what if deku had mjolnir

 

The wind howling across the rooftop of the nondescript office building was biting, carrying with it the distant, muffled symphony of Musutafu’s afternoon traffic. But to fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya, the world had gone entirely, terrifyingly silent.

 

He stood there, his knees trembling so violently that his worn red sneakers squeaked against the concrete. His lungs burned, gasping for air not just from the terrifying flight clinging to the leg of the world’s greatest hero, but from the sheer, suffocating weight of the moment.

 

Before him stood All Might. The Symbol of Peace. The man whose laugh had been the soundtrack to Izuku’s dreams since he was old enough to understand what a hero was. But the towering, invincible god of justice was gone, replaced by a skeletal, emaciated man engulfed in a cloud of thick, billowing steam. Blood trickled down the man's chin, stark and crimson against his gaunt, shadowed face.

 

Izuku’s mind was a frantic, terrifying whirlwind. A fake? An imposter? No, the voice is the same. The eyes are the same. But how? How could the strongest man in the world look like… like a corpse?

 

Toshinori Yagi wiped the blood from his mouth with a bony, trembling hand, his oversized white t-shirt hanging off his skeletal frame like a ghost’s shroud. He looked down at the trembling boy before him, his sunken blue eyes carrying a sorrow so profound it made Izuku want to shrink away.

 

"You're shaking, kid," Toshinori said, his voice no longer booming with thunderous bravado, but ragged, tired, and profoundly human.

 

Izuku swallowed the lump of ash in his throat. He had asked the question. The single, desperate question that had haunted his every waking moment since the doctor told a four-year-old boy he had an extra joint in his toe. Can someone without a Quirk be a hero? Can someone like me… be like you?

 

He waited for the answer. He needed it. He needed the man who defied impossible odds on a daily basis to look him in the eye and tell him that the bullies were wrong. That Kacchan was wrong. That society, with all its genetic hierarchy and cruel Darwinian logic, was wrong.

 

Toshinori sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand tragedies. He sat down heavily against the chain-link fence, lifting his shirt to reveal a horrific, spiraling scar that encompassed the entire left side of his chest. It looked like a crater left behind by a meteor strike, the flesh pulled taut and purple, radiating a deep, unnatural heat.

 

"Five years ago," Toshinori began, his voice a gravelly whisper. "An enemy did this to me. My respiratory system was nearly destroyed. I lost my whole stomach. All the surgeries have worn me down, and it can't be fixed. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day. The rest of the time… I look like this."

 

Izuku stared in absolute horror. Five years ago? The Toxic Chainsaw fight? No, that timeline didn't match up. The realization hit Izuku like a physical blow. The world’s greatest hero was dying. He was bleeding out in slow motion, hiding his agony behind a golden smile to keep the world from spiraling into panic.

 

"A Symbol of Peace," Toshinori continued, staring up at the graying sky, "must never be daunted. I smile to show the pressure of heroes, and to trick the fear inside of me. I'm saving people with a smile so I can hide my own terror."

 

He finally turned his gaze back to Izuku. The pity in those hollow eyes was worse than any explosion Katsuki Bakugo had ever fired at him.

 

"Pro heroes are always having to risk their lives," Toshinori said gently, but with a firmness that felt like steel. "Some villains simply can't be beaten without power. Can you be a hero without a Quirk?" He paused, letting the silence stretch until it was deafening. "I honestly don't think you can."

 

The words didn't just break Izuku’s heart. They shattered his entire reality. They were a sledgehammer to a foundation made of fragile glass.

 

"If you want to help people," Toshinori offered, his voice softening, trying to soften the fatal blow he had just dealt. "You can become a police officer. They get mocked because the heroes deliver the villains to their doorstep, but it's a fine profession. It's not a bad thing to dream, young man. But you have to consider what's realistic."

 

With those final words, Toshinori pushed himself up from the fence. He didn't look back as he opened the heavy metal door leading to the stairwell, leaving Izuku completely alone on the roof. The click of the door latch echoing in the wind sounded like the slamming of a coffin lid.

 

Izuku stood paralyzed. The sky above Musutafu began to darken, heavy gray clouds rolling in from the coast, matching the utter desolation in the boy’s chest.

 

Realistic.

 

The word echoed in his mind, bouncing off the walls of his skull. Realistic. Realistic.

 

His knees finally buckled. He fell to the cold concrete, his hands scraping against the gravelly surface. He didn't cry. He was too hollow to cry. The reservoir of tears he had spent over a decade weeping over hero analysis notebooks, burned uniforms, and his mother’s quiet apologies had finally run dry.

 

All Might had said it. The one man who could have proved everyone wrong had just agreed with them. He was Deku. The useless, defenseless Deku. A quirkless anomaly in a world of gods and monsters.

 

He didn't know how long he sat there. Minutes? Hours? Eventually, the chill of the approaching evening seeped into his bones, forcing him to move. He picked himself up, moving like an automaton, his eyes dead and unfocused. He walked down the stairs, out of the building, and into the bustling streets of the city.

 

The world moved around him in a blur of colors and noises. People with horns, scales, floating objects, and vibrant hair walked past him, complaining about taxes, discussing dinner plans, and laughing at jokes. To them, it was just another Tuesday. To Izuku, the world had ended.

 

As he walked, his mind drifted miles away, to a heavily guarded, subterranean facility on the outskirts of Tokyo.

 

 

 

Two hundred miles away, in a state-of-the-art secure containment sector beneath the National Hero Museum, Dr. Kenjiro Sato adjusted his glasses and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

 

He stood behind a wall of reinforced, quirk-resistant glass, looking into a sterile white room. In the center of the room, resting on a pedestal of solid tungsten, was an object that defied every law of physics, biology, and Quirk science known to mankind.

 

It was a hammer.

