what if deku got the omnitrix

 

 

All men are not created equal.

 

Izuku Midoriya learned this harsh, unforgiving truth at the tender age of four. While other children in his kindergarten class began manifesting incredible, reality-defying abilities—breathing fire, extending their fingers into long vines, moving objects with their minds—Izuku waited. He waited through the summer, through the winter, and through endless visits to specialists. He waited until the doctor, sitting in a sterile room with an x-ray of Izuku’s foot pinned to a light board, delivered the verdict with the casual indifference of someone reporting the weather.

 

“You should probably give it up.”

 

Two joints in his pinky toe. That was all it took to condemn him to the lowest rung of a superhuman society. In a world where eighty percent of the global population possessed a "Quirk," Izuku was a relic of a bygone era. He was Quirkless. A normal human in a world of gods and monsters.

 

For ten years, that reality hung over him like a suffocating shroud. It made him a target. It made him the punching bag for Katsuki Bakugo and the rest of his peers at Aldera Junior High. But despite the burns on his shoulders from Bakugo’s explosions, despite the torn notebooks, and despite the mocking laughter that followed him through the halls, Izuku refused to let go of his dream. He analyzed Pro Heroes, furiously scribbling their tactics, strengths, and weaknesses into his Hero Analysis for the Future notebooks. He believed, with an innocent, desperate fervor, that if he just tried hard enough, if he was just brave enough, he could be a hero who saved people with a smile.

 

Just like his idol. Just like All Might.

 

But reality had a funny way of catching up to dreams, and on a humid afternoon in April, reality finally cornered Izuku in a dark, concrete underpass.

 

The smell hit him first—a rancid, putrid stench like rotting garbage mixed with open sewage. Before Izuku could turn around, a mass of sentient, dark-green sludge surged from a manhole cover. The villain, a monstrous amalgamation of liquid and malice, loomed over him, its massive yellow eyes swiveling wildly in its gelatinous head.

 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," the Sludge Villain gurgled, its voice wet and echoing off the concrete walls. "You'll do perfectly, kid."

 

Izuku tried to run, but the sludge lashed out like a whip, wrapping around his ankles and slamming him onto the pavement. Before he could scream, the foul-tasting mud forced its way down his throat and up his nose.

 

He was drowning on dry land.

 

I can't breathe... Izuku clawed at the sludge, his fingernails scraping uselessly against the fluid mass. My body... it’s going numb. I'm dying. I'm dying right here, and no one even knows...

 

His vision began to darken at the edges. His lungs burned, screaming for oxygen. The villain’s laughter sounded distant, muffled by the rushing blood in Izuku’s ears. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Is this it? I didn't even get to try...

 

Suddenly, a massive metallic clang echoed through the tunnel.

 

A shadow, vast and imposing, blocked out the sunlight at the end of the underpass. Even through his fading consciousness, Izuku recognized the silhouette. The towering height, the V-shaped antennae of blonde hair, the sheer, undeniable presence of absolute power.

 

"Fear not, young man," a voice boomed, deep and resonant, vibrating through the concrete itself. "For I am here!"

 

The Sludge Villain lashed out in a panic, but it was useless. The man pulled back a single, massive, muscular arm.

 

"TEXAS... SMASH!"

 

The air itself seemed to shatter. A hurricane-force gale exploded outward, ripping the oxygen from the tunnel. The shockwave was so immense that the Sludge Villain didn't just break apart; it was atomized, blown into thousands of droplets that splattered against the walls. The wind pressure hit Izuku, and the world finally went black.

 

 

 

"Hey! Wake up! Come on, kid, give me a sign here!"

 

Izuku gasped, his eyes snapping open. The bright afternoon sun blinded him for a moment. He was lying on his back on the pavement just outside the underpass. And leaning over him, lightly slapping his cheek, was the towering, smiling face of the Number One Hero in the world.

 

"Thought we lost you there!" All Might laughed, a hearty, booming sound.

 

Izuku scrambled backward, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it physically hurt. "A-A-All Might?! The real All Might?! In person?!"

 

"In the flesh!" All Might struck a heroic pose, hands on his hips. "Apologies for getting you caught up in my villain-hunting, young man! The sewer system in this city is quite a labyrinth, but I managed to capture the evildoer!" He held up two plastic soda bottles, the Sludge Villain securely trapped inside, swirling angrily.

 

Izuku’s mind was short-circuiting. His idol. The man he had watched on the internet a million times. He patted his pockets frantically, pulling out his charred Hero Analysis No. 13 notebook. "A-Autograph! Please, I need—!"

 

He flipped the book open, only to find a massive, sprawling signature already covering a two-page spread.

 

"HE ALREADY SIGNED IT!" Izuku bowed so fast and so deep his forehead nearly cracked against the concrete. "Thank you! I'll treasure it! It'll be a family heirloom!"

 

"Well, I must be off!" All Might said, turning away and bending his knees, the muscles in his legs bulging tight against his trousers. "Pro Heroes are always fighting time as well as enemies!"

 

Wait, Izuku thought, panic seizing his chest. Already? But I haven't... I haven't asked him...

 

It was the question that had defined Izuku’s entire existence. The question he needed an answer to, from the only man whose opinion truly mattered in the entire world.

 

As All Might leapt into the air with a deafening BOOM, kicking up a cloud of dust, he felt an unexpected weight on his right leg. Looking down, the Pro Hero’s eyes widened in shock. The green-haired middle schooler was clinging to his pant leg, his face flapping in the intense wind pressure as they soared hundreds of feet above the city.

 

"Hey, hey, hey! Let go! This is madness!" All Might shouted over the roaring wind.

 

"If I let go now, I'll die!" Izuku screamed, his eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming horizontally across his cheeks.

 

"Right, right! Hold on tightly!"

 

A few moments later, they crashed down onto the roof of a towering office building. Izuku collapsed onto the hard roof, trembling, his legs turning to jelly.

 

"Good grief," All Might sighed, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "That was incredibly dangerous, young man. You can find the stairs down over there. I really must be going—"

 

"Wait!" Izuku scrambled to his feet, holding his hand out. "I just... I have to know!"

 

All Might paused, his broad back turned to the boy. "I have no time, kid."

 

"Can someone without a Quirk be a hero like you?!"

 

The words tore out of Izuku’s throat, raw and desperate. He squeezed his eyes shut, his fists clenched at his sides.

 

"People think I don't have a chance," Izuku rushed on, the dam breaking. Ten years of pent-up sorrow poured out. "They tell me I'm useless. That I'm a Deku. I don't have a Quirk. But I want to save people. I want to save people with a fearless smile, just like you! So... can I? Can a Quirkless nobody ever become a Pro Hero?"

 

For a long, agonizing moment, there was silence save for the wind howling across the rooftop. Izuku slowly opened his eyes.

 

What he saw made his blood run cold.

 

Steam was pouring off of All Might’s massive frame. Thick, hissing clouds of vapor obscured the hero. Then, a sickening sound of deflating air echoed, like a tire violently losing pressure. When the steam cleared, the towering, muscular god of heroism was gone.

 

In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with sunken, hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones, and clothes that hung off his frail frame like a scarecrow. The man coughed violently, a spray of blood splattering onto the concrete.

 

"W-What?!" Izuku shrieked, backing up. "You're... you're an imposter! Where is All Might?!"

 

The skeletal man wiped the blood from his chin, his blue eyes tired and heavy. "I assure you, kid. I am All Might." He sighed, leaning heavily against the railing. "You know how guys at the pool suck in their gut to look buff? It's kind of like that."

 

Izuku’s reality was fracturing. "No... it can't be..."

 

"Sit down," All Might ordered softly. With a grimace, he lifted his baggy t-shirt, revealing a horrific, twisting, purple scar that took up the entire left side of his chest. It looked like a crater, radiating jagged lines of mangled tissue. Izuku gasped.

 

"Five years ago, a villain did this to me," All Might explained, his voice stripped of its booming bravado. It was quiet. Human. "My respiratory system was nearly destroyed. I lost my stomach. After countless surgeries, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day. The rest of the time... I look like this."

 

"Five years ago..." Izuku muttered, his encyclopedic mind racing. "Was it the fight with Toxic Chainsaw?"

 

"You know your stuff. But no. I made sure that fight was kept out of the media. A symbol of peace, a hero who saves everyone with a smile... cannot be seen to be weak." All Might looked away, staring out over the sprawling city of Mustafu. "I smile to hide the fear inside. To trick myself into being brave when the pressure is crushing me."

 

He turned back to Izuku, and the pity in the man's sunken eyes felt like a knife to Izuku's chest.

 

"Pro Heroes are always risking their lives. It's a dangerous, bloody, violent profession," All Might said gently. "Some villains simply cannot be beaten without power. So, no. I honestly don't think you can become a hero without a Quirk."

 

The words hung in the air. Final. Absolute.

 

Izuku felt the breath leave his lungs, as if the Sludge Villain were choking him all over again. The tears that had threatened to fall finally spilled over, dropping onto the concrete.

 

"If you want to help people," All Might continued, his voice soft, trying to cushion the blow, "become a police officer. They get a lot of flak for having heroes deliver villains to their doorstep, but it's a fine, honorable profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you also have to consider what's realistic."

 

All Might turned and walked toward the rooftop access door. "I'll leave you to your thoughts. Be careful going down."

 

The heavy metal door clicked shut, the sound echoing with dreadful finality.

 

Izuku stood alone on the roof. The wind whipped his green hair across his face. He didn't move for a long time. The notebook in his pocket, the one he had defended with his life, felt like a lead weight.

 

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

 

Even the Number One Hero had said it. The verdict was unanimous. Izuku Midoriya was useless. He would never be a hero. He would never save anyone.

 

Slowly, numbly, Izuku walked to the stairwell.

 

 

 

The walk home was a blur. The vibrant, bustling city around him felt muted, like he was watching the world through a dirty pane of glass. The afternoon sun had begun its descent, painting the sky in bruises of purple, orange, and bloody red.

 

Somewhere in the distance, Izuku heard the distinct, rhythmic Boom! Boom! Boom! of explosions. Crowds were gathering a few blocks away, watching a villain attack in the Tatooin Shopping District. Usually, Izuku would have sprinted toward the commotion, eager to pull out his notebook and analyze the pros on the scene.

 

Today, he didn't even turn his head.

 

What's the point? he thought dully, his feet dragging against the pavement. I'm just a spectator. I'll always be a spectator.

 

Instead of his usual route home, which would take him past the shopping district, Izuku blindly wandered toward the outskirts of town. He needed silence. He needed to be away from the towering billboards of grinning heroes, away from the chatter of people comparing Quirks on the subway.

 

His feet carried him toward the Dagobah Municipal Beach Park.

 

Or, more accurately, the Dagobah Municipal Dump. Over the years, ocean currents and illegal dumping had turned the once-beautiful coastline into a towering, miles-long graveyard of rusted appliances, crushed cars, and rotting trash. It was an eyesore that the city had abandoned. It was broken, discarded, and utterly forgotten.

 

Izuku felt a bitter kinship with the place as he stepped onto the sand, his red sneakers crunching over broken glass and rusted gears.

 

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and twilight settled over the beach. The ocean was dark, reflecting the first faint stars of the evening. Izuku found a relatively clean spot atop a half-buried industrial refrigerator and sat down, pulling his knees to his chest. He pulled the charred Hero Analysis No. 13 notebook from his pocket and stared at the cover.

 

You should probably give it up.

Take a swan dive off the roof, maybe you'll get a Quirk in your next life.

You have to consider what's realistic.

 

With a choked sob, Izuku threw the notebook. It tumbled through the air and landed in a pile of rusted metal parts.

 

He buried his face in his knees and finally allowed himself to cry. He wept for the dream he had held onto for ten years, for the boy who had watched All Might’s debut video until the computer screen burned his retinas, and for the hollow, empty future that awaited him now.

 

Above him, the night sky was clear.

 

Had Izuku been looking up, he would have noticed that one of the stars was moving.

 

It was a small, white pinprick of light, drifting lazily across the cosmos. But then, it pulsed. The white light shifted violently into a harsh, neon emerald green. It suddenly changed its trajectory—a sharp, ninety-degree turn that completely defied the laws of physics and gravity.

 

It accelerated, tearing into Earth's atmosphere.

 

Izuku sniffled, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. A strange, low-frequency hum vibrated in the air. It sounded like an airplane engine, but higher pitched, like a teapot about to boil. He raised his head.

 

The sky above Mustafu was torn open by a streak of blinding, viridian light.

 

It was a shooting star, but it was massive, and it was plummeting straight toward the beach. Izuku’s eyes widened in sheer terror as the blinding green comet eclipsed his vision.

 

"Whoa—!"

 

CRASH!

 

The impact was earth-shattering. The shockwave hit Izuku a fraction of a second later, a wall of kinetic force that blew him backward off the refrigerator. He tumbled across the sand, ears ringing, choking on a massive cloud of dust, sand, and vaporized sea water. Rusted cars and mountains of trash collapsed, avalanching around him as the ground violently shook.

 

Izuku coughed, rolling onto his hands and knees. His ears screamed with a high-pitched tinnitus. "W-What the..."

 

He looked toward the center of the beach. A massive crater, easily thirty feet wide and ten feet deep, had been carved into the trash and sand. A thick canopy of steam and black smoke billowed from the hole, illuminated from within by a rhythmic, pulsing green glow.

 

Any sane person would have run. Any normal teenager would have called the police or the Pro Heroes.

 

But Izuku Midoriya, despite lacking a Quirk, possessed a fatal flaw that defined his very soul: his body moved before his brain could think.

 

Is someone hurt? Was it an airplane? A hero whose flight Quirk gave out?

 

Scrambling to his feet, ignoring the scrapes on his elbows and the trembling in his knees, Izuku sprinted toward the rim of the crater. The heat radiating from the hole was intense, singing the hairs on his arms. He slid down the steep embankment, sand filling his shoes, until he reached the epicenter.

 

Through the clearing smoke, Izuku squinted.

 

There was no airplane fuselage. There was no fallen Pro Hero.

 

Sitting in the dead center of the smoking glass—the sand had literally melted into glass from the heat of the impact—was a metal sphere. It was roughly the size of a beach ball, sleek, dark grey, and covered in strange, circuit-like etchings that glowed with residual heat.

 

"A... satellite?" Izuku muttered to himself, stepping closer. "Or a villain's support gear?"

 

As he approached within three feet, a sudden hiss of pressurized gas startled him. Izuku flinched, throwing his arms up to protect his face.

 

The top half of the metal sphere slid open with a mechanical whir, splitting into overlapping plates like the aperture of a camera. A soft, eerie green light bathed the crater.

 

Slowly, tentatively, Izuku lowered his arms and peeked inside the pod.

 

Resting in the center of the hollowed-out sphere, suspended on a cushion of dark, alien alloy, was a device.

 

It looked like a wristwatch, but far too bulky and strange to be a simple timepiece. It was primarily dark grey and black, made of a metal Izuku didn't recognize. The faceplate was a glowing green dial bearing a black hourglass symbol. Thick, tubular circuitry ran along its wide wristband.

 

"What is this?" Izuku whispered. He was completely captivated. The logic center of his brain, the part that analyzed Quirks and support gear, was working in overdrive. It didn't look like any support gear from I-Island or Hatsume Industries. The design was entirely alien.

 

Without thinking, Izuku reached his left hand out, his fingers inching toward the strange device.

 

"Maybe I should take it to the police..." he murmured.

 

His fingertips were just an inch away from the metal.

 

Suddenly, the device sprang to life. The metal bands on the sides of the watch snapped open like the jaws of a trap. Before Izuku could react, the watch leapt from the pod like a striking snake.

 

Clack!

 

"GAH!" Izuku shrieked as the device clamped onto his left wrist. The metal bands wrapped around his forearm, tightening painfully before seamlessly locking into place. The green hourglass symbol flashed brilliantly.

 

Panic seized him. "Get it off! Get it off!"

 

He grabbed the watch with his right hand, pulling with all his meager strength. It didn't budge. He braced his foot against the metal pod, yanking his arm so hard his shoulder popped, but the device felt like it was fused to his very skin. He wedged his fingers under the thick bands, but there was no gap. It was tight, but strangely didn't cut off his circulation.

 

"No, no, no! What is this thing?!" Izuku hyperventilated, staggering backward out of the crater. He climbed frantically over a pile of crushed washing machines, slipping and sliding on the trash. He fell backward, landing hard on his rear.

 

He held his left arm up, staring at the bulky, alien tech clinging to his wrist.

 

It hummed softly. A strange, rhythmic pulse against his pulse.

 

Izuku’s breathing was ragged. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Okay, calm down. Calm down, Izuku. Panic won't help. Analyze the situation.

 

He wiped the sweat from his brow and inspected the device. It was heavy, but incredibly balanced. There were no visible latches, no keyholes, no straps.

 

His thumb brushed against a small, raised button on the side of the dial.

 

BEEP.

 

The faceplate suddenly popped up, sliding back to reveal a crystalline, diamond-shaped core. The green light intensified, projecting a small, holographic silhouette hovering an inch above the dial.

 

Izuku’s jaw dropped. "A... hologram?"

 

The silhouette looked like a person, but wrong. The proportions were unnatural. It had flames roaring off its head, wide shoulders, and a distinct lack of a neck.

 

Curiosity overrode his terror. Izuku gently gripped the outer ring of the dial and turned it.

 

Click.

 

The hologram changed. Now it was a massive, hulking creature with four arms.

 

Click.

 

A scrawny, hunched over figure with a massive head.

 

Click.

 

A lizard-like creature with wheels on its feet and a sharp tail.

 

"Is this... a game? A toy?" Izuku turned it back to the first silhouette, the man made of fire. He stared at the glowing green hourglass on the hologram's chest.

 

He didn't know why, but a strange, instinctual compulsion tugged at his mind. The device felt... expectant. Waiting for an input. Waiting for a user.

 

Tentatively, Izuku raised his right hand. He flattened his palm and hovered it over the popped-up dial.

 

"It's just a machine," Izuku told himself. "Maybe pressing it will turn it off."

 

He pushed the dial down.

 

A blinding, emerald flash of light erupted from the watch, swallowing Izuku whole.

 

There was no pain, but the sensation was terrifying. Izuku felt his very DNA unraveling and restructuring at the speed of light. His bones expanded, snapping and reforming. His skin hardened, shifting from soft human flesh to dense, charcoal-colored rock. The blood in his veins superheated, turning into flowing, incandescent magma. Fire erupted from his head, his shoulders, his hands.

 

The light died down.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. Or rather, he opened his two, bright-yellow, pupil-less eyes.

 

The world looked different. The colors were sharper, the heat of the night air felt cold to him, and he felt inexplicably... powerful.

 

He looked down at his hands.

 

They were large, blocky, and made of cracked, dark red volcanic rock. Yellow fire pulsed through the cracks in the stone. And from his fingers, roaring flames danced effortlessly.

 

"W-What?!"

 

The voice that came out of his mouth wasn't his own. It was deep, raspy, echoing as if spoken through a blazing furnace.

 

He touched his face. Rock. He patted his chest. More rock, with a large, circular badge embedded in the center, displaying the green hourglass symbol.

 

"I'm on fire!" the creature—Izuku—screamed. He began patting himself down frantically, running in circles. "I'm on fire! Oh my god, I'm burning! Help! Put me out!"

 

He threw himself into the sand, rolling aggressively. "Stop, drop, and roll! Stop, drop, and roll!"

 

He rolled over a pile of discarded tires, which instantly melted and caught fire, sending thick black smoke into the air. He sprang up, realizing his efforts were only spreading the blaze.

 

"Wait..." Izuku stopped flapping his arms. He looked closely at his flaming hands.

 

"I'm on fire... but it doesn't hurt."

 

He wiggled his rocky fingers. The flames flared up and died down with his movements. He didn't feel the agonizing pain of burning flesh. In fact, he felt incredible. The energy coursing through his body was exhilarating. He felt like he could punch through a mountain.

 

"Did the watch... do this?" Izuku stared at his hands in awe. "It's a transformation Quirk? No, it's technology. It changed my biology. I'm... I'm an alien?"

 

He clenched his fist. The fire around his hand concentrated, glowing white-hot. He threw a test punch at the empty air. A massive fireball shot from his knuckles, hurtling across the dump and obliterating a rusted-out van in a spectacular explosion of twisted metal and slag.

 

Izuku jumped back, terrified by his own power. "Woah! Okay, careful, careful..."

 

Suddenly, a loud, panicked scream pierced the night air.

 

Izuku whipped his head around. The enhanced hearing of his new form pinpointed the sound instantly. It was coming from the edge of the dump, near the residential street bordering the beach.

