blackwhips lashed out, wrapping around the avatars of the past users. Daigoro screamed as his own mutated quirk bound him, the dark side burning his spirit.

 

"You don't control me anymore!" Izuku screamed at the predecessors, watching them struggle against his dark will. "This power is mine! I suffered for it! I bled for it! And I will use it to tear this world apart!"

 

He slammed his fist down.

 

The Vestige realm collapsed into absolute darkness, sealing the past users away behind a wall of impenetrable dark side energy. They were not destroyed, but they were imprisoned, their light entirely snuffed out, their power forcibly hijacked to serve the Sith.

 

In the real world, the transformation was complete.

 

Izuku floated a few inches off the ground, enveloped in a violent, unstable aura of pure red lightning. The six crimson, spiked tendrils of his corrupted Blackwhip thrashed the ground around him, pulverizing concrete into dust, whipping through the air with supersonic cracks. His physical strength had multiplied exponentially, fueled no longer by a heroic stockpile, but by an endless, cosmic rage.

 

Vader watched from the edge of the crater. Even behind the mask, there was a profound sense of awe.

 

The boy was a reactor core of raw destruction. The fusion of the biological quirk singularity and the mystical nature of the Dark Side had created an anomaly that eclipsed even the Inquisitors Vader had trained in the past.

 

Izuku turned his head slowly toward Vader. The yellow eyes locked onto the Sith Lord.

 

The corrupted Blackwhips reared back like striking cobras.

 

Driven by the intoxicating rush of absolute power, Izuku completely lost himself to the bloodlust. He didn't see his master; he saw a target. He saw the world that had hurt him.

 

With a deafening roar, Izuku launched himself at Vader. He cleared the fifty yards in a fraction of a second, moving faster than the eye could track, leaving a trail of red lightning in his wake.

 

Two of the crimson tendrils lashed out, aiming to impale Vader through the chest, while Izuku drew back a fist crackling with dark energy, aiming a 100% Smash directly at Vader’s helmet.

 

Vader did not flinch.

 

SNAP-HISS.

 

The crimson blade of Vader’s lightsaber ignited in a flash of brilliant light.

 

With terrifying, mechanical precision, Vader swung the blade in a tight arc. The plasma blade clashed against the dark side energy of the Blackwhip tendrils. To Izuku's shock, the lightsaber did not cut through them—the tendrils were so saturated with pure dark side energy that they acted like physical matter, sparking violently against the Kyber-focused plasma.

 

But Vader was not just a swordsman. He was a master of the Force.

 

As Izuku’s fist drove forward, packing enough kinetic energy to level a mountain, Vader dropped his lightsaber, raised his left hand, and caught Izuku’s fist dead in its tracks.

 

The shockwave of the impact was apocalyptic. The air shattered. A concussive blast of red and black energy expanded outward, flattening the ruins of the crater for a half-mile radius, blowing away the toxic ash and exposing the scorched bedrock beneath.

 

Izuku hung in the air, his fist pressed against Vader’s unyielding black glove. The red lightning violently arced between them, trying to tear Vader apart.

 

But Vader stood like a monolith of obsidian. The earth beneath his boots had vaporized, but he had not moved a single inch.

 

Vader squeezed Izuku’s fist.

 

Izuku screamed as the bones in his hand threatened to shatter under the telekinetic and mechanical pressure. The corrupted Blackwhips thrashed, but Vader raised his right hand, unleashing a localized, devastating wave of Force repulsion.

 

The blast slammed into Izuku’s chest, completely overriding his mutated Full Cowl. Izuku was launched backward like a cannonball, skipping across the bedrock, tearing a deep trench in the earth before slamming violently into the remnants of a concrete wall.

 

The red lightning sputtered out. The jagged tendrils retreated into his back.

 

Izuku slumped to the ground, gasping for air, the intoxicating high of the dark side crashing into agonizing physical exhaustion. He looked up, terrified, expecting the executioner’s blade. He had attacked his master.

 

Vader walked slowly across the scorched earth, retrieving his deactivated lightsaber hilt from the ground. He clipped it to his belt and stopped a few feet from Izuku.

 

Paaah-kurrr.

 

"You have claimed the power," Vader said, his voice surprisingly calm. "You have subjugated the ghosts of your past, and you have tasted the true depth of your anger."

 

Vader extended a hand, using the Force to gently lift Izuku to his feet.

 

"But power without discipline is merely a tantrum," Vader continued. "You threw yourself at me like a feral beast. A Sith is not a beast. A Sith is a predator. Cold. Calculating. You will learn to control the storm within you, or it will tear you apart."

 

Izuku stood, his head bowed, his chest heaving. "Yes, Master."

 

"Your quirk is no longer a tool of salvation," Vader declared, looking at the boy's hands. "It is an instrument of domination. The 'Vestiges' are silenced. The power is yours. Now, it is time you built the weapon that will execute your will."

 

 

 

The next evening, inside the dimly lit cargo hold of the stolen Imperial shuttle, the final trial began.

 

Vader sat upon a heavy metal crate, his arms crossed over his chest. The ambient hum of the ship's hyperdrive core provided a low, vibrating baseline to the heavy mechanical breathing.