 

It wasn't particularly large—perhaps a foot and a half long. The handle was wrapped in worn, dark brown leather, ending in a loop. The head was a rectangular block of dark, forged metal, etched with intricate, beautiful runes that glowed with a very faint, almost imperceptible blue light.

 

It had been discovered nearly three centuries ago, long before the dawn of Quirks, in a crater in the icy mountains of Tromsø, Norway. It had been transported to Japan during a period of global artifact exchange in the early Quirk Era, long before society had collapsed and rebuilt itself.

 

The hammer had a name, etched in ancient Norse translations on its side: Mjolnir.

 

"Any change in the gravitational readings?" Dr. Sato asked into his comms unit.

 

"Negative, Doctor," a technician replied over the speaker. "Mass readings are completely erratic. It registers as weighing exactly 42.3 pounds when resting on the pedestal. But when kinetic force is applied in an upward trajectory—when someone tries to lift it—its mass effectively becomes infinite."

 

Dr. Sato shook his head. Over the past century, they had tried everything. They had used industrial cranes that snapped under the strain. They had brought in Pro Heroes with strength-enhancing Quirks capable of lifting entire skyscrapers. A hero with a telekinetic Quirk strong enough to move a mountain had suffered a brain aneurysm trying to make the hammer float an inch off its pedestal. Even All Might, in his prime twenty years ago, had been brought in as a secret government favor.

 

The Symbol of Peace had planted his feet, flexed muscles that could change the weather, and pulled with all his godlike might. The earth beneath the facility had cracked. The tungsten pedestal had groaned. But the hammer had not moved a single millimeter.

 

It was entirely, utterly immovable.

 

Yet, there was an inscription on the side of the metal head, translated into modern Japanese on the plaque outside the room: Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.

 

"Worthy," Dr. Sato muttered to himself. "Magic and fairy tales in a world of Quirks. Whatever alien or ancient Quirk-user forged this thing, they had a twisted sense of humor."

 

Suddenly, the monitors in the observation deck flickered.

 

Dr. Sato frowned, tapping the glass of his screen. "Hey, check the power grid. We're getting fluctuations."

 

"Doctor..." the technician's voice crackled over the intercom, trembling. "It's not the grid. It's... it's the artifact."

 

Sato snapped his head up, looking through the reinforced glass.

 

The runes on the side of the hammer were glowing. Not the faint, dormant blue they had emitted for three hundred years. They were blazing with a blinding, furious white light. A low, vibrational hum began to emanate from the weapon, a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the marrow of Sato’s bones.

 

"What's happening?" Sato demanded, rushing to the console. "Are we under attack? Did a villain with an electromagnetic Quirk breach the perimeter?"

 

"No one is here! Doctor, the localized atmospheric pressure inside the containment cell is dropping rapidly! Ozone levels are spiking! It's... it's generating a localized electrostatic field!"

 

Sparks of violent blue electricity began to arc off the square head of the hammer, dancing across the tungsten pedestal. The leather strap at the end of the hilt began to flutter, as if caught in a phantom wind.

 

"Shut it down! Engage the suppression field!" Sato yelled, though he knew it was futile. How do you suppress a rock that defies gravity?

 

Inside the chamber, Mjolnir began to vibrate. It shook so violently the tungsten pedestal began to fracture.

 

For centuries, it had slept. It had been pulled, prodded, and analyzed by the arrogant, the strong, the greedy, and the proud. It had felt the hands of heroes who sought glory, men who sought power, and scientists who sought answers. It had rejected them all. They were unworthy.

 

But now, two hundred miles away, an ancient, cosmic tether had snapped taut. The hammer felt a resonance. It felt a soul that was completely, utterly hollowed out by despair, yet burned with a purity of self-sacrifice that the universe hadn't seen in millennia. A soul that possessed no power, sought no glory, and expected no reward.

 

Mjolnir woke up.

 

With a sound like a bomb detonating, a massive bolt of lightning erupted from the head of the hammer, shattering the Quirk-resistant glass of the observation deck. Dr. Sato was thrown backward as alarms screamed throughout the subterranean facility.

 

He looked up, ears ringing, just in time to see the unthinkable.

 

The unmovable hammer tore itself off the pedestal. It angled its heavy square head upward, and with a sonic boom that ruptured the eardrums of everyone in the facility, it launched itself like a missile. It smashed through the reinforced titanium ceiling, through three layers of concrete and steel, bursting out of the ground and into the darkening Japanese sky, leaving a trail of furious blue lightning in its wake.

 

 

 

Izuku was shaken from his stupor by the sound of an explosion.

 

BOOM.

 

The shockwave rattled the windows of the Tatooin Shopping District. Izuku stopped, his green eyes blinking rapidly as he was pulled back to reality. A plume of thick, black smoke was rising into the sky a few blocks away.

 

A villain attack? his brain instantly supplied. I need to get my notebook. I need to see what heroes are on the scene. I need to observe their Quirk applications and—

 

His thoughts slammed into a brick wall.

 

No.

 

He stopped walking. He looked down at his yellow backpack, heavily slung over his shoulder. Inside was his hero analysis notebook, currently sporting a scorch mark from Bakugo's explosive temper.

 

What's the point? Izuku thought, a bitter, unfamiliar cynicism twisting in his gut. I can't use any of it. I'm just a quirkless kid. A realistic kid.

 

He turned away from the smoke, intending to walk straight home. To tell his mother she was right. To finally give up.

 

But as he took a step away, another explosion rocked the street, louder this time. The scent of sulfur and burning ozone drifted on the wind. Without meaning to, his feet shifted. Decades of ingrained habit, of chasing the sirens, overrode his fresh despair.

 

Just to see, he told himself. Just to see which Pro Heroes handle it.

