What if Deku Completely Outclassed Momo's Quirk

 

The alarm clock did not simply ring; it was dismantled.

 

At exactly 5:30 AM, a hand reached out from beneath the All Might themed duvet. The fingers, calloused from years of holding pens and sketching diagrams, lightly brushed the plastic casing of the blaring clock. There was a faint, almost imperceptible hum—a sound like a tuning fork vibrating at the frequency of the universe itself. A soft blue light rippled across the surface of the plastic.

 

In a fraction of a second, the alarm clock deconstructed. The plastic casing unspooled into neat, microscopic threads of polymer. The copper wiring untwisted, the screws unthreaded, and the quartz crystal popped out, hovering for a microscopic moment in the air before reassembling.

 

When the light faded, the alarm clock was gone. In its place, sitting perfectly on the nightstand, was a beautifully crafted, fully functional miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty, cast in mixed plastics and copper.

 

It was entirely silent.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and sighed. "Right. Need to stop doing that in my sleep."

 

He reached out, tapped the statue, and visualized the internal blueprint of the digital clock. The blue light flared again, and with a soft click, the alarm clock was back, though now displaying 5:31 AM. A dull, pulsing ache flared behind his left eye—the familiar morning greeting of his Quirk.

 

Izuku’s Quirk was officially registered in the national database as Atomic Assembly. It was, by all accounts from the quirk counselors and doctors, a mutation of terrifying potential. He didn't just move things with his mind, nor did he simply create things from his own body. Izuku possessed the ability to instantly restructure ambient matter within a five-meter radius. Dirt, concrete, plastic, metal, and even the moisture in the air were nothing but raw clay to him. He could break them down to their atomic components and rebuild them into whatever he desired, provided he perfectly understood the molecular blueprint of what he was creating.

 

The caveat, however, was brutal. The human brain was not designed to process the structural integrity, atomic weight, and chemical bonding of thousands of molecules in a millisecond. Every time he used his Quirk, his brain acted as a supercomputer, overclocking itself to execute the transmutation. The more complex the creation, the heavier the toll. A simple restructure, like turning a wooden desk into a wooden chair, was easy. Synthesizing complex electronics or volatile chemicals from raw soil? That invited migraines so severe they could leave him bedridden, bleeding from the nose, and temporarily blinded by agonizing static.

 

Because of this, Izuku wasn't a brawler. He was a scholar. His room was less a bedroom and more a chaotic library. Stacks of notebooks—currently numbering up to Volume 13—towered precariously in the corners. But these weren't just standard hero analysis notes. They were filled with dense chemical equations, architectural blueprints, metallurgical studies, and physics formulas. To use his Quirk safely and efficiently, Izuku had to memorize the exact composition of everything in the world.

 

He was a nerd. A muttering, socially anxious, hyper-fixated nerd. But today, he was a U.A. High School student.

 

Izuku walked to his mirror, fastening the gold buttons of the prestigious gray U.A. uniform. He looked at his reflection. He didn't look particularly intimidating. He was lean, having worked out to ensure his body could withstand the neurological strain of his Quirk, but he still had a mop of unruly green hair and a face dominated by freckles and wide, anxious eyes.

 

"Okay," Izuku whispered, slapping his cheeks with both hands to psych himself up. "You can do this. Just... remember the structural formulas. Don't overexert the cerebral cortex. And, for the love of All Might, try to actually talk to someone without muttering about their cellular structure."

 

Grabbing his iconic yellow backpack, he headed out the door.

 

 

 

The doors to Class 1-A were absurdly large. Izuku stared up at the massive painted '1-A', wondering briefly if the architecture was designed to accommodate gigantification quirks or simply to intimidate freshmen. He opted for the latter.

 

Taking a deep breath, he slid the heavy door open.

 

Immediately, the chaotic energy of the room hit him. To his left, a tall boy with engines in his calves was aggressively chopping the air, lecturing someone. To his right, sitting with his feet kicked up on a desk, was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Katsuki sneered the moment he saw green hair. "Oh, look. The walking chemistry set made it."

 

Izuku offered a tired, strained smile. He and Bakugo had a complicated history. When they were kids, Bakugo’s Explosions were the flashiest, most powerful thing on the playground. But when Izuku’s Quirk manifested, the dynamic fractured. Izuku couldn't punch as hard as Bakugo, but he could turn the sand beneath Bakugo’s feet into a solid block of titanium in a millisecond. Bakugo hated Izuku’s Quirk. He called it a "coward's trick," furious that Izuku didn't fight with his fists, but with his mind and the environment.

 

"Morning, Kacchan," Izuku said mildly, choosing not to engage. He had a headache brewing already just from the morning commute.

 

Before the engine-legged boy could introduce himself, a voice, entirely devoid of joy, drifted up from the floor.

 

"If you're just here to make friends, you can pack up your stuff and leave."

 

The entire class froze. A man resembling a heavily sleep-deprived caterpillar unzipped a yellow sleeping bag on the floor, revealing a scruffy face and dark, apathetic eyes.

 

"I'm Shota Aizawa. Your homeroom teacher. Put these on and head out to the P.E. grounds." He tossed a blue and white track uniform onto the nearest desk. "We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

On the opposite side of the classroom, Momo Yaoyorozu gracefully rose from her seat, collecting her P.E. uniform with practiced elegance. Her face was a mask of serene composure, but internally, she was brimming with a quiet, steely confidence.

 

Momo was a Yaoyorozu. She had been groomed for greatness since the day she could walk. Her Quirk, Creation, was widely considered by top-tier analysts and private tutors to be one of the most versatile and powerful Quirks in the world. As long as she understood the atomic configuration of an object, she could create it from her exposed skin, using the lipid stores in her body as fuel. It was the ultimate utility. She was a one-woman armory, hospital, and tactical strike team.

 

She had breezed through the Recommendation Exams. She knew her worth. She looked around the room, silently assessing her peers. The boy with the dual-hair, Todoroki, was another recommendation student; he was a threat, certainly. The explosive blonde boy seemed wildly unstable. The rest? They seemed perfectly adequate, but Momo felt secure in her position. She was the pinnacle of utility.

 

She briefly noted the green-haired boy who had walked in last. He was currently muttering to himself, his eyes darting around nervously as he clutched his uniform. He lacks presence, Momo thought analytically. Probably an emitter-type. Mild-mannered. Needs to work on his posture if he wants to project heroism.

 

She dismissed him from her mind and headed to the changing rooms.

 

 

 

The sun beat down on the expansive dirt field of the U.A. training grounds. The twenty students of Class 1-A stood in a loose gaggle, shifting nervously as Aizawa stood before them, holding a digital tablet.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension test?" a pink-skinned girl, Ashido, cried out. "But what about the entrance ceremony? The orientation?"

 

"If you're going to become a hero, you don't have time for such leisurely events," Aizawa deadpanned. "U.A.'s selling point is how unrestricted its school traditions are. That's also how the teachers run their classes."

 

Aizawa turned his tired gaze to Bakugo. "Bakugo, you finished first in the practical exam. In junior high, what was your best result for the softball throw?"

 

"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugo grunted.

 

"Then try doing it with your Quirk." Aizawa tossed him a standard baseball. "Do whatever you want, just don't leave the circle."

 

Bakugo stepped into the chalk ring. He stretched his arms, a feral grin spreading across his face. He wound back, and as he hurled the ball, he ignited a massive explosion from his palm.

 

"DIE!" Bakugo roared.

 

The shockwave blasted dust over the front row of students. The ball skyrocketed into the clouds, leaving a trail of black smoke. Aizawa held up his device, waiting for the beep. He turned the screen to the class.

 

705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted.

"Seven hundred meters? Seriously?!"

"We get to use our Quirks as much as we want! This looks like fun!"

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, flashing a dangerous red. "Fun? You have three years to become heroes. Will you have an attitude like that the whole time? Fine. Whoever comes in last place in all eight events will be judged to have no potential and will be punished with expulsion."

 

The collective gasp from the class was exactly what Aizawa wanted.

 

From her place in the crowd, Momo didn't flinch. She felt a brief spike of adrenaline, but she squashed it. Expulsion was a threat for the unprepared. Her Creation quirk was adaptable to any physical test. She just needed to manage her lipid consumption and pace herself.

 

She glanced over at the green-haired boy. Midoriya, she believed his name was. He was pale, sweating profusely, staring at his hands. Ah, Momo thought, a twinge of pity in her chest. He must have a Quirk completely unsuited for physical exams. A mental quirk, perhaps? Or a highly situational one. Poor thing.

 

"Event One: 50-Meter Dash," Aizawa called out.

 

The students lined up in pairs. When it was Momo's turn, she faced off against the boy with tape-dispenser elbows. As the starting gun fired, Momo quickly visualized the complex mechanics of a motorized scooter. It took a second—a precious second where she had to focus, a soft white light glowing from her back as the metal and battery components pushed through her skin. By the time it fully materialized and she hopped on, her opponent was already halfway down the track. She caught up, finishing in 6.2 seconds. Not bad, but she felt a slight drain on her energy.

 

Then, it was Midoriya’s turn. He was up against Bakugo.

 

Momo watched closely, curious to see what the nervous boy would do. Bakugo was already sparking his hands, ready to blast himself forward.

 

Midoriya knelt down at the starting line. He didn't take a sprinter's stance. Instead, he placed his bare palms flat against the dirt track.

 

"On your marks..." the robot proctor announced.

 

Momo frowned. What was he doing?

 

"Get set... Go!"

 

Bakugo launched forward with a deafening boom. But in the exact same fraction of a millisecond, the world around Midoriya warped.

 

A loud, crystalline CRACK echoed across the field, followed by a blinding flash of blue light that spanned a five-meter radius around Midoriya. The dirt, gravel, and chalk of the track violently shuddered. In a blink—faster than the human eye could track—the track beneath Midoriya transformed. The loose dirt rearranged its atomic structure, shedding impurities and hardening into a perfectly smooth, frictionless sheet of polished synthetic ice that extended exactly fifty meters in a straight line.