 

Izuku knelt in the center of the floor, stripped down to a black undershirt and trousers Vader had provided from the ship's stores. Spread out before him on a synthetic tarp were the dismantled, shattered remnants of his old hero costume.

 

The green cowl was torn. The iron soles were detached from the red boots. The Air Force gloves were stripped of their pneumatic mechanisms. The metal bracers Mei Hatsume had built for him lay in pieces.

 

"A Jedi relies on a lightsaber as a tool of defense, a symbol of their pathetic devotion to peace," Vader's voice echoed in the cramped hold. "A Sith’s blade is a manifestation of his malice. It is an extension of his hatred. It is a tool of subjugation."

 

Vader reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a small, metallic cylinder. He tossed it onto the tarp in front of Izuku. It was a Jedi holocron, damaged and inactive, but within its core lay the heart of a lightsaber.

 

"Open it," Vader commanded.

 

Izuku reached out with the Force. He didn't use his hands. He envisioned the intricate locking mechanisms of the cylinder and brutally twisted them with telekinesis. The cylinder snapped open, and a small, glowing crystal floated into the air.

 

It was a Kyber crystal. It glowed with a soft, warm, brilliant blue light. It pulsed with a gentle, harmonic frequency that felt like a soothing melody. It felt like hope.

 

Izuku looked at the blue light, and a sudden, sharp pang of nostalgia hit him. It reminded him of Iida’s engines. It reminded him of the clear sky over U.A.

 

"The Kyber crystal is alive, in a sense," Vader explained, his tone taking on a dark, instructional cadence. "It is attuned to the light side of the Force. It naturally resists the dark. To wield it as a Sith, you must conquer it. You must break its will. You must bleed it."

 

"Bleed it?" Izuku asked, his eyes reflecting the blue glow.

 

"Pour your pain into the crystal," Vader ordered, leaning forward, the dark lenses fixing on the boy. "Force it to feel what you felt in that cell. Force it to witness your betrayal. Dominate its light, or it will reject you."

 

Izuku took a deep breath and reached out, grasping the floating blue crystal in his right hand.

 

The moment his skin touched it, the crystal resisted. It sent a wave of soothing, light-side energy up his arm, trying to calm his raging heartbeat, trying to pacify his anger. It whispered of peace, of forgiveness, of letting go.

 

Let go, the crystal seemed to sing. Forgive them. They made a mistake.

 

"No," Izuku growled, his grip tightening.

 

He closed his eyes and summoned the darkness.

 

He didn't just remember his trauma; he weaponized it. He forcefully shoved the memory of the deep-fake videos into the crystal. He shoved the image of Uraraka crying, turning her back on him, treating him like a monster. He poured the agonizing, bone-chilling cold of the Tartarus cell into the stone.

 

The crystal began to vibrate violently. The blue light flickered, turning a sickly violet as it fought against the influx of pure, unadulterated hatred.

 

"More," Vader commanded. "Hold nothing back. Show it your true agony!"

 

Izuku bared his teeth, sweat dripping from his forehead. He dove into the deepest, most agonizing wound in his soul.

 

He remembered standing in the basement of U.A. He remembered the gaunt, skeletal face of the man he had worshipped since he was a toddler. The man who had given him everything, only to snatch it away the moment doubt crept in.

 

You were a mistake, Izuku Midoriya.

 

My greatest failure.

 

Take those embers into the dark and let them die.

 

"I AM NOT A MISTAKE!" Izuku roared, his eyes snapping open. They blazed with a terrifying, absolute yellow fire.

 

He squeezed the crystal with both his physical strength and a crushing, telekinetic vice. He unleashed the full, corrupted might of his mutated One For All, channeling the red lightning straight down his arm and into his fist.

 

A deafening, high-pitched shriek filled the cargo hold. It sounded like a choir of angels being burned alive.

 

The crystal cracked.

 

A blast of concussive force exploded from Izuku’s hand, blowing the dismantled pieces of his hero costume across the floor and rattling the bulkheads of the ship.

 

Izuku opened his hand, his chest heaving, his breath ragged.

 

The crystal no longer glowed blue. It was fractured, jagged, and bleeding an intense, malevolent crimson light. It pulsed not with a soothing melody, but with a harsh, aggressive, rapid heartbeat. It felt hot to the touch, vibrating with an insatiable hunger for destruction.

 

Izuku smiled. It was a cold, cruel expression that looked entirely alien on his freckled face.

 

"It is done," Vader said, standing up. "Now. Construct the hilt. Use the remnants of your past to forge the instrument of your future."

 

Izuku nodded. He didn't touch the pieces with his hands. He crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and raised both hands, palms facing upward.

 

Through the Force, the scattered pieces of his hero costume began to levitate into the air.

 

This was not the hasty, desperate engineering of the support course. This was a surgical, telekinetic assembly guided by the dark currents of the Force.

 

Izuku stripped the heavy, reinforced tungsten from his Iron Soles, breaking it down into a cylindrical chassis. He took the conductive pneumatic coils from his Air Force gloves, weaving them into the internal matrix to handle the immense energy output. He used the black, impact-resistant polymer of his bracers to fashion a sleek, grooved grip.