 

Izuku shuffled toward the commotion, joining the throng of civilians crowding the perimeter of an alleyway in the shopping district. The heat radiating from the scene was oppressive, forcing sweat to bead on Izuku’s forehead. He pushed his way through the crowd, muttering apologies, until he reached the front.

 

When he saw what was happening, his heart stopped.

 

Fire engulfed the alleyway. The storefronts were burning, glass shattered across the pavement. But the fire wasn't the main problem. The problem was the towering, grotesque mass of sentient, sewage-like sludge wreaking havoc in the center of the flames.

 

It was the Sludge Villain. The exact same villain that had attacked Izuku under the bridge. The one All Might had captured in a plastic soda bottle.

 

Izuku’s hands flew to his mouth. His mind raced back to the desperate flight through the air, clinging to All Might’s leg. The villain must have slipped out of the hero’s pocket during the struggle.

 

This is my fault, Izuku realized, terror and guilt hitting him like a physical blow, driving the air from his lungs. I did this. If I hadn't been so selfish, if I hadn't grabbed onto him... this wouldn't be happening.

 

He looked around frantically. Where were the heroes?

 

Death Arms was standing near the police barricade, gritting his teeth, his massive fists clenched. "It's no good! I can't get a grip on him! Every time I punch, my arms sink right through!"

 

Kamui Woods was beside him, shielding his face from the flames. "It's a bad matchup! My wood will just burn in this fire! We need someone with a water Quirk, or someone who can blow him away!"

 

Mt. Lady was stuck at the entrance of the street, groaning in frustration. "I need at least a two-lane road to activate my Quirk! I can't fit in there!"

 

They were waiting. The Pro Heroes, the people paid to risk their lives, were standing on the sidelines, waiting for someone with a more suitable Quirk to arrive.

 

Izuku looked back at the villain. The sludge monster was laughing maniacally, wildly swinging massive tendrils of muck that smashed into the surrounding buildings, causing more fires to break out.

 

But it was what was in the center of the sludge that made Izuku’s blood run cold.

 

A figure was trapped within the suffocating mass. A boy in a Middle School uniform. He was thrashing violently, setting off massive explosions from his palms in a desperate bid to free himself. But the explosions were only feeding the fires and making the villain angrier.

 

The sludge parted for a fraction of a second, revealing a face. Ash-blonde hair, coughing up dark muck, eyes wide with a terror Izuku had never, ever seen before.

 

Katsuki Bakugo. Kacchan.

 

The boy who had told Izuku to take a swan dive off the roof just hours ago. The boy who had tormented him for a decade.

 

But in that singular, agonizing moment, as Kacchan’s crimson eyes locked onto Izuku’s in the crowd, Izuku didn't see a bully. He didn't see his tormentor. He saw a boy who was drowning in fire, suffocating on mud, screaming for a savior that wasn't coming.

 

He's asking for help.

 

Izuku didn't make a conscious decision. There was no internal debate. No weighing of the odds. No consideration of his own safety, his lack of a Quirk, or All Might’s crushing words.

 

Before his brain could even process what was happening, his legs moved.

 

He burst past the police tape.

 

"Hey! Kid, stop! Get back here!" Death Arms roared, reaching out to grab him, but his hand closed on empty air.

 

Izuku was sprinting. He was running directly into the inferno. The heat blistered his skin, the smoke stung his eyes, but his gaze was locked dead on Bakugo.

 

What am I doing?! Izuku’s mind finally caught up with his body, screaming in sheer panic. Why am I running?! I don't have a Quirk! I don't have a weapon! I'm going to die!

 

"You!" the Sludge Villain roared, his gelatinous eyes snapping to the green-haired boy charging at him. "You're that brat from the bridge! Here to die?!"

 

The villain reared back a massive, whip-like tendril of sludge, preparing to swat Izuku into the burning concrete.

 

Think! What do I do?! Page 25! Remember the analysis!

 

In a frantic, desperate motion, Izuku ripped his yellow backpack off his shoulder and hurled it with all his meager strength directly at the villain's face. The bag unzipped mid-air, spilling textbooks, pencil cases, and a thick, scorched notebook. The heavy edge of a math book slammed directly into the villain’s large, bulbous right eye.

 

"AGGGH!" the villain shrieked, flinching and recoiling. The sludge around Bakugo’s face loosened just enough.

 

Bakugo gasped, taking in a massive, ragged breath of smoky air. He looked at Izuku, his eyes a mix of shock, rage, and profound confusion. "Deku?! What the hell are you doing here?!"

 

Izuku didn't know how to answer. He reached out, his hands desperately clawing at the thick, vile sludge, trying to rip it away from Bakugo's shoulders. The muck burned like acid, smelling of raw sewage and death. His fingers sank in, finding no purchase, just uselessly grabbing at liquid.

 

Tears were streaming down Izuku’s face, cutting tracks through the soot. He looked at Bakugo, his voice cracking with terrified desperation.

 

"I don't know!" Izuku screamed, pulling with all his might, though nothing happened. "My legs just moved on their own! You... you looked like you were asking for help!"

 

Bakugo’s eyes widened, the breath hitching in his throat.

 

For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to freeze. The heroes watching in stunned silence. The civilians gasping. A skeletal Toshinori Yagi, who had just arrived at the back of the crowd, clutching his bleeding side, watching a quirkless boy do what the Symbol of Peace was too cowardly to attempt.

 

Then, the world violently snapped back into motion.

 

The Sludge Villain recovered, his injured eye blinking furiously. Rage warped his gelatinous features into a demonic mask. "You little pest! I'm going to rip you apart!"

 

The villain raised a massive arm, reshaping it into a hardened, dense club of compacted sludge and debris. He swung it down toward Izuku with enough force to shatter a car.

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. He threw his arms over his head in a futile gesture of protection.

 

I'm sorry, Mom, he thought.

 

But the blow never landed.

 

Instead, a sound unlike anything Izuku had ever heard ripped through the air. It wasn't an explosion. It sounded like the very fabric of the sky was tearing apart. A deafening, whistling shriek, followed by a concussive boom that shattered every remaining window in a three-block radius.

 

Izuku opened his eyes.

 

A streak of blinding silver light had descended from the heavens, moving faster than the eye could track. It smashed into the Sludge Villain’s descending arm with the force of a meteor.

 

The hardened sludge didn't just break; it completely disintegrated into mist upon impact.

 

"GAAAAAH!" The villain shrieked in agony as half of his mass was instantly obliterated by a shockwave of kinetic force. Bakugo was thrown backward by the sheer wind pressure, tumbling safely out of the sludge and onto the asphalt.

 

Izuku fell backward onto his hands, gasping. He looked up, trying to see what Pro Hero had just saved him.

 

But there was no hero.

 

Floating in the air, exactly where the villain’s arm had been a second ago, was a hammer.

 

It was a strange, archaic weapon. A short, leather-wrapped handle ending in a loop, and a heavy, rectangular block of dark metal. It hovered there, defying gravity, spinning slowly. Faint blue runes glowed along its side.

 

The crowd was dead silent. The crackling of the fire was the only sound.

 

What is that? Izuku thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. Whose Quirk is this?

 

Before anyone could move, the sky above Tatooin Shopping District changed.

 

It didn't just get cloudy. The atmosphere violently ruptured. Within seconds, a massive, swirling supercell of pitch-black clouds blotted out the late afternoon sun. The temperature plummeted, turning the oppressive heat of the fire into a chilling, electric cold. The hair on Izuku’s arms stood straight up. The air tasted heavily of copper and ozone.

 

Deep within the black clouds, monstrous tendrils of blue and white lightning crawled like serpents. Thunder echoed, not as a rumble, but as a continuous, deafening roar that vibrated in the teeth of everyone present.

 

The hammer, hovering in the air, suddenly dropped down, stopping perfectly level with Izuku’s chest. It hung there, the hilt pointed directly at him.

 

Waiting.

 

"Deku! Get away from that thing!" Bakugo coughed from the ground, recognizing danger even when he didn't understand it.

 

The Sludge Villain, regenerating his missing mass with garbage from the alleyway, let out a terrified but furious roar. "I don't know what kind of trick this is, but you're dead!"

 

He lunged forward, opening a massive, gaping maw of sludge, preparing to swallow Izuku whole.

 

Izuku didn't look at the villain. He was looking at the hammer.

 

He didn't know why, but the weapon... it felt familiar. Not like he had seen it before, but like it was calling to him. It felt like a warm hearth in the middle of a blizzard. It hummed with a strange, ancient intelligence. It wasn't just metal and leather. It was a judge.

 

And for the first time in his fourteen years of life, someone, or something, was looking at Izuku Midoriya and telling him he was worthy.

 

The villain's shadow fell over him. The jaws of sludge descended.

 

Izuku reached out his scarred, bruised hand.

 

His fingers closed around the leather-wrapped handle of Mjolnir.

 

The moment skin met leather, the world exploded.

 

A pillar of pure, blinding, celestial lightning descended from the swirling black heavens. It wasn't a jagged bolt; it was a solid, continuous cylinder of divine wrath. It struck Izuku directly, completely engulfing him and the hammer in a torrent of white-hot plasma.

 

The impact of the lightning hitting the earth sent a concussive shockwave of wind radiating outward. The flames consuming the alleyway were instantly snuffed out by the sheer lack of oxygen. Death Arms, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady were thrown off their feet, tumbling backward into the crowd. Bakugo dug his fingers into the asphalt, screaming as the wind threatened to blow him away.

 

The Sludge Villain, caught in the outer edge of the lightning strike, screamed as his liquid body began to instantly boil and evaporate. "What is this?! WHAT IS THIS?!"

 

Inside the pillar of lightning, Izuku felt no pain.

 

He expected to be burning. He expected to die. Instead, he felt a sensation he could only describe as... awakening. A power, older than Quirks, older than the society of heroes, flooded his veins. It was a torrential river of kinetic energy, wind, storm, and unbridled strength. It stitched into his muscles, bonded with his bones, and ignited his heart.

 

The voice of All Might echoed in his head: Can you be a hero without a Quirk? I honestly don't think you can.

 

He was wrong, a new voice whispered in his mind. It wasn't a voice of words, but a feeling of absolute, unshakeable certainty radiating from the hammer. Power is not born from blood. Power is forged in the heart. You are a savior. You are worthy.

 

The pillar of lightning shattered like glass, dispersing into thousands of harmless blue sparks that rained down upon the quiet street.

 

The crowd slowly uncovered their eyes, peering into the dissipating smoke.

 

Death Arms’ jaw dropped. Bakugo stared, his crimson eyes wide with a terror and awe he had never known. In the back of the crowd, Toshinori Yagi fell to his knees, clutching his chest, feeling an aura that dwarfed even the legendary One For All.

 

Standing in the center of the cratered street was Izuku Midoriya.

 

But he was changed. His middle school uniform was charred at the edges, but layered over it, manifested from the raw energy of the storm, were pieces of ancient, mythical armor. Six circular metal discs adorned a dark, heavy tunic over his chest. Silver, scaled bracers protected his forearms, and a crimson cape, woven from a fabric that seemed to drink the light, billowed fiercely behind him in the howling wind.

 

His green eyes were no longer terrified. They were glowing. Literally glowing, radiating a fierce, crackling blue electricity that arced across his freckled cheeks.

 

In his right hand, gripped with absolute, unwavering confidence, was Mjolnir.

 

The Sludge Villain, reduced to half his size, looked at the boy and felt true, primal fear. But survival instinct took over. "I'll kill you! I'll drown you!"

 

The villain launched himself entirely at Izuku, a tidal wave of boiling, acidic sludge.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't cower.

 

He tightened his grip on the hilt. The hammer felt like an extension of his own arm. It didn't weigh forty-two pounds. To him, it weighed nothing at all.

 

Izuku pulled his arm back. Thunder rumbled in the black sky above, perfectly syncing with his movement. Sparks of lightning gathered around the square head of the hammer, rapidly intensifying into a blinding sphere of electricity.

 

"No," Izuku said. His voice was calm, but it carried a strange, reverberating echo that made the hair on the back of everyone's neck stand up. "You won't."

 

He swung the hammer forward.

 

He didn't hit the villain. He hit the air.

 

KRACK-THOOOOOM!

 

The force of the swing ripped the very air molecules apart. A massive, cone-shaped shockwave of wind and lightning erupted from the head of the hammer. It slammed into the Sludge Villain with the force of a category-five hurricane.

 

The villain didn't even have time to scream. The concussive blast hit him, instantly splattering his liquid body into a million microscopic droplets that rained down over the city blocks. The sheer wind pressure continued down the alleyway, clearing the smoke, blowing out the remaining fires, and parting the massive supercell clouds in the sky above, allowing a single, brilliant beam of twilight sun to pierce through and illuminate the street.

 

Silence descended upon the Tatooin Shopping District.

 

The fires were gone. The villain was defeated. The storm had vanished as quickly as it arrived.

 

All that remained was a fourteen-year-old boy standing in the center of a crater, holding a hammer.

 

Izuku stood there, his chest heaving. The divine armor that had clad his body began to dissolve into mist, leaving him back in his torn, soot-stained school uniform. The glowing blue light faded from his eyes, returning them to their normal, bright emerald green.

 

He looked down at his right hand. He looked at the hammer. The runes were no longer blazing white, but softly pulsing with a calm, steady blue light.

 

I... I did that?

 

The adrenaline, which had been holding his frail, human body together, instantly vanished. The cosmic power retreated back into the artifact, leaving a mortal boy who had just channeled the energy of a localized thunderstorm.

 

The physical toll was immediate and devastating.

 

Every muscle in Izuku’s body screamed in absolute agony. His bones felt like they had been turned to lead. His vision swam, black spots dancing across his eyes.

 

Suddenly, the hammer, which had felt lighter than a feather a second ago, felt like it weighed a million tons.

 

"Deku?" Bakugo’s voice reached him, sounding like it was coming from underwater.

 

Izuku’s knees buckled. He pitched forward, collapsing face-first onto the shattered asphalt. The hammer slipped from his fingers, landing squarely on his chest with a heavy, dull thud.

 

The last thing Izuku saw before darkness claimed him was the terrified faces of the Pro Heroes rushing toward him, and the heavy leather strap of the hammer resting gently against his cheek.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

For the first time in his life, he didn't feel useless. He didn't feel weak.

 

He felt worthy.

 

The steady, rhythmic beep... beep... beep... of a heart monitor was the first thing to pierce the suffocating darkness of Izuku Midoriya’s unconsciousness.

 

Slowly, agonizingly, his senses began to boot up. The harsh smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol assaulted his nose. The crisp, starchy texture of hospital sheets scratched against his bare arms. But above all else, there was the pain.

 

It wasn't a sharp, localized pain like a broken bone or a sprained ankle. It was a deep, pervasive ache that vibrated in the very marrow of his skeleton. His muscles felt as though they had been submerged in boiling water and then stretched across a medieval rack. Every nerve ending in his body was humming, randomly firing off phantom sparks of static electricity that made his fingers twitch involuntarily.

 

Izuku groaned, his throat feeling like he had swallowed a mouthful of hot ash. He forced his heavy eyelids open, squinting against the harsh, fluorescent lights of the hospital room.

 

As his vision blurred and then focused, he realized he wasn't alone.

 

Sitting in a chair by the window was his mother, Inko, fast asleep, her face puffy and stained with dried tears. Standing near the foot of his bed were three men. One was a tall man in a tan trench coat and a matching fedora—a police detective, judging by the badge clipped to his belt. Beside him stood a frazzled-looking man in a white lab coat, furiously tapping away at a tablet, his glasses askew.

 

And then there was the third man.

 

He was dangerously thin, with unkempt blonde hair, sunken eyes, and clothes that hung off his skeletal frame like drapes on a coat rack. Toshinori Yagi. All Might.

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. The memories of the previous day hit him like a runaway bullet train. The rooftop. The crushing rejection. The Sludge Villain. Kacchan suffocating. Running into the fire. The blinding light. The storm.

 

The hammer.

 

Izuku’s eyes darted wildly around the room, panic rising in his chest. Where was it? Was it a dream? A hallucination brought on by oxygen deprivation?

 

Then, he felt a weight. It was resting on his lap, pinned beneath the thin white hospital blanket.

 

"Ah, you're awake," the detective said, his voice calm and authoritative, though a distinct undercurrent of disbelief edged his words. He stepped forward, pulling out a small notepad. "I am Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi of the police force. This is Dr. Kenjiro Sato, lead curator and anomalous artifact specialist at the National Hero Museum. And this..." Tsukauchi gestured vaguely to Toshinori. "This is an associate of mine."

 

Inko stirred at the sound of the voices. Her eyes fluttered open, locking onto Izuku. "Izuku!" she sobbed, practically throwing herself out of the chair and wrapping her arms around his neck, careful not to squeeze too hard. "Oh, my baby! You're awake! I was so terrified! The police called, and they said there was lightning, and you were unconscious, and—"

 

"I'm okay, Mom," Izuku croaked, his voice raspy. He weakly patted her back. "I'm okay. Really."

 

Inko pulled back, cupping his face, fresh tears welling in her eyes. After a moment, Tsukauchi gently cleared his throat.

 

"Mrs. Midoriya, I'm glad your son is awake and recovering. The doctors say he suffered severe muscular exhaustion and minor electrical burns, but no permanent damage. However, we have a very... delicate matter to discuss regarding the incident."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. He looked at Toshinori, who was staring at him with an unreadable expression.

 

Dr. Sato stepped forward, adjusting his glasses. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in a week, his eyes wide and manic. "Midoriya, isn't it? Young man, do you have any idea what happened yesterday? Do you have a Quirk? A telekinetic ability? An electromagnetic tethering mutation?"

 

"I... no," Izuku stuttered, shrinking back slightly. "I'm Quirkless. I've always been Quirkless."

 

Sato let out a shaky breath, running a hand through his thinning hair. "That is impossible. Mathematically, historically, and scientifically impossible." He pointed a trembling finger at the lump beneath Izuku’s blanket. "Do you know what that is?"

 

Izuku reached down. He pulled the blanket back.

 

There it was. Mjolnir.

 

The dark, square-headed block of metal rested innocuously on his thighs, the worn leather handle pointing toward his stomach. It wasn't glowing anymore. It didn't hum with storm clouds. It looked like a very old, very heavy, and entirely mundane prop from a Viking movie.

 

"It... fell from the sky," Izuku whispered. "It saved me."

 

"It didn't fall from the sky," Sato corrected, his voice pitching higher. "It launched itself out of a secure, subterranean vault at the National Hero Museum two hundred miles away, shattered three layers of titanium-reinforced concrete, and flew to Musutafu at Mach 8."

 

Izuku stared at the doctor, his jaw slack.

 

"For three hundred years," Sato continued, pacing the small hospital room. "That artifact has sat on a pedestal. It was discovered in Norway. It defies every law of physics. It possesses a localized gravitational anomaly that effectively gives it infinite mass when an upward trajectory is applied. In layman's terms: it cannot be lifted. By anyone. We have had Pro Heroes with strength that could shatter mountains try to lift it. Cranes. Hydraulics. Nothing."

 

Sato stopped at the edge of the bed, staring at the hammer with a mix of awe and terror. "And yet... when the paramedics found you, it was resting on your chest. And when they tried to move you onto the stretcher..." Sato swallowed. "They couldn't. Four paramedics couldn't move it. Death Arms, a Pro Hero whose Quirk allows him to lift cars, tried to move it off you so they could transport you. He dislocated both his shoulders, and the hammer didn't budge."

 

Izuku looked down at the weapon. "Then... how did I get here?"

 

"They had to cut the asphalt out from underneath you," Tsukauchi said deadpan. "They slid a reinforced steel board under your back and carried you, the slab of street, and the hammer into the ambulance together. It’s been sitting on your lap since we got you into this bed."

 

"This is insane," Toshinori finally spoke, his deep voice rumbling in the small room. He stepped forward, his blue eyes locked onto the hammer. "Dr. Sato, there must be a biometric lock. A Quirk resonance. Something."

 

"There is no Quirk resonance!" Sato snapped, waving his tablet. "I've run every scan! It’s inert! It’s just... sitting there!"

 

"Allow me," Toshinori said, stepping up to the side of the bed. He looked at Izuku. "May I, young man?"

 

Izuku nodded numbly.

 

Toshinori rolled up the sleeve of his oversized shirt. He reached out with a massive, bony hand and wrapped his fingers around the leather hilt.

 

Izuku watched closely. He knew the secret. He knew this frail man was All Might. If anyone in the world could lift an unmovable object, it was the Symbol of Peace.

 

Toshinori pulled.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Toshinori frowned. He adjusted his stance, planting his feet firmly on the linoleum floor. The muscles in his skinny arm corded. He pulled harder.

 

The hospital bed groaned. The metal frame began to creak and warp downward under the immense, opposing pressure, but the hammer remained perfectly, completely stationary relative to Izuku’s lap. It was as if it was welded to the very fabric of space and time.

 

Toshinori closed his eyes. A wisp of steam curled off his skin. Underneath his oversized clothes, his musculature began to expand rapidly, condensing into the towering, muscle-bound form of All Might. The sheer physical presence of the Number One Hero filled the room, casting a massive shadow over the bed.

 

“HNNNGGGH!” All Might grunted, gripping the handle with both hands now.

 

He pulled with the strength that could change the weather. The strength that had defeated thousands of villains. The floor tiles beneath his boots cracked. The hospital bed snapped in half at the center, the mattress bowing inward.

 

The hammer did not move a single fraction of a millimeter.

 

Panting, coughing up a small spray of blood, All Might deflated in an instant, returning to his skeletal form, leaning heavily against the wall for support. He stared at the weapon in absolute, unadulterated shock.

 

"I... I cannot move it," Toshinori whispered, wiping the blood from his chin. "It is immovable."

 

Izuku sat there, his mind racing. He looked at Toshinori. He looked at the cracked floor. He looked back down at the hammer.

 

"But..." Izuku murmured. "It’s not heavy."

 

Sato let out a hysterical bark of laughter. "Not heavy? Boy, the Number One Hero—I mean, a very strong associate—just broke the floor trying to lift it!"

 

"No, I mean..." Izuku reached down with his right hand.

 

He wrapped his fingers around the leather hilt.

 

He didn't strain. He didn't brace himself. With the casual ease of a child picking up a TV remote, Izuku lifted the hammer off his lap and held it up in the air.

 

The silence in the room was deafening.

 

Sato dropped his tablet. It shattered on the floor.

 

Tsukauchi’s jaw went slack, his eyes bulging out of his head.

 

Inko gasped, clapping both hands over her mouth.

 

Toshinori Yagi stopped breathing entirely.

 

Izuku held the hammer out toward the doctor. "See? It’s really light. Maybe forty pounds?"

 

"P-P-Put it down," Sato stammered, backing away as if Izuku was holding a live nuclear warhead. "Please, just put it down."

 

Izuku carefully lowered the hammer back onto his lap.

 

Toshinori slowly walked toward the head of the bed, his sunken eyes filled with an emotion Izuku couldn't quite decipher. Reverence? Regret? Awe?

 

"Dr. Sato," Toshinori said quietly, never taking his eyes off Izuku. "What does the inscription on the side of the relic say?"

 

Sato swallowed hard, adjusting his crooked glasses. "It’s ancient Norse. Roughly translated into modern Japanese, it reads: Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."

 

"Thor," Izuku whispered. He was a hero nerd. He knew mythology. Thor was the Norse god of thunder. A mythical deity of storms, strength, and protection.

 

"Magic," Tsukauchi muttered, rubbing his temples. "I deal in Quirks, Dr. Sato. Not magic."

 

"Call it what you want, Detective," Sato said, his voice trembling with scientific ecstasy. "But the boy is the only being on the planet capable of wielding it. The artifact has chosen him. It judged him. And it found him... worthy."

 

Tsukauchi sighed, turning to Inko. "Mrs. Midoriya, given the... unprecedented nature of this event, we are going to keep this highly classified. As far as the media and the public are concerned, your son manifested a late-blooming, incredibly powerful electromagnetic Quirk due to extreme trauma. If word gets out that this is an unmovable, magical artifact, villains will stop at nothing to steal it, or cut off his arm to take it."

 

Inko paled, nodding frantically. "Yes. Yes, of course. Whatever keeps Izuku safe."

 

"Dr. Sato, Detective," Toshinori said, his voice commanding despite his frail form. "Could you give young Midoriya and me a moment? We have some things to discuss."

 

Tsukauchi nodded, ushering a protesting Dr. Sato and a worried Inko out of the hospital room, closing the door softly behind them.

 

The room was quiet, save for the steady beep of the heart monitor.

 

Toshinori walked to the window, looking out over the sprawling city of Musutafu. The setting sun cast a golden hue over his sharp, skeletal features. For a long time, he didn't say anything. He just looked at the city he protected.

 

"Yesterday," Toshinori finally spoke, his voice heavy with sorrow. "On the roof. I told you that you could not be a hero without a Quirk. I told you to be realistic."

 

Izuku looked down at the hammer in his lap. "You were just trying to keep me safe. I understand."

 

Toshinori turned around. To Izuku’s immense shock, the Number One Hero suddenly bowed at the waist, a deep, formal apology.

 

"I was wrong," Toshinori said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I let reality blind me to the essence of what a hero truly is. When the Sludge Villain had that boy hostage... I stood there. Me. The Symbol of Peace. I was out of time, my body was in agony, and I was terrified. I convinced myself I couldn't act."

 

Toshinori straightened up, his blue eyes locked onto Izuku’s green ones.

 

"But you... a boy with no power, no training, and everything to lose... you moved. You rushed into the flames when the professionals, and I, did not. You possessed the one thing that truly matters. The spirit of self-sacrifice."

 

Toshinori pointed to the hammer on Izuku’s lap.

 

"That weapon. That artifact. It did not choose you because you were strong. It chose you because you were the only one worthy of holding it. It judged your heart, young Midoriya, and found it flawless."

 

Tears pricked the corners of Izuku’s eyes. For ten years, he had been told he was useless. A Deku. A biological failure. And now, the man he idolized above all others was standing before him, telling him he was wrong.

 

"I didn't give you a Quirk," Toshinori continued softly. "I cannot pass my power onto you. But the universe... the universe saw your heart, and it gave you a power far older, and perhaps far greater, than anything I possess."

 

Izuku choked back a sob, gripping the sheets. "It hurts, though. When I swung it... the lightning burned me. The force of the swing felt like my arm was going to rip out of its socket. I'm too weak."

 

Toshinori nodded slowly, walking over and pulling up the chair Inko had vacated. He sat down, leaning forward.

 

"That is because you possess the power of a god, but the vessel of a mortal child," Toshinori explained. "The hammer might be weightless to you, but physics still apply. The momentum of swinging a forty-pound block of solid metal at supersonic speeds... the recoil of channeling millions of volts of raw electricity... it will tear your human body apart if you are not prepared."

 

Toshinori smiled, a genuine, warm smile that reached his sunken eyes.

 

"You want to go to U.A. High School, don't you?"

 

Izuku nodded vigorously, wiping his nose with the back of his unburned arm. "More than anything."

 

"The entrance exam is in exactly ten months," Toshinori said, holding up a finger. "You have the power. But your vessel is fragile. If you try to use that weapon in your current state, you will kill yourself before you ever become a hero."

 

Toshinori held out his hand.

 

"Let me train you, Izuku Midoriya. Let me help you forge a vessel capable of holding the storm. Let me teach you how to be a hero."

 

Izuku looked at Toshinori’s extended hand. He looked at the ancient, mystical hammer resting on his lap. He reached out, grasping the hero's hand tightly.

 

"Yes, sir," Izuku cried, tears streaming down his face, a fierce, blazing determination igniting in his chest. "Please!"

 

 

 

Two Months Later – Dagobah Municipal Beach Park

 

"AGGGGH!"

 

Izuku screamed as a jolt of electricity arced across his back, leaving a stinging, red welt on his skin. He dropped Mjolnir onto the sand, collapsing to his knees, panting heavily. Sweat poured down his face, mixing with the grime and sand that coated his torso.

 

"Control your breathing, young Midoriya!" Toshinori barked from atop a rusted refrigerator a few yards away. He was sitting in a lawn chair, wearing a ridiculous yellow tracksuit, a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other. "The hammer responds to your emotional state and your focus! If your mind is chaotic, the lightning will be chaotic!"

 

Izuku gasped for air, his muscles trembling.

 

Dagobah Beach was a seaside dump. Over the years, the ocean currents had deposited tons of illegal trash, rusted appliances, and ruined vehicles onto the shore. It was an eyesore, a blight on the city.

 

And it was Izuku’s gym.

 

"Your body is a conduit," Toshinori explained, hopping down from the fridge and walking over to the exhausted boy. "Think of a fire hose. If you turn the water on full blast, but the hose is made of thin paper, what happens?"

 

"It bursts," Izuku wheezed, rubbing his stinging shoulder.

 

"Exactly. Right now, your muscles, ligaments, and bones are paper. Mjolnir is the fire hydrant. We are going to turn you into Kevlar."

 

Toshinori pointed to a massive, rusted-out pickup truck half-buried in the sand.

 

"I don't want you to use the hammer. Put it down. Go over to that truck, tie this rope to the bumper, and pull it ten yards. Rely solely on your own physical strength."

 

Izuku groaned, pushing himself up from the sand. His body was already aching from hours of carrying refrigerators, tires, and microwaves. He trudged over to the truck, looping the thick hemp rope around the rusted bumper. He slung the rope over his shoulder, dug his bare feet into the sand, and pulled.

 

The truck didn't budge.

 

Izuku gritted his teeth. He leaned forward until his chest was almost parallel with the ground. Every muscle in his legs screamed in protest. The rope burned against his collarbone. Slowly, agonizingly, the truck shifted an inch. Then two.

 

For the next eight months, Izuku Midoriya lived in hell.

 

He woke up at 4:30 AM every day. He ran five miles before school. He ate a highly specialized, hyper-caloric diet Toshinori had designed for him—chicken, rice, fish, vegetables, protein shakes—shoving food down his throat until he felt like he was going to burst. After school, he went straight to Dagobah Beach and moved garbage until his hands bled and his vision blurred.

 

But physical conditioning was only half the battle.

 

The real danger was the weapon.

 

"Mjolnir cannot be controlled by sheer force of will alone," Toshinori explained one evening during month five, as they sat on the beach eating protein bars. "It is a weapon of the elements. It requires harmony. When you wield it, you cannot be afraid of it. But you must respect it."

 

Izuku stood up, picking up the hammer. By month five, his body had begun to change. The soft, scrawny kid was gone, replaced by a teenager with lean, highly defined muscle mass. His shoulders had broadened, his arms were corded with strength, and calluses thick as leather covered his palms.

 

He gripped the leather hilt. He closed his eyes.

 

He didn't think about smashing things. He thought about the sky. He thought about the rolling clouds, the pressure in the air before a storm, the smell of rain.

 

He felt the hum in the metal. The faint blue runes began to glow.

 

"Good," Toshinori encouraged, his eyes narrowing in observation. "Now, channel it. Just a spark. Keep it contained."

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were glowing with that same fierce, crackling blue light. He spun the hammer once in his hand. A single, controlled arc of blue lightning danced across the metal head, then vanished.

 

"Excellent," Toshinori smiled. "Now, try to throw it."

 

This was the hardest part. The hammer had infinite mass to anyone else, but to Izuku, it was light. However, when he threw it, the momentum generated was catastrophic.

 

Izuku wound his arm back. He twisted his hips, planting his foot, and hurled the hammer toward the ocean.

 

FWOOSH!

 

The hammer left his hand like a railgun slug, breaking the sound barrier instantly with a sharp crack. It flew hundreds of yards out over the water, skipping off the surface of the waves like a skipping stone, churning up water in a massive wake.

 

Izuku held out his hand, palm open.

 

Come back.

 

The hammer stopped mid-air over the ocean, defying all laws of inertia. It zipped backward, flying straight toward Izuku’s outstretched hand.

 

It hit his palm.

 

SMACK!

 

The kinetic transfer was immense. Izuku was thrown backward off his feet, tumbling violently across the sand, coming to a halt near a pile of tires. He groaned, holding his aching wrist.

 

"You're not bracing for the return!" Toshinori called out. "You are calling an immovable object back to you at Mach 2! You have to absorb the shock with your entire body, not just your wrist! Plant your feet, engage your core, and bend your knees!"

 

By month eight, Izuku stopped falling backward. He caught the hammer, his boots digging trenches in the sand as he absorbed the titanic force, his reinforced muscles holding the line.

 

By month nine, he discovered something entirely new.

 

He was practicing throwing the hammer. He wound it up by its leather strap, spinning it faster and faster until it was a blur of metal and wind. He threw it upward into the sky. But this time, his grip slipped on the leather loop. He didn't let go in time.

 

Instead of the hammer flying away, the hammer took Izuku with it.

 

"WAAAAAHHH!" Izuku screamed, his feet leaving the earth as he was violently yanked hundreds of feet into the air, soaring over the beach and the ocean.

 

"Young Midoriya!" Toshinori yelled in panic from the ground.

 

Izuku was terrified for a moment, soaring through the clouds. But then, instinct took over. He twisted his body, angling the hammer downward. The trajectory changed. He wasn't just being pulled; he was steering.

 

He was flying.

 

He looped over the ocean, the wind roaring in his ears, exhilaration replacing his fear. He aimed back toward the beach, soaring down like a meteor, and landed perfectly in the sand, skidding to a halt.

 

He looked at Toshinori, a massive, uncontainable grin breaking across his face.

 

Toshinori just stared, laughing a deep, booming laugh. "Well, I suppose that solves your mobility issues!"

 

 

 

The Morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam

 

Dagobah Beach was immaculate.

 

The morning sun reflected off pristine white sand and crystal-clear water. Not a single tire, refrigerator, or piece of scrap metal remained. Standing atop a massive pile of collected junk on the street level was Izuku Midoriya.

 

He was shirtless, