What if Deku Could Create Anything He Imagined

 

 

The glow of the computer monitor cast long, flickering shadows against the walls of the Midoriya apartment. It was a familiar light, a comforting, electric blue hue that danced across the All Might posters plastering the small bedroom.

 

Four-year-old Izuku Midoriya sat cross-legged in his favorite desk chair, rocking back and forth with an energy that could hardly be contained within his tiny frame. In his right hand, he clutched a limited-edition All Might action figure, squeezing it tight. His large, emerald eyes were glued to the screen, reflecting the chaotic footage playing out on the video-sharing site.

 

It was an old video, a classic. A disaster in the city, raging fires, crushed buildings, and the deafening roar of panic. And then, a booming laugh that cut through the despair like a thunderclap.

 

"Fear not, citizens! Hope has arrived!"

 

On the screen, the towering figure of All Might stepped out of the inferno, carrying a dozen people on his back, his golden hair standing tall and his signature smile shining brighter than the flames around him.

 

Izuku gasped, his breath hitching in his throat. He had watched this exact clip a thousand times, maybe more, but the sheer awe never faded. The sheer presence of the Symbol of Peace was intoxicating. Izuku leaned forward, his nose practically touching the glass of the monitor.

 

"He's so cool," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling with adoration.

 

In the background, the soft sounds of his mother, Inko, humming while preparing dinner drifted from the kitchen. The smell of katsudon—his favorite—wafted through the hallway, but Izuku barely noticed. His entire universe was localized to the pixels on the screen.

 

As the camera zoomed in on All Might, the hero posed, striking his legendary stance. The camera focused, for just a few seconds, on the intricate details of his costume. The bright primary colors, the muscular definition, and the heavy, golden belt buckle forged in the shape of a V, gleaming in the sunlight.

 

Izuku stared at that buckle. It was a symbol of strength. A symbol that held the hero’s costume—and in Izuku’s childish mind, the world—together. He reached his small, empty left hand out toward the screen, his fingertips brushing the cold glass right where the golden belt buckle was displayed.

 

I want to be just like him, Izuku thought, his imagination running wild. I want to be strong. I want to save people.

 

He closed his eyes, visualizing the buckle. He could see it perfectly in his mind’s eye. The weight of the gold, the slight tarnish near the edges from battles fought, the sharp angles of the V, the cool metal against the fabric of the suit. He pictured it with a vividness that was unusual for a four-year-old. He didn't just see the shape; his mind seemed to effortlessly grasp the concept of the object. Heavy. Solid. Metallic.

 

Suddenly, a strange sensation bloomed in his chest. It wasn't painful, but it was intense—like a sudden drop in a roller coaster, combined with a strange, sharp pulling feeling in his stomach. A wave of profound, instantaneous exhaustion washed over him, followed immediately by a ravenous, gnawing hunger that made his stomach rumble loudly.

 

Then came the light.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. The room was no longer lit just by the computer monitor. A brilliant, ethereal cyan light was radiating from his outstretched left hand.

 

He blinked, stunned. Suspended an inch above his palm was a wireframe matrix of glowing blue light. It looked like a three-dimensional blueprint drawn in the air. For a fraction of a second, the glowing lines intersected, forming geometric patterns, calculating volume and mass. Then, the blue light flashed white, forcing Izuku to squint.

 

When the light faded, a heavy weight dropped into his tiny hand, pulling his arm down with a quiet thud against the desk.

 

Izuku sat perfectly still. He slowly uncurled his fingers.

 

Resting in his palm, reflecting the light of the monitor, was a golden belt buckle. It was a perfect, one-to-one replica of the buckle All Might wore in the video. It wasn't plastic. It wasn't a toy. It was solid metal, cold to the touch, with the exact same sharp angles and the slight tarnish near the edges that he had imagined.

 

Izuku stared at it, his mouth hanging open. He poked it with his right index finger. It clinked. He picked it up. It was incredibly heavy, almost too heavy for him to lift with one hand.

 

"Mom!" Izuku shrieked, his voice cracking, panic and excitement colliding in his chest. "Mom! Mom! MOM!"

 

Footsteps hurried down the hallway. The door swung open, revealing Inko Midoriya, wearing an apron over her casual clothes, her eyes wide with maternal alarm. "Izuku? Sweetie, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"

 

Izuku turned in his chair, holding the golden buckle up with both hands, his arms trembling from the weight of it. His face was pale, his eyes wide, and a thin trickle of blood was slowly leaking from his left nostril, dripping down to his lip.

 

"Mom," he breathed, his vision swimming slightly. "I... I made a thing."

 

Inko stared at the heavy, golden object in her son’s hands. She looked at the screen. She looked back at the buckle. She noticed the blood on his lip.

 

Her knees buckled slightly, one hand flying to her mouth. "Oh, my goodness," she whispered.

 

The katsudon was forgotten. Thirty minutes later, they were in a taxi, rushing to the local pediatrician who specialized in Quirk counseling.

 

 

 

The sterile white walls of Dr. Tsubasa’s clinic were usually a place of anxiety or crushing disappointment for the parents of four-year-olds. For the Midoriyas, it was a place of utter bewilderment.

 

Izuku sat on the crinkly paper covering the examination table. He was currently on his fourth protein bar, chewing mechanically. Ever since he made the buckle, he had felt like he was starving. Inko had practically bought out the hospital vending machine to keep him from crying from the sudden hunger pangs. The nosebleed had been cleaned up, but a dull, throbbing headache lingered behind his eyes.

 

Dr. Tsubasa, a bald, heavy-set man with thick goggles, was holding the golden belt buckle with a pair of calipers, muttering to himself as he examined it under a desk lamp. He tapped it with a pen, then dropped it onto a digital scale. The metallic clack echoed in the quiet room.

 

"Fascinating," the doctor muttered, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead. He turned around to face Inko and Izuku, a wide, almost manic smile on his face. "Truly, utterly fascinating."

 

"Doctor," Inko said, twisting her hands nervously in her lap. "Is he... is he okay? The nosebleed, the hunger... is this his Quirk?"

 

"Oh, it's his Quirk, alright," Dr. Tsubasa said, pulling up a glowing x-ray of Izuku's foot on his computer monitor. "As you can see here, Mrs. Midoriya, your son lacks the extra joint in his pinky toe. He represents the next stage of human evolution. But to say he merely has a Quirk is a drastic understatement. Your son has won the genetic lottery."

 

Izuku stopped chewing, his eyes widening. He had a Quirk. He really had a Quirk. He wasn't going to be left behind. He could be a hero.

 

"What... what exactly is it?" Inko asked. "Your Quirk is pulling small objects towards you, and my husband can breathe fire. How did he... make that?" She gestured to the heavy gold buckle.

 

Dr. Tsubasa leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "Quirks are generally categorized into three types: Emitter, Transformation, and Mutant. Your son’s Quirk defies standard categorization. It appears to be an incredibly rare Emitter/Transformation hybrid. I've taken the liberty of running a preliminary blood test while we waited. His lipid levels—the fat cells in his body—dropped significantly in a very short span of time. We see this in Creation-type Quirks."

 

The doctor picked up the buckle. "He didn't just summon this from somewhere else. He manufactured it. From nothing but his own biological energy and his imagination."

 

Izuku swallowed his bite of protein bar. "I imagined it really hard," he piped up, his voice small but proud. "I pictured the gold, and how heavy it looked."

 

Dr. Tsubasa pointed a finger at Izuku. "Exactly! And that is where the true power—and danger—of this Quirk lies. This isn't a simple matter of wishing for an apple and getting an apple. Based on his symptoms—the sudden caloric deficit, the nosebleed, the migraine—his Quirk requires two fuels."

 

The doctor held up one finger. "First, physical fuel. His body converts its own lipids and calories into raw matter. If he creates something large or dense, he will burn through his body's reserves instantly. That explains the extreme hunger. If he pushes it too far on an empty stomach, his body might start consuming muscle tissue, or worse."

 

He held up a second finger. "Second, and much more importantly: mental fuel. To create an object, his brain has to subconsciously—and consciously—understand its properties. Volume, mass, material composition. For a solid piece of gold-alloy like this, the math is relatively simple, but it still required immense processing power. His brain essentially acted like a supercomputer for a fraction of a second, diverting blood flow to his frontal lobe to calculate the molecular structure. That localized spike in blood pressure caused the capillaries in his nose to burst, resulting in the nosebleed."

 

Inko looked horrified. "You're saying his Quirk hurts him?"

 

"I'm saying his Quirk is a muscle, and he just tried to lift a boulder on his first day at the gym," Dr. Tsubasa corrected gently. "Mrs. Midoriya, this power... I think we should register it under the name 'Genesis.' Or perhaps 'Blueprint.' It is a power of absolute creation. But it is bottlenecked entirely by his intellect."

 

The doctor knelt in front of Izuku, looking him dead in the eye. "Izuku. If you try to make a gun, but you don't know how the springs, the firing pin, and the gunpowder work... it won't work. It will just be a solid lump of useless metal, or worse, it will shatter because your mind couldn't hold the blueprint together. Do you understand?"

 

Izuku stared at the doctor, the wheels in his four-year-old brain already turning. The headache was still there, but it was being drowned out by a soaring sense of realization.

 

He didn't just have a Quirk. He had a Quirk that demanded he learn everything.

 

"I have to know how things work," Izuku whispered.

 

"Exactly," Dr. Tsubasa smiled. "You have an incredible gift, young man. But you will have to eat a lot, and you will have to read even more. Your mind is your greatest weapon now."

 

As they left the clinic that evening, the golden belt buckle secured safely in Inko’s purse, Izuku held his mother's hand tightly. The walk home was quiet. Inko was lost in a swirl of anxiety about diets, calorie counts, and brain aneurysms.

 

But Izuku was looking at the world differently. He looked at the streetlights illuminating the sidewalk. For the first time, he didn't just see a light. He wondered what was inside the bulb. He wondered how the electricity traveled up the pole. He wondered what kind of metal the pole was made of.

 

If he knew, he could make it. He could make anything.

 

 

 

The playground was bathed in the warm, golden light of the late afternoon sun. It was the undisputed territory of Katsuki Bakugo, a boy whose Quirk had manifested a week prior with literal explosive fanfare.

 

Katsuki stood at the top of the jungle gym, his hands popping with small, firecracker-like explosions. A group of local kids surrounded the base, looking up at him with unadulterated awe.

 

"So cool, Kacchan!" one kid cheered.

 

"You're definitely gonna be the number one hero!" another added.

 

Katsuki grinned fiercely, his red eyes flashing with confidence. "Of course I am! I've got the strongest Quirk in the world! Nobody can beat explosions!"

 

Izuku stood at the edge of the playground, his yellow backpack slung over his shoulders. He watched Katsuki for a moment, a mix of admiration and nervous anticipation bubbling in his stomach. For the past week, Katsuki had been the king of the world. Izuku had been terrified he would be Quirkless, doomed to be the sidekick, or worse, the victim.

 

But not anymore.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, clutching a small, heavily-read encyclopedia of basic mechanics to his chest. He marched toward the jungle gym.

 

"Kacchan!" Izuku called out.

 

Katsuki stopped his explosions and looked down, wiping a smudge of soot from his cheek. "What do you want, Deku? You finally get your Quirk, or are you still a late-bloomer extra?"

 

The other kids snickered. Izuku didn't flinch. He walked right up to the base of the structure.

 

"I went to the doctor yesterday," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady. "I got my Quirk."

 

Katsuki hopped down from the jungle gym, landing nimbly in the sand. He crossed his arms, sizing Izuku up. "Yeah? What is it? You can cry a river to put out my fires?"

 

"No," Izuku said. He placed his book on the ground. He looked at Katsuki's hands. "You make explosions using your sweat, right? Like nitroglycerin."

 

Katsuki blinked, momentarily thrown off by the big word. "Uh... yeah. The doctor said my sweat is like bomb juice. What about it?"

 

"I can't make explosions," Izuku said. "But... I can make the things that make the things."

 

Katsuki frowned, annoyed by the riddle. "Speak Japanese, nerd. Show me or shut up."

 

Izuku nodded. He took a deep breath. He thought about what to make. He didn't want to try anything too big. His mother had packed him a massive bento box for lunch today, full of fatty fish and rice, so he had the energy. But he didn't want another nosebleed in front of Kacchan.

 

He looked at Katsuki's pocket. Sticking out of it was the head of a rare, silver-age All Might action figure—the one with the articulated joints that Katsuki bragged about all week.

 

Izuku closed his eyes. He pictured the plastic. He thought about the molds, the dye, the hollow space inside the chest cavity, the small metal pins holding the shoulders and knees together. He focused his mind, organizing the components like a puzzle.

 

Plastic. Polyvinyl chloride. Metal pins. Paint.

 

The familiar pull in his gut began. The drop in blood sugar. The rush of blood to his head.

 

A brilliant, cyan light erupted from Izuku's right hand. The other kids gasped, stepping back. Katsuki's eyes went wide as he watched the glowing blue wireframe materialize in the air above Izuku's palm. The grid lines snapped together rapidly, forming a humanoid shape.

 

With a soft flash of white light, the glow vanished.

 

Resting in Izuku's hand was a perfect, flawless replica of Katsuki's silver-age All Might figure. The paint was pristine. The joints were perfect.

 

Izuku opened his eyes, panting slightly, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. He held the figure out to Katsuki. "I can make anything I can imagine. As long as I know how it works."

 

Katsuki stared at the figure. He slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out his own. He held them side by side. They were identical. Except Izuku's didn't have the small scratch on the boot that Katsuki's had from when he dropped it on the sidewalk yesterday.

 

The playground was dead silent. The other kids looked from Katsuki's explosive hands to Izuku's creation, entirely unsure of who to be more amazed by.

 

Katsuki's mind, sharp and aggressive even at four years old, raced. He looked at Deku. Deku, the crybaby. Deku, the mumbler.

 

But Deku had just conjured a complex toy out of thin air.

 

If he can make a toy, Katsuki thought, his breath hitching, what else can he make? Can he make swords? Can he make guns? Can he make bombs?

 

A strange, unfamiliar feeling washed over Katsuki Bakugo. It wasn't the superiority he usually felt around Izuku. It was a cold, sharp spike of genuine threat.

 

Katsuki snatched the duplicated toy from Izuku's hand. He gripped it tightly. A small explosion popped in his palm, melting the plastic of the duplicate into a scorched lump. He threw it to the ground.

 

Izuku flinched, stepping back. "Kacchan?"

 

Katsuki stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He grabbed the collar of Izuku's shirt, pulling the smaller boy in close. Katsuki's eyes weren't mocking anymore. They were burning with an intense, fierce competitive fire.

 

"Listen to me, Deku," Katsuki growled, his voice low. "I don't care if you can pull toys out of thin air. You're not better than me. My explosions will destroy anything you build. Do you hear me? I'm going to be Number One. Not you."

 

Izuku looked at the ruined, melted plastic on the ground, then up at Katsuki's furious, determined face. He didn't see a bully. He saw a challenge.

 

Izuku's hands clenched into fists at his sides. The headache was pounding, but he ignored it.

 

"I'm not trying to be better than you, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice quiet but laced with a newfound steel. "But I'm going to be a hero too. And I'm going to build things you can't destroy."

 

Katsuki shoved him back, not hard enough to knock him over, but enough to make a point. He turned his back on Izuku, stomping away from the jungle gym. "We'll see about that, nerd! You better study hard, because when we get to U.A., I'm gonna blast your little toys to ash!"

 

Izuku watched him leave. The dynamic had shifted, fundamentally and permanently. There would be no bullying in the years to come. There would be no pity. There would only be an arms race. The boy who could destroy anything, against the boy who could build everything.

 

Izuku bent down, picking up his encyclopedia of mechanics. He brushed the sand off the cover.

 

I need to learn about heat resistance, Izuku thought, turning and walking home. And shock absorption. And titanium alloys.

 

The obsession had begun.

 

 

 

Over the next ten years, the Midoriya household transformed.

 

It didn't happen overnight, but the shift was undeniable. The posters of All Might still adorned the walls, but they were slowly pushed aside to make room for corkboards covered in blueprints, chemical formulas, and complex mathematical equations.

 

Izuku’s notebooks, once titled Hero Analysis for the Future, underwent a drastic rebranding. The cover of Notebook No. 1 read: Creation Blueprints: Simple Machines & Ballistics.

 

His childhood was a grueling crucible of trial and error. Discovering the limits of "Genesis" was painful.

 

When he was six, he tried to create a bicycle so he could ride to the park faster. He pictured the frame, the tires, the handlebars. The familiar blue grid appeared, the light flashed, and the bike materialized. Izuku proudly sat on it and pushed off the ground.

 

The moment the wheels turned, the entire bicycle collapsed into a pile of warped metal, snapping the chain and sending Izuku tumbling onto the asphalt, scraping his knees raw.

 

He sat on the ground, staring at the wreckage, confused. Why did it break? He pictured it perfectly.

 

Then it hit him. He had pictured the outside of the bicycle. He hadn't imagined the ball bearings in the wheel hubs. He hadn't visualized the internal tension of the chain links. He had created a hollow shell of a machine that had no internal logic. Because it lacked structural integrity in its blueprint, the laws of physics tore it apart the moment stress was applied.

 

It was a harsh lesson: Genesis does not fill in the blanks.

 

If Izuku didn't understand every single atom of what he was building, the creation was fragile, useless, or outright dangerous.

 

From that day on, Izuku became an insatiable sponge for knowledge. For his seventh birthday, he didn't ask for toys; he asked for a high school chemistry set and a subscription to an engineering journal. For his tenth birthday, he asked for a microscope and a textbook on metallurgy.

 

He took apart the family toaster, the microwave, the television—much to Inko’s dismay—just to see how the circuits connected, before putting them back together.

 

Simultaneously, Izuku had to manage the physical toll.

 

He was eating nearly 6,000 calories a day just to maintain a normal weight. His metabolism burned at a frightening pace. If he wanted to create a solid block of iron, the lipid conversion would leave him faint and dizzy for hours. To counteract this, Izuku started a physical conditioning routine long before most kids his age thought about working out. He needed a larger pool of body fat and muscle to draw from. He wasn't bodybuilder-huge, but by the time he hit middle school, beneath his baggy school uniform, Izuku had developed a dense, athletic swimmer's build. He carried nutrition bars, calorie-dense gels, and sugar packets in every pocket.

 

And then there were the migraines.

 

The mental strain of calculating mass, volume, and chemical composition on the fly was agonizing. If he panicked and tried to create something too complex too quickly, the blood vessels in his nose would rupture. He learned to manage it through intense meditation and visualization exercises. He learned to "pre-load" blueprints in his mind.

 

Instead of trying to figure out how a flashbang grenade worked in the heat of the moment, Izuku spent three weeks studying the exact ratio of magnesium powder to ammonium nitrate, the fuse mechanism, and the casing thickness. He memorized it until it became second nature, a file stored away in his brain that he could access instantly.

 

He built a mental armory.

 

By the time he was fourteen, walking the halls of Aldera Junior High, Izuku Midoriya was not the timid, Quirkless boy of another timeline. He was quiet, intensely observant, and possessed a quiet confidence that unnerved some of his classmates.

 

He was always taking notes, his green eyes darting around, analyzing the structural weaknesses of the school building, the tensile strength of the gym ropes, the chemical makeup of the cafeteria food.

 

And he was always, invariably, locked in a silent war with Katsuki Bakugo.

 

 

 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your future," the homeroom teacher announced, standing at the front of the class with a stack of career aptitude papers.

 

Izuku sat near the back, twirling a pencil in his fingers. He wasn't paying much attention to the teacher. He was currently running a complex thermodynamic equation in his head, trying to figure out how to create a localized freezing agent that wouldn't immediately give him frostbite upon manifestation.

 

"I'll pass out these printouts for your desired life course," the teacher continued, a smirk crossing his face. "But... you all pretty much want to be heroes, don't you?"

 

He threw the papers into the air. The classroom erupted into cheers. Students showed off their Quirks—stretchy arms, glowing hands, small localized rainclouds.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher chuckled. "But using your powers in school is against the rules!"

 

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these losers!"

 

The loud, arrogant voice cut through the noise. Katsuki Bakugo was leaning back in his chair, his feet kicked up on his desk, a sneer on his face. "As if I had anything in common with these weaklings. Their Quirks are bottom-tier garbage."

 

The class erupted in outrage.

 

"Get over yourself, Katsuki!"

"Yeah, we're not garbage!"

 

"Shut up, extras! You should be bowing to me!" Katsuki barked, letting off a warning pop of explosions from his palms. "I aced all the mock tests! I'm the only one here with the stuff for U.A. High School. I'm gonna surpass All Might and become the top hero!"

 

The teacher looked down at his clipboard. "Oh, yeah. Bakugo, you're going for U.A. High, aren't you?"

 

The class murmured in awe. U.A. was the national academy. The acceptance rate was abysmally low.

 

"That's right!" Katsuki stood up on his desk, his fists clenched. "I'm the only one in this crappy school who stands a chance!"

 

The teacher adjusted his glasses. "Actually... Midoriya is also applying for U.A."

 

The entire room went dead silent. Every head turned to look at the green-haired boy sitting quietly by the window.

 

Izuku stopped twirling his pencil. He didn't look up, merely finishing his equation in his notebook and closing it with a soft snap. He reached into his pocket, unwrapped a high-calorie chocolate bar, and took a bite.

 

Nobody laughed. Nobody mocked him.

 

The students in this class had seen what Izuku could do. Last year, when a pipe burst in the science lab and flooded the room with toxic gas, the teacher had panicked. Izuku had calmly stepped forward, his hand glowing cyan, and instantly materialized a perfect, airtight carbon-fiber cap that sealed the pipe, followed by an industrial-grade ventilation fan to clear the air. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

 

The kids knew Bakugo was a monster of destruction. But they knew Midoriya was something entirely different. He was a terrifying prodigy of creation.

 

Katsuki slowly turned his head to look at Izuku. The sneer faded from his face, replaced by a scowl of intense concentration. He hopped off his desk and walked down the aisle, stopping right in front of Izuku's desk.

 

The class held its breath. The tension between the two was infamous. It wasn't the tension of a bully and a victim. It was the tension of two apex predators forced to share a cage.

 

Katsuki slammed his hands down on Izuku's desk. Small wisps of smoke curled from his palms, singing the wood.

 

"Listen to me, Deku," Katsuki said, his voice a low, vibrating growl. "You've been playing with your little toys for ten years. You think building fancy gadgets makes you a hero? When the villains come, they don't give you time to do math in your head. They just kill you."

 

Izuku slowly chewed his chocolate, swallowed, and looked up into Katsuki's blazing red eyes. His expression was maddeningly calm.

 

"I know, Kacchan," Izuku said evenly. "That's why I don't do the math in my head anymore. I've already done it."

 

Katsuki's eyes narrowed. "You're getting cocky. I told you when we were four: my explosions will destroy anything you make. If you get in my way at the entrance exam, I'll blow you and your blueprints to hell."

 

Izuku reached out. He didn't activate his Quirk to create something. Instead, he simply tapped his index finger against Katsuki's smoking palm.

 

"Your explosions require oxygen and space to expand, Kacchan," Izuku said quietly, so only Katsuki could hear. "If I create a vacuum-sealed dome of aerogel around you, your blast will reflect inward and concuss you before it even cracks the shell. You know that. I know that."

 

Katsuki's jaw tightened. The veins in his neck bulged. He knew Deku was right. The nerd had spent years mathematically calculating the exact countermeasures to his explosions. It drove Katsuki insane.

 

Katsuki snatched his hand away. "You think you've got me figured out? I'll just blast through the dome before you even finish glowing, you damn nerd."

 

"Maybe," Izuku conceded softly. "I guess we'll find out at U.A."

 

Katsuki scoffed, turning on his heel and storming back to his desk. "Don't die at the exam, Deku. I want the pleasure of crushing you at the Sports Festival."

 

"Looking forward to it," Izuku replied, opening his notebook again.

 

The teacher cleared his throat, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the room. "Right, well... let's get back to the career forms, shall we?"

 

Izuku tuned out the rest of the day. The confrontation with Kacchan was routine. They pushed each other. Katsuki trained his reflexes and raw power to be faster than Izuku’s creation time; Izuku trained his mind to process blueprints faster than Katsuki could move. It was an endless, exhausting, exhilarating race.

 

But as the final bell rang, a different anxiety began to gnaw at Izuku's stomach.

 

The U.A. Entrance Exam was only ten months away.

 

Izuku packed his bag and walked home alone, taking the long way through the city. He needed time to think. He passed by a large crowd gathered near a tunnel. A villain attack.

 

A massive creature made entirely of brown sludge was rampaging, holding a civilian hostage. Pro heroes like Death Arms, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady were standing on the sidelines, helpless. The villain was liquid; physical attacks were useless, and there was a hostage.

 

Izuku stopped at the edge of the crowd, his eyes analyzing the situation instantly.

 

Sludge villain. High water content. Viscous. Highly sensitive to extreme temperature changes. Hostage restricts wide-area attacks. Weakness: freezing or dehydration.

 

Izuku’s hand twitched. He could end this. He already had the blueprint for a pressurized canister of liquid nitrogen loaded in his mental cache. It would cost him about 800 calories and give him a mild headache, but he could freeze the villain solid without harming the hostage.

 

He took a step forward.

 

Suddenly, a massive rush of wind knocked the breath out of him. A towering figure vaulted over the crowd, landing in the center of the chaos with an earth-shattering crash.

 

"FEAR NOT, CITIZENS!" a booming voice roared. "BECAUSE I AM HERE!"

 

All Might.

 

Izuku froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. It was him. The man from the video. The man whose belt buckle sat perfectly polished on Izuku’s desk at home. He looked exactly the same, radiating an aura of absolute, undeniable power.

 

The sludge villain lunged, a massive tendril of muck swinging at the number one hero.

 

All Might didn't create a weapon. He didn't calculate thermodynamics. He simply pulled back his right arm, the muscles bulging to an impossible size, and punched the air.

 

"TEXAS SMASH!"

 

The sheer wind pressure generated by the punch was a localized hurricane. It tore through the sludge villain, scattering the liquid body into a thousand droplets across the pavement and freeing the hostage instantly. The wind pressure changed the weather, causing it to rain locally for a few seconds.

 

The crowd went wild.

 

Izuku stood there, the rain hitting his face, his eyes wide.

 

Raw power, Izuku thought, his mind racing. No tools. No gadgets. Just overwhelming, impossible physical force. My Quirk... I can build a bomb that replicates that concussive force, but the sheer speed... the instantaneous delivery without any setup...

 

Izuku clenched his fists. All Might was the pinnacle. But All Might was a brawler.

 

Izuku wasn't a brawler. If he tried to fight like All Might, he would die. He had to be smarter. He had to be prepared. If he wanted to stand on the same stage as that man—if he wanted to surpass Katsuki—he couldn't just rely on making cool gadgets on the fly. He needed an arsenal. He needed a tactical network.

 

He needed to be the architect of his own victories.

 

Without staying to ask for an autograph, Izuku turned and sprinted the rest of the way home.

 

 

 

The Midoriya apartment was quiet when Izuku unlocked the door. Inko was working a late shift at the hospital.

 

Izuku walked straight to his bedroom and threw open the door.

 

To call it a bedroom was a stretch. It was a war room. The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling in overlapping blueprints. Desks lined the walls, covered in half-assembled mechanical parts, soldering irons, and chemistry beakers. A massive whiteboard dominated one wall, covered in complex mathematical formulas and diagrams of U.A. High's previous entrance exams.

 

At the center of it all, resting on a velvet pillow under a desk lamp, was the original golden belt buckle he had created ten years ago. A reminder of where it all started.

 

Izuku dropped his backpack. He walked over to the mini-fridge in the corner, pulled out a massive tupperware container of high-calorie pasta and meat sauce, and started eating it cold, shoveling the fuel into his body.

 

Ten months. Ten months to prepare for an exam where he would be judged alongside people with physical mutation Quirks and elemental powers.

 

He swallowed the pasta and walked to the center of the room. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, centering his mind.

 

He needed to increase his creation speed. He needed to push his brain's processing power to its absolute breaking point.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They glowed with an intense, emerald light.

 

Begin.

 

A brilliant cyan aura erupted around his body, casting the room in sharp, blue shadows. The air hummed with energy. Izuku raised his hands, his fingers dancing through the empty air like a maestro conducting a symphony.

 

A glowing blue wireframe materialized in front of him. A gear. Then another. Then a cylinder. The parts snapped together in mid-air, hovering and spinning.

 

Carbon-fiber exoskeleton plating.

 

A blue grid mapped out over his left arm, solidifying in a flash of white light into a sleek, black, mechanical gauntlet. He flexed his fingers. The servos whirred perfectly.

 

Pneumatic grappling hook.

 

Another wireframe appeared on his right forearm, solidifying into a compressed-air launcher with a titanium-alloy hook.

 

The familiar headache began to creep in, a dull throbbing at the temples. Izuku ignored it. He pushed harder.

 

 EMP grenade. Magnesium flashbang. High-tensile capture net.

 

The glowing blueprints materialized in a circle around him, rapidly filling with matter and dropping onto his bed with heavy thuds.

 

He could feel the calories burning away, his stomach tightening as the fat cells were converted into raw mass. He grit his teeth, a thin line of blood trickling from his left nostril.

 

More. Faster.

 

He imagined a drone. Not just the shell. He pictured the lithium-ion battery, the copper wiring, the microchips, the aerodynamic curve of the rotors. The blueprint took three full seconds to form—too slow. If Katsuki were here, he would have blown his head off by now.

 

Izuku forced the mental math to accelerate. The blue grid flashed violently, vibrating with unstable energy.

 

Hold it together, Izuku commanded himself. Understand the circuit.

 

With a blinding flash, the drone solidified, hovering in the air with a soft buzz before landing perfectly on his desk.

 

Izuku dropped to his knees, gasping for air. The cyan glow faded from the room. He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, his head pounding as if a drum were being beaten inside his skull. He was exhausted, dizzy, and starving.

 

He looked around the room. The mechanical gauntlet, the grappling hook, the grenades, the drone. All flawless. All fully functional. Created from nothing but fat cells and sheer intellect.

 

A fierce, exhausted smile spread across Izuku's face.

 

Katsuki had explosions. Todoroki had fire and ice. All Might had invincible strength.

 

Let them have it.

 

Izuku Midoriya stood up, his legs shaking slightly, and walked over to his whiteboard. He picked up a marker and wrote two words at the very top, underlining them heavily.

 

PROJECT: GENESIS.

 

He was going to U.A. High School. And he wasn't going to rely on a borrowed Quirk or brute force.

 

He was going to build his way to the top. Literally.

 

 

The human brain consumes roughly twenty percent of the body’s energy while at rest. When engaged in intense, complex cognitive tasks, that consumption spikes. For Izuku Midoriya, "spiking" was a laughable understatement. When he activated Genesis, his brain became a black hole for calories.

 

It was a Tuesday afternoon, ten months before the U.A. High School Entrance Exam, and Izuku was walking home from Aldera Junior High, nursing a massive, 3,000-calorie peanut-butter-and-whey-protein shake. He sucked the thick sludge through a wide straw, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.

 

He wasn't looking at the streets, the passing cars, or the pedestrians. His mind was miles away, suspended in an imaginary void where he was currently testing the tensile limits of a theoretical tungsten-carbide alloy.

 

If I use a honeycomb internal structure, I can reduce the mass by thirty-four percent, which saves me about eight hundred calories per cubic meter, he thought, his eyes tracking invisible numbers in the air. But it compromises the sheer impact resistance against blunt-force trauma. If Kacchan hits it with a point-blank blast, the kinetic shockwave might shatter the honeycomb. I need a shock-absorbing gel layer. Non-Newtonian? No, too unpredictable under sustained heat. A synthetic viscoelastic polymer…

 

His muttering was a low, rapid-fire drone that caused a few passing businessmen to give him wide berths. Izuku didn’t notice. He took another massive gulp of his protein shake. He needed the fat reserves. He had spent his lunch period creating a series of micro-drones just to test his multitasking capabilities, and it had left him feeling lightheaded.

 

His route took him under a bridge—a shadowed, concrete overpass that echoed with the sounds of the city above. It was a shortcut he took often, a quiet spot where the noise of the world faded just enough for his mind to run at full capacity.

 

He was halfway through the tunnel when he heard the sound.

 

A wet, slurping noise, like a massive plunger being pulled from deep mud. It was accompanied by a foul stench—a mix of raw sewage, stagnant river water, and rotting garbage.

 

Izuku stopped, his pen hovering over the notebook he had absentmindedly pulled from his pocket. He turned around.

 

Rising from the metal grate of a manhole just a few feet away was a nightmare. It was a massive, amorphous blob of dark green and brown sludge. Thick, viscous tendrils whipped through the air, dripping corrosive-looking liquid onto the concrete. Two massive, bulbous eyes rolled within the liquid mass, locking onto Izuku, followed by a jagged, shifting maw of what looked like broken teeth.

 

"A medium-sized meat-suit," the creature gurgled, its voice wet and echoing. "Perfect. I need to hide."

 

Izuku’s mind immediately snapped out of his theoretical polymers and slammed into reality. He dropped his protein shake. The plastic cup hit the ground, thick brown liquid splattering across his red sneakers.

 

Villain. Liquid mutation or Transformation type. High volume, unstable shape. Defensive capabilities: high physical resistance to blunt force.

 

Izuku’s hand twitched toward his pocket, where he kept a few pre-loaded blueprints for flashbangs.

 

He was too slow.

 

Before Izuku could even picture the chemical makeup of magnesium, a massive tendril of sludge shot forward like a whip. It wrapped around his chest and arms, pinning them to his sides with crushing force, and hoisted him off the ground.

 

Izuku gasped, but that was his first mistake.

 

The villain lunged, slamming the bulk of its gelatinous body over Izuku’s face. The foul-tasting sludge forced its way into his mouth, down his throat, and up his nose.

 

"Don't struggle, kid," the villain hissed, the voice vibrating through the sludge directly into Izuku’s ears. "It’ll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then it’s all over. I just need to hijack your body for a little while to escape that maniac."

 

Panic, primal and blinding, seized Izuku. He couldn't breathe. His lungs screamed for oxygen. He thrashed his legs, kicking wildly against the air, but the sludge was like liquid concrete. It absorbed his kinetic energy effortlessly. He tried to reach for his Quirk, tried to imagine a bomb, a knife, anything, but the terror was fragmenting his thoughts.

 

Genesis required perfect focus. It required a calm, calculated mind. You couldn't build a complex machine while your brain was screaming in absolute terror. The blue grid refused to form in his mind; the lines kept shattering.

 

Dark spots danced in the corners of his vision. Twenty seconds left.

 

I'm going to die, Izuku thought, his thrashing growing weaker. I'm going to suffocate in a sewer before I even take the exam.

 

Then, a face flashed in his mind. Katsuki Bakugo’s sneering, arrogant expression. When the villains come, they don't give you time to do math in your head. They just kill you.

 

No. Izuku’s eyes snapped wide open beneath the murky sludge. No, I am not dying here. I am the architect.

 

Izuku stopped thrashing. He forced his body to go completely limp. The villain chuckled, thinking the boy had given up.

 

With his physical struggles ceased, Izuku diverted every single ounce of his remaining oxygen, every drop of his blood flow, directly to his frontal lobe. He shut off his fear. He compartmentalized the burning in his lungs. He retreated into the vault of his mind.

 

Enemy composition: Liquid. High water content.

 

Solution: Extreme temperature drop. Endothermic reaction or cryogenic freezing.

 

Blueprint selected: Pressurized Liquid Nitrogen Canister, Model 4.

 

In the darkness of his own mind, a brilliant, glowing cyan blueprint materialized. Izuku didn't just picture the canister; he felt it. He commanded his fat cells to convert.

 

Outer shell: Aluminum alloy 6061. Thickness: 4 millimeters. High tensile strength to contain the pressure.

Internal substance: Nitrogen (N2). Cryogenic state. Temperature: Negative 196 degrees Celsius.

Mechanism: Spring-loaded release valve. Brass nozzle. Wide-dispersion spray head.

 

Because he was suffocating, his heart was beating frantically, accelerating the lipid-to-matter conversion. A blinding blue light suddenly erupted from the center of the sludge mass, right where Izuku’s trapped right hand was resting against his hip.

 

The villain shrieked, momentarily blinded. "What the—what is that light?!"

 

With a heavy, metallic clank, a large, silver canister materialized in Izuku's right hand. The extreme cold radiating from it instantly caused the surrounding sludge to freeze, making the villain's grip brittle.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He shifted his thumb, gripped the trigger of the brass nozzle, and crushed it down.

 

A deafening hiss echoed under the bridge. A massive, violent cloud of pure, sub-zero white mist erupted from the canister.

 

The liquid nitrogen blasted directly into the core of the sludge villain. The reaction was instantaneous. The sheer thermal shock caused the water in the villain's body to crystallize in a fraction of a second. The sludge turned from a viscous, flowing liquid into a solid, dirty ice sculpture.

 

The pressure around Izuku's chest shattered like cheap glass. He fell to his knees on the concrete, the heavy canister clattering away as he hacked, coughed, and violently vomited up the sludge that had been forced down his throat.