 

In the center of the hovering matrix, he placed the bleeding Kyber crystal.

 

He wrapped the magnetic stabilizing ring around the crystal, locking it into place. He envisioned the internal circuitry, aligning the diatium power cell, the field energizers, and the focusing lens with microscopic precision. Every component was a piece of the hero Deku, fundamentally altered and repurposed to serve the dark side.

 

With a final, telekinetic twist, the external casing snapped shut. The metal sealed itself with a sharp clack.

 

The completed hilt dropped from the air, landing perfectly in Izuku’s outstretched right hand.

 

It was a beautiful, terrifying weapon. The hilt was slightly longer than a standard lightsaber, built to accommodate Izuku’s two-handed, high-impact fighting style. It was matte black, accented with the scuffed, dark-green polymer of his old suit. It looked industrial, brutal, and entirely functional.

 

"Ignite it," Vader commanded.

 

Izuku stood up. He held the heavy hilt in his right hand, angling the emitter toward the floor. He rested his thumb on the activation stud, built from the trigger mechanism of his old capture-tape bracer.

 

He pressed it.

 

SNAP-KRAAAASH!

 

The ignition sound was not the smooth, humming hiss of Vader’s blade. It was a violent, thunderous crack, like a bolt of lightning striking an anvil.

 

The blade erupted from the emitter. It was not a smooth column of plasma. Because the crystal was cracked, the energy was unstable. The blade was a thick, jagged torrent of blinding crimson fire. It crackled and spat, sparks of dark energy violently arcing off the main column. It looked less like a sword and more like a captured, screaming beam of pure destruction.

 

The intense heat immediately raised the temperature of the cargo hold. The aggressive, roaring hum of the unstable blade vibrated in Izuku’s teeth.

 

Izuku swung it. He didn't use a quirk. He just used the physical strength of a boy forged in hell.

 

He slashed at the heavy titanium crate Vader had been sitting on.

 

The unstable crimson blade sheared through the thick metal with zero resistance, leaving a glowing, molten scar. It didn't just cut; the unstable energy practically violently sawed through the molecular bonds of the metal.

 

Izuku stared at the glowing red plasma, his yellow eyes reflecting the chaotic light. The blade felt like a living thing in his hand, a conduit for all his hatred, ready to be unleashed upon the world.

 

He deactivated the blade with a sharp hiss. The sudden silence in the room was deafening.

 

He hooked the hilt onto the black belt of his trousers.

 

Darth Vader approached him. The towering Sith Lord looked down at the boy who had, just two weeks ago, been weeping in a dark cell, begging for a false idol to save him.

 

That boy was dead. The ashes of Oki Island had buried him.

 

"The boy known as Izuku Midoriya was weak," Vader’s deep voice resonated, filling the space with absolute authority. "He trusted in the false light of heroes, and he was blinded by it. He is no more."

 

Izuku knelt, bowing his head before his Master. He felt no hesitation. He felt only absolute clarity. The path to true peace was Order, and Order could only be built on the ashes of the old world.

 

"You have been reforged in the fires of betrayal," Vader continued, drawing his own crimson blade and resting the searing plasma mere inches from Izuku’s shoulder, casting a hellish glow over the boy's face. "You have embraced the power of the Dark Side. You have bled your past, and you have forged your future."

 

Vader deactivated his saber and stepped back.

 

"Rise, my apprentice."

 

Izuku stood, his posture perfectly straight, his eyes cold and unyielding.

 

"From this day forward," Vader declared, the title echoing with the weight of ancient, cosmic doom, "you will no longer be known by the name your enemies mocked. You are a Sith. An avenger of the truth."

 

Vader raised a hand, pointing at the boy's chest.

 

"Rise... Darth Vindex."

 

Izuku took a deep breath, the name settling into his soul like molten iron into a mold. It felt right. It felt powerful.

 

Vindex. The punisher. The avenger.

 

"Thank you, my Master," Darth Vindex replied, his voice calm, devoid of the stuttering anxiety that had once defined him.

 

"Our work here is done," Vader said, turning toward the cockpit of the shuttle. "The foundation is laid. Now, we must gather our resources. The society that cast you out will not fall on its own. We will build an empire in the shadows, and when the time is right, we will tear their false pillars down."

 

Vindex touched the hilt of the lightsaber at his belt. He looked out the viewport of the cargo bay, staring at the toxic, ash-choked sky of Earth.

 

He thought of U.A. High School. He thought of the shining glass towers of the Hero Commission. He thought of the smiles of his former classmates, ignorant and secure in their fabricated reality.

 

I'm coming back, Vindex thought, the red lightning sparking faintly at his fingertips. And I'm going to show you all the true meaning of power.

 

The shuttle's engines roared to life, kicking up a massive cloud of toxic ash as it lifted off the ruined earth. It pierced the bruised sky, vanishing into the upper atmosphere, leaving the dead city behind.

 

The Sith had been forged. And the eclipse of Hero Society had officially begun.