 

He bounded up a massive hill of trash, his powerful, rocky legs launching him twenty feet into the air with a single leap. He landed effortlessly at the top of the pile and looked toward the street.

 

His heart sank.

 

The comet—the pod that had brought the watch—had come down at a steep angle. While the pod had landed in the dump, the sheer kinetic shockwave and ambient heat of its entry had struck a dilapidated, three-story apartment building bordering the beach.

 

The building was fully engulfed in flames. Black smoke billowed into the night sky.

 

People were gathered on the street below, pointing and screaming. Sirens wailed in the far distance, but they were miles away, likely held up by the traffic caused by the Sludge Villain incident downtown. The Pro Heroes were all occupied.

 

"Someone is still inside!" a woman on the street shrieked, pointing to a second-story window.

 

Izuku saw it. A mother, coughing violently, holding a small boy in her arms. Flames were licking the walls of the room behind them, trapping them against the window. The stairs were gone. There was no way out.

 

They're going to die, Izuku thought, a cold terror gripping him despite his fiery form.

 

He looked around frantically. Where are the heroes? Backdraft? Death Arms? Anyone?

 

No one was coming.

 

Izuku looked down at his flaming hands.

 

You should probably give it up.

You have to consider what's realistic.

 

"No," Izuku whispered. His fiery voice cracked like burning timber.

 

He wasn't Quirkless Izuku Midoriya right now. He had power. He had heat. He had a chance.

 

Without a second thought, Izuku leapt from the trash mountain. He soared through the air, clearing the fence of the dump, and landed on the paved street with a heavy, asphalt-cracking THUD.

 

The crowd of onlookers screamed and backed away from the towering, flaming rock monster.

 

"Another villain?!" someone yelled.

 

Izuku ignored them. He broke into a sprint toward the burning building. The heat radiating from the structure was intense, hot enough to melt the plastic siding of the neighboring houses, but to Izuku, it felt like a warm, comforting breeze.

 

He reached the front entrance. The doors were blocked by a collapsed, flaming beam. Izuku didn't slow down. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the wood. The beam splintered into ash upon contact with his rock-hard body.

 

He was inside.

 

The interior of the apartment building was a raging inferno. The smoke was thick, black, and poisonous. But Izuku realized, with a shock, that he wasn't coughing. I don't need to breathe! he realized. Or, at least, the smoke doesn't bother me!

 

"Hello?!" Izuku roared. His voice cut through the roaring flames. "Where are you?!"

 

"Up here! Please! Help!"

 

The voice came from directly above him. Izuku looked up. The ceiling was entirely engulfed, and the wooden staircase had completely collapsed. There was no way to walk up to the second floor.

 

Think, Izuku, think! What are the properties of fire? Heat rises. Fire consumes oxygen. Wait... if I'm made of fire, can I control the fire around me?

 

It was a crazy theory, but he had no time.

 

Izuku raised his hands toward the blazing ceiling. He focused his mind, envisioning the fire as an extension of his own body. He clenched his hands and pulled downwards.

 

Instantly, the flames ravaging the ceiling and walls detached themselves from the wood. Like liquid gold, the fire swirled through the air, funnelling directly into Izuku’s outstretched palms. He was absorbing the fire.

 

Within seconds, the hallway was completely extinguished, leaving only charred, smoking wood.

 

"Incredible..." Izuku muttered, but he shook his head. Focus!

 

He bent his knees. The muscle-like structures in his rocky legs tensed. With a powerful grunt, he launched himself straight up. He punched through the weakened, charred ceiling like it was wet cardboard, soaring into the second-floor hallway.

 

He landed heavily, the floorboards groaning under his weight.

 

Down the hall, the door to apartment 204 was open. Inside, the fire was raging out of control. Izuku sprinted to the door.

 

The mother and her son were huddled by the window, the woman using her body to shield the boy from the blistering heat. A wall of fire stood between them and Izuku.

 

"Hold on!" Izuku yelled.

 

The woman looked back, her eyes widening in sheer terror at the sight of the flaming rock monster. "S-Stay back!" she cried, pulling her son tighter.

 

Izuku realized his appearance was terrifying. He stepped into the room and held his hands out, not to attack, but to command the flames.

 

"I'm not going to hurt you!" Izuku yelled. With a sweeping motion of his arms, he parted the wall of fire in the room, creating a safe, smoke-free path straight to the window.

 

The woman gasped, staring in shock as the fire seemingly obeyed the monster's commands.

 

"We have to go, now! The floor is going to collapse!" Izuku urged.

 

He stepped forward. As he got closer, the woman flinched away from the heat radiating off his body.

 

I'm too hot, Izuku realized. If I touch them, I'll burn them.

 

He concentrated, squeezing his eyes shut. He pulled the ambient heat of his own body inward, dampening the roaring flames on his head and shoulders down to a low, smoldering glow. His rock skin cooled from white-hot to a dull, ashen charcoal.

 

"I won't burn you," Izuku promised, extending a rocky hand. "Trust me."

 

The woman looked at his hand, then at the collapsing roof above them. She grabbed her son and took Izuku’s hand.

 

Izuku scooped them both up in his massive arms. They were surprisingly light to him. He could feel the fragile, beating hearts of the humans against his stony chest. It was a terrifying responsibility, but for the first time in his life, he was the one protecting someone else.

 

The floor beneath them suddenly gave way with a deafening crack.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He turned his back to the window, tightened his grip on the family to shield them, and threw himself backward.

 

They crashed through the glass, plummeting toward the street below.

 

Izuku twisted in mid-air, ensuring he was facing the ground. He hit the pavement with a massive crash, his rocky body absorbing the entirety of the impact. The asphalt spiderwebbed beneath him.

 

He lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of him.

 

Slowly, he sat up and opened his arms.

 

The mother and child were perfectly unharmed, save for a few soot stains. The mother gasped for fresh air, tears streaming down her face. She hugged her son fiercely.

 

The crowd of onlookers erupted into cheers.

 

Fire engines and police cars finally rounded the corner, their sirens blaring, but the rescue had already been made. Paramedics rushed forward, throwing blankets over the mother and child.

 

The mother looked back at Izuku, who was slowly standing up, his flames beginning to reignite as he lost concentration.

 

"Thank you," the woman wept, bowing her head. "Thank you so much. You saved our lives. Who... who are you?"

 

Izuku froze. The crowd was staring at him. Not with disgust, not with pity, and not with the mocking sneers he had endured his entire life.

 

They were looking at him with awe. They were looking at him the way he looked at All Might.

 

"I..." Izuku stammered, his fiery voice trembling. He stood up straight, rolling his broad, magma-filled shoulders. "I'm just a guy doing the right thing."

 

Suddenly, the green hourglass symbol on his chest began to beep.

 

Beep. Beep. Beep.

 

The badge flashed violently red.

 

Izuku panicked. He didn't know what the beeping meant, but he knew he couldn't let anyone see who was underneath this alien exterior.

 

"I have to go!" Izuku yelled.

 

Before the police or heroes could approach him, Izuku bent his knees and fired blasts of fire from his hands, propelling himself high into the air. He soared over the rooftops, landing a few blocks away in a dark, secluded alley behind a convenience store.

 

He collapsed against a brick wall, his chest heaving.

 

The beeping grew faster. Beep beep beep beep!

 

With a final, blinding flash of red light, the fire, the magma, and the rock instantly vanished.

 

Izuku hit the ground, landing hard on his hands and knees. He gasped, the cool night air hitting his sweat-drenched school uniform. He was human again. Small, frail, Quirkless Izuku Midoriya.

 

He lay in the dirt of the alleyway, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Every muscle in his body ached with a deep, profound exhaustion, as if he had just run a marathon while wearing lead weights.

 

Slowly, he rolled over and sat up against the brick wall.

 

He lifted his left arm. The watch was still there. The bulky metal device had reverted from its glowing state, the dial returning to a dull, unlit green.

 

Izuku stared at it. He traced the smooth metal with his right index finger.

 

Thirty minutes ago, he was a broken boy sitting on a pile of trash, ready to give up on his life's dream. He was told by the greatest hero in the world that he was useless without a Quirk.

 

But then, he remembered the feeling of the fire. The sheer, intoxicating power coursing through his veins. He remembered the heat of the flames parting at his command. He remembered the weight of the mother and child in his arms, and the look in the woman's eyes when she thanked him.

 

He had saved them. Not All Might. Not Bakugo. Him.

 

Izuku let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. A tear slipped down his cheek, cutting through the soot on his face, but this time, it wasn't a tear of despair.

 

It was a tear of pure, unadulterated hope.

 

He didn't know where this watch came from. He didn't know who built it, or why it had fallen from the stars directly into his lap. He didn't know how it worked, or what the other nine silhouettes on the dial could do.

 

But as Izuku Midoriya looked up at the narrow strip of starry sky visible between the alley walls, he knew one thing for absolute certain.

 

All Might was wrong.

 

He didn't need a Quirk to be a hero. He just needed to figure out how to use this watch.

 

"Watch out, world," Izuku whispered, a fierce, determined smile breaking across his face. He clenched his left fist, the metal of the Omnitrix cool and solid against his skin. "I'm going to be the greatest hero you've ever seen."

 

 

The morning after the fire, Izuku Midoriya woke up with a sharp gasp.

 

He shot up in bed, his heart hammering against his ribs, his sheets tangled around his legs. Sunlight streamed through his bedroom window, illuminating the posters of All Might that plastered his walls. For a terrifying, heart-stopping second, he thought the previous night had been a dream. A hallucination brought on by the hypoxia of the Sludge Villain attack, or a coping mechanism to deal with All Might crushing his dreams.

 

Then, he felt the weight on his left wrist.

 

Izuku slowly lifted his arm. There it was. The bulky, dark-grey and black metal device. The Omnitrix. Its green hourglass dial glowed with a faint, steady luminescence in the morning light.

 

He ran his right thumb over the cold, alien metal. It hadn’t been a dream. The pod, the crater, the fire, the transformation into a living, breathing magma-creature—it was all real.

 

Izuku threw off his covers and rushed to his desk. He opened his bottom drawer and bypassed the stack of his Hero Analysis for the Future notebooks. Instead, he reached into his school bag and pulled out a brand-new, completely blank notebook he had purchased on the walk home last night.

 

He clicked his pen, smoothed out the first page, and wrote the title in bold, careful strokes:

 

Alien Biology & Tactics for the Future: Vol. 1.

 

He stared at the title. A thrill of sheer, electric excitement shot down his spine. He wasn't analyzing other heroes anymore. For the first time in his fourteen years of life, Izuku Midoriya was analyzing himself.

 

"Ten months," Izuku whispered to the empty room. "Ten months until the U.A. High School Entrance Exam."

 

He had an alien super-weapon fused to his wrist. He didn't know where it came from, but he knew what it did. It granted him power. But power without control was just destruction, as his flaming debut had nearly proven. If he was going to walk through the gates of U.A., he needed to understand this device inside and out. He needed a place to train, away from prying eyes.

 

An image flashed in his mind: the towering mountains of rusted metal and discarded appliances where the pod had landed.

 

The Dagobah Municipal Dump.

 

 

 

Izuku began his regimen that very afternoon.

 

The dump was isolated, ignored by the city, and perfectly suited for collateral damage. Izuku found a massive clearing surrounded by walls of crushed cars and rusted refrigerators—a makeshift colosseum.

 

He stood in the center, took a deep breath, and pressed the small button on the side of the watch.

 

BEEP.

 

The faceplate popped up. The holographic silhouette of the fiery man appeared. Izuku turned the dial. He skipped past the fire alien and stopped on a silhouette he hadn't tried yet: a lanky figure with a pointed head and what looked like a tail.

 

"Let's see what you can do," Izuku muttered. He slammed his hand down on the dial.

 

The blinding emerald flash consumed him. His skeleton stretched and snapped into new, aerodynamic proportions. His legs inverted at the knees into a digitigrade stance. Three orb-like wheels formed at the bottom of his feet, and a sleek, black-and-blue exoskeleton enveloped his skin. A conical helmet snapped over his head, complete with a blue visor that slid over his eyes.

 

When the light faded, Izuku stood in his new body. He felt incredibly light, as if gravity had lost its hold on him. The world around him seemed... sluggish. A seagull flying overhead appeared to be hovering in slow motion.

 

"Whoa," Izuku said. His voice was higher pitched, vibrating with a strange, static energy.

 

He took a step forward, but instead of walking, the spheres at the bottom of his feet spun. He shot forward like a bullet, crossing fifty feet of sand in a fraction of a millisecond, and slammed face-first into a rusted washing machine.

 

CLANG!

 

Izuku groaned, peeling his face off the dented metal. "Okay... high velocity. Zero friction. Let's try that again."

 

For the next ten minutes, the dump became a blur of blue and black. Izuku figured out how to balance on the spheres, treating them like high-tech rollerblades. The speed was intoxicating. He could run up the sheer vertical faces of the trash piles, run across the surface of the ocean without breaking the water's surface tension, and throw punches so fast they created miniature vacuums in the air.

 

Suddenly, a loud, rapid Beep-beep-beep! echoed from the badge on his chest. It flashed red, and in a burst of ruby light, Izuku was dumped back onto the sand in his human body, gasping for air.

 

He scrambled for his notebook and frantically began to write.

 

Transformation 2: Super-speed. Frictionless travel. Enhanced reflexes. Let's call him... XLR8. Wait, why did I turn back?

 

Izuku tapped his pen against his chin, staring at the now-red Omnitrix dial. It was unmoving, the faceplate locked down.

 

"A time limit," he deduced. "Ten minutes of active use, and then a recharge period. That means in a drawn-out fight, I'll be left completely defenseless."

 

A grim realization settled over him. The watch was a tool, but he was the wielder. If his base human body was frail and weak, he would be a liability the second the watch timed out. If he was going to be a Pro Hero, he couldn't just rely on the aliens. He had to forge himself into a weapon, too.

 

From that day on, Izuku’s life became a grueling, dual-focused crucible.

 

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were for physical conditioning. He ran miles along the beach. He did pushups until his arms gave out. He hauled rusted car doors and heavy scrap metal across the sand to build his core strength. He studied martial arts videos online, practicing forms in his cramped bedroom to improve his human agility and reaction times.

 

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends were for the Omnitrix.

 

Over the course of the next few months, Izuku systematically cataloged the ten alien forms, giving each a hero name and testing their biological limits.

 

He discovered Four Arms—a twelve-foot-tall, four-eyed, crimson-skinned behemoth with strength that rivaled All Might himself. Izuku spent hours using Four Arms to literally clean up the beach, lifting massive crushed trucks over his head and tossing them into organized piles. He learned that Four Arms could create localized shockwaves just by clapping his hands together.

 

He tested Diamondhead, a Petrosapien made of nearly indestructible, pale-green crystal. Izuku marveled at this form, realizing he could reshape his limbs into blades or shields, and even fire crystalline projectiles from his hands. It was the ultimate defensive and offensive hybrid.

 

There was Stinkfly, a massive insectoid that smelled like a chemical fire, but granted him the gift of flight and the ability to shoot immobilizing slime.

 

There was Ripjaws, an aquatic terror with a massive bite force that Izuku only used in the deeper waters off the coast, quickly learning the hard way that this form suffocated on dry land.

 

He unlocked Ghostfreak, a terrifying, spectral entity that could turn invisible and intangible. Izuku shivered whenever he used this form; it felt cold, and there was a strange, unsettling sensation in the back of his mind, as if the alien's DNA possessed a lingering, sinister consciousness.

 

There was Wildmutt, a massive, eyeless, orange beast that relied entirely on enhanced smell and echolocation.

 

And then, there was the breakthrough.

 

In his fourth month of training, Izuku transformed into a six-inch-tall, frog-like creature with grey skin and massive green eyes. At first, Izuku thought this tiny alien was a dud. A joke.

 

But the moment the transformation completed, it was as if a padlock on Izuku's brain had been shattered.

 

As Grey Matter, Izuku's intelligence didn't just increase; it ascended to a state of near-omniscience. He looked at a rusted toaster in the dump and instantly understood its schematic makeup, the flow of its electrical currents, and how to rewire it into a localized EMP grenade.

 

More importantly, Grey Matter looked at the Omnitrix badge on his chest.

 

Ah, Grey Matter thought, his voice squeaky but incredibly articulate. A level 20 biological interface. The Omnitrix. It taps into the Codon Stream to rewrite the user's DNA on a cellular level, storing a compendium of sentient alien life.

 

In those ten minutes as Grey Matter, Izuku learned more about the watch than he had in months. He learned the alien species' names. He learned about the randomized timeout mechanic designed to protect the user's base DNA from permanent genetic drift. When he timed out and returned to human form, the hyper-intelligence faded, leaving Izuku with a massive migraine, but he frantically wrote down everything Grey Matter had deduced before he forgot it.

 

The last form he mastered was Upgrade, a Galvanic Mechamorph—a living, liquid-metal circuit board that could merge with and enhance any technology. Izuku used Upgrade on an abandoned, rusted bulldozer, instantly transforming it into a high-tech, laser-firing, hover-tank.

 

By month eight, Dagobah Beach was entirely unrecognizable.

 

What was once a towering graveyard of trash was now completely cleared. Izuku had used Four Arms to move the heavy debris, Heatblast to incinerate the non-recyclables, and XLR8 to organize the rest into neat, categorized zones for city pickup.

 

As the sun set on the final day of his ten-month training regimen, Izuku stood on the pristine white sand, looking out at the sparkling ocean.

 

He was shirtless, the ocean breeze cooling his sweat. He looked down at his body. He was no longer the scrawny, frail boy who had cowered under a bridge. His shoulders were broad, his chest firm, his arms wrapped in lean, highly-defined muscle. He had grown an inch or two, his posture completely transformed by the quiet, undeniable confidence of someone who wielded the power of the cosmos.

 

He looked at his left wrist. To hide the Omnitrix from casual public scrutiny, he had taken to wearing a specialized, thick red compression sleeve over his left forearm. It covered the bulky bands of the watch entirely, though a circular cutout allowed the green dial to remain exposed and accessible.

 

"Tomorrow is the exam," Izuku said, clenching his fist.

 

He pulled out his phone and checked his U.A. registration profile. Under "Quirk Name," he had submitted the term Poly-Morph. He had provided a doctor's note (heavily forged, thanks to a few minutes as Grey Matter) claiming his Quirk was a late-blooming, cellular-level mutation that allowed him to mimic various biological forms.

 

It was a lie, but society would accept a complex Quirk far easier than they would accept extraterrestrial technology.

 

Izuku looked up at the stars. I'm ready.

 

 

 

The morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam arrived with a crisp, biting chill.

 

Izuku stood before the towering, H-shaped glass arches of U.A. High School. The sheer scale of the campus was intimidating. Thousands of students were pouring through the front gates, buzzing with nervous energy.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, adjusting the strap of his backpack.

 

"Out of my way, Deku."

 

The harsh, gravelly voice sent an instinctual jolt of anxiety through Izuku. He turned to see Katsuki Bakugo storming up the path, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his crimson eyes glaring daggers.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice remarkably steady.

 

Bakugo stopped, his eyes narrowing. He looked Izuku up and down. Something was different. The damn nerd wasn't shaking. He wasn't stuttering. He wasn't looking at the ground. Izuku was standing tall, looking Bakugo dead in the eye.

 

"Don't stand in front of me," Bakugo snarled, small pops of caramel-scented explosions crackling in his palms. "I don't know what kind of confidence boost you got over the last year, Quirkless nobody, but if you get in my way, I'll blow you to ash."

 

A year ago, Izuku would have apologized and curled into a ball.

 

Today, Izuku simply stepped aside, gesturing politely to the path. "Good luck on the exam, Kacchan."

 

Bakugo’s eye twitched violently. The lack of fear infuriated him more than any insult could have. He scoffed, shouldering past Izuku with unnecessary force, and stomped toward the entrance.

 

Izuku watched him go. He felt a strange sense of liberation. The shadow Bakugo had cast over his life for a decade was suddenly incredibly small.

 

Turning back to the path, Izuku took a step forward, but his foot caught on an uneven paving stone. Gravity seized him, and he pitched forward, bracing for a face-full of concrete.

 

Suddenly, he stopped in mid-air.

 

"Are you okay?"

 

Izuku blinked, finding himself floating an inch above the ground. He turned his head to see a girl with short, bobbed brown hair and round, pink cheeks standing next to him, her hand glowing with a soft pink light. She pressed her fingers together, and gravity gently returned Izuku to his feet.

 

"It's my Quirk," she smiled warmly, adjusting her scarf. "Sorry for using it on you without asking, but it would be bad luck if you fell right before the exam, right?"

 

"Oh, uh, no! Thank you!" Izuku stammered, a bit of his old social anxiety flaring up. He realized this was the first time he had spoken to a girl his age who wasn't actively mocking him.

 

"I'm Ochaco Uraraka!" she chirped. "I'm super nervous, but let's both do our best!" She gave him a cheerful wave and jogged toward the auditorium.

 

Izuku watched her go, a small smile breaking across his face. She's nice.

 

An hour later, Izuku sat in a massive, darkened auditorium. On the brightly lit stage, the Voice Hero, Present Mic, was explaining the rules of the practical exam.

 

"Like your applications said, today you rockin' boys and girls will be out conducting ten-minute mock battles in super-large urban settings!" Present Mic shouted, striking a dramatic pose. "You'll be hunting down three types of faux villains! The one-pointers, two-pointers, and three-pointers! Destroy them and rack up the score! But remember, no attacking other examinees! That's a major red card!"

 

A tall, stiff-looking boy with blue hair and glasses suddenly stood up, pointing a rigid hand at the stage. "Excuse me, sir! The handout lists four types of villains! If this is a misprint, U.A., the most prominent school in Japan, should be ashamed of this foolish mistake!"

 

The blue-haired boy then turned around, pointing directly at Izuku. "And you, with the messy green hair and the bulky wristband! You've been muttering this entire time! It's distracting! If you think this is some sort of game, leave immediately!"

 

A few students snickered. Izuku felt his cheeks burn, but he didn't apologize. He had been muttering, analyzing how Present Mic's voice amplification Quirk bounced off the acoustic paneling of the room.

 

Present Mic held up his hands. "Okay, okay, Examinee Number 7111! Thanks for the great message! The fourth faux villain is a Zero Pointer! It's an obstacle we'll be throwing in every battle center! It's a massive gimmick that rampages in tight spaces. My advice? Run away from it! It's not worth the trouble!"

 

Izuku nodded, absorbing the information. A zero pointer. So, a massive environmental hazard designed to test our situational awareness and threat assessment. Got it.

 

 

 

Battle Center B was a sprawling, hyper-realistic replica of a dense urban cityscape, complete with skyscrapers, alleyways, and paved roads.

 

Izuku stood at the front of a massive crowd of nervous teenagers, waiting before the towering metal gates. He stretched his arms, pulling back the left sleeve of his U.A. issued tracksuit just enough to expose the dial of the Omnitrix.

 

He glanced around. The girl from the entrance, Uraraka, was a few dozen yards away, taking deep, anxious breaths. The rigid boy with the glasses was aggressively stretching his calves.

 

Izuku closed his eyes. The ten-minute time limit of the Omnitrix perfectly matched the duration of the exam. This was optimal. He just had to make sure he didn't mistransform. He needed mobility, wide-area attack power, and the ability to traverse vertical terrain quickly.

 

He pressed the button on the watch. BEEP.

 

The faceplate popped up. He didn't look at the dial; he had memorized the exact turn sequence for every alien. Two clicks to the right.

 

"Right, let's start!"

 

Present Mic's voice echoed from a massive speaker tower overlooking the gates. "What's wrong? There are no countdowns in real fights! Run, run, run! The die has been cast!"

 

The massive metal doors swung open.

 

While the other students were still processing the command to start, Izuku slammed his hand down on the dial.

 

The emerald light erupted, blinding the students nearest to him. A wave of kinetic static electricity washed over the crowd.

 

When the light snapped out of existence, Izuku was gone. In his place was XLR8. The blue visor snapped down over his face.

 

Before the first student could even take a step into the battle center, a shockwave of displaced air knocked them back. A streak of blue and black lightning tore through the open gates, leaving a trail of scorched pavement in its wake.

 

"Woah!" one student yelled, shielding his eyes. "What kind of speed Quirk is that?!"

 

Inside the city, Izuku’s perception of the world shifted. To him, he was running at a moderate jog, but the world around him was standing completely still.

 

He rounded a corner and saw a group of five One-Pointer robots rolling down the street, their red optics scanning for targets.

 

Target acquired, Izuku thought, his alien voice a low, static hum.

 

He didn't stop. He accelerated. At speeds exceeding four hundred miles per hour, XLR8 was a living kinetic missile. He blurred past the robots, extending the sharp, scissor-like claws on his hands.

 

Shhhk! Shhhk! Shhhk!

 

Izuku ran completely through the formation. He came to a halt at the end of the street, spinning around on his wheel-feet to look back.

 

A full second later, the delayed physical reality caught up to his speed. The heads of all five One-Pointers cleanly slid off their chassis. The robots collapsed in a shower of sparks and minor explosions.

 

"Five points," Izuku calculated. "Not enough. I need mass destruction."

 

He tapped the Omnitrix badge on XLR8's chest. Master Control was locked, meaning he couldn't seamlessly switch aliens at will, but he had discovered a workaround. If he manually tapped the badge, it forced a reset, reverting him to human form for exactly two seconds before allowing him to dial up another alien—at the cost of severely draining his total ten-minute battery life.

 

The blue blur vanished in a flash of red. Izuku, in his human form, hit the pavement running. He immediately popped the dial, turned it three clicks left, and slammed it down.

 

The green light exploded again. His muscles violently expanded, tearing through his tracksuit sleeves. He grew to a towering twelve feet, four massive arms flexing with raw, unadulterated power. His skin shifted to deep crimson.

 

"FOUR ARMS!" Izuku roared, his dual vocal cords vibrating the glass of the nearby buildings.

 

A group of three-pointers—massive, tank-like robots with missile launchers—rounded the corner, locking their sights on the giant red alien. Missiles fired, trailing white smoke.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He dug his four massive feet into the concrete and brought all four of his hands back.

 

With a deafening roar, he slammed his palms together.

 

"THUNDER CLAP!"

 

The sheer concussive force of the compressed air created a localized hurricane. The shockwave visibly warped the air, catching the missiles mid-flight and detonating them prematurely. The force continued onward, striking the three-pointers with the impact of a freight train. The heavy robots were lifted entirely off the ground and smashed into the side of a building, reduced to flattened pancakes of scrap metal.

 

"Fourteen points," Izuku grinned, cracking his four sets of knuckles.

 

For the next six minutes, Battle Center B became Four Arms' personal playground. Examinees could only watch in stunned, open-mouthed awe as the twelve-foot-tall behemoth leaped from rooftop to rooftop, tearing three-pointers in half with his bare hands, using destroyed robots as clubs to smash other robots, and ripping entire lampposts out of the ground to use as javelins.

 

But Izuku wasn't just destroying.

 

When a stray missile blew apart a building façade, raining deadly debris down onto a paralyzed examinee with a tail Quirk, Izuku blurred into action. He caught a three-ton slab of concrete in his upper right hand with effortless ease, tossed it aside, and used his lower left hand to gently scoop the boy out of harm's way.

 

"Keep moving!" Izuku boomed, setting the boy down safely before leaping away to crush another two-pointer.

 

 

 

High above the battle centers, in a darkened, multi-screened observation room, the faculty of U.A. High School watched the exam in silence.

 

Nezu, the chimera principal of U.A., sipped a cup of tea, his dark, beady eyes fixed on Screen 4.

 

"Fascinating," Nezu murmured. "A very impressive crop this year. But Examinee 7111 is certainly stealing the show in Area B."

 

Sitting in the back row, shrouded in the shadows of his oversized yellow scarf, Shota Aizawa narrowed his tired eyes. He watched the massive red creature on the screen rip a tank-robot in half.

 

"His file says his Quirk is 'Poly-Morph,'" Aizawa drawled, his voice flat but laced with suspicion. "It claims his cellular structure completely overwrites itself to adapt to different combat scenarios. But look at his left wrist."

 

Midnight, the R-Rated Hero, leaned forward, her eyes widening. "The metallic bands? They're on the red giant, and they were on the blue speedster he transformed into earlier."

 

"Is it a Support Item?" Snipe asked, adjusting his cowboy hat. "Using unapproved support gear is grounds for immediate disqualification."

 

Suddenly, a massive, skeletal hand clamped down on the back of Aizawa's chair.

 

All Might stood in the shadows, his hollow blue eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated shock. He was staring at Screen 4, his jaw slack.

 

It's him, All Might thought, his mind racing. The boy from the roof. Izuku Midoriya. He told me he was Quirkless. He begged me to tell him he could be a hero without power. But this... this power is overwhelming. It’s versatile. It's monstrous.

 

"All Might?" Nezu asked, noticing the number one hero's distress. "Do you know this boy?"

 

"I... I have encountered him briefly," All Might managed to say, his voice tight. "His power... it is extraordinary."

 

"It's flashy, I'll give him that," Aizawa muttered, scratching his chin. "He has the speed to outmaneuver any threat, and the raw strength to rival you in your prime, All Might. But power alone doesn't make a hero. Let's see how they handle true despair."

 

Aizawa reached forward and flipped a massive, red switch on the console.

 

 

 

Beep... Beep... Beep...

 

Izuku stood in the center of a decimated intersection, surrounded by the smoking ruins of over thirty robots. He was still in his Four Arms form, but he was breathing heavily. The Omnitrix dial on his chest was flashing yellow, transitioning into red.

 

"I've got maybe two minutes left," Izuku calculated, his dual voice sounding strained. "I'm sitting at seventy-four points. That should be more than enough to pass."

 

Suddenly, the ground beneath his massive feet violently shuddered.

 

The vibration was so intense it shattered the remaining glass in the surrounding buildings. A shadow fell over the intersection, eclipsing the sun.

 

Izuku slowly looked up, his four eyes widening in horror.

 

Rising from the center of the city was the Zero Pointer. But Present Mic’s description hadn't done it justice. It wasn't just a robot; it was a moving skyscraper. Its olive-green chassis blotted out the sky, its massive, glowing red optical sensor scanning the tiny ants below. Its treads crushed entire buildings as it rolled forward.

 

"Less than two minutes left!" Present Mic’s voice echoed over the PA system.

 

Panic erupted in the streets. The examinees, realizing the sheer, impossible scale of the threat, turned and fled in terror.

 

"Run!"

 

"Are they insane?! That thing will kill us!"

 

Izuku took a step back. His tactical mind was screaming at him to run. It's a zero-pointer. There's no reward for fighting it. Just run away. Your timer is almost up.

 

He turned to flee with the others. But as he did, he heard a sound that pierced through the grinding of metal and the screams of the crowd.

 

"Ow... help..."

 

Izuku stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around.

 

The shockwave of the Zero Pointer’s emergence had collapsed the facade of a nearby building. Trapped under a massive, jagged slab of concrete was the girl from the entrance. Uraraka. She was pinned by the legs, her face pale with pain and terror, struggling weakly against the impossible weight.

 

And the Zero Pointer’s massive, treads were rolling directly toward her.

 

Izuku didn't think. He didn't calculate points. He didn't worry about his time limit. His body simply moved.

 

He lunged forward, but mid-step, the Omnitrix dial on his chest flashed a brilliant, final red.

 

BEEEEEEP.

 

The crimson skin melted away. The four arms shrank and fused. The blinding red light consumed him, and when it vanished, Izuku midoriya hit the pavement in his frail, human body, sliding on his knees and scraping his palms bloody on the concrete.

 

The Omnitrix was completely dead. The dial was pitch black.

 

"No! No, no, no, not now!" Izuku screamed, scrambling to his feet. He ran toward Uraraka, grabbing the edge of the concrete slab. He pulled with all his human strength, the muscles in his back screaming, his boots finding no purchase on the dusty road. It wouldn't budge.

 

"Deku..." Uraraka coughed, tears in her eyes, recognizing him from earlier. "Run... it's going to crush us..."

 

"I'm not leaving you!" Izuku yelled, his voice cracking. He looked up.

 

The Zero Pointer towered directly above them. Its massive, building-sized hand was raised high into the air, preparing to slam down and flatten the street.

 

Izuku slammed his hand against the blackened dial of the Omnitrix. "Come on! Work! Please, give me something! Anything!"

 

The giant metal hand began its descent. The air pressure alone forced Izuku to his knees. Death was a second away.

 

Click.

 

Deep within the alien circuitry of the watch, the A.I. registered a lethal threat to the host. Safety protocols were instantly overridden. The black dial sparked with a violent, chaotic green energy. It popped up forcefully, almost ejecting from the watch.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He slammed it down with a bloody palm.

 

The emerald flash this time was different. It wasn't just light; it was a shockwave of crystalline energy. The concrete around Izuku instantly transmuted, turning into jagged, pale-green crystal.

 

His human body crystallized. His skin hardened into indestructible tadenite. His head morphed into a sharp, aerodynamic wedge. Large, spike-like shards of crystal erupted from his back.

 

He was Diamondhead.

 

The Zero Pointer’s hand slammed down, perfectly aimed to crush Uraraka and Izuku.

 

Izuku stepped over Uraraka's pinned body, planting his crystalline feet firmly into the asphalt. He looked up at the descending mass of steel and raised both of his arms.

 

"HAAAAAH!"

 

Izuku drove his arms violently outward.

 

From the ground beneath him, an absolute mountain of pale-green crystal erupted. It wasn't just a shield; it was a geological event. Massive, jagged pillars of tadenite shot upward at the speed of a bullet, branching out like a crystalline forest.

 

The Zero Pointer’s hand struck the crystal.

 

CRAAAACK!

 

The sound of the impact echoed for miles, a deafening screech of tearing metal. The robot's hand didn't crush the crystal. Instead, the tadenite pillars impaled the steel, shattering the robot's fingers and forearm into a rain of useless scrap.

 

But Izuku wasn't done.

 

"You want to step on us?!" Izuku roared, his voice deep and echoing with a metallic resonance. "Step on this!"

 

He slammed both of his crystalline palms flat onto the street.

 

The crystal growth surged forward, racing along the asphalt like a tidal wave of green glass. It reached the base of the Zero Pointer. Massive spikes of diamond erupted directly beneath the robot's treads, piercing through the thick armor plating, snapping the drive belts, and completely immobilizing the behemoth.

 

The sheer force of the erupting crystal beneath its base threw the building-sized robot off balance.

 

With a slow, agonizing groan of twisted metal, the Zero Pointer tilted backward.

 

BOOOOOOM!

 

The robot crashed onto its back, sending a massive shockwave of dust and debris washing over the battle center. The red optical sensor flickered wildly before dying out completely.

 

Silence descended over Area B.

 

The dust slowly began to clear.

 

Standing in the center of a crater, surrounded by a breathtaking, shimmering forest of pale-green crystal, was Diamondhead. His arms were still glowing with faint residual energy.

 

Izuku looked down. The crystal had meticulously grown over the concrete slab trapping Uraraka, creating a protective dome that held the rubble aloft without touching her.

 

Izuku morphed his right hand from a sharp blade back into a fingered hand. He reached down, shattered the concrete slab with a single, effortless tap, and gently offered his hand to Uraraka.

 

She stared at him, her mouth agape, completely speechless. She tentatively reached up, her soft hand grabbing his cold, hard, crystalline fingers. Izuku pulled her up effortlessly.

 

"THE EXAM IS OVER!" Present Mic’s voice blared over the speakers, breaking the stunned silence.

 

The moment the buzzer sounded, the violent, chaotic energy in the Omnitrix finally gave out. The red light flashed, and Izuku instantly reverted to his human form.

 

He didn't stick the landing. The absolute drain on his physical stamina hit him like a physical blow. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed forward, unconscious before he even hit the ground.

 

 

 

In the observation room, utter pandemonium had broken out.

 

Midnight was gripping the edge of the console, her knuckles white. Snipe had pushed his hat up, his jaw dropped. Even Nezu had stopped drinking his tea, his tail twitching in rare, unbridled excitement.

 

"Did he... did he just generate enough raw material to completely halt and destroy a multi-ton assault chassis?" Aizawa muttered, staring at the frozen image of the crystal forest on the screen. "That wasn't strength. That was matter generation. Absolute, indestructible matter generation."

 

"First speed," Midnight counted on her fingers, her voice breathless. "Then colossal strength. Then... that. Three entirely different, top-tier Quirks in a single body. And he used the last one strictly to protect another examinee."

 

All Might stood in the back of the room, his skeletal hands trembling.

 

I told him he couldn't be a hero, All Might thought, guilt and absolute awe warring in his chest. I looked him in the eye and told him to give up.

 

All Might looked at the screen, watching the medical robots load the unconscious, frail-looking boy onto a stretcher. The metal device on his wrist was smoking slightly.

 

What are you, Izuku Midoriya? All Might wondered. And how on earth are we going to teach you, when you already possess the power of a god?

 

 

 

 

The holographic projection of All Might fizzled out, leaving Izuku’s bedroom bathed in the quiet, dim light of his desk lamp.

 

Izuku sat in his chair, staring blankly at the metal disk that had been delivered in his U.A. High School acceptance letter. Beside the disk lay a crisp, official document detailing his entrance exam scores.

 

Villain Points: 40.

Rescue Points: 60.

Total Score: 100 points. Rank: 1st.

 

He had done it. He had passed the exam with flying colors, but that wasn't what had Izuku gripping the edges of his desk until his knuckles turned white. It was the message All Might had recorded for him.

 

The Number One Hero had bowed his head. Through the grainy blue hologram, All Might had looked directly at Izuku and apologized. He had admitted his failure on that rooftop ten months ago, acknowledging that he had allowed his own cynicism and trauma to blind him to the heart of a true hero.

 

"You proved me wrong, Young Midoriya," All Might had said, his booming voice softened with genuine awe. "Your power is staggering, yes. But it was your willingness to sacrifice your own safety—and your time limit—to save a fellow examinee that truly makes you worthy of U.A."

 

Izuku looked down at his left wrist. The Omnitrix was quiet, its green dial dark in the low light.

 

He was in. He had shattered the ceiling the world had placed over his head. But with that victory came a terrifying new reality. U.A. High School wasn't just a school; it was a magnifying glass. The smartest, most perceptive Pro Heroes in Japan were going to be scrutinizing his every move.

 

If they realized the Omnitrix was extraterrestrial technology—a weapon capable of bending the laws of physics and biology on a whim—they would confiscate it. The government would lock it away in a vault, or worse, dissect it.

 

"Poly-Morph," Izuku whispered to himself, rehearsing the lie he had crafted while transformed into the hyper-intelligent Grey Matter. "It's a biological anomaly. A cellular mutation triggered by puberty. It is not a Quirk factor. It is not support gear. It is my body."

 

He repeated the mantra until he fell asleep.

 

 

 

The first day of spring brought with it the blooming of cherry blossoms, framing the massive glass structures of U.A. High School in a picturesque cascade of pink petals.

 

Izuku stood before the colossal door bearing the painted red letters 1-A. The door was easily ten feet tall—designed to accommodate students with mutation Quirks of all shapes and sizes. Izuku adjusted the collar of his stiff, gray U.A. uniform blazer. Beneath his left sleeve, he wore his thick red compression band, perfectly hiding the bulk of the Omnitrix while leaving the faceplate accessible just beneath the cuff.

 

He reached out and slid the massive door open.

 

Instantly, the chaotic noise of thirty clashing egos hit him like a physical wave.

 

"Take your feet off that desk immediately!"

 

"Huh?! Who the hell are you to tell me what to do, Four-Eyes?!"

 

Izuku froze in the doorway. Standing at the front of the classroom, violently arguing, were the two people he least wanted to see. Tenya Iida, the rigid, rule-obsessed boy who had berated him in the auditorium, was aggressively chopping his hand through the air. And reclining at a desk, his feet propped up dismissively, was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Bakugo turned his head, his crimson eyes locking onto Izuku.

 

The sneer on Bakugo’s face vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated hostility. The ambient temperature in the room seemed to drop. The other students fell silent, sensing the sudden, suffocating tension radiating from the explosive blonde.

 

"You..." Bakugo whispered. He swung his legs off the desk, his boots hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

 

Izuku forced himself to breathe. Don't look down. Don't cower. You aren't that kid anymore.

 

"Good morning, Kacchan," Izuku said evenly, stepping into the room.

 

Before anyone could blink, Bakugo closed the distance. He grabbed the lapels of Izuku’s blazer, slamming him backward into the sliding door. A localized explosion popped in Bakugo’s right palm, singing the fabric of Izuku’s jacket.

 

"What kind of trick is this, Deku?!" Bakugo snarled, his face inches from Izuku's, his breath smelling of nitroglycerin and rage. "You’ve been a Quirkless nobody your entire pathetic life! And suddenly I see on the news that some giant rock monster with your face destroyed a Zero Pointer?! Explain it right now, before I blow your jaw off!"

 

"Unhand him this instant!" Iida shouted, rushing forward. "Brawling on the first day is a severe violation of U.A. regulations!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He looked at Bakugo’s trembling hands. Ten months ago, Izuku would have been crying, pleading for mercy. But now? After feeling the raw power of Four Arms, the blazing heat of Heatblast, the indestructible density of Diamondhead? Bakugo’s explosions felt... small.

 

"It's not a trick, Kacchan," Izuku said calmly. His left hand twitched, instinctively brushing the cuff of his sleeve where the watch lay waiting. "It’s my Quirk. It just manifested late."

 

"Bullshit!" Bakugo roared, a larger explosion detonating in his hand, the smoke filling the entryway. "Quirks manifest by age four! You're a liar! You're hiding something, and I'm going to beat it out of you!"

 

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

 

The voice was dry, exhausted, and completely devoid of inflection.

 

Everyone froze. They turned to the hallway behind Izuku.

 

Lying on the floor like a giant, bright yellow caterpillar was a man in a sleeping bag. He unzipped the front, revealing a haggard face, unkempt black hair, and eyes heavily bagged with sleep deprivation. He slurped an unidentifiable jelly pouch, his deadpan gaze sweeping over the students.

 

"It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down," the man sighed, stepping out of the sleeping bag. He was wearing a ragged black jumpsuit and a scarf that looked like it was made of thick, woven bandages. "Time is a precious resource. You kids aren't rational enough."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. I know him... The erasing hero, Eraser Head! He’s an underground Pro!

 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa," the man grunted, walking past Bakugo and Izuku to the front of the class. He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white P.E. uniforms. "Put these on and head out to the training field. We're skipping orientation."

 

"Skipping orientation?!" the class echoed in shock.

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, flashing a dangerous, glowing red for a fraction of a second. "Welcome to U.A. High School’s hero course. Here, we don't coddle you. Get moving."

 

 

 

The sun beat down on the massive dirt field behind the school. Class 1-A stood in a loose cluster, adjusting their P.E. uniforms. Izuku had rolled his left sleeve up to his elbow, leaving the Omnitrix fully exposed.

 

Aizawa stood before them, holding a digital tablet. "A Quirk Apprehension Test. Today, we're going to measure your physical capabilities while using your Quirks."

 

"But what about the entrance ceremony?" Uraraka asked, stepping forward. "And the guidance counselor meetings?"

 

"If you want to be a Pro Hero, you don't have time for leisurely events," Aizawa replied flatly. "Japan’s education system is steeped in archaic traditions. They take the average of your physical fitness without Quirks. It’s irrational. Bakugo, you finished first in the practical exam. What was your best result for the softball throw in middle school?"

 

Bakugo crossed his arms, glaring at Izuku out of the corner of his eye. "Sixty-seven meters."

 

"Try it with your Quirk," Aizawa said, tossing Bakugo a baseball. "Stand in the circle. Anything goes, as long as you don't step out."

 

Bakugo stepped into the chalk circle. He stretched his arms, a feral grin spreading across his face. He wound up, the sweat on his palms reacting chemically. As he threw the ball, a massive explosion engulfed his hand.

 

"DIE!" Bakugo roared.

 

The ball rocketed into the sky atop a pillar of smoke and fire. Aizawa held up a device. 705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted in murmurs of awe.

 

"This looks like so much fun!" a girl with pink skin and horns cheered.

 

Aizawa’s expression darkened. "Fun, you say? You have three years to become heroes. You think it's going to be games and playtime?" Aizawa smiled—a terrifying, unhinged grimace. "Right. Whoever places last in all eight tests will be judged as having no potential, and will be expelled immediately."

 

The students gasped. Izuku felt his stomach drop.

 

Expulsion? On the first day?

 

He looked down at the Omnitrix. The ten-minute limit. He had eight separate tests to get through. If he used a transformation for every test, he would burn through his battery and risk the watch forcefully timing him out, leaving him utterly Quirkless for the rest of the exam. He needed to be tactical. He needed to use quick bursts, manually timing himself out after just a few seconds to preserve power.

 

"Test one: 50-Meter Dash," Aizawa announced.

 

The students lined up in pairs. Iida easily won his heat, his engine-calves propelling him across the finish line in 3.04 seconds.

 

Izuku stepped up to the starting line. Beside him was a girl with long, dark-green hair and large, frog-like features—Tsuyu Asui.

 

"You're the boy who blew up the Zero Pointer," Tsuyu croaked softly. "I'm curious to see what you do."

 

"I'll do my best," Izuku said, taking a deep breath.

 

Aizawa stood at the finish line, holding his tablet. Midoriya Izuku. Let's see if this 'Poly-Morph' Quirk of yours is truly as versatile as the entrance exam suggested. Or if you're just a one-trick pony with a massive drawback.

 

"On your marks," Aizawa drawled.

 

Izuku didn't enter a running stance. Instead, he raised his left arm. He pressed the button. BEEP. The faceplate popped up. He turned it six clicks to the right, landing on a bulky, winged silhouette.

 

"Get set."

 

Izuku slammed his hand down on the dial.

 

The emerald light erupted, blinding the students on the sidelines. The sound of tearing fabric and shifting biology echoed across the field.

 

Bakugo, watching from the back, clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into his palms. Show me the trick, Deku. Show me the damn trick!

 

The light vanished.

 

The students recoiled in disgust.

 

Replacing Izuku was a massive, horrifying insectoid creature. He was nearly seven feet long, hovering slightly off the ground on four translucent, rapidly vibrating wings. His body was a sickly green and white, segmented like an exoskeleton. Four eyestalks sprouted from his head, and a massive, stinger-like tail twitched behind him. A pungent, chemical odor—like sulfur and burning plastic—washed over the starting line.

 

"Eww!" several girls shrieked, covering their noses.

 

"What the hell is that?!" Bakugo yelled, genuinely taken aback. That wasn't the giant red man or the crystal monster from the videos.

 

"Stinkfly," Izuku buzzed. His voice was a horrific, chittering drone that sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

 

"Go," Aizawa signaled.

 

Tsuyu leaped forward, her powerful frog legs covering immense distance.

 

But Izuku didn't run. The four wings on Stinkfly's back blurred into a hum so fast they became invisible. He shot off the starting line horizontally, hovering three feet above the dirt. The sheer aerodynamic thrust of his insectoid wings propelled him forward like a biological jet fighter.

 

He crossed the finish line in a blur of green and white.

 

1.89 seconds, the robotic voice of the timer announced.

 

Izuku immediately tapped the Omnitrix dial positioned in the center of Stinkfly's forehead. A flash of red light, and he was human again, tumbling into the dirt in his P.E. uniform.

 

He gasped, wiping a bit of slime from his cheek. Battery usage minimal. Less than five seconds active. Good.

 

Aizawa recorded the time, his eyes narrowed. He completely rewrote his genetic structure from a mammalian base to a complex insectoid form. The mass generation alone defies conservation of energy. And the speed... it wasn't just physical strength, it was perfectly adapted flight mechanics.

 

"Test two: Grip Strength," Aizawa called out, moving them to the next station.

 

A massive, multi-armed student named Shoji crushed his grip machine, scoring an impressive 540 kilograms.

 

Izuku held the small, digital grip-strength device in his hand. He could use Four Arms and completely obliterate the machine, but that was a waste of battery, and Aizawa was already watching him too closely. He needed to be smart. He needed to prove he wasn't just a brute.

 

He popped the dial. One click to the left.

 

He slammed it down. The green light flashed.

 

"Is it the giant red guy again?!" someone shouted, bracing for the wind pressure.

 

The light faded.

 

Silence descended on the class.

 

Izuku was gone. In his place, standing on the grass, was a tiny, six-inch-tall humanoid frog. He had smooth grey skin, massive green eyes with horizontal pupils, and wore a miniature white and black uniform with the Omnitrix dial on his back.

 

The class stared.

 

"Did he... shrink?" Uraraka asked, blinking in confusion.

 

Bakugo burst into mocking laughter. "A tiny frog?! What are you going to do, Deku, give the machine a papercut?! You're pathetic!"

 

"Grey Matter," the tiny alien spoke. His voice was high-pitched, incredibly fast, and laced with absolute intellectual authority. "And brute force is the least efficient application of energy when dealing with simplistic mechanical diagnostics."

 

Before anyone could comprehend what he was saying, Grey Matter leaped into the air, landing perfectly on the digital grip-strength machine. His tiny, suction-cup fingers moved with blinding speed. He didn't squeeze the handle. Instead, he unlatched the digital casing, pulled out two microscopic wires, crossed them, and re-inserted the battery backward.

 

He hopped off the machine and tapped his dial.

 

Red flash. Izuku was human again, holding his head slightly as the overwhelming hyper-intelligence faded, leaving a slight migraine in its wake.

 

The grip-strength machine beeped frantically. The digital screen glitched, the numbers rolling up in a blur before locking into place.

 

Error: Max Capacity Exceeded. 9,999 kg.

 

Aizawa stared at the screen, then looked up at Izuku. "You hacked a calibrated U.A. testing device in three seconds."

 

"The test was to measure the maximum output we could generate from the machine using our Quirks," Izuku said, trying to keep his voice steady despite Aizawa's piercing glare. "You didn't specify it had to be a kinetic application of force."

 

Aizawa’s eye twitched. "Rational. Proceed."

 

The class was in an uproar.

 

"He's a genius!"

 

"What kind of Quirk turns you into a bug, a giant, and a hacker-frog?!"

 

Bakugo was practically vibrating with rage. His teeth ground together so hard he tasted blood. He's making a fool of me. He's showing off.

 

The next few tests went by in a blur. Izuku relied on his human body's enhanced conditioning from the ten months of clearing the beach to score average marks in the sidestep and the seated toe-touch, conserving the Omnitrix battery. He used Wildmutt, the eyeless orange beast, for the standing long jump, clearing the sandbox entirely with a single, feral bound.

 

Finally, they arrived at the last test.

 

The Softball Throw.

 

Uraraka stepped up to the plate. She touched the ball, removing its gravity, and tossed it into the air. It floated endlessly into the stratosphere.

 

Infinity, Aizawa's device read.

 

"Midoriya. You're up," Aizawa said.

 

Izuku stepped into the chalk circle. He held the softball in his right hand. He looked down at the Omnitrix. The dial was glowing a steady green, but he knew he was pushing his time limit. He had used Stinkfly, Grey Matter, and Wildmutt. He had maybe two or three minutes of active transformation time left before a forced recharge.

 

I need a massive score here to ensure I don't fall to the bottom of the rankings, Izuku thought. Four Arms is the only logical choice for raw projectile momentum.

 

Aizawa watched the boy from the edge of the field.

 

This is it, Aizawa thought, his hands gripping the edges of his scarf. His transformations are incredibly powerful, but they completely rewrite his physical form. He relies entirely on that device on his wrist. Is it a conduit? A focus item? Or is his Quirk a fake, and he's cheating with unauthorized technology? Either way, he's too dangerous to let loose without a leash. I need to see his base level. I need to erase it.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He pressed the button. The faceplate popped up. He turned it to the four-armed silhouette.

 

He raised his right hand, preparing to slam it down.

 

Suddenly, a profound, chilling pressure settled over the field.

 

Izuku froze. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He felt a heavy, oppressive gaze locking onto him, as if gravity itself had suddenly increased ten-fold.

 

He looked toward Aizawa.

 

The teacher's scarf was defying gravity, floating and writhing around him like a nest of angry snakes. Aizawa’s unkempt black hair stood on end, revealing his deeply bagged eyes. But his eyes weren't tired anymore. They were glowing a brilliant, piercing, blood-red.

 

Erasure, Izuku realized, panic spiking in his chest. He's using his Quirk on me. He's trying to erase my power.

 

Aizawa kept his unblinking stare locked onto Izuku. I've erased your Quirk factor, kid, Aizawa thought grimly. Your genetic mutations are suppressed. Let's see you throw that ball now as a normal, Quirkless human.

 

"Hey, what's Mr. Aizawa doing?" someone whispered.

 

"He looks super scary!"

 

Izuku stood in the circle. The red glow of Aizawa’s eyes reflected off the metal chassis of the Omnitrix.

 

For a terrifying second, Izuku doubted himself. What if he can erase it? What if the watch relies on my biological energy, and Aizawa is shutting it down?

 

But then, Izuku remembered Grey Matter's analysis.

 

The Omnitrix taps into the Codon Stream to rewrite the user's DNA on a cellular level. It does not utilize Quirk Factors. It is alien biology.

 

Izuku grit his teeth. I am not a Quirk user. I am a wielder of the universe.

 

Maintaining direct eye contact with Aizawa’s glowing red eyes, Izuku slammed his hand down on the dial.

 

VWOOSH!

 

The eruption of emerald light was so intense it cast long, stark shadows across the entire training field. The concussive wave of displaced air blasted outward, forcing Aizawa to take a step back, his scarf whipping wildly in the wind.

 

Aizawa’s red eyes widened in absolute, reality-shattering shock.

 

Impossible, Aizawa thought, his mind racing to comprehend what he was seeing. My Quirk is active. I am looking directly at him. I erased his Quirk Factor! Why is he transforming?!

 

The green light shattered like glass.

 

Standing in the chalk circle, towering twelve feet over the class, was Four Arms. His crimson muscles bulged, pulsating with raw, cosmic energy. His four yellow eyes narrowed, locking onto Aizawa's stunned, red-glowing gaze.

 

"You can't erase what I am," Four Arms rumbled, his dual-layered voice carrying across the silent field like thunder.

 

Bakugo dropped to his knees, his mind completely broken by the sheer scale of the creature standing before him. He... he defied Eraser Head. He's immune. What the hell is he?!

 

Izuku turned his attention back to the test. He squeezed the softball in his lower right hand, careful not to pop it. He wound up all four of his massive arms, twisting his torso backward. The sheer kinetic tension in his muscles was audible, sounding like thick steel cables pulling taut.

 

Four Arms stepped forward, his massive foot cracking the concrete beneath the chalk circle.

 

He threw the ball.

 

BOOOOOOOM!

 

A visible sonic boom rings shattered the air. The shockwave was so immense it ripped the grass from the earth in a cone directly in front of him. Several students were blown off their feet. Aizawa had to cross his arms and use his scarf to anchor himself to the ground to avoid being thrown backward.

 

The softball wasn't just thrown; it was launched like an orbital railgun strike. It ignited a trail of white smoke as it tore through the atmosphere, disappearing into the clouds in a fraction of a second.

 

Silence rained down on the field, save for the ringing in everyone's ears.

 

Aizawa’s hair fell back down. His eyes faded from red to black. He slowly lifted his digital tablet. The screen was cracked from the shockwave, but the numbers were clearly visible.

 

1,524.8 meters.

 

Four Arms exhaled a cloud of steam, then tapped the dial on his left shoulder.

 

With a flash of red light, the towering giant vanished, and Izuku stood in the circle, his chest heaving, his left arm smoking slightly from the immense exertion.

 

He looked over at Aizawa, offering a nervous, sheepish smile. "Did I pass?"

 

Aizawa didn't speak. He walked forward, his footsteps heavy on the dirt. He stopped two feet in front of Izuku. The intimidating aura of the underground Pro Hero was palpable.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice dangerously low, meant only for Izuku's ears. "My Quirk temporarily shuts down the Quirk Factor—the genetic anomaly responsible for superhuman abilities—in anyone I look at. It has never failed. Not once in my entire career. Until today."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. The lie. He had to execute the lie perfectly.

 

"I... I tried to tell you, sir," Izuku lied, his voice remarkably steady. "My Quirk... it's not a normal Quirk. The doctors call it a biological anomaly."

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. "Explain."

 

"I don't have a Quirk Factor," Izuku said, parroting Grey Matter’s complex medical jargon. "My cellular structure lacks the Plus Alpha gene entirely. Instead, my core DNA is highly unstable and constantly mutating. The device on my wrist—it’s a medical focus item. It stabilizes my genetic code and allows me to channel those mutations into specific, localized forms. Because I don't have a Quirk Factor, there is nothing for your Quirk to erase. It's just... biology."

 

Aizawa stared at him. He looked at the bulky, metallic device on Izuku's wrist. The explanation was wildly implausible, bordering on science fiction. But in a world where people could create black holes and turn into dragons, who was to say a complete lack of a Quirk Factor couldn't result in catastrophic genetic instability?

 

More importantly, it explained why Erasure had failed.

 

"A biological anomaly," Aizawa repeated, rubbing his dry eyes. "So, without that device, you'd what? Melt into a puddle of flesh?"

 

"I... I don't know," Izuku said, feigning genuine fear. "The doctors told me never to take it off."

 

Aizawa exhaled a long, tired sigh. "Fine. Return to the class. But hear this, Midoriya. Raw power and strange biology do not make a hero. If you can't control it, you are a liability. Prove to me you belong here."

 

Izuku bowed deeply. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

 

As Izuku walked back to the group, the class swarmed him.

 

"Dude, that was insane!" a boy with spiky red hair yelled. "I'm Eijiro Kirishima! Your Quirk is so manly! You totally just stared down Mr. Aizawa!"

 

"That sonic boom was terrifying," Tsuyu croaked, though she looked impressed.

 

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, overwhelmed by the positive attention. "T-Thanks, everyone. I just got lucky."

 

Suddenly, the crowd parted.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stood there, trembling violently. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and burning with a rage so intense it felt palpable. The realization had finally sunk in. Deku wasn't just hiding a Quirk. He was hiding a power that defied the very laws of their superhuman society. He had outscored him. He had overpowered him. He had made him look like a weak, irrelevant extra.

 

"Deku..." Bakugo hissed, small, erratic explosions popping off his palms, burning his own skin. "You... you bastard. You lied to me for ten years! YOU'VE BEEN LAUGHING AT ME THIS WHOLE TIME!"

 

Bakugo lunged forward, his hands aimed directly at Izuku’s face.

 

Before Izuku could react, something wrapped around Bakugo’s waist. It was a thick, gray cloth.

 

Aizawa yanked his capture scarf, pulling Bakugo backward and slamming him into the dirt. Aizawa’s hair was up again, his red eyes glaring down at the explosive blonde.

 

"Stand down, Bakugo," Aizawa warned, his voice cold and commanding. "Use your Quirk to attack a classmate again, and you'll be expelled before the day is out. Am I clear?"

 

Bakugo struggled against the bindings, his teeth bared like a rabid dog, but he couldn't break free. He glared at Izuku, his eyes promising violence.

 

"I'll kill you," Bakugo mouthed silently.

 

Izuku held his ground, his hand resting defensively over the Omnitrix.

 

"Test is over," Aizawa announced, releasing Bakugo and turning off his Quirk. "I'll project the results."

 

A holographic screen appeared from Aizawa’s tablet.

 

Izuku scanned the list. His heart leaped.

 

1. Yaoyorozu Momo

2. Todoroki Shoto

3. Midoriya Izuku

4. Bakugo Katsuki

 

He had placed third overall. Bakugo was fourth.

 

"By the way, I lied about the expulsion," Aizawa said, an incredibly creepy smile spreading across his face. "It was a rational deception to ensure you all gave it your absolute best."

 

The entire class, save for a few, screamed in outrage.

 

"Of course it was a lie," a tall girl with a ponytail—Yaoyorozu, the first-place student—sighed. "It was quite obvious if you just thought it through."

 

Izuku slumped his shoulders, letting out a breath he felt he had been holding for an hour. He was testing us. He wanted to see how we handled the pressure.

 

"We're done here. Your syllabuses are in the classroom. Dismissed," Aizawa said, turning and walking away, slipping his jelly pouch back into his pocket.

 

As the class began to disperse, Uraraka and Iida walked over to Izuku.

 

"You were amazing, Midoriya!" Uraraka beamed. "That giant form was incredible, but the little frog guy hacking the machine was so cool!"

 

"Indeed," Iida nodded approvingly, adjusting his glasses. "You possess a highly versatile and potent Quirk. But more importantly, you maintained your composure when confronted by our teacher's intimidation tactics. I misjudged you during the entrance exam. You are a true U.A. student."

 

"Thanks, you guys," Izuku smiled genuinely. For the first time in his life, he had friends. Peers who respected him.

 

He looked down at his left wrist. The Omnitrix dial was red, pulsing slowly as it recharged. It was a heavy burden, carrying the greatest weapon in the universe on his arm. It was a secret that could destroy his life if it ever got out.

 

But as Izuku walked back to the school, surrounded by his new classmates, he felt a profound sense of purpose.

 

He was Izuku Midoriya. He was the wielder of the Omnitrix. And he was going to show the world that true heroism wasn't just about Quirks. It was about adapting, overcoming, and using whatever power you had to protect those who couldn't protect themselves.

 

Tomorrow is combat training, Izuku thought, his eyes hardening as he caught a glimpse of Bakugo’s retreating, furious back. And I have a feeling Kacchan isn't going to let today go.