 

He gasped for air, his chest heaving, his vision swimming with stars. A warm trickle of blood ran down from his left nostril, mingling with the dirty water on his chin. He clutched his head, groaning as the familiar, punishing migraine slammed into his skull. Creating liquid nitrogen on the fly without a warm-up had cost him dearly. He felt incredibly faint.

 

Above him, the villain was frozen solid, an expression of bubbly terror locked onto its face.

 

"I... I did it," Izuku wheezed, wiping his mouth with the back of a trembling hand.

 

Suddenly, the manhole cover a few yards away exploded upward, flying into the air and crashing violently against the roof of the tunnel.

 

"HAVE NO FEAR, CITIZEN!" a booming, legendary voice roared. "FOR I AM—"

 

All Might leaped out of the sewer, pulling his fist back for a devastating punch, his legendary smile plastered across his face.

 

He froze.

 

All Might looked at the frozen, statuesque villain. He looked at the massive cloud of dissipating nitrogen gas. Then he looked down at the fourteen-year-old boy on his knees, covered in muck, bleeding from the nose, and panting heavily next to an empty, frosting canister.

 

All Might blinked. The heroic aura faltered for a fraction of a second. "Oh. Um."

 

Izuku stared up at his idol. The man he had admired since he was a toddler. The man whose belt buckle sat on his desk. Here he was, in the flesh.

 

"All Might," Izuku croaked.

 

"Young man!" All Might recovered quickly, marching over with massive, heavy steps. "Are you alright?! I was pursuing this villain through the sewage system, but it seems you’ve already handled him! That is an incredible Quirk you have! Ice manipulation?"

 

"No," Izuku said, slowly pushing himself to his feet. He swayed slightly, his blood sugar dangerously low. "Genesis. I built the canister."

 

All Might looked at the silver tank on the ground. He picked it up. He noted the perfect machining, the seamless welds, the brass nozzle. "You... built this? In the middle of an attack?"

 

"I had it pre-calculated," Izuku muttered, patting his pockets frantically until he found a crushed protein bar. He tore the wrapper open with his teeth and took a massive bite, chewing aggressively. "Sorry. Quirk drawback. I need calories."

 

All Might stared at the boy. He had seen thousands of Quirks in his lifetime. He had seen geniuses and prodigies. But the sheer tactical efficiency required to construct a highly pressurized, cryogenic weapon while suffocating to death... that was something else entirely.

 

"Young man," All Might said, his voice dropping an octave, losing a bit of its theatrical boom. "What is your name?"

 

"Midoriya. Izuku Midoriya."

 

All Might nodded slowly. "Midoriya. You possess a remarkable head on your shoulders. To remain calm under pressure and devise a perfect countermeasure without causing collateral damage to the surroundings... you have the makings of a Pro."

 

Izuku’s heart soared. He stopped chewing. The Number One Hero was praising him. But before he could respond, a strange sizzling sound filled the air. Steam began to pour off All Might’s massive frame.

 

"Oh, no," All Might grunted, clutching his side. "Not now..."

 

Poof.

 

A massive cloud of steam enveloped the hero. Izuku coughed, waving the smoke away. When it cleared, the towering, muscular symbol of peace was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with hollow cheeks, baggy clothes, and a sharp, angular face. He looked like a stiff breeze could break him in half.

 

The man coughed violently, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth.

 

Izuku didn't scream. He didn't panic. His mind, conditioned to analyze anomalies, immediately went to work.

 

Mass reduction of over eighty percent. Instantaneous. No thermal energy release, just steam. Post-transformation physical degradation. Blood from the respiratory system. It's not a transformation Quirk... it's a severe physical injury causing an inflation mechanism to fail.

 

"You're injured," Izuku said calmly, stepping forward. "Your left side. The respiratory system and probably the stomach are severely compromised. That muscular form... it's like a flexing mechanism, isn't it? You're forcing your body to act as a balloon, but the puncture in your side drains your stamina."

 

All Might wiped the blood from his chin, his sunken blue eyes widening in profound shock. He stared at the teenager.

 

"You... figured that out just by looking at me?" All Might whispered.

 

"It's the only biological mechanism that makes sense without violating the laws of mass conservation, unless your Quirk is purely energy-to-matter, which it isn't, because you rely on kinetic force," Izuku rambled, taking another bite of his protein bar. "Who did it? Toxic Chainsaw?"

 

"No," All Might sighed, sliding down against the concrete wall and sitting heavily. "A villain the public doesn't know about. And you're right, Midoriya. Five years ago, I lost my stomach and half my respiratory system. I can only do hero work for about three hours a day now."

 

Izuku was silent. The invincible All Might was broken. The realization should have shattered him, but instead, it only reinforced his own philosophy. Even the strongest physical force in the world can be broken. Muscles fail. Minds endure.

 

All Might looked up at the ceiling of the overpass. "I've been looking for a successor, Midoriya. Someone to take up my mantle. My Quirk, it isn't natural. It's a sacred torch, passed down from generation to generation, accumulating power. It's called One For All."

 

He turned his piercing gaze to Izuku. "I saw your eyes when you were trapped by that villain. You were terrified, yes, but you didn't surrender. You calculated. You fought. You have a heroic spirit. Izuku Midoriya... I deem you worthy. Will you accept my power?"

 

The tunnel fell dead silent, save for the distant hum of traffic.

 

Izuku stared at the skeletal man. The offer was astronomical. The power to punch through buildings. The power to change the weather with a flick of his wrist. It was the ultimate, undisputed power in the world.

 

Izuku looked down at his own hands. They were calloused from soldering irons, scarred from chemical burns, and currently trembling from Quirk exhaustion.

 

He thought about the ten years he had spent studying thermodynamics, metallurgy, and quantum mechanics. He thought about the thousands of blueprints stored in his mind. He thought about the vow he made to Katsuki Bakugo. I'm going to build things you can't destroy.

 

If he took One For All, he would become a god of destruction. He wouldn't need to build anymore. The easy path was right here.

 

Izuku closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

 

"All Might," Izuku said, his voice respectful but incredibly firm. "I am deeply, profoundly honored. You have been my idol since I could walk."

 

He opened his eyes, meeting the hero's gaze. "But I have to decline."

 

All Might blinked, genuinely stunned. "You... decline? Young man, do you understand what I'm offering? It is the power to be the Number One Hero."

 

"I do understand," Izuku said, stepping forward. "But your power is kinetic. It's physical. My Quirk, Genesis, requires absolute mental clarity and an immense amount of physical fuel—lipids and calories—to create matter. If I take a Quirk that amplifies physical strength to that degree, it might alter my body's metabolic rate, or worse, the sheer power might scramble my focus. I can't afford to lose my precision. A single mathematical error during a creation could cause an explosion that kills everyone around me."

 

Izuku looked down at the frozen sludge villain. "More importantly... I don't want to punch my way through every problem. I want to solve them. I want to be a hero who builds the solutions. I want to push my Quirk to its absolute, theoretical limit. I'm going to be Number One, All Might. But I'm going to do it my way."

 

All Might stared at the boy. The sheer conviction, the unshakable pride in his own mind, was radiating off Izuku like heat from an engine.

 

Slowly, a wide, genuine smile spread across All Might’s skeletal face. It wasn't his trademark heroic grin; it was the smile of a proud teacher.

 

"I see," All Might chuckled softly. "A man of science. A builder. You know, Midoriya... I think the world could use a hero like you. Someone who thinks before he smashes." He slowly got to his feet, gesturing to the frozen villain. "Well, Architect, shall we call the police and get this mess cleaned up?"

 

Izuku smiled, finishing his protein bar. "Yes, sir. And All Might?"

 

"Yes?"

 

"You should really consider carbon-fiber reinforced plating around your left torso. It would prevent further blunt trauma to your respiratory system without hindering your mobility."

 

All Might laughed, a booming sound that echoed even in his weakened state. "I'll keep that in mind, young man."

 

 

 

The next ten months were a blur of agonizing, self-inflicted torture.

 

Izuku didn't train on a beach hauling trash. He trained in his room, in the library, and in the kitchen.

 

His routine was brutal. He consumed roughly 8,000 calories a day, carefully balancing fats, proteins, and complex carbohydrates to ensure his body had the maximum amount of convertible fuel. He exercised vigorously to ensure the calories built dense, usable mass rather than purely lethargic fat.

 

But his mind took the real beating.

 

He studied college-level physics, advanced robotics, chemical engineering, and aeronautics. He ran simulation after simulation in his head. He learned to compress his blueprints, visualizing complex machinery as singular, interconnected "blocks" of thought to increase his creation speed.

 

He suffered nosebleeds almost daily. His migraines were so severe he occasionally lost his vision for minutes at a time. But every time the pain flared, he pushed through it, forging his neurological pathways into a superhighway of creation.

 

By the morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam, Izuku Midoriya was a coiled spring of pure, intellectual violence.

 

He stood at the massive, towering gates of U.A. High School. He wore his middle school uniform, but his pockets bulged with high-calorie nutrient gels and sugar cubes. He felt heavy, grounded, and ready.

 

"Out of my way, Deku."

 

Izuku didn't flinch as Katsuki Bakugo shoved past him, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his face locked in a scowl.

 

"Morning, Kacchan," Izuku said mildly.

 

"Don't talk to me," Katsuki snarled, not looking back. "If you get in my way today, I'll turn you into ash."

 

"I'll be out of your way," Izuku replied, adjusting his backpack. "I'm aiming for a different battleground."

 

Izuku walked toward the main building. He was so focused on calculating the optimal trajectory for a localized EMP burst that he didn't notice the uneven paving stone. His foot caught, and he pitched forward.

 

Fall parameters: Velocity 2 meters per second. Impact in 1.2 seconds. Countermeasure: Create a thin sheet of frictionless aerogel on the floor to slide—

 

Before he could manifest the gel, a soft hand touched his shoulder.

 

"Release!" a cheerful voice called out.

 

Izuku suddenly felt entirely weightless. He floated mid-air, parallel to the ground. He blinked, turning his head to see a girl with short brown hair and a round, rosy face smiling at him. She pressed her fingertips together, and Izuku gently dropped the remaining two inches to the pavement.

 

"Sorry I used my Quirk on you without asking," she said, beaming. "But it would be bad luck to fall right before the exam, right?"

 

Izuku stood up, analyzing her instantly. Gravity negation. Touch-based. The pads on her fingers are the emitters. Incredible potential for mass manipulation.

 

"Thank you," Izuku said politely. "Gravity manipulation is a highly versatile Quirk. You'll do well today."

 

The girl blushed, waving her hands. "Ah, I hope so! I'm Ochaco Uraraka. Good luck to you too!" She hurried off toward the auditorium.

 

Izuku watched her go, mentally filing away the mechanics of her Quirk. If I could replicate a localized version of her gravity negation, I could drastically reduce the mass constraints of my own creations... No, focus. One impossible equation at a time.

 

 

 

The auditorium was massive, filled with hundreds of hopeful applicants. Pro Hero Present Mic stood on the stage, screaming into a microphone to explain the rules of the practical exam.

 

"You'll be conducting ten-minute mock urban battles! There are three types of faux villains in every battle center! They’re worth one, two, or three points! Use your Quirks to disable them and rack up points!"

 

Izuku muttered to himself, rapidly scribbling in his notebook. Robotics. Armor plating is likely standard steel. Vulnerabilities: joints, optical sensors, internal circuitry. EMPs will be highly effective, but might be penalized if they fry other students' gear. Ballistics or localized plasma burns are safer.

 

"Excuse me!"

 

A tall, stiff-looking boy with glasses stood up several rows ahead, pointing an accusing finger at Present Mic. "On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the top hero academy of Japan, should be ashamed!"

 

The boy then whipped around, pointing directly at Izuku. "And you, with the curly hair! You've been muttering this entire time! It's distracting! If you're just here to play with your pens, you should leave!"

 

The auditorium chuckled. Katsuki, sitting two seats away from Izuku, scoffed loudly.

 

Izuku stopped writing. He slowly stood up, slipping his notebook into his pocket. He looked at the tall boy, his expression entirely devoid of embarrassment.

 

"My Quirk requires me to construct complex mental blueprints of machinery and chemical reactions," Izuku said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet room. "I am currently calculating the optimal blast radius for a localized plasma-discharge turret to ensure I don't inadvertently severely burn you or anyone else when we enter the arena. If my preparation offends you, I suggest you stay out of my firing line."

 

The tall boy’s mouth snapped shut. He blinked, utterly bewildered by the clinical, terrifying response. "I... I see. My apologies." He quickly sat down.

 

Present Mic coughed into his microphone, breaking the tension. "Right! Well! The fourth villain is worth zero points! It's an obstacle! If you see it, just run!"

 

Izuku sat back down. He pulled a nutrient gel from his pocket and sucked it down. The tank was full. It was time to build.

 

 

 

Test Area B.

 

Massive, mechanical doors loomed over a faux-city landscape. Dozens of students, including the tall boy with glasses and the gravity girl, Uraraka, stood in front of the gates, stretching and psyching themselves up.

 

Izuku stood in the back. He closed his eyes.

 

Loading Blueprints.

File 1: Sentinel Spider-Drone. (Scouting/EMP).

File 2: Auto-Tracking Plasma Turret, Tripod mount.

File 3: Carbon-Fiber snare traps.

 

"START!" Present Mic’s voice boomed from the speakers. "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL BATTLES!"

 

The students surged forward, sprinting through the gates in a mad dash. Engines roared from the tall boy's legs as he rocketed ahead.

 

Izuku didn't run. He walked slowly through the gates, taking a deep breath.

 

His eyes snapped open, glowing a fierce, radioactive cyan.

 

He raised both hands. The air around him shimmered as the temperature dropped, his body burning calories at a ferocious rate. A massive, complex wireframe grid materialized in a five-meter radius around him.

 

Execute.

 

With a blinding, sustained flash of white light, the blueprints solidified.

 

From the empty air, three sleek, metallic, four-legged turrets dropped to the pavement with heavy clanks. They whirred to life, their optical sensors glowing red, tracking the movement down the street. Simultaneously, five small, mechanical spiders dropped from his left hand, scurrying instantly up the walls of the nearby buildings to gain a vantage point.

 

Izuku felt the drain. He swayed slightly, pulling two sugar cubes from his pocket and tossing them into his mouth. He crunched them loudly, walking calmly down the center of the main street.

 

A Three-Point villain, a massive tread-based robot, rolled around the corner, locking its targeting lasers onto Izuku.

 

"Target acquired," the robot droned.

 

Izuku didn't even break his stride. He pointed a finger at the robot.

 

The three plasma turrets flanking him pivoted seamlessly.

 

VZZZ-BAM!

 

Three streaks of superheated, blue plasma tore through the air, instantly melting through the central chassis of the robot. The machine exploded in a shower of sparks and collapsed.

 

"Three points," Izuku muttered.

 

 

 

In the dark, heavily monitored observation room deep within U.A., the faculty of heroes watched the screens in silence.

 

Nezu, the principal—a creature resembling a bear, mouse, and dog—sipped his tea, his beady eyes locked onto Screen 4.

 

"Well, well," Nezu purred. "We have an interesting batch this year. The explosive boy in Area A is a powerhouse of raw instinct. But this one..."

 

"He's not fighting," Eraserhead (Shota Aizawa) noted from his sleeping bag in the corner. "He's managing a battlefield. He fights like an entire Support Company rolled into one kid."

 

On the screen, Izuku was walking through an alleyway. A group of One-Pointers ambushed him from above. Without looking up, Izuku tapped his foot. The mechanical spiders he had deployed earlier dropped from the rooftops, landing on the robots and discharging localized EMPs that fried their circuits instantly. The robots crashed to the ground around Izuku, who simply stepped over them.

 

"His Quirk registration says 'Genesis,'" Midnight observed, leaning closer to the monitor. "Creation of matter from lipids. Like Yaoyorozu in the recommended exams. But he's not creating simple weapons. He's creating autonomous, highly complex machinery on the fly. The mental processing power required for that..."

 

"Is staggering," Ectoplasm finished. "If he loses focus for even a second, those turrets should fall apart. But they're stable."

 

"Let's see how he handles a disruption to his precious calculations," Nezu smiled, pressing a large red button on his console.

 

 

 

Izuku was at fifty-four points. He was exhausted.

 

His uniform was drenched in sweat. His head throbbed with a migraine so fierce it felt like a knife behind his eyes. He had consumed almost all his emergency rations. The turrets had run out of battery power minutes ago, and he had been forced to deconstruct them into dust, replacing them with a custom-built, hydraulic gauntlet on his right arm to punch through the remaining robots.

 

I have enough points to pass, Izuku thought, leaning heavily against a brick wall, gasping for breath. I just need to run out the clock.

 

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet violently shuddered.

 

The buildings around him groaned. A massive shadow fell over the faux-city. Izuku looked up, his emerald eyes widening in genuine shock.

 

At the end of the main street, towering over the skyscrapers, was the Zero Pointer. It was a colossal, green behemoth of steel and treads, easily the size of a city block. As it moved forward, it crushed a building like it was made of cardboard, sending a massive shockwave of dust and debris down the street.

 

Mass estimated at over 10,000 tons, Izuku’s brain calculated automatically, even through the pain. Armor plating is multi-layered titanium-steel composite. It's too big. An EMP wouldn't have the range. A plasma blast would barely scorch the paint.

 

"RUN!" a student screamed.

 

The street devolved into chaos as applicants turned and sprinted away from the mechanical titan. Izuku turned to follow them. There was no tactical advantage to fighting a Zero Pointer.

 

"Ow! Help!"

 

Izuku stopped dead. He whipped his head around.

 

Through the clearing dust, he saw her. The girl who had stopped his fall. Uraraka. She was trapped, her leg pinned under a massive slab of concrete that had fallen from a crushed building. The Zero Pointer’s massive treads were rolling relentlessly toward her. She was less than fifty yards away from being pulverized.

 

Run, his instincts screamed. You have no calories left. You have no blueprints big enough to stop that thing.

 

Izuku looked at the towering robot. He looked at the girl.

 

I am not a brawler. I am the architect.

 

Izuku turned his back to the exit. He sprinted toward the Zero Pointer.

 

"What are you doing?!" the tall boy with glasses yelled as he ran past, fleeing in the opposite direction. "Are you insane?!"

 

Izuku didn't answer. He reached Uraraka, sliding to his knees beside the concrete rubble pinning her leg. He grabbed the stone and pulled, but it was far too heavy.

 

"I-I can't reach it to use my Quirk," Uraraka sobbed, tears streaming down her dirty face as the shadow of the robot engulfed them.

 

Izuku looked up. The treads were thirty yards away. The ground was shaking so violently his teeth rattled.

 

He couldn't destroy the robot. He couldn't lift the rock. He couldn't push the robot back.

 

If I can't overpower its mass... I have to remove its mass.

 

Izuku stood up, placing himself directly between Uraraka and the approaching titan. He closed his eyes.

 

This wasn't a pre-loaded blueprint. This was theoretical. He had never built this before. He had only run the math in his head late at night, wondering if he could mimic Uraraka's Quirk through mechanical means.

 

Quantum-field manipulator. Disruption of graviton particles within a localized radius. I need a superconducting electromagnet, cooled to absolute zero, rotating at ten thousand RPMs to generate a diamagnetic field strong enough to repel the Earth's gravitational pull.

 

The math was monstrous. It was a chaotic storm of calculus, quantum physics, and thermodynamics.

 

WARNING, his body screamed. LIPID RESERVES CRITICAL. MUSCLE DEGRADATION IMMINENT.

 

"Shut up," Izuku whispered to his own biology.

 

He threw his arms out wide.

 

The air around him didn't just shimmer; it warped. A deafening, high-pitched whine filled the street, like a jet engine spinning up to lightspeed. The cyan light that erupted from Izuku wasn't just a glow; it was a blinding, physical force that pushed the dust away.

 

Blood exploded from both of Izuku’s nostrils, splashing down his chin and staining his white shirt. His eyes snapped open, the whites completely bloodshot, the irises glowing like miniature suns.

 

Above his hands, the blue wireframe materialized. It was beautiful and terrifying—a complex, spinning gyroscope of geometric perfection, calculating the weight of the world and defying it.

 

With a sound like a thunderclap, the device materialized. It wasn't a weapon. It was a heavy, metallic disc, covered in glowing blue circuitry, hovering between Izuku’s outstretched hands.

 

Izuku screamed, the sheer pain of the creation tearing through his nervous system. His body began consuming its own muscle tissue to fuel the massive energy deficit, his arms visibly trembling as he held the generator.

 

"GENESIS: NULL FIELD!" Izuku roared, slamming his hands together and activating the core.

 

A pulse of invisible energy erupted from the disc, expanding outward in a massive dome that encompassed the street, the rubble, and the front half of the Zero Pointer.

 

Suddenly, the earthquake stopped.

 

Uraraka gasped. The massive concrete slab pinning her leg slowly floated an inch into the air.

 

But that wasn't the incredible part.

 

The Zero Pointer, the 10,000-ton titan of steel, stopped moving forward. Its treads spun uselessly in the air. The massive machine groaned, its front chassis slowly tilting upward, defying gravity. The anti-gravity field had rendered the front half of the behemoth entirely weightless, while the back half remained heavy, causing the colossal robot to tip backward, off-balance.

 

Izuku held the field for three grueling, agonizing seconds. The blood was pouring from his nose. His vision was entirely black. He was operating purely on willpower and the structural integrity of his mind.

 

The robot tipped past its center of gravity.

 

"Deactivate," Izuku whispered.

 

The disc shattered into a million glowing blue shards. The anti-gravity field collapsed instantly.

 

Gravity reasserted itself with a vengeance. The Zero Pointer, now leaning precariously backward, had nothing to support its monumental weight. With a screech of tearing metal, the titan crashed backward, away from Izuku and Uraraka, slamming into the faux-city behind it with a catastrophic explosion that sent a shockwave of wind tearing through the streets.

 

Izuku stood there for a moment, the wind whipping his curly hair. He looked at the fallen giant.

 

He didn't punch it. He outsmarted gravity itself.

 

The adrenaline faded. The catastrophic caloric deficit hit him like a freight train. Izuku’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut, slipping into total darkness.

 

 

 

"Time's up!" Present Mic's voice echoed distantly.

 

In the observation room, there was absolute silence. Even Katsuki Bakugo’s explosive rampage on Screen 1 had been entirely forgotten. Every hero was staring at Screen 4, where the green-haired boy lay unconscious in front of the toppled leviathan.

 

Eraserhead slowly unzipped his sleeping bag and stood up. "He didn't just break the robot. He broke the laws of physics. On an empty stomach."

 

Nezu lowered his teacup. A terrifying, delighted smile stretched across his furry face. "I believe, my dear colleagues, we are looking at the highest-scoring applicant in the history of U.A. High School."

 

 

 

Three weeks later, Izuku sat at his desk in his bedroom.

 

The recovery had been brutal. Recovery Girl had hooked him up to IVs of pure liquid lipids and glucose for three days just to stop his body from consuming his own organs. His mother had cried for hours, forbidding him from ever doing something so reckless again.

 

But he was alive. And he was waiting.

 

There was a knock on the door. Inko Midoriya peeked her head in, holding a small, sealed envelope with the U.A. wax seal. Her hands were shaking.

 

"Izuku," she whispered. "It's here."

 

Izuku took the envelope. He placed it on the desk, right next to the golden belt buckle. He opened it carefully. A small metal disc slid out and clattered onto the wood.

 

A holographic projection flickered to life.

 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!" All Might’s voice boomed from the hologram. He was in his muscular form, wearing a sharp yellow suit.

 

Izuku leaned forward, his heart pounding.

 

"Young Midoriya!" All Might pointed directly at him. "You passed the written exam with flying colors! But the practical... oh, the practical! You scored an impressive fifty-four villain points! Enough to pass on its own!"

 

All Might’s expression softened, a proud smile gracing his features. "But U.A. is not just about destroying villains. How could we reject someone who risks their life, pushing their own Quirk to its absolute, self-destructive limit, to save a fellow student? We have a hidden metric, young man! Rescue points!"

 

The scoreboard appeared on the hologram.

 

"Ochaco Uraraka, the girl you saved, actually came to us to offer you some of her points," All Might chuckled. "But she didn't need to! For your unprecedented display of heroism and intellect, you have been awarded sixty rescue points!"

 

The numbers tallied up on the screen. 114 points.

 

"First place, Izuku Midoriya!" All Might declared, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "You have shattered the school record! Welcome, Architect. This is your Hero Academia!"

 

The hologram faded.

 

Izuku sat in the quiet of his room. He looked at the golden belt buckle. He looked at the blueprints covering his walls.

 

He didn't cry. He didn't cheer. He simply reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a fresh, blank notebook, and wrote U.A. Arsenal: Phase Two on the cover.

 

The foundation was laid. It was time to build the future.

 

 

The alarm clock did not ring; it was dismantled. Izuku had taken it apart at 3:00 AM because the oscillating frequency of the tiny internal speaker had been interfering with his train of thought regarding electromagnetic induction.

 

Instead, he woke to the silent, internal biological clock he had rigorously trained over the past ten months. It was 5:00 AM on his first day at U.A. High School.

 

Izuku swung his legs out of bed, his bare feet hitting the cold wooden floor of his bedroom-turned-laboratory. He didn't stretch. He walked immediately to the massive commercial-grade refrigerator humming in the corner of his room. He opened it, the cool air spilling out over the piles of metal scraps and blueprints on the floor.

 

Breakfast was not a meal; it was an ammunition reload.

 

He pulled out two massive Tupperware containers. Inside the first was a dense, 2,000-calorie brick of baked salmon, avocado, and brown rice. The second held a liter of a viscous, high-fat protein slurry he had chemically engineered himself, heavily fortified with omega-3s, medium-chain triglycerides, and complex carbohydrates.

 

He sat at his desk, staring at the golden belt buckle illuminated by the dawn light creeping through his window, and began to eat. He ate mechanically, efficiently, chewing just enough to aid digestion before swallowing.

 

As he ate, he initiated his morning mental routine.

 

Activating Genesis required a terrifying amount of working memory. It was akin to a computer running a high-end rendering program; if too many background applications were open, the system would crash. Over the years, Izuku had developed a mental filing system to bypass the startup lag. He called it "caching."

 

He closed his eyes, visualizing an empty, dark void.

 

Load File: Sub-Orbital Flashbang. Magnesium core, ammonium nitrate oxidizer, reinforced aluminum casing.

Visualize the molecular bond. Lock it in.

 

He felt a tiny, localized pressure behind his right eye—the physical sensation of blood being rerouted to maintain the active memory.

 

Load File: PolyTetraFluoroEthylene Gel. Low-friction polymer. Viscous state.

Load File: Carbon-Nanotube Restraint Cable. Tensile strength: 63 gigapascals.

 

He loaded seven different, relatively small blueprints into his active cache. These were his instantaneous creations—items he could manifest in less than a tenth of a second because the mathematical equations were already running on a continuous loop in the back of his mind. The mental strain was immediate. A dull ache settled at the base of his skull, and he felt the familiar drop in his core body temperature as his Quirk primed itself.

 

He finished his slurry, wiped his mouth, and stood up. He walked to the mirror and pulled on the crisp, gray U.A. uniform with its gold buttons. It fit a bit tightly around his chest and thighs; ten months of packing on dense, convertible muscle and fat had given him a solid, grounded physique. He filled his uniform pockets with high-calorie nutrient gels—slim, silver packets that looked like astronaut food.

 

"Izuku!" his mother called from the hallway. "You're going to be late!"

 

Izuku picked up his yellow backpack, heavily modified with reinforced straps to carry his textbooks and emergency tools. "Coming, Mom."

 

At the front door, Inko fussed over his collar, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "My boy. U.A. High School. I’m so incredibly proud of you. Just... promise me you won't push yourself so hard that you end up in the hospital again."

 

Izuku touched the side of his nose, remembering the blood that had poured from it after stopping the Zero Pointer. "I’ll be careful, Mom. I’ve optimized my energy output. I won't need to break the laws of physics today."

 

He stepped out into the crisp spring air, his mind whirring with infinite possibilities.

 

 

 

Class 1-A’s door was ridiculously massive. Izuku stood before it, noting the heavy reinforced hinges and the thickness of the metal. Designed to accommodate mutation-type Quirks of varying sizes, he deduced. Smart.

 

He slid the massive door open and stepped inside.

 

The first thing he saw was the tall, bespectacled boy from the entrance exam—the one who had scolded him for muttering—chopping his arms aggressively at Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"Take your feet off that desk immediately!" the tall boy barked. "It is disrespectful to your classmates and to the upperclassmen who used it before us!"

 

Katsuki, leaning back in his chair with his feet planted firmly on the polished wood, scoffed. "Huh? What middle school did you go to, you extra?"

 

"I am Tenya Iida, from Somei Private Academy!"

 

"Somei? So you're an elite prick?" Katsuki smirked, small sparks popping off his fingertips. "I'll have fun crushing you."

 

Iida gasped, utterly scandalized. "Crushing me?! You wish to be a hero with that attitude?!"

 

Izuku walked quietly into the room. He didn't want to get involved. He moved toward an empty desk near the back, pulling out his notebook to review the structural integrity of a new polycarbonate aerogel he was conceptualizing.

 

"Oh! It's you!"

 

Izuku stopped. Iida had abandoned Katsuki and was marching toward him with stiff, robotic strides. Iida stopped perfectly in front of Izuku and bowed at a rigid ninety-degree angle.

 

"I am Tenya Iida! I must apologize to you! During the entrance exam, I misjudged your behavior in the auditorium. You were engaging in advanced tactical preparation, and I mistook it for disrespect. Furthermore, your actions during the practical exam... realizing there was a hidden rescue mechanic and facing that mechanical titan to save a fellow examinee... it was the pinnacle of heroism! You are far superior to me!"

 

The entire class quieted down, turning to look at Izuku.

 

Izuku blinked, slightly taken aback by the sheer volume of Iida's voice. "I didn't know about the rescue points," Izuku corrected evenly. "I just ran the math. The Zero Pointer was moving at a trajectory that would have crushed her in 14.3 seconds. I had no offensive capabilities remaining, so I temporarily disabled gravity. It was a logical, if highly inefficient, expenditure of my remaining calories."

 

Iida stared at him, momentarily short-circuiting at the clinical, emotionless breakdown of such a heroic feat.

 

"Hey! You're the falling boy!"

 

Izuku turned to see Ochaco Uraraka bounding into the classroom, her face flushed with excitement. "You got in! I'm so glad! I wanted to thank you for saving me... even if you broke your nose doing it!"

 

"It wasn't a break, just ruptured capillaries from localized cranial blood pressure," Izuku replied automatically. "But thank you, Uraraka. Your gravity negation is a phenomenal power. I've actually been studying the theoretical mechanics of it."

 

Before Uraraka could respond, a low, exhausted voice drifted from the hallway floor.

 

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

 

The class froze. Lying on the floor in the doorway, resembling a giant, bright yellow caterpillar, was a man in a sleeping bag. He unzipped the bag and stood up, revealing a scruffy, tired-looking man wearing entirely black clothing and a scarf composed of strange, metallic-looking cloth. He pulled a juice pouch from his pocket and sucked on it lazily.

 

"It took you eight seconds to quiet down," the man drawled, his bloodshot eyes sweeping over the class. "Time is limited. You kids are not rational enough."

 

Izuku’s eyes instantly locked onto the man. Pro Hero Eraserhead. Underground hero. Quirk: Erasure. Nullifies emitter and transformation-type Quirks upon visual contact. Combat style revolves around the specialized capture weapon around his neck. Extremely dangerous in one-on-one combat.

 

"I am your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa," the man announced, stepping to the front of the room. He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white tracksuits. "Put these on and meet me on the P.E. grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

The sun beat down on the dirt field of U.A.'s training grounds. Class 1-A stood in their gym uniforms, shivering slightly under Aizawa’s intense, unblinking stare.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" Uraraka asked nervously. "But what about the entrance ceremony? Or guidance counseling?"

 

"No time to waste on pointless ceremonies," Aizawa said flatly. "U.A. is known for its unrestricted traditions. That means I run my class however I see fit." He held up a digital device. "You've been taking physical fitness tests since elementary school, but you were never allowed to use your Quirks. It's an irrational system that suppresses true potential. Bakugo."

 

Aizawa pointed to Katsuki. "You finished first in the practical exam. What was your farthest softball throw in middle school?"

 

"Sixty-seven meters," Katsuki replied, crossing his arms.

 

"Try it with your Quirk." Aizawa tossed a baseball to him. "Stay in the circle. Anything goes, just don't leave the circle."

 

Katsuki stepped up to the pitcher's plate. He rolled his shoulders, a wicked grin spreading across his face. He wound up, his arm pulling back. "DIE!"

 

An ear-splitting explosion detonated from his palm as he released the ball. A massive shockwave of fire and smoke kicked up dust across the field. The ball vanished into the sky, propelled by pure concussive force.

 

Aizawa held up his device. It beeped. "Know your own maximum first." He turned the screen toward the class.

 

705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted.

"Over 700 meters?!"

"This looks like fun!"

"We get to use our Quirks as much as we want! Awesome!"

 

Aizawa's expression darkened. The atmosphere instantly dropped ten degrees. "Fun? You think becoming a hero is about having fun? You have three years to become Pros. You think it's all going to be games?"

 

Aizawa smiled, a chilling, predatory grin. "Fine. The student who ranks last in total points across all eight tests will be judged as having no potential... and will be punished with immediate expulsion."

 

Silence slammed into the students like a physical weight.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He simply reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver gel packet, bit the top off, and squeezed 500 calories of pure energy into his mouth. Expulsion was a logical motivator to force maximum output. He needed fuel.

 

Katsuki looked over his shoulder at Izuku, his red eyes burning. Let's see what you build today, Deku.

 

Test 1: 50-Meter Dash.

 

Izuku stepped up to the starting line next to Iida.

 

Iida dropped into a perfect sprinter's stance, the exhaust pipes on his calves revving with a loud, mechanical purr. "I will not hold back, Midoriya!" Iida declared.

 

Izuku stood straight up. He closed his eyes. The 50-meter dash required explosive, linear momentum. Human muscle tissue, even highly trained, was inefficient compared to pneumatic propulsion.

 

Blueprint: Exoskeletal leg braces. Titanium frame. High-compression pneumatic pistons at the ankle and knee joints. Energy source: Compressed CO2.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. The radiant cyan light exploded around his legs. The air hummed with the sound of rapid displacement.

 

Crunch.

 

With a flash of light, heavy, silver metallic braces materialized over Izuku's pants, bolting themselves down his thighs, wrapping around his knees, and forming thick, mechanical boots over his feet. Hissing pneumatic tubes snaked up his calves.

 

The class stared, wide-eyed.

 

"He just... built a machine on his legs!" an electric-blonde boy (Kaminari) shouted.

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, watching closely.

 

"On your marks," the starting machine droned.

 

Izuku bent his knees slightly. He visualized the release valves opening.

 

"Get set... Go!"

 

P-TSHHHHH!

 

A massive burst of compressed white air exploded from the back of Izuku’s boots. He didn't run; he was violently launched forward. The pneumatic pistons absorbed the shock of his steps, propelling him forward in massive, bounding leaps that covered ten meters at a time.

 

Iida rocketed forward with a scream of engines, but Izuku was moving in a straight, terrifyingly mechanical line, his face a mask of absolute concentration as he calculated the precise timing of the piston releases to avoid shattering his own kneecaps.

 

Izuku crossed the finish line a fraction of a second before Iida.

 

3.01 seconds, the robot voice announced.

3.04 seconds, it declared for Iida.

 

Izuku skidded to a halt, the metal boots grinding sparks against the dirt. The blue light flared again, and the massive leg braces shattered into glowing dust, returning to nothingness. Izuku swayed, panting softly, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

 

"Incredible," Iida breathed, slowing down next to him. "You constructed a localized propulsion system in under three seconds! The mental acuity required for that is staggering!"

 

Izuku took another bite of his gel packet. "It's inefficient. The weight of the titanium slows the initial acceleration. I need to synthesize a lighter alloy."

 

Aizawa watched from the sidelines, writing on his clipboard. He compensates for physical limits with instantaneous, highly complex support gear. He's smart. But there's a fatal flaw in his method.

 

Test 2: Grip Strength.

 

A massive, multi-armed boy named Shoji crushed the digital grip meter, scoring 540 kilograms.

 

Izuku stepped up. He didn't use pneumatics this time. He used hydraulics. The cyan light enveloped his right arm, solidifying into a bulky, black industrial gauntlet with thick, fluid-filled tubes.

 

He squeezed the meter. The mechanical whine of crushing force echoed across the field.

 

850 kilograms.

 

Izuku dissolved the gauntlet, groaning softly and pressing two fingers to his temple. The headaches were starting earlier than usual today. The adrenaline of the first day was making him burn calories too quickly.

 

Test 5: Ball Pitch.

 

It was the main event. Uraraka had just scored an infinity by making the ball weightless.

 

Izuku stood in the circle. He felt the eyes of the entire class on him. Katsuki was glaring at him, arms crossed. Aizawa was watching him with a cold, unreadable expression.

 

Izuku looked down at the baseball in his hand.

 

I need a high score here to offset the flexibility and toe-touch tests. I need maximum kinetic output.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

Blueprint: Mobile Artillery Arm. Multi-chambered combustion cannon. Tungsten-lined barrel to withstand the heat. Propellant: Synthesized cordite.

 

This was a massive construct. The largest he had attempted today.

 

Izuku’s breathing slowed. He commanded his body to open the floodgates. His body temperature plummeted. The brilliant, blinding cyan light erupted from his right shoulder, swirling down his arm like a localized hurricane of data and energy.

 

The wireframe materialized. It was massive—a cannon the size of his torso, locking around his right arm. It was beautiful, terrifyingly complex, filled with gears, firing pins, and pressure chambers.

 

Izuku raised his arm, aiming the invisible, glowing cannon toward the sky. He prepared to solidify it. He prepared for the massive caloric drain.

 

Suddenly, a strange sensation washed over him. The connection between his brain and his fat cells was instantly, brutally severed.

 

The cyan light flickered. The wireframe matrix of the cannon warped, glitched, and shattered like glass, dissolving into thin air.

 

Izuku gasped, stumbling forward as the sudden cancellation of the mental load sent a shockwave of vertigo through his skull. The baseball dropped from his hand, rolling uselessly in the dirt.

 

"What...?" Izuku muttered, clutching his head. He looked up.

 

Aizawa was standing ten feet away. His scarf was floating menacingly around his head, his hair defied gravity, and his eyes were glowing a piercing, bloody red.

 

"I erased your Quirk," Aizawa said, his voice dripping with condescension.

 

The class gasped.

 

Izuku stared at him. Erasure. He stopped the manifestation mid-process.

 

Aizawa walked forward, his eyes still glowing. "I've been watching you, Midoriya. The judges at the entrance exam praised your tactical brilliance. They called you an architect. I call you a liability."

 

Aizawa stopped right in front of Izuku. "Your power is incredible, yes. But it requires time. It requires focus. You stand perfectly still, engulfed in a bright blue light, telegraphing to the entire world that you are preparing an attack. You rely entirely on building complex, cumbersome machinery to solve your problems."

 

Aizawa’s capture weapon snaked out, wrapping tightly around Izuku’s torso and pulling him close.

 

"What happens when a villain like me ambushes you from the shadows?" Aizawa hissed, his face inches from Izuku's. "What happens when you don't have three seconds to build your fancy little cannon? What happens when you're exhausted, starving, and out of calories? You'll be nothing but a Quirkless kid holding a wrench. You cannot become a hero if you rely on tools that can be taken away or broken before you even finish making them."

 

Aizawa blinked. His hair fell flat. The capture weapon unspooled, dropping Izuku.

 

"I've returned your Quirk," Aizawa said, turning his back and walking away. "You have one throw left. If you try to build that cannon again and take too long, I'll expel you on the spot. Show me you're not just a factory worker."

 

The field was dead silent. Katsuki’s grin had vanished. Even he knew Aizawa had a point. Deku’s weakness had always been the setup time.

 

Izuku stood in the circle. His heart was hammering. His mind was racing.

 

He's right, Izuku thought. My complex blueprints take an average of 2.4 seconds to materialize. Against a speed-type villain, or an underground ambush specialist, that's an eternity. I was relying too much on raw power output to get a high score. I overcomplicated it.

 

Izuku reached down and picked up the baseball.

 

He didn't need a cannon. He didn't need cordite or tungsten. He needed efficiency. He needed to eliminate the setup time entirely.

 

Recall Cache File 1. The simplest mechanism in the universe. Elastic potential energy.

 

Izuku didn't close his eyes. He didn't take a deep breath. He stared dead ahead at the horizon.

 

He pulled his arm back to throw.

 

As his arm moved forward, a minuscule spark of cyan light flashed—not around his whole arm, but isolated entirely to the very tip of his right index finger.

 

Blueprint: A single, localized plate of ultra-compressed, hyper-dense carbon aerogel. One millimeter thick. Activated exactly upon the release of the ball.

 

Izuku threw the ball.

 

The instant the ball left his fingertips, his index finger flicked forward. The microscopic plate of hyper-dense aerogel materialized in mid-air, directly behind the ball. Izuku’s finger struck the plate with all of his physical strength.

 

Because the aerogel plate possessed immense mass but zero elasticity, it acted as a perfect kinetic transfer mechanism. It transferred 100% of the kinetic energy from Izuku's physical swing directly into a pinpoint spot on the back of the ball.

 

CRACK!

 

The sound was like a sniper rifle discharging.

 

A shockwave ripped through the air, kicking up a massive cloud of dust around Izuku’s feet. The ball didn't just fly; it warped space for a fraction of a second, tearing through the sound barrier with a sonic boom that forced several students to cover their ears.

 

The ball vanished into the clouds, leaving a white contrail in its wake.

 

Aizawa’s eyes widened slightly. He slowly raised his tracking device.

 

The device beeped.

 

Aizawa turned the screen toward the class.

 

705.3 meters.

 

Exactly point-one meters further than Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Izuku lowered his arm. The microscopic aerogel plate had already dissolved. He hadn't built a machine. He had built a single, perfect point of leverage. It took exactly zero-point-zero-one seconds to create, and it burned less than ten calories.

 

Izuku turned to look at Aizawa. His emerald eyes were cold, sharp, and intensely focused. He raised his right hand, making a fist.

 

"Sensei," Izuku said quietly, his voice cutting through the ringing silence of the field. "I don't need a factory. I just need a blueprint."

 

Aizawa stared at the boy. For a long, tense moment, the underground hero didn't move. Then, a slow, terrifying grin stretched across Aizawa’s face.

 

"This kid..." Aizawa muttered under his breath. "He actually minimized his Quirk’s rendering time by simplifying the physics. He’s a monster."

 

"DEKU!"

 

The roar tore across the field. Katsuki Bakugo was charging, his palms erupting with massive explosions, his face twisted in a mask of absolute, unhinged fury.

 

"What the hell was that?! Tell me how you did that! You didn't build anything! EXPLAIN IT, NERD!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't even raise his hands to defend himself. He knew he didn't have to.

 

Before Katsuki could close the distance, Aizawa’s capture scarf lashed out like a striking viper, wrapping tightly around Katsuki and yanking him to a violent halt.

 

"What the...?! This cloth is stiff!" Katsuki struggled, his explosions sputtering out as Aizawa’s red eyes locked onto him.

 

"It's a carbon-fiber alloy woven with metal wire," Aizawa said dryly. "Stop using your Quirk, Bakugo. I'm getting dry eye. We're moving on to the next test."

 

Aizawa released Katsuki, who fell to the dirt, glaring venomously at Izuku.

 

Izuku walked back to the group, pulling another gel packet from his pocket. Uraraka and Iida looked at him like he was an alien.

 

"Midoriya," Iida whispered. "That was... mathematically perfect."

 

"It was adequate," Izuku replied softly, rubbing his temples. The migraine was returning. "But I need to get faster."

 

 

 

The final rankings were displayed via hologram.

 

Izuku finished 3rd overall, right behind Yaoyorozu Momo—whose Quirk was startlingly similar to his own, though focused heavily on chemical creation rather than complex mechanical engineering—and Todoroki Shoto, the stoic boy who wielded immense fire and ice. Katsuki finished 4th.

 

Aizawa dismissed the expulsion threat as a "logical ruse," though Izuku knew mathematically that Aizawa would have expelled the lowest scorer if they lacked potential. Mineta, the shortest boy in the class, wept openly in relief.

 

The rest of the day passed in a blur of standard academic classes. English with Present Mic, Modern Literature with Cementoss. Izuku excelled in all of them, his mind already conditioned to absorb information at an accelerated rate.

 

But it was the afternoon class that truly ignited the room.

 

"I AM... COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"

 

All Might threw the classroom door open, leaning in with a bizarre, twisted posture that was anything but normal. He wore his Silver Age costume, his muscles bulging, his smile blinding.

 

The class erupted in cheers.

"It's All Might!"

"Wow, he really is a teacher!"

"That costume is so retro!"

 

All Might marched to the podium. He briefly made eye contact with Izuku. A silent communication passed between them. The Architect. Let's see what you've built.

 

"Hero Basic Training!" All Might boomed. "The class that will put you through the wringer to forge you into true heroes! And today, we're doing... BATTLE TRAINING!"

 

All Might pressed a button on a remote. The wall sectioned off, revealing rows of numbered metal cases.

 

"And to go with that... the support companies have created your Hero Costumes based on your Quirk registrations and requests! Gear up, and meet me at Ground Beta!"

 

 

 

Ground Beta was a massive, sprawling fake city.

 

All Might stood at the entrance, waiting as the students walked out of the tunnel, fully clad in their heroic personas. There were capes, armor, spandex, and masks.

 

Katsuki walked out wearing a menacing, black and orange suit with massive, grenade-shaped gauntlets on his arms. Uraraka wore a sleek, pink and black spacesuit design.

 

Then, Izuku walked out.

 

He didn't look like a traditional hero. He looked like a high-tech, black-ops operative.

 

His base layer was a dark, charcoal-gray tactical bodysuit made of a highly advanced, breathable micro-mesh. It was designed to maximize heat dissipation—crucial for managing the immense body heat generated during his rapid metabolic lipid-conversion.

 

Over the suit, he wore a modular, matte-black tactical vest covered in dozens of small, reinforced pouches. Every single pouch contained calorie-dense rations, sugar cubes, and nutrient gels.

 

He had heavily reinforced, shock-absorbing combat boots and knee pads. His gloves were fingerless, exposing the skin of his palms to allow for unobstructed manifestation of matter.

 

The only nod to his childhood idol was the color scheme of his utility belt and the subtle armor plating on his shoulders: a muted, dark forest green, accented with a familiar, heavy, dull-gold V-shaped belt buckle.

 

Lastly, resting around his neck was a sleek, metallic respirator mask. It wasn't for oxygen; it was a pressurized chemical inhaler filled with concentrated glucose and pain-suppressants, designed to mitigate the agonizing migraines of Quirk overuse.

 

"Looking sharp, everyone!" All Might praised. "Now, let's get down to business. The setup is simple! Villains have hidden a nuclear weapon in a stronghold! Heroes must either capture the villains or secure the weapon within the time limit!"

 

All Might drew lots from a box.

 

"Team A! Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka! You are the Heroes!"

"Team D! Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida! You are the Villains!"

 

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over Team A and Team D.

 

Katsuki slowly turned his head to look at Izuku. His red eyes were wide, twitching with a manic, terrifying ecstasy. He slowly pounded a fist into his massive grenade gauntlet.

 

"Deku," Katsuki whispered, the sound carrying across the quiet group. "I've been waiting ten years for this."

 

Izuku didn't respond to the taunt. He reached into his tactical vest, pulled out a silver gel packet, and bit the top off. He looked up at the towering fake building they were about to enter.

 

Building layout: Five stories. Concrete and steel construction. Narrow hallways. High probability of close-quarters combat. Bakugo’s explosions will be amplified in enclosed spaces, but his mobility will be restricted.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku said, his voice entirely devoid of fear. It was cold, precise, and authoritative.

 

Uraraka jumped slightly. "Y-Yes, Midoriya?"

 

"We are not fighting a mock battle," Izuku said, adjusting his gloves. "We are fighting Katsuki Bakugo. He will abandon the weapon. He will abandon Iida. He is going to hunt me down the second we enter that building."

 

"Hunt you?" Uraraka gulped. "But... we're a team! We can double-team him!"

 

"No," Izuku replied. He pulled the respirator mask up over his mouth, the metallic clasps locking into place with a sharp hiss. "If you get near him, the concussive shockwave of his blast will rupture your eardrums and cause severe internal bleeding. He doesn't hold back."

 

Izuku turned his glowing emerald eyes to her. "When we enter, he will come for me. I am going to trap him in a nightmare of physics. While I do that, you will locate the weapon and engage Iida. Can you do that?"

 

Uraraka looked at the imposing, tactical armor of her teammate. He didn't look like a nervous teenager anymore. He looked like a general preparing for war. She swallowed her fear and nodded firmly. "I can do it."

 

 

 

Inside the fifth-floor monitor room, the "Villains" were preparing.

 

Iida was pacing the room, checking the faux nuclear weapon. "This is a great opportunity to truly embody the role of a villain! I must think maliciously! Mwahahaha!"

 

Katsuki was standing by the door, staring out into the dark hallway. He wasn't listening to a word Iida was saying. His breathing was heavy, his heart hammering against his ribs.

 

He thinks he's so smart, Katsuki thought, his teeth grinding. He thinks he can calculate me. He thinks his little blueprints can stop my raw power. I’m going to shatter his toys. I’m going to blow away his shields. I’m going to prove that raw power is the only thing that matters.

 

"Bakugo," Iida said, stopping his pacing. "We should establish a defensive perimeter. Midoriya is highly analytical. If we hold the high ground—"

 

"Shut up, four-eyes," Katsuki growled.

 

"Excuse me?!"

 

Katsuki cracked his neck. "Deku is mine. You stay here and guard the stupid bomb. I'm going to exterminate a pest."

 

"START!" All Might’s voice echoed through the PA system.

 

Katsuki didn't hesitate. He blasted himself out the door, rocketing down the hallway in a blur of orange and black, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake.

 

 

 

Izuku and Uraraka slipped through a first-floor window.

 

The building was dark, the only light coming from the artificial sun outside filtering through the windows. The air was still.

 

"We're in," Uraraka whispered.

 

"He's coming," Izuku stated calmly. He closed his eyes.

 

Cache loaded. Three items. Fast execution. High defensive priority.

 

"Uraraka, go up the side stairwell," Izuku commanded, walking deliberately into the center of the main hallway. "Do not engage until you find Iida."

 

"But Midoriya—"

 

"Go."

 

Uraraka hesitated, then turned and sprinted toward the stairs.

 

Izuku stood alone in the hallway. He spread his feet shoulder-width apart. He took a deep breath of the glucose mist from his respirator.

 

Listen.

 

He could hear it. The rapid, popping sound of explosions echoing down the stairwell. It was getting louder. Faster. He was descending rapidly.

 

Three floors up. Two floors. He's skipping steps. He's furious. His trajectory will be a straight line.

 

Katsuki turned the corner at the end of the hallway.

 

The moment he saw Izuku, a guttural roar ripped from his throat. He threw his hand back, detonating a massive blast that launched him down the narrow corridor like a human missile.

 

"DEEEEEKUUUU!"

 

Katsuki was moving at fifty miles an hour, his right hand pulled back, aimed directly at Izuku's face.

 

0.8 seconds to impact.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He didn't build a massive cannon. He didn't build an exosuit.

 

He raised his right hand, pointing his palm directly at the floor between them.

 

Execute Cache 1: Polytetrafluoroethylene viscous polymer.

 

A flash of cyan light hit the ground. A thick, clear gel splattered across the linoleum floor, covering a five-foot radius, instantly solidifying into a frictionless puddle.

 

Katsuki’s foot hit the gel.

 

With zero friction to grip, Katsuki’s massive forward momentum instantly betrayed him. His legs flew out from under him with comical, terrifying speed. He pitched forward, losing his target entirely, and slammed face-first into the floor, sliding rapidly toward Izuku.

 

0.4 seconds.

 

As Katsuki slid across the floor, totally out of control, Izuku stepped calmly to the side. As Katsuki slid past his feet, Izuku raised his left hand, pointing it directly at Katsuki’s back.

 

Execute Cache 2: Magnesium-Ammonium Flashbang.

 

A small, silver cylinder materialized from Izuku's palm, dropping onto Katsuki’s back.

 

Izuku immediately turned away, covering his ears and shutting his eyes tightly beneath his mask.

 

BOOM-FLASH!

 

A blinding, 170-decibel explosion of pure white light and concussive sound detonated in the enclosed hallway.

 

Katsuki screamed, his hands flying to his eyes as he careened into the wall at the end of the hallway, crashing into the plaster. He tumbled onto his back, completely blinded, his ears ringing with a deafening screech.

 

"Ahhhh! My eyes! You bastard!" Katsuki thrashed, firing wild, uncoordinated explosions into the ceiling and walls, tearing the drywall apart.

 

Izuku opened his eyes and turned back around. He pulled a sugar cube from a pouch and popped it into his mouth under the respirator.

 

"Your attacks are entirely reliant on visual tracking and linear momentum, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, his voice muffled by the mask. "If you can't see, and you can't plant your feet, you're just a hazard to yourself."

 

In the observation room, Class 1-A watched in stunned, horrific silence.

 

"He... he didn't even attack him," Kirishima whispered, his jaw hanging open. "He just made Bakugo defeat himself."

 

"It's like watching a matador fight a bull," Todoroki murmured, his mismatched eyes locked onto the screen. "Midoriya is entirely in control of the engagement."

 

All Might gripped the microphone tightly. Incredible, my boy. You used the environment, physics, and his own aggression against him. But do not underestimate young Bakugo.

 

Back in the hallway, Katsuki stopped thrashing.

 

He forced himself to his knees, his eyes squeezed shut, tears of pain streaming down his face from the flashbang. His ears were bleeding slightly. He was panting, his chest heaving with a rage so profound it seemed to heat the air around him.

 

"You think..." Katsuki growled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, low resonance. "...a little light and some slippery slime is enough to beat me?"

 

Katsuki slowly stood up. He didn't open his eyes. He raised his right arm, pointing the massive grenade gauntlet at the ceiling. He pulled the pin.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He's not aiming at me. He's aiming at the structure.

 

A colossal, concentrated blast of fire and shockwave erupted from the gauntlet. It hit the ceiling, completely obliterating the concrete. The structural integrity of the hallway failed instantly. Massive slabs of rubble and twisted rebar rained down, burying the floor, destroying the frictionless gel, and filling the air with a choking cloud of dust.

 

Katsuki stood in the center of the destruction, wiping the tears from his eyes. His vision was blurry, but it was returning.

 

"There's your physics, Deku!" Katsuki roared. "I don't need friction! I'll just blow the whole damn floor away!"

 

Izuku stood amidst the falling dust. He coughed, adjusting his respirator. The playfulness was over. Katsuki was adapting. He was using area-of-effect destruction to negate Izuku's precision traps.

 

"Fine," Izuku whispered.

 

Katsuki locked his blurry red eyes onto the green and black figure in the dust. "I'm going to vaporize your blueprints. Show me what you've got!"

 

Katsuki lunged, using small explosions from his feet to propel himself through the air, bypassing the rubble entirely. He closed the distance in a second, his palm glowing with a massive, concentrated explosion aimed dead at Izuku’s chest.

 

He's too close. Cache 3.

 

Izuku threw both hands forward. His eyes burned cyan.

 

Blueprint: Hexagonal Polycarbonate Aerogel Barrier. 4 inches thick. Impact absorption configuration.

 

A brilliant, shimmering wall of solid, translucent blue matter materialized out of thin air, snapping into existence between Izuku and Katsuki.

 

Katsuki’s palm slammed into the shield. The explosion detonated point-blank.

 

The sound was apocalyptic. The shockwave hit the shield and was forced outward, blowing the windows out of the hallway and tearing the plaster off the walls.

 

Behind the shield, Izuku grit his teeth. The barrier held, but the sheer kinetic force of the blast pushed him backward, his boots skidding violently across the floor. He could feel the intense heat radiating through the polycarbonate. His head throbbed as he forcibly maintained the structural integrity of the shield through sheer mental willpower, burning calories at an alarming rate to repair the micro-fractures Katsuki's blast was creating in the material.

 

He's stronger than middle school, Izuku calculated rapidly. His sweat glands have expanded. The blast radius is twenty percent larger.

 

"DON'T HIDE BEHIND A WALL, DEKU!" Katsuki screamed, unleashing a relentless barrage of alternating left and right explosions against the shield. Boom! Boom! Boom!

 

The blue shield began to spider-web with cracks.

 

Izuku’s nose started to bleed again, a warm drop hitting the inside of his respirator. The mental strain of calculating the stress vectors of continuous explosions was agonizing. He couldn't hold a static defense against infinite offense.

 

I need to trap him. I need a restraint mechanism that absorbs heat.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku spoke into his earpiece, his voice strained. "Status."

 

“I found the weapon! Fifth floor! But Iida is guarding it, and he removed everything from the room so I can't use my Quirk on anything to distract him!”

 

"Understood," Izuku grunted, taking a step back as Katsuki landed a massive right hook on the shield, cracking it further. "I am going to send Bakugo up to you. When he breaches the floor, Iida will be distracted. Secure the weapon."

 

“Send him up? How?!”

 

"Physics," Izuku rasped.

 

Izuku looked through the cracked blue shield at Katsuki's furious face.

 

"Hey, Kacchan," Izuku yelled over the explosions. "You're right! Shields are useless against you!"

 

Izuku dropped the shield. The cyan light vanished.

 

Katsuki stumbled forward slightly, his next explosion hitting empty air. He grinned savagely. "Finally ran out of gas, huh?! DIE!"

 

Katsuki pulled both hands back, preparing for a massive, two-handed blast that would undoubtedly put Izuku in the hospital.

 

Izuku didn't defend himself. He pointed his right hand directly at the floor beneath Katsuki’s feet.

 

Execute Complex Blueprint: Instantaneous Vacuum Funnel.

 

It was a risky, highly experimental creation. Izuku pushed 2,000 calories into the manifestation, his body screaming in protest.

 

A flash of light.

 

A large, metallic, cone-shaped device materialized directly under Katsuki. But it wasn't a bomb. It was a massive, reverse-engineered jet turbine, facing upward.

 

"What the—" Katsuki looked down.

 

"Airflow, Kacchan," Izuku said, taking a massive step backward. "Your explosions need oxygen. But what happens when an explosion is trapped in a wind tunnel?"

 

Izuku activated the turbine.

 

With a deafening roar, the turbine sucked in all the surrounding air and blasted it violently upward in a hyper-pressurized column of wind.

 

At that exact millisecond, Katsuki’s two-handed explosion detonated.

 

Normally, the blast would expand outward in a sphere. But caught in the localized, hyper-pressurized updraft of the turbine, the explosive force had nowhere to go but straight up.

 

The explosion was funneled into a concentrated, vertical pillar of fire and concussive force. It hit Katsuki himself, catching him in the updraft.

 

"AAAAAAHHHHH!"

 

Katsuki was launched like a cannonball, propelled by his own explosion and the turbine's wind. He smashed through the ceiling of the second floor. Then the third. Then the fourth.

 

He tore through the building like a rocket, leaving perfectly circular, blasted holes in the floors above.

 

 

 

On the fifth floor, Iida was laughing maniacally. "Come, Hero! Face my villainous wrath!"

 

Suddenly, the floor beneath him exploded.

 

A screaming, smoking Katsuki Bakugo erupted through the concrete, flew ten feet into the air, and crashed violently into the faux nuclear weapon, knocking it over before collapsing into a groaning, soot-covered heap on the ground.

 

Iida shrieked in terror, jumping back. "Bakugo?! What are you doing up here?!"

 

Uraraka, who had been hiding behind a pillar, didn't hesitate. She lunged forward while Iida was distracted by his falling teammate. She slapped her hands onto the massive paper-mache bomb.

 

"Secured!" Uraraka yelled.

 

A buzzer echoed throughout the building.

 

"HERO TEAM WINS!" All Might announced, his voice booming over the speakers.

 

 

 

Down on the first floor, the turbine shut off, dissolving into blue dust.

 

Izuku stood in the ruins of the hallway. He was shaking violently. His entire body was drenched in sweat. His uniform was torn, and blood was leaking steadily from his nose, painting the lower half of his face beneath his mask. The migraine was a localized supernova behind his eyes.

 

He leaned back against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, gasping for air. He unclasped his respirator, pulling another gel packet from his vest with trembling fingers.

 

He had done it. He had outsmarted a force of nature.

 

In the observation room, the students of Class 1-A were deadly silent. They looked from the screen showing Katsuki, groaning in defeat on the fifth floor, to the screen showing Izuku, quietly eating a ration packet in the destroyed hallway.

 

Momo Yaoyorozu placed a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. "He didn't just beat him. He manipulated him from the very first second. Every trap, every word, every movement... it was all designed to position Bakugo exactly where Midoriya wanted him."

 

"He's not a fighter," Todoroki said quietly, his dual-colored eyes narrowing in profound respect and caution. "He's a chess player. And he just checkmated the strongest piece on the board."

 

All Might stood silently, watching the green-haired boy on the monitor. He remembered the boy under the bridge, the one who refused his Quirk because he wanted to be an architect.

 

You are terrifying, young Midoriya, All Might thought, a shiver running down his spine. You don't need One For All to shake the world. You're going to build a new one.

 

Izuku swallowed his nutrient gel. He closed his eyes, resting his head against the concrete.

 

The arsenal was limitless. The mind was the only bottleneck.

 

And Izuku Midoriya was just getting started.