 

But he wasn't done. The ambient nitrogen and oxygen in the air around his back visibly distorted. He had compressed the air into a highly pressurized pneumatic pocket behind him.

 

With a simple release of his mental hold on the air pressure, Midoriya was shot forward like a bullet from a gun, sliding across his newly created frictionless path with zero air resistance. He passed Bakugo in a blur of green and gray.

 

"3.12 seconds," the robotic voice chimed.

 

Bakugo blasted over the finish line a second later, screaming in rage. "DEKU! YOU BASTARD, YOU ALTERED THE TRACK AGAIN!"

 

Midoriya casually stood up at the finish line, brushing off his knees. As he lifted his foot, the blue light flashed again, and the frictionless ice instantly dissolved back into regular, loose dirt, leaving no trace it was ever there. "Sorry, Kacchan. It’s the most efficient route."

 

A dead silence fell over the students.

 

Momo felt a cold drop of sweat slide down her neck. Her dark eyes were wide, completely fixated on the dirt where the ice had been.

 

What... what was that?

 

Her brilliant mind raced. She mentally dissected the phenomenon. He made ice. No, not ice—synthetic resin, maybe? But he didn't secrete it. He didn't pull it from his body. He placed his hands on the ground, and the ground became the path. And it was instantaneous. There was no creation lag. No glowing emergence from the skin.

 

Matter transmutation? Momo thought, her heart beginning to beat a little faster. No, that's too simple. He created a pneumatic propulsion system out of thin air. He altered the physical state of the environment. He didn't just freeze the ground; he restructured it.

 

She looked down at her own hands. To make a simple scooter, she had to burn calories, wait for the lipids to convert, and endure the physical sensation of pulling it from her body. It took her three seconds of prep time.

 

Midoriya had restructured the earth in a fraction of a second.

 

"Event Two: Grip Strength," Aizawa's voice broke through the silence.

 

Momo approached the grip-strength machine. She closed her eyes, focusing. She materialized a customized, high-leverage hydraulic clamp over her hand. It took her four seconds to create. She squeezed the machine inside the clamp.

105 kg.

A very respectable score. She felt a wave of pride.

 

Then, a few feet away, she heard murmuring. She turned.

 

Midoriya was holding his grip-strength device. He didn't bring anything out of his pockets. He just stared at the machine. He placed his other hand gently over his right forearm. A soft hum vibrated the air.

 

The carbon from the surrounding dirt and the trace metals in the fencing nearby visibly lifted into the air like iron filings drawn to a magnet. They swirled around his arm, bonding at a molecular level, instantly assembling into a sleek, interlocking exoskeleton of pure carbon-nanotubes and titanium. It looked like the arm of a high-tech android, perfectly fitted to his musculature.

 

He squeezed his hand. The machine didn't just register a score; it groaned under the pressure, the digital display wildly flickering before the casing cracked.

 

540 kg.

 

With a thought, the blue light flashed, and the mechanical arm dissolved into dust, blowing away in the wind. Midoriya rubbed his temples, wincing slightly as he handed the broken machine to a stunned Aizawa. "Ah, sorry, Sensei. I miscalculated the tensile strength of the springs. I'll pay for that."

 

Momo stood paralyzed. Her hydraulic clamp suddenly felt incredibly clunky, heavy, and obsolete.

 

He's doing what I do, she realized, a feeling of dread washing over her. But he doesn't need his own body. He uses the world. And he's faster.

 

 

 

The events continued, and with every test, the gap between Momo's pride and Midoriya's reality widened.

 

During the standing long jump, Momo created a miniature trampoline. It was effective, getting her across the sandbox. Midoriya simply stepped to the line, transmuted the dirt beneath his feet into a highly compressed, coiled tungsten spring, and launched himself entirely out of the sandbox area.

 

During the repeated side steps, Momo created two small, dense gravity boots to help anchor her momentum. Midoriya simply turned the floor beneath his shoes into a highly magnetic alloy, locking his metallic shoe-soles into a perfect rhythm.

 

By the time they reached the softball throw, the class was buzzing entirely about the quiet, green-haired boy.

 

"Dude, Midoriya's Quirk is insane!" Kaminari, the blonde electric boy, whispered loudly. "It's like magic! He can make anything!"

 

"It is highly efficient," Iida agreed, chopping his hand. "The tactical applications of environmental manipulation are limitless!"

 

Momo stood near the back of the group, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her nails dug lightly into her sleeves. She was a Yaoyorozu. She was supposed to be the undisputed master of Creation. But every time she looked at Midoriya, she saw a boy who could do everything she could do, but better, faster, and without consequence. Or so it seemed.

 

"Yaoyorozu," Aizawa called out. "You're up."

 

Momo uncrossed her arms and walked to the chalk circle. She held the softball. She needed to prove herself. She needed to show why she was a recommendation student.

 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She visualized the blueprints of a medieval-style cannon, but upgraded. She substituted the cast iron for a lighter, stronger titanium alloy to save on lipid consumption. She calculated the exact chemical compound of gunpowder—potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur.

 

The skin on her back and arms glowed. She felt the heavy, draining sensation of her fat stores converting into matter. It was exhausting. It took time. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

 

Slowly, the heavy barrel of the cannon pushed free from her skin, clattering onto the dirt. Then came the base. Finally, the gunpowder and a fuse. She was panting slightly, sweat beading on her forehead. She loaded the softball into the barrel, packed the powder, and lit the fuse.

 

BOOM.

 

The ball shot into the sky, arcing beautifully over the horizon.

 

Aizawa held up the screen. 1,204 meters.

 

The class clapped politely. "Whoa, a cannon! That's so cool!" Ashido cheered.

 

Momo smiled modestly, bowing her head. 1,204 meters. Let him try to beat that without a propulsion mechanism, she thought, a spark of competitive defiance flaring in her chest.

 

She walked back to the crowd. As she did, Midoriya stepped out of the group, his eyes wide, holding one of his notebooks and a pencil.

 

"Yaoyorozu-san!" he called out, his voice cracking slightly with excitement.

 

Momo paused, looking at him defensively. "Yes, Midoriya-san?"

 

"That was absolutely incredible!" Izuku beamed, rapidly scribbling in his notebook. "I've been watching you all day! Your Quirk is essentially bio-creation, right? You use your own lipid stores! But to create a functioning titanium cannon and the exact chemical mixture for gunpowder in under ten seconds? The sheer caloric conversion rate and the mental processing required to synthesize complex, multi-part machinery from a biological source is astounding! It's so much more refined than my Quirk!"

 

Momo stared at him. She looked for the sarcasm. She looked for the condescension. She looked for the smug superiority of someone who knew they were better.

 

She found absolutely none. Izuku Midoriya was looking at her like she was All Might. He was genuinely, utterly awestruck by her.

 

"You... you think so?" she managed to say, her voice tight.

 

"Are you kidding? I have to rely on ambient matter," Izuku explained, tapping his pen against his chin. "If you put me in an empty void, I'm quirkless. But you? You are the factory! You're completely self-sufficient! It's a flawless Quirk for rescue and combat logistics. You're going to be an amazing hero."

 

He bowed respectfully and jogged over to the chalk circle for his turn.

 

Momo felt her face flush hot. She felt a sickening mixture of flattery, intense guilt, and an overwhelming, crushing sense of inadequacy. He wasn't mocking her. He honestly believed her Quirk was amazing. Which meant he had no idea just how completely and utterly he outclassed her. He was oblivious to his own superiority.

 

Somehow, that was infinitely worse.

 

"Midoriya, you're up," Aizawa sighed, clearly exhausted by the boy's muttering.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the chalk circle. He held the softball in his left hand. He looked out at the vast, empty field.

 

Okay, Izuku thought, his mind slipping into the familiar, terrifyingly fast gears of Atomic Assembly. Distance requires velocity. Velocity requires force. Bakugo used rapid thermal expansion. Yaoyorozu used chemical combustion. I need maximum force with minimum environmental waste to keep my head from splitting open.

 

He looked at the dirt. Composition: Silica, aluminum oxide, iron oxide, trace amounts of copper from old underground cables, carbon.

 

He touched two fingers of his right hand to his temple, feeling the dull ache start to sharpen.

 

Blueprint selected: Electromagnetic Mass Driver. Railgun.

 

Izuku dropped to one knee and slammed his right palm flat into the dirt.

 

The air pressure dropped instantly, pulling the breath from the lungs of the students standing nearby. A deep, resonant hum—louder and more violent than before—shook the ground. The blue light of transmutation exploded outwards, crawling across the earth like lightning.

 

To Momo's horrified fascination, she watched the earth literally unweave itself.

 

The iron and copper elements were violently ripped from the soil, spiraling upward like a miniature tornado of metallic dust. The silica and carbon fused instantly, forming a massive, three-meter-long sleek barrel that angled toward the sky.

 

In less than a second, the floating iron and copper wove themselves around the barrel, creating a series of perfectly spaced, tightly coiled electromagnetic rings. A thick grounding wire shot out from the base, anchoring itself deep into the bedrock. It was a masterpiece of lethal engineering, built in the time it takes a human to blink, assembled from the literal dirt they stood on.

 

Izuku didn’t pant. He didn't glow. He just stood up, his face slightly paler, his eyes intensely focused.

 

He dropped the softball into the chamber at the base of the railgun.

 

"I'm drawing electricity from the friction of the earth's mantle and the static in the atmosphere," Izuku muttered, mostly to himself, though the silence of the class amplified his voice. "Compressing the magnetic field... now."

 

He tapped the side of the barrel.

 

The sound was indescribable. It was not a boom. It was a catastrophic crack of displaced air, followed by a sonic boom that shattered the silence of the campus. A ring of white vapor materialized around the muzzle of the railgun as the softball was accelerated to Mach 7 in a fraction of a second. The recoil kicked up a massive cloud of dust, blinding everyone for a moment.

 

When the dust cleared, Izuku was still standing there. The barrel of the railgun was glowing cherry-red from the friction. With a wave of his hand and a flash of blue, the magnificent weapon instantly broke apart, turning back into lifeless dirt and settling onto the ground as if it had never existed.

 

Izuku staggered slightly, pressing the heel of his hand hard against his forehead. A thin trickle of blood leaked from his left nostril. He hastily wiped it away, hoping no one noticed the physical toll the mental calculation had taken on him.

 

Aizawa stared at his device. He didn't turn it around immediately. He looked at Midoriya, then at Yaoyorozu, and finally back to the screen.

 

Aizawa was a man of logic. And logically, he had just witnessed two similar Quirks. But the disparity in application was terrifying. Yaoyorozu had used her body’s resources to build a 15th-century weapon. Midoriya had used literal dirt to build a 22nd-century weapon.

 

Aizawa turned the screen.

 

Infinity.

 

The softball had achieved escape velocity. It was gone.

 

"Infinity?!" the class screamed in unison. Mineta, a small purple-haired boy, was clutching his head in disbelief. "He threw it into space?! What kind of monster is he?!"

 

"He didn't throw it," Todoroki murmured quietly, his mismatched eyes locked on Midoriya. "He engineered a launch protocol."

 

Momo Yaoyorozu felt the world tilt slightly. The numbers burned into her retinas. Infinity.

 

She looked at her hands. The soft, unblemished skin that she had spent years meticulously feeding specific diets to maintain lipid counts. She thought of the hours spent reading encyclopedias, the tutors who told her she was a god among men.

 

I am obsolete, she thought, the realization hitting her like a physical blow to the stomach. My Quirk... it's just a slower, weaker, biologically restricted version of his.

 

Izuku turned around, a sheepish, apologetic smile on his face. He rubbed the back of his neck as the class swarmed him, showering him with praise and questions. He looked overwhelmed, desperately trying to answer their questions about physics and electromagnets, stuttering over his words.

 

Momo watched him. He was so unassuming. He didn't carry himself like a king. He carried himself like a fanboy who had accidentally wandered onto a battlefield.

 

She remembered his words from just minutes ago. You are the factory. You're a flawless Quirk. You're going to be an amazing hero.

 

He wasn't mocking her. He truly believed what he was saying. But as Momo watched the boy who could restructure reality with a touch, a new emotion began to crystallize in her chest. It wasn't just jealousy anymore. It was a cold, sharp, burning pride.

 

You think you know my limits, Midoriya Izuku? Momo thought, her posture straightening, her dark eyes locking onto his messy green hair. You think because I am a biological factory, I am meant only for logistics? You think your mind is faster than mine?

 

She wiped a stray bead of sweat from her brow.

 

I will show you. You may have the speed of creation. But I will prove that I have the mind of a creator.

 

The Quirk Apprehension Test concluded an hour later. Izuku Midoriya placed first overall, despite placing average in the purely physical tests he couldn't augment without triggering a migraine. Momo Yaoyorozu placed second.

 

As they walked back to the classroom, Izuku caught Momo's eye. He smiled brightly, giving her a small thumbs-up.

 

Momo did not smile back. She gave him a curt, deeply respectful nod, her eyes ablaze with an unspoken challenge.

 

The Blueprint Boy had shattered her world on the first day. Now, she was going to have to rebuild it.

 

 

The morning air of U.A. High School carried a deceptive calm, an atmosphere starkly contrasting the storm brewing within Class 1-A.

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

The classroom door was thrown open with the force of a localized hurricane, and the towering, muscle-bound form of All Might, the Number One Hero, stood framed in the doorway. He was leaning so far forward he was practically parallel to the ground, a booming laugh echoing off the walls. "COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A HERO!"

 

The class erupted into instantaneous awe. Kaminari almost fell out of his chair, Kirishima pumped his fists with a wide grin, and even the normally reserved students leaned forward. Izuku Midoriya felt a familiar surge of fanboy adrenaline spike in his chest, his eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. All Might. He’s actually teaching us. It wasn't just a rumor!

 

"Hero Basic Training!" All Might declared, marching to the podium. "The class that will put you through the wringer to forge the foundation of your heroic identities! And today, we’re pulling no punches. Today, it’s Battle Training!"

 

Beside him, a section of the wall seamlessly slid outward, revealing rows of numbered metallic briefcases.

 

"And to go with your first battle," All Might continued, pointing dramatically, "the gear you requested based on your Quirk registrations before school started! Suit up, and gather at Ground Beta!"

 

Izuku stared at briefcase number 18. Inside was the culmination of weeks of obsessive drafting. For most heroes, a costume was about branding, flashiness, or intimidation. For Izuku, whose Quirk required him to process the atomic structure of the universe in a millisecond, his costume was a matter of survival.

 

Twenty minutes later, the students of Class 1-A stepped out of the dark tunnel and into the bright sunlight of Ground Beta, a massive, simulated city district.

 

Momo Yaoyorozu stepped into the light, her posture perfect, her expression composed. Her costume, the Yaoyorozu Equipment, was a masterpiece of functional necessity, heavily modified by the best support engineers money could buy. It consisted of a crimson leotard with a deeply plunging open center, exposing her stomach, chest, and the majority of her arms and legs, paired with a utility belt and a trailing waist-cape. To the untrained eye, it seemed scandalous. To Momo, it was the absolute peak of utility. Her Quirk, Creation, required exposed skin to pull the newly synthesized matter from her lipid stores. Any fabric covering her body was a hindrance, a choke point that would rip or stall her creations. She wore her exposure as a badge of honor; it was the price of her versatility.

 

She scanned the crowd of her peers, assessing their gear. Bakugo looked like a walking armory. Iida looked like a medieval knight crossed with a sports car. And then, there was Midoriya.

 

Momo’s eyes narrowed slightly as she studied him.

 

Izuku’s costume was radically different from his peers'. It wasn't flashy. It was deeply, almost terrifyingly utilitarian. He wore a sleek, dark-green tactical bodysuit made of a highly conductive, fire-resistant polymer mesh. Instead of a cape, he had a high, thick collar that housed a network of tiny, whirring cooling fans pointed directly at his neck and the base of his skull—a necessity to stave off the brain-boiling temperatures of his migraines. His arms were covered in gauntlets with exposed fingertips, lined with specialized sensor-nodes that allowed him to instantly sample the chemical makeup of any surface he touched.

 

But the most striking feature was his headgear. Izuku wore a smooth, dark-visored helmet that covered the upper half of his face, resembling a specialized welding mask. It was designed to automatically tint and polarize the moment his Quirk activated, protecting his retinas from the blinding, radioactive blue flash of atomic transmutation.

 

He didn't look like a traditional hero. He looked like a hazardous materials engineer stepping into a warzone.

 

"They say the clothes make the man, young men and women!" All Might boomed, placing his hands on his hips. "And looking at you all, I see a fine batch of heroes in the making! Now, let's get down to business."

 

All Might pulled out a script, clearing his throat. "The setup is simple. Villains have hidden a nuclear weapon somewhere in their hideout. The Heroes must either capture the Villains or secure the weapon within the time limit. The Villains must protect the weapon or capture the Heroes. We will draw lots to determine the teams!"

 

Momo watched closely as the pairs were decided. She was placed on Team C with the diminutive, incredibly anxious Mineta Minoru. They would be playing the Heroes against Team B, consisting of Todoroki Shoto and Shoji Mezo, as the Villains. Momo calculated the odds instantly. Shoji provides sensory overwatch. Todoroki provides overwhelming elemental offense. It will be a battle of attrition. I need to synthesize thermal countermeasures immediately upon entry.

 

"Team A will be the Heroes," All Might called out, holding up two white balls. "Midoriya Izuku and Uraraka Ochaco! They will be facing Team D, the Villains... Bakugo Katsuki and Iida Tenya!"

 

A dark, heavy silence fell over a specific corner of the group.

 

Bakugo slowly turned his head toward Izuku. The blonde boy’s red eyes were wide, twitching with a volatile mixture of rage, humiliation from the previous day’s quirk test, and a feral, unyielding pride. Small explosions popped and cracked in his palms, burning the fabric of his grenadier gauntlets.

 

Izuku felt a cold sweat prickle the back of his neck. Through the dark tint of his visor, he looked at Bakugo. He knew that look. That was the look of a boy who had spent his entire life being told he was the apex predator, only to find a quiet, muttering kid standing at the top of the food chain.

 

"This is going to be rough," Izuku muttered under his breath, his fingertips tapping nervously against his thighs.

 

 

 

Ground Beta - Building B

 

"So, the plan is simple, Uraraka-san," Izuku whispered, tracing a finger against the rough exterior of the poured-concrete building. "Iida is highly mobile but operates best on flat, unobstructed terrain. His engine quirk is linear. Bakugo... Bakugo is a wildcard. But realistically, he’s going to ignore the objective and hunt me down."

 

Ochaco Uraraka, clad in her pink and black space-suit, nodded eagerly, though she looked a bit pale. "Because of what happened yesterday? At the pitch?"

 

"Because of our whole lives, really," Izuku corrected softly. He pressed his exposed fingertips against the concrete wall. The micro-sensors in his gloves relayed a faint haptic feedback pulse to his wrist. Composition: 60% Portland cement, 30% aggregate sand and gravel, 10% water. Reinforcement: low-carbon steel rebar.

 

"Uraraka, I need you to focus purely on the payload," Izuku said, turning to her. Behind his visor, his green eyes were deadly serious. "When Bakugo attacks, and he will, I will isolate him. I'll create a pathway for you to bypass us and head straight to the top floor. Can you make yourself weightless and float up an elevator shaft if I make one?"

 

"Make an elevator shaft?" Uraraka blinked. "You can just... do that?"

 

Izuku offered a small, strained smile. "If I think hard enough. Just be ready."

 

Inside the surveillance room, the rest of Class 1-A crowded around a bank of massive monitors. Momo stood near the front, her arms crossed perfectly, her eyes locked on Midoriya's screen. Beside her, All Might leaned into the microphone.

 

"Team A and Team D! Your time starts... NOW!"

 

Izuku and Uraraka stepped through a shattered window on the ground floor. The interior of the building was a labyrinth of gray, sterile hallways. Shadows clung to the corners, and the silence was suffocating.

 

Izuku didn't walk normally. He moved with one hand trailing against the wall, a constant, physical connection to his ammunition. The ambient matter was his weapon, and he needed to feel its density.

 

They reached the first intersection.

 

CRACK.

 

It wasn't a footstep. It was the sound of a pin being pulled from a grenade.

 

"DEKU!"

 

From the ceiling above, having blown a hole through the floorboards of the second story, Katsuki Bakugo descended like a vengeful demon. His right hand was pulled back, a massive, blinding sphere of ignited nitroglycerin expanding in his palm, aimed squarely at Izuku’s face.

 

"Uraraka, back!" Izuku shouted.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He didn't raise his arms to block. He didn't scream.

 

In a fraction of a millisecond, Izuku’s brain overclocked. The world lost its color, snapping into a wireframe blueprint of molecular structures.

 

Threat: Thermal expansion and kinetic shockwave. Temperature exceeding 2000 degrees Celsius.

Countermeasure required: High melting point, supreme tensile strength, shock absorption.

Material available: Concrete, low-carbon steel.

Process: Extract iron, infuse with ambient carbon, crystallize atomic lattice. Transmute.

 

Izuku slammed his right palm into the floor.

 

A blinding, radioactive blue light detonated from his hand, washing the drab hallway in a terrifying, ethereal glow. The visor on his helmet snapped black, protecting his eyes.

 

The concrete hallway didn't just shift; it screamed. The sound of matter being forcibly ripped apart and restitched at the atomic level was a deafening, shrieking screech of metal and stone.

 

Before Bakugo’s explosion could even travel the remaining three feet, the floor, the walls, and the ceiling between him and Izuku violently erupted outward. The low-grade steel rebar was magnetically ripped from the concrete, instantly purified, and fused with the ambient carbon to form a slab of hyper-dense, four-inch-thick titanium-carbide plating. The shield angled sharply, forming a perfect wedge designed specifically to deflect explosive force outward rather than absorb it flat-on.

 

Bakugo’s explosion hit the titanium wedge.

 

The shockwave was deafening, rattling the entire building. Fire washed over the corridor, blasting out the windows in a tempest of shattered glass and smoke. But behind the shield, Izuku and Uraraka didn't even feel a breeze.

 

In the surveillance room, the monitors whited out for a moment. Kirishima dropped his jaw. "Whoa! A sneak attack?! And Midoriya blocked it instantly?!"

 

Momo didn't say a word. Her dark eyes were wide, calculating. Reaction time... zero point two seconds. Creation time... instantaneous. Structural integrity... flawless. He didn't just make a wall; he engineered a blast-deflection wedge. He processed all of that while being ambushed.

 

Back in the hallway, the smoke began to clear. Bakugo landed on his feet, skidding backward. He looked at the massive, gleaming metallic wall blocking his path, his teeth grinding so hard they threatened to crack.

 

"Don't mock me, Deku!" Bakugo roared, placing both hands on the titanium barrier. "You think you can hide behind your little crafts?! I'LL MELT IT DOWN!"

 

Bakugo began unleashing a relentless, machine-gun barrage of explosions against the wall, the heat rapidly turning the metal cherry-red.

 

On the other side, Izuku winced. The familiar, stabbing pain of a migraine drove an icy spike behind his left eye. He gritted his teeth, pressing a hand to his helmet. "Uraraka... run. Down the hall, take a right. I'm going to alter the load-bearing structure to give you a ramp."

 

"B-But what about you?!" Uraraka stammered.

 

"He’s not after the objective. He’s after me. Go!"

 

Uraraka nodded, activating her Quirk on her boots to lighten her weight, and bolted down the hall.

 

Izuku turned his attention back to the glowing red titanium wall. The heat was transferring through. Bakugo was relentless. If this had been a physical fight, Izuku would have been dead three times over. But this was a battle of physics. And in physics, action demanded an equal and opposite reaction.

 

Izuku placed both hands flat on the floor beneath him.

 

Bakugo’s Quirk relies on friction, sweat ignition, and leverage from his lower body to brace against the recoil, Izuku analyzed. Remove the leverage. Neutralize the limbs.

 

The blue light surged again, this time sending a wave along the ground beneath the titanium wall, passing straight under Bakugo's feet.

 

On Bakugo's side, he drew his right arm back for a massive, full-power blast. "I'M GOING TO TEAR YOU APART!" he screamed, stepping forward to plant his boot.

 

His boot didn't plant.

 

With a sickening squelch, the solid concrete floor beneath Bakugo’s feet instantly transmuted into a pool of hyper-viscous, non-Newtonian fluid—a synthetic, tar-like polymer synthesized from the petrochemicals in the building's paint and plastics.

 

Bakugo sank up to his knees in an instant. He gasped, his balance completely thrown. He fired an explosion downward to blast himself out, but the moment the kinetic force hit the fluid, the non-Newtonian properties engaged, instantly hardening the fluid into a solid, impenetrable vice grip around his calves. When the explosion faded, it went back to a sticky liquid, slowly pulling him deeper.

 

"What the hell is this?!" Bakugo thrashed wildly, firing blasts in every direction. "DEKU!"

 

The titanium wall smoothly parted down the middle, retracting into the ceiling like liquid metal flowing in reverse.

 

Izuku stood at the end of the hallway, his posture relaxed but guarded. His visor stared blankly at the trapped explosive boy.

 

"You always lead with a right hook, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly calm, amplified slightly by his helmet's speakers. "And you always plant your left foot to brace for the recoil. You haven't changed your combat style since we were eight. You’re predictable."

 

"SHUT UP!" Bakugo aimed his gauntlet at Izuku, his finger hovering over the pin that would unleash his maximum firepower. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He just flicked his wrist.

 

The blue light snapped across the gap. The metal in the walls on either side of Bakugo peeled away like ribbons, shooting forward like metallic vipers. Before Bakugo could pull the pin, the steel ribbons wrapped tightly around his massive grenadier gauntlets, pinning his arms to his sides.

 

But Izuku wasn't done. He knew Bakugo could heat his sweat to melt steel. So, Izuku didn't just bind him. He transmuted the steel ribbons, fusing them with the ambient nitrogen to form a thick, frosty layer of aerogel insulation over Bakugo’s palms. The temperature in Bakugo's hands plummeted, physically suppressing his ability to sweat nitroglycerin.

 

The entire exchange had taken exactly fourteen seconds.

 

Bakugo was completely neutralized. He was buried to his knees in a trap he couldn't blast out of, his arms pinned, his quirk chemically suppressed. He hadn't landed a single blow. Izuku hadn't thrown a single punch.

 

Silence fell over the hallway, broken only by Bakugo's heavy, ragged breathing. He struggled against the restraints, the veins in his neck bulging, his red eyes wide with a mixture of absolute fury and a terrifying, dawning realization of complete powerlessness.

 

"I told you," Izuku said quietly, the blue light fading from the air. "I'm not fighting you, Kacchan. I'm just completing the objective."

 

In the surveillance room, the silence was absolute.

 

No one spoke. Kaminari’s mouth was hanging open. Kirishima’s eyes were wide.

 

"He... he didn't even move from his spot," Sero whispered, breaking the quiet. "He completely disabled Bakugo without touching him."

 

"It's terrifying," Tsuyu Asui added, her finger on her chin. "Bakugo was out for blood. Midoriya treated him like a puzzle to be solved. His environmental control is absolute."

 

All Might stood rigidly, his hands gripping the console. He had expected a brawl. He had expected the explosive boy to overwhelm the quiet one. Instead, he had just witnessed a surgical, flawless dismantling of a combatant. Young Midoriya... All Might thought, a bead of sweat forming on his brow. Your power... it’s not just strong. It’s dictatorial. You rewrite the rules of the battlefield.

 

Momo Yaoyorozu felt a cold dread pooling in her stomach.

 

She stared at Midoriya’s unmoving figure on the screen. He was panting slightly, one hand pressed to the side of his helmet, but otherwise, he was unharmed.

 

Fourteen seconds, Momo calculated, her mind racing. He analyzed the threat, synthesized a hyper-dense titanium shield, engineered a non-Newtonian trap, and formulated a chemical-suppressant binding, all in fourteen seconds.

 

If she had been in Midoriya's place? It would have taken her at least five seconds just to generate the shield. By that time, Bakugo’s explosion would have incinerated her. If she survived, generating the bindings would have drained her lipid stores significantly. She would have been exhausted, bruised, and gasping for air.

 

Midoriya had simply touched the floor.

 

"Uraraka, status?" Izuku's voice crackled over the radio feed, broadcast into the surveillance room.

 

“I’m on the top floor!” Uraraka’s voice came back, slightly out of breath. “Iida is guarding the weapon. He’s... well, he’s taken all the furniture out of the room so I don't have anything to use my Quirk on. And he’s doing a really intense villain monologue.”

 

Izuku let out a soft sigh. He reached up, tapped the side of his helmet, and pressed his hand against the wall. "Understood. Standby. I'm going to alter the structural integrity of the ceiling directly beneath him. When the floor drops, secure the weapon."

 

"Got it!"

 

In the monitor showing the fifth floor, Iida was dramatically pacing in front of the papier-mâché missile. "HAHAHA! YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME, HERO! MY SPEED IS UNMATCHED IN THIS OPEN DOMAIN!"

 

Suddenly, the concrete floor directly beneath Iida's feet turned a glowing, radioactive blue.

 

Before Iida could react, the solid floor instantaneously transmuted into brittle, fragile chalk. Iida’s immense weight, coupled with his heavy armor, shattered the chalk instantly. With a yelp of pure surprise, Iida fell through the floor, landing squarely on his back in the fourth-story hallway.

 

Uraraka gleefully floated across the gap and slapped both hands onto the missile. "Secured!"

 

"HERO TEAM WINS!" All Might's voice boomed over the PA system.

 

The surveillance room erupted into cheers.

 

"Flawless victory!" Ashido cheered. "Midoriya is a beast! He didn't even break a sweat!"

 

Momo closed her eyes. The cheering felt loud. It felt grating. Didn't break a sweat, she thought bitterly. Of course he didn't. He didn't have to sacrifice a piece of himself to win. He just borrowed from the world.

 

 

 

Fifteen minutes later, Izuku stumbled out of the simulated building. He was lagging behind Uraraka, who was practically skipping.

 

As soon as he was out of sight of the cameras, Izuku ripped his helmet off. The cool air hit his face, but it did nothing to soothe the inferno raging inside his skull. He dropped to his knees behind a fake bus stop, violently coughing. His nose was bleeding freely now, dripping onto his tactical suit.

 

Too much, Izuku thought, his vision swimming with static. Titanium synthesis, non-Newtonian polymer, aerogel, and architectural structural restructuring. All within three minutes. God, my brain feels like it’s bleeding.

 

He pulled a small, auto-injecting pen from his utility belt and pressed it against his thigh. It hissed, delivering a high-dose sumatriptan and specialized neuro-soothing cocktail developed specifically for his Quirk's backlash. Slowly, the agonizing thumping behind his eyes dulled to a manageable roar. He wiped the blood from his face, took a deep breath, and stood up, putting his helmet back on before heading toward the surveillance room. No one needed to know he was a glass cannon. He had to be the immovable wall.

 

 

 

"Team B, Villains. Team C, Heroes," All Might announced. "Time starts... NOW!"

 

Momo Yaoyorozu stood at the entrance of Building C. Her partner, Mineta, was cowering behind her legs, shivering uncontrollably.

 

"Okay, Mineta," Momo said, her voice steady, projecting a confidence she was desperately trying to convince herself she possessed. "Todoroki possesses a highly powerful ice Quirk. Given the confined space of the building, a large-scale area-of-effect attack is highly probable. I need to synthesize thermal insulation blankets and localized heaters for us before we enter."

 

"J-Just don't let him freeze me! I'm too young and beautiful to die!" Mineta wailed.

 

Momo closed her eyes. She focused on her body. She visualized the complex synthetic fibers of a high-grade thermal blanket. She calculated the atomic weight, the weaving pattern, the exact lipid expenditure required.

 

Midoriya did it in fourteen seconds. I can do it in ten. I have to do it in ten, Momo thought, pushing herself.

 

Her back began to glow with a soft, white light. The skin heated up. The blanket began to slowly pull itself from her shoulder blades, inch by agonizing inch.

 

Five seconds.

Six seconds.

Seven seconds.

 

"Yaoyorozu!" Mineta screamed.

 

Momo opened her eyes. The temperature in the air hadn't just dropped; it had vanished.

 

A monstrous, creeping sound echoed from inside the building—a sound of cracking glass and groaning concrete. From the dark doorway, a wave of solid, jagged white ice erupted outward like a slow-motion explosion. It cascaded down the walls, crawled across the floor, and surged toward them with terrifying speed.

 

"No!" Momo gasped. She tried to abort the blanket synthesis and pivot to a fire-emitter, but her Quirk didn't work like Midoriya's. Once the biological process started, pulling it back was like trying to shove toothpaste back into a tube.

 

The ice hit them.

 

It wasn't just cold; it was absolute zero. The frost instantly clung to Momo's exposed skin. Her body, deeply reliant on its internal temperature to burn lipids for her Quirk, went into immediate shock. The pores on her skin slammed shut. The glowing light of her Creation flickered and died. Half of a thermal blanket hung limply from her back, useless.

 

The ice encased her boots, freezing her to the ground. It crawled up to her knees, locking her in place. Beside her, Mineta was completely frozen up to his neck, his teeth chattering so hard they sounded like a jackhammer.

 

Momo gasped, her breath puffing into the air in thick clouds. She strained her arms, trying to create anything—a hammer, an ice pick, a spark plug. But her body was too cold. The lipids wouldn't burn. Her metabolic rate had completely crashed.

 

Move, she commanded her body. Create! Do something! Midoriya wouldn't be stuck. Midoriya would have turned the ice into steam. Midoriya would have—

 

Slowly, agonizingly, the sound of boots crunching on ice echoed from the hallway.

 

Todoroki Shoto walked out of the building. His right side was covered in a thin layer of frost. His face was an emotionless mask, his mismatched eyes sweeping over the frozen forms of his classmates.

 

He didn't look malicious. He looked utterly bored.

 

He walked up to Momo. She glared at him, her body shivering violently, but she refused to look away. She strained, a tiny spark of light flickering on her palm, desperately trying to form a blade.

 

Todoroki simply reached out and placed his bare, freezing hand on her shoulder. The cold bit through her flesh, numbing her completely.

 

"You rely too much on your skin, Yaoyorozu," Todoroki said quietly. "In this cold, your metabolism stops. Your Quirk is disabled. Checkmate."

 

"VILLAIN TEAM WINS!" All Might announced, though his voice lacked the boisterous energy it had for the previous match.

 

Todoroki sighed, pressing his left hand to the ice. A wave of heat washed over the area, melting the ice in seconds and leaving Momo soaking wet, shivering, and deeply, profoundly humiliated. She dropped to her knees, coughing as the blood rushed back into her frozen limbs.

 

She had lost. In less than thirty seconds, she had been completely and utterly dismantled.

 

 

 

The Locker Room

 

The battle trials concluded an hour later. The girls' locker room was mostly empty, as the others had rushed out to discuss the matches and head to lunch.

 

Momo sat alone on the wooden bench in the corner. She hadn't changed back into her school uniform yet. She was just staring at her hands.

 

The hands of a genius. The hands of a recommendation student. The hands that were supposed to be the absolute pinnacle of versatility.

 

She clenched them into fists, her fingernails biting into her palms.

 

The image of Midoriya's fight played on an agonizing loop in her mind. The blinding blue light. The absolute control. The way the universe itself seemed to eagerly bend to his will. He didn't have to calculate his own biology. He didn't have to worry about the cold stopping his engine. He was the engine, and the world was his fuel.

 

"It's not fair," Momo whispered, the sound startling her in the quiet room. She immediately clamped her mouth shut, deeply ashamed of the words. A Yaoyorozu does not complain about fairness, her mother’s strict voice echoed in her head. A Yaoyorozu adapts. A Yaoyorozu overcomes.

 

But how do you overcome obsolescence?

 

How do you adapt when you are the dial-up internet and the boy next to you is the fiber-optic cable?

 

The door to the locker room swung open. Jiro Kyoka, the punk-rock girl with earphone jacks hanging from her earlobes, walked in. She paused, noticing Momo sitting in the dark corner.

 

"Hey, Yaomomo," Jiro said softly, using a nickname Momo hadn't authorized but couldn't find the energy to correct. "You okay? Todoroki did a number on you out there."

 

Momo forced a polite, perfectly manicured smile onto her face. "I am perfectly fine, Jiro-san. Just reviewing my tactical errors. I allowed the environmental temperature to dictate my biological output. It was a rookie mistake."

 

Jiro walked over to her locker, pulling out her school blazer. "Don't beat yourself up. Todoroki is a monster. I mean, did you see him? Only guy who was scarier today was Midoriya."

 

Momo flinched. The name felt like a physical sting.

 

"Seriously," Jiro continued, oblivious to Momo's discomfort. "Midoriya is insane. Kaminari was trying to figure out his Quirk. It’s like... he can just make whatever he wants, instantly, right? Without any limits?"

 

"He has limits," Momo said sharply, her voice suddenly cold.

 

Jiro blinked, looking back at her. "He does?"

 

Momo stood up, her pride flaring, demanding to be recognized. "Matter cannot be created or destroyed, Jiro-san. It can only be transformed. Midoriya requires ambient matter. If he is placed in a vacuum, or an environment completely devoid of usable atomic structures, his Quirk is useless. He is completely dependent on his surroundings."

 

She walked over to her locker, placing a hand on the cool metal door.

 

"My Quirk," Momo continued, her voice trembling slightly with an emotion she refused to identify as desperation, "draws from within. I am self-sufficient. I do not need the environment. I am the source."

 

Jiro rubbed the back of her neck. "Uh, right. Yeah, totally. Yours is way more... reliable, I guess? Anyway, I'm grabbing lunch. Catch you later."

 

Jiro left, the door clicking shut behind her.

 

Momo stood facing her locker. The bravado melted away instantly, leaving behind a hollow, aching emptiness.

 

She had spoken the truth. Midoriya was dependent on the environment. But it was a hollow victory. Because when in the history of heroism had a battle ever taken place in a total vacuum? The world was made of matter. Midoriya had infinite ammunition.

 

Momo looked down at her stomach, at the exposed skin of her costume. She thought about the heavy, exhausting caloric burn required to make a single thermal blanket. She thought about the fourteen seconds it took Midoriya to conquer a god of explosions.

 

The Efficiency Gap, Momo thought, her brilliant analytical mind categorizing her despair into cold, hard logic. That is what separates us. It’s not knowledge. It’s not intelligence. It is the raw, mechanical efficiency of execution.

 

She reached out and pressed her forehead against the cool metal of her locker, closing her eyes.

 

"I won't stay behind," she whispered into the empty room, her voice hardening. The jealousy was still there, a bitter, ugly thing. But beneath it, the burning pride of her lineage was catching fire.

 

She would not be the obsolete model. If biology was slower than physics, she would simply have to be smarter. She would have to anticipate the battle. Midoriya reacted to the present. Momo decided, right then and there, that she would have to live in the future. She would have to prepare the battlefield before he even realized there was a war.

 

She opened her locker and pulled out her uniform. The Battle Trials were over. The real war—the war for her own self-worth against the Blueprint Boy—had just begun.

 

 

 

Across the campus, in the boys' locker room, Izuku was sitting on a bench, a cold compress pressed firmly against his eyes. The migraine was finally subsiding into a dull, manageable ache.

 

"Hey, Midoriya!" Kirishima bounded over, clapping Izuku hard on the back. Izuku winced, nearly dropping his ice pack. "Man, you were so manly out there! You completely clowned Bakugo! How'd you know exactly what to build?"

 

Izuku pulled the compress away, blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights. "Oh, um... well, it's just basic chemistry and physics, really. You assess the kinetic output of the threat and synthesize the most efficient countermeasure based on available ambient matter. It's... it's really not that impressive."

 

"Not that impressive?!" Kaminari laughed from the next aisle. "Dude, you're like a wizard! You don't even have to think about it! It just happens!"

 

Izuku offered a weak smile, but his stomach twisted. Don't have to think about it. If only they knew. If only they knew the agonizing mental gymnastics required to calculate the atomic weight of titanium carbide while a psychopath was trying to blow your head off.

 

As he packed his yellow backpack, Izuku’s mind drifted to the other matches. Specifically, he thought of Match B. He had watched Yaoyorozu get frozen. He had seen the look of utter defeat on her face.

 

It bothered him.

 

He had genuinely meant what he said yesterday. Her Quirk was flawless. It was a miracle of biological engineering. To see it shut down by a simple temperature drop... it felt wrong. It felt like watching a masterpiece painting get ruined by a leaky roof.

 

She relies on internal temperature to maintain the lipid conversion rate, Izuku muttered mentally, a new, blank page in his mind opening up. If her core temperature drops, the enzyme catalysts for transmutation freeze. But what if she preemptively synthesized an exothermic chemical compound right beneath the dermal layer? A slow-release phosphorus or a capsaicin-derivative? It would keep her pores open even in sub-zero environments.

 

He pulled out his Notebook No. 13 and quickly jotted down the chemical formula, his pencil flying across the page. He drew a quick, incredibly detailed sketch of Yaoyorozu's biological mechanics, charting a hypothetical pathway for internal thermal regulation.

 

He paused, looking at the page.

 

Would she want his advice? He was just a nerd who manipulated dirt. She was a Yaoyorozu. A recommendation student. She probably already knew all of this.

 

Izuku closed the notebook and stuffed it into his bag. No, he thought. She's brilliant. She'll figure it out on her own. I shouldn't patronize her.

 

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked out of the locker room, entirely unaware of the fierce, burning rivalry he had inadvertently ignited in the heart of the smartest girl in U.A. High School.

 

 

The bus ride to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint was supposed to be a reprieve, a brief moment of camaraderie before another grueling exercise. The vehicle hummed along the coastal highway, the bright morning sun glaring off the ocean waves. Inside, Class 1-A was loud, buzzing with the restless energy of teenagers who had yet to face the true, ugly realities of the world they were trying to save.

 

Momo Yaoyorozu sat near the middle, her posture impeccably straight, hands folded neatly in her lap. She stared out the window, but her eyes weren't focused on the scenery. They were locked onto the reflection of the boy sitting two rows ahead of her.

 

Izuku Midoriya was currently engrossed in a frantic, whispered conversation with Tsuyu Asui and Eijiro Kirishima.

 

"Your Quirk is like All Might's in terms of sheer destructive output, Midoriya, but it's way more versatile," Kirishima was saying, leaning over the aisle. "You can just... make whatever. It's totally pro-level."

 

"O-Oh, no, it's not like that!" Izuku stammered, waving his hands defensively. "I can't just make anything. I'm strictly bound by the laws of equivalent exchange and the ambient elemental composition of my immediate radius! I can't synthesize complex organics, and if there isn't enough carbon or iron in the area, my defensive options drop by sixty percent! Plus, the neural load—"

 

"See? You're already talking like a pro," Tsuyu croaked bluntly. "It's a strong Quirk, Midoriya. You don't have to hide it."

 

Momo closed her eyes, the ambient chatter of the bus fading into a low, irritating drone. Equivalent exchange, she thought bitterly. He acts as if he's restricted. He acts as if the entire planet isn't made of the very materials he manipulates.

 

Since the Battle Trials, Momo had spent every waking hour in a state of hyper-focused preparation. She had consumed three times her normal caloric intake, banking lipids. She had studied the chemical compositions of flashbangs, tear gas, and sonic emitters until she could recite them backward in her sleep. She was determined to bridge the Efficiency Gap. Today's rescue training at the USJ was her proving ground. She would show the class—and Midoriya—that a creator who plans is superior to a creator who merely reacts.

 

"We're here," Aizawa's tired voice cut through the chatter. "Quiet down."

 

The bus hissed to a halt outside a massive, domed structure that looked more like a sci-fi planetary colony than a training facility. As the students piled out, they were greeted by the Space Hero, Thirteen, whose puffy, astronaut-like suit gleamed in the sunlight.

 

Inside, the USJ was breathtaking. It was a sprawling, multi-biome marvel of engineering. There were fake cities engulfed in flames, a massive artificial lake housing a shipwreck, a towering mountain zone, and a dense, humid forestry area.

 

"A shipwreck, a landslide, a fire, a windstorm..." Thirteen gestured widely to the sprawling zones. "I created this facility to prepare you for all types of disasters! It is the Unforeseen Simulation Joint! Or, USJ for short!"

 

The class murmured in awe. But Thirteen raised a hand, their demeanor shifting from welcoming to deadly serious.

 

"Before we begin, I have one or two points... or three... or four," Thirteen said, holding up their thick, gloved fingers. "As you all know, my Quirk is Black Hole. I can suck up and tear apart anything. However... it is a Quirk that can easily kill people."

 

The silence in the grand entrance hall was immediate and heavy. Izuku stiffened, his green eyes locking onto Thirteen. Momo felt a chill run down her spine.

 

"Some of you have Quirks like that as well," Thirteen continued, sweeping their gaze over the students. Momo felt the gaze briefly rest on her, then on Midoriya. "In our superhuman society, Quirks are heavily restricted and monitored. It’s easy to forget that at their core, many of these powers are inherently lethal. A single misstep, a single loss of control, and you could end a life. Today, you will learn how to use your Quirks to save lives, not take them. You will learn the weight of your power."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. He knew exactly what Thirteen meant. If he miscalculated the atomic weight of a transmutation, he could accidentally synthesize a pocket of chlorine gas instead of breathable oxygen. He could turn the floor beneath someone's feet into a vacuum. His power was a loaded gun, and his brain was the fragile trigger.

 

"That is all," Thirteen bowed. "Thank you for listening."

 

"Alright," Aizawa stepped forward. "First, we'll—"

 

The lights in the dome flickered violently. A low, electronic whine echoed from the massive floodlights lining the ceiling before they shattered, showering the central plaza in sparks. The fountain in the center of the plaza sputtered and died.

 

Down below, in the central courtyard, the air itself seemed to tear open.

 

It started as a small speck of swirling, purple-black mist. Within seconds, it expanded into a massive, swirling vortex. A hand, pale and sickeningly thin, reached out from the void, gripping the edge of the portal as if pulling a door open. A man covered in disembodied hands stepped through, his red eyes peering through the fingers clutching his face.

 

Behind him, dozens—no, hundreds—of grotesque, heavily armed figures began to pour out of the darkness. Mutants, thugs, villains.

 

"Gather together and don't move!" Aizawa roared, his voice cracking like a whip. He ripped his capture scarf from his shoulders. "Thirteen, protect the students!"

 

"What is that?" Kirishima squinted, taking a step forward. "Is this like the entrance exam? Does the training start right away?"

 

"Don't step forward!" Aizawa commanded, pulling his yellow goggles down over his eyes. "Those are... real villains."

 

The temperature in the dome seemed to plummet. Momo froze, her breath catching in her throat. Real villains? Here? U.A. is supposed to be the most secure facility in the country. Her brilliant mind, usually a well-oiled machine of tactics and data, hit a sudden, terrifying roadblock. This isn't a simulation.

 

"Thirteen, begin the evacuation," Aizawa ordered, preparing to leap down the sweeping staircase. "Try calling the school."

 

"Wait, Sensei! You can't fight them all alone!" Izuku stepped forward, his voice tight with panic. "Even if you can erase their Quirks, there are too many! Your fighting style is suited for stealth and one-on-one, not a frontal assault!"

 

Aizawa paused and glanced back at Izuku. "A hero only has one trick, Midoriya. And they don't have the luxury of choosing their battles."

 

With that, Eraserhead plummeted into the mob of villains, a one-man army descending into the fray.

 

"We have to go! Now!" Thirteen urged, herding the paralyzed students toward the heavy blast doors.

 

Momo turned to run, falling in line behind Iida. But as they neared the exit, the air in front of them warped. The purple-black mist exploded upwards from the floor, towering over them, cutting off the exit.

 

The mist coalesced, forming two glowing, narrow yellow eyes. "I'm afraid I cannot allow that," a deep, aristocratic voice resonated from the void. "Greetings. We are the League of Villains. It may be presumptuous of us, but we have invited ourselves into the home of the heroes... in order to have All Might take his final breath."

 

Kill All Might? Momo thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. That's impossible.

 

"My role is to scatter you... and torture you to death!"

 

Before Thirteen or Bakugo could land a hit, the villain known as Kurogiri expanded. A massive dome of dark, swirling mist engulfed the students. Momo felt a suffocating cold wrap around her body. The ground vanished beneath her feet. She was falling through an endless, disorienting blackness.

 

A moment later, she hit solid ground. Hard.

 

 

 

The Mountain Zone

 

Momo rolled across a jagged, rocky surface, scraping her knee and tearing the fabric of her utility belt. She gasped, pushing herself up. The air was thin, cold, and smelled sharply of ozone and dry dust. She was entirely surrounded by towering, sheer rock faces and deep, treacherous ravines.

 

"Ow, damn it..." a voice groaned nearby.

 

Momo spun around, falling into a defensive crouch. A few yards away, Jiro Kyoka was picking herself up, rubbing her head. Beside her, Denki Kaminari was dusting off his jacket, looking wildly around the canyon.

 

"Jiro! Kaminari!" Momo called out, relief briefly washing over her. "Are you unhurt?"

 

"Yeah, I think so," Jiro muttered, plugging her earphone jacks into the rock wall. She closed her eyes. Her expression instantly paled. "Yaomomo... we're not alone."

 

"Heh. Nice catch, little girl."

 

From the ridges above, figures began to emerge. Thugs with rusted machetes, villains with reptilian scales, men with jagged, crystalline protrusions growing from their knuckles. They surrounded the three students, effectively trapping them in a small, bowl-like depression of the mountain zone. There were easily two dozen of them.

 

"Look at this," a villain with a patchwork face sneered, brandishing an iron pipe. "Just a bunch of kids. This is gonna be a slaughter."

 

Kaminari held his hands up, sparks dancing across his knuckles. "S-Stay back! I'll fry you all! I'm serious!"

 

"Oh yeah? Do it," a massive villain with stone-like skin challenged, stepping closer. "Let's see what U.A. brats are made of."

 

Kaminari hesitated. He leaned back toward Momo, whispering frantically. "Yaoyorozu, I can't let out a massive discharge! If I go full power, I'll fry you and Jiro too! I need an insulation sheet, like, right now!"

 

Momo’s mind snapped into gear. An insulation sheet. Yes. That’s the logical tactic. An insulated blanket with a surface area of at least ten square meters to cover Jiro and myself, plus close-quarters weapons for defense if they break through the perimeter.

 

"I need time," Momo said, her voice shaking slightly. She stripped off the outer layer of her jacket, exposing her shoulders, back, and stomach to the cold mountain air. "Jiro, Kaminari, hold them off. It will take me exactly twenty seconds to synthesize a blanket of that size and two quarterstaffs."

 

"Twenty seconds?!" Kaminari yelped, dodging a sudden thrust from a spear-wielding villain. "That's an eternity in a fight!"

 

"Just do it!" Jiro yelled, plunging her jacks into her boots. She unleashed a directed soundwave, blasting the nearest three villains backward into a rock wall.

 

Momo closed her eyes. She focused on the cellular structure of high-density aerogel and rubberized polymer. She focused on the iron and wood for the staffs. Her back began to glow with a brilliant, stark white light. The heat generated by the lipid conversion felt sickening against the cold wind.

 

One second. Two seconds. Three...

 

"They're not robots!" Jiro screamed as a villain lunged at her. She barely dodged, a knife slicing through the shoulder of her jacket.

 

Four seconds. Five seconds. Six...

 

Momo's skin stretched uncomfortably. The heavy, thick rubber of the massive blanket began to slowly protrude from her shoulder blades, inching outward. It was heavy. It was draining her energy fast.

 

"Get the one making the glowing stuff!" a villain roared, pointing directly at Momo. "She's the crafter!"

 

Three villains broke through Kaminari's erratic, panicked electric blasts. They charged straight at Momo.

 

Seven seconds. Eight seconds. Nine...

 

Hurry, Momo's mind screamed. Faster! Process faster! Burn the lipids faster! But biology has a speed limit. She could feel the cellular synthesis working as fast as physically possible. It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.

 

A villain with a serrated blade leaped into the air, bringing the weapon down toward Momo’s exposed neck.

 

Momo couldn't move. The half-formed blanket anchored her to the ground. If she stopped the creation now, she would be defenseless. If she didn't move, she would die.

 

"Yaomomo!"

 

Jiro threw herself forward. She tackled Momo to the side just as the blade came down.

 

The serrated metal didn't hit Momo. Instead, it carved a vicious, bloody gash down the side of Jiro's left leg.

 

Jiro screamed, collapsing onto the rocky floor, clutching her bleeding thigh.

 

Momo's eyes widened in absolute horror. The glowing white light on her back flickered and died instantly. The massive, half-finished rubber blanket fell to the dirt, useless and incomplete.

 

"Jiro!" Momo scrambled to her friend's side, her hands hovering over the bloody wound. Real, crimson blood was staining the rocks. This wasn't paint. This wasn't a simulation.

 

"I'm fine... I'm fine..." Jiro gritted her teeth, tears of pain pricking her eyes. "Keep making... the weapons!"

 

Momo looked up. The three villains were looming over them, raising their weapons. Kaminari was backed against a wall, completely overwhelmed by numbers, terrified to use his Quirk.

 

Momo's mind, usually a fortress of logic and planning, completely shattered.

 

I was too slow, the thought echoed in the empty cavern of her skull. She bled because I was too slow. I took ten seconds. Ten seconds was too long. In ten seconds, people die.

 

She looked at her hands. They were trembling violently. She tried to spark the white light of creation to make a sword, a shield, a bandage, anything. But her body was in shock. Her heart rate was too erratic, her breathing too shallow. The biological factory had shut down.

 

She was a sitting duck. A liability.

 

"End of the line, rich girl," the villain sneered, swinging his iron pipe down.

 

Momo squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the killing blow.

 

 

 

The Shipwreck Zone – Three Minutes Earlier

 

Izuku Midoriya didn't panic when he fell out of the sky.

 

As he plummeted toward the massive artificial lake of the Shipwreck Zone, his brain automatically cataloged the environment. Wind speed: nominal. Temperature: 20 degrees Celsius. Surface tension of water below. High risk of blunt force trauma upon impact.

 

He twisted mid-air, bringing his right hand to his lips. He bit down hard on his thumb, drawing a drop of blood. He pressed his bloody thumb to the metal casing of his utility belt.

 

Blueprint: Surface Tension Breaker. Hydrodynamic wedge.

 

A flash of blue light illuminated the sky. The metal of his belt and the trace carbon in his uniform rapidly synthesized into a sleek, aerodynamic diving cone that encased his lower body. He pierced the surface of the water without a splash, completely bypassing the concrete-like impact of the surface tension.

 

The moment he was submerged, he dismissed the cone. He opened his eyes, the dark visor of his helmet automatically sealing and shifting to aquatic mode.

 

The water was infested with villains. They were swimming toward him like sharks—men with gills, webbed fingers, and predatory eyes.

 

Suddenly, a massive tongue wrapped around his waist. He was violently yanked upward, bursting through the surface of the water, and slammed unceremoniously onto the wooden deck of a sinking ship. Tsuyu Asui landed next to him, gently placing a crying Mineta on the floorboards.

 

"Thanks, Asui-san," Izuku coughed, quickly calculating the structural integrity of the ship. The hull is compromised. Wood rot, taking on water. We have maybe five minutes before it sinks.

 

"Call me Tsu," she replied, peering over the edge of the railing. "We're in a bad spot, Midoriya. The villains in the water have the geographical advantage. They're waiting for the ship to sink."

 

"We're gonna die!" Mineta sobbed, ripping purple spheres from his head and throwing them uselessly at the deck. "They're gonna drown us and eat us!"

 

Izuku ignored Mineta. He walked to the edge of the ship and looked down. The water was boiling with movement. There were at least thirty villains circling the vessel.

 

"They have the geographical advantage," Izuku repeated, his voice low, distorted slightly by the water-seal of his helmet. He placed his bare, sensor-tipped fingers against the wet, rotting wood of the railing.

 

"Midoriya?" Tsu asked, tilting her head.

 

"They think this water is their domain," Izuku muttered, his eyes narrowing behind his visor. The familiar, agonizing pressure began to build behind his left eye. The supercomputer was booting up. "But water is just hydrogen and oxygen. The ship is carbon and cellulose. The lakebed is silica and iron. It's all just raw material."

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He needed to neutralize thirty aquatic combatants without killing them, without giving them time to attack, and he needed an escape route to land.

 

Blueprint required: Large-scale fluid dynamics manipulation. Vortex generation.

Method: Transmute the ship's hull into a high-powered, dual-rotational turbine. Utilize ambient water density to create a localized maelstrom.

Drawback: Immense neural load. Mass conversion will trigger a localized vacuum.

 

"Tsu," Izuku said, not looking back. "Grab Mineta. Hold onto me tightly. Do not let go, no matter what happens."

 

"Okay, ribbit." Tsu didn't question him. She grabbed Mineta by his collar and wrapped her powerful arms around Izuku's waist.

 

Izuku placed both hands flat on the wooden deck.

 

"Let's change the geography," Izuku whispered.

 

The atomic restructuring didn't start with a sound. It started with the absence of it.

 

The air pressure in the Shipwreck Zone instantly dropped. The water around the ship suddenly stopped rippling. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to hold its breath.

 

Then, the blue light detonated.

 

It wasn't a flash; it was a continuous, blinding nova of radioactive azure that swallowed the entire ship. The sound that followed was apocalyptic—the roar of thousands of tons of water and wood being violently torn apart at the molecular level.

 

The rotting wooden ship dissolved instantly. The cellulose and carbon were ripped apart, purified, and reconstructed into massive, interlocking titanium-alloy turbine blades. The turbine spanned thirty meters wide, submerging itself instantly into the depths of the lake.

 

Izuku, Tsu, and Mineta were left standing on a small, hyper-dense floating platform in the dead center of the lake.

 

Izuku gritted his teeth, blood immediately pouring from his nose and ears under his helmet. "Engage."

 

He mentally triggered the turbine.

 

The massive titanium blades began to spin with terrifying, frictionless velocity. The water in the artificial lake didn't just swirl; it was violently sucked into a massive, shrieking whirlpool. The sheer force of the vortex generated a localized hurricane, whipping the water into a frenzy.

 

The aquatic villains below didn't even have time to scream. They were instantly caught in the inescapable undertow. They were pulled into the center of the vortex, spinning helplessly in a terrifying centrifuge of violently churning water.

 

Izuku raised his left hand. The blue light flared again.

 

"Mineta! Throw your spheres into the water! Now!" Izuku roared over the sound of the maelstrom.

 

Mineta, crying hysterically, rapidly pulled the sticky balls from his head and threw them into the vortex.

 

As the spheres hit the water, they stuck to the villains who were being forced together by the centrifugal force of the whirlpool. Within seconds, all thirty villains were hopelessly glued together in a massive, dizzying ball of bodies, trapped in the center of the vortex.

 

"Now... the exit!" Izuku gasped. His vision was going white. The pain in his head was blinding. He had to finish this.

 

He slammed his hand down on the floating platform. He transmuted the titanium of the turbines, unraveling them into a massive, solid bridge of synthetic diamond-carbon that arched beautifully over the swirling water, connecting their platform directly to the central plaza of the USJ.

 

The whirlpool slowly dissipated as the water settled, leaving the massive ball of incapacitated villains floating harmlessly on the surface.

 

The entire encounter—from the moment Izuku touched the deck to the moment the bridge was formed—took exactly eight seconds.

 

"Holy... crap..." Mineta whispered, staring at the bridge, completely forgetting to cry.

 

Tsu looked at Izuku. The boy was trembling violently. He dropped to his knees on the diamond bridge, clutching his helmet. Blood was pooling at the base of his visor.

 

"Midoriya!" Tsu knelt beside him. "You overdid it."

 

"I'm... fine," Izuku wheezed, injecting himself with a double-dose of his neuro-soothing cocktail. He ripped the helmet off. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes bloodshot. He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of a trembling hand.

 

He stood up, swaying slightly. He looked toward the central plaza, where Aizawa was fighting a losing battle against a massive, bird-like monster. But his eyes darted to the right, toward the Mountain Zone.

 

Even from here, he could see the flashes of yellow electricity. He could hear the faint echo of screaming.

 

Kaminari's electricity. But it's erratic. Not a full discharge. He's holding back. Why? Because Yaoyorozu and Jiro are in the blast radius. They don't have insulation.

 

Izuku did the math. Distance: 400 meters. Elevation: 60 meters. Time it takes for a villain to swing a weapon: 1.2 seconds.

 

"Tsu, take Mineta to the entrance," Izuku ordered, his voice suddenly void of its usual anxiety. It was the cold, analytical voice of the supercomputer. "I have to make a delivery."

 

Before Tsu could argue, Izuku jumped.

 

He didn't run. He transmuted the diamond bridge beneath his feet into a pneumatic catapult, launching himself into the air like a human missile directly toward the Mountain Zone.

 

 

 

The Mountain Zone

 

The iron pipe swung down toward Momo's head. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. She could see the rust on the metal, the feral grin on the villain's face.

 

She had failed. She was too slow.

 

BOOM.

 

A shockwave ripped through the canyon. The villain swinging the pipe was suddenly hit by something moving so fast it was invisible to the naked eye. The man was violently blasted sideways, crashing into the rock wall with a sickening crunch.

 

Momo blinked, dust stinging her eyes.

 

Standing in front of her, a cloud of dust settling around his green tactical suit, was Izuku Midoriya. He wasn't wearing his helmet. His face was stained with blood, his green hair wild, his eyes glowing with an intense, terrifyingly bright azure light.

 

The remaining villains paused, startled by the sudden intrusion.

 

"A-Another kid?" one of them stammered.

 

Izuku didn't look at them. He glanced back over his shoulder. He saw Jiro bleeding on the ground. He saw the unfinished, useless lump of rubber on Momo's back. He saw the sheer, unadulterated terror in Momo's dark eyes.

 

"Yaoyorozu," Izuku said, his voice quiet but echoing clearly over the wind. "Are you hurt?"

 

"I... I..." Momo couldn't form the words. She was trembling.

 

Izuku turned his attention back to the villains. He placed both of his bloodstained hands flat against the rocky walls of the canyon.

 

"Kaminari," Izuku called out, his voice sharp. "What is your maximum voltage output?"

 

"A-A million volts! Maybe more!" Kaminari yelled back from the wall. "But I can't use it! I'll kill them!"

 

"Not today," Izuku said.

 

The blue light ignited. It was brighter than before, almost blinding. It swept through the mountain zone like a tidal wave of pure energy.

 

Target: Ambient rock face. Iron, copper, and zinc deposits.

Process: Rapid extraction. Smelting. Wire drawing. Weaving.

 

The mountain screamed.

 

From the stone walls around the villains, millions of tiny, glittering veins of raw copper and iron were violently ripped from the rock. They shot into the air like golden threads, weaving together in a spectacular, beautiful tapestry of lethal engineering.

 

In less than two seconds, a massive, intricate net of highly conductive copper wire encased every single villain in the canyon. The wire looped around their wrists, their ankles, and their weapons, anchoring them to the ground.

 

But Izuku didn't stop there. The blue light swept over Momo, Jiro, and Kaminari. The ambient carbon in the dust around them instantly synthesized into a thick, localized dome of perfectly clear, incredibly dense rubberized aerogel—the exact insulation material Momo had been trying to create. It formed a perfect protective bubble around the three students, leaving Kaminari standing just outside its perimeter, directly connected to the copper net.

 

Izuku stood outside the bubble, his hands still pressed to the rock. He looked at Kaminari.

 

"The circuit is closed, Kaminari," Izuku said, blood dripping from his nose. "Light them up."

 

Kaminari grinned, a manic, electrified spark jumping across his teeth. "You got it, man! ONE POINT THREE MILLION VOLTS!"

 

Kaminari slammed his hands onto the copper wire.

 

The canyon erupted into pure, blinding white light. The electricity surged through the perfectly designed conductive net, completely bypassing the insulated dome where Momo and Jiro sat. The villains screamed as the massive voltage electrocuted them simultaneously.

 

When the light faded, Kaminari was stumbling around, his brain fried, giving two thumbs up with a vacant smile. "Yay..." he mumbled before falling over.

 

Every single villain was unconscious, smoking slightly, trapped in the copper net.

 

It was over.

 

The rubber dome slowly dissolved back into dust. Izuku stood up, swaying dangerously. He took a step toward Momo and Jiro, pulling a roll of sterile gauze from his utility belt.

 

"Jiro-san," Izuku mumbled, dropping to his knees beside her. He quickly and efficiently wrapped the wound tightly. "It's a clean cut. Not an artery. You're going to be okay."

 

Jiro stared at him in awe. "Midoriya... how did you... you just..."

 

Izuku ignored the praise. He looked up at Momo.

 

Momo was still sitting on her knees. The incomplete, ugly lump of rubber she had spent ten agonizing seconds making was sitting on the ground next to her. She looked at it, and then she looked at the massive, sprawling, flawless copper net that Izuku had pulled from a literal mountain in two seconds.

 

"Yaoyorozu," Izuku said softly, his brow furrowing with genuine concern. He reached out a bloodstained hand. "Are you alright? You didn't get hit, did you?"

 

Momo looked at his hand.

 

It was the hand of a creator. A true creator. A god of matter who didn't need ten seconds. A boy who didn't bleed his own fat to make a shield. A boy who just rewrote the universe to suit his needs.

 

She didn't take his hand.

 

She looked at Jiro's bloody leg. She looked at the blood on Izuku's face.

 

He saved us, Momo thought, her mind a spiraling vortex of self-loathing and devastating realization. He crossed the entire facility, calculated a flawless tactical extraction, generated an insulated dome, synthesized a conductive grid, and neutralized twenty hostiles in less time than it took me to fail at making a single blanket.

 

The illusion was shattered. Completely, utterly, irreversibly shattered.

 

She was not a peer. She was not a rival.

 

She was a liability.

 

"Yaoyorozu?" Izuku asked again, stepping closer, his green eyes filled with nothing but kindness.

 

Momo scrambled backward, her back hitting the cold stone of the canyon wall. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering violently, not from the cold, but from the crushing weight of her own inadequacy.

 

"Don't," Momo whispered, her voice cracking, tears finally spilling over her dark eyes. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't look at the boy who had just proven, without a shadow of a doubt, that her entire life's work was obsolete. "Please, Midoriya. Just... don't look at me."

 

Izuku froze, his hand still extended. He didn't understand. He had saved them. He had done the math perfectly. Why was she looking at him like he had just destroyed her world?

 

Before he could ask, a massive explosion rocked the USJ dome. The ground beneath them violently shuddered.

 

Izuku whipped his head toward the central plaza. Through the gap in the canyon, he saw it.

 

Aizawa was on the ground, his arms bent at horrifying angles. Standing over him was a massive, hulking, brain-exposed monstrosity.

 

Nomu, the villain Shigaraki called it.

 

Izuku's supercomputer mind flared again, the pain reaching a critical, maddening crescendo. He had neutralized the grunts. But the boss was here.

 

He looked back at Momo. She was crying silently, her head buried in her knees. He didn't have time to fix whatever he had broken.

 

"Stay here," Izuku commanded, his voice tight with pain. "Keep Jiro safe."

 

With a flash of blue, Izuku bounded out of the canyon, heading straight into the abyss. Leaving Momo Yaoyorozu alone with the shattered pieces of her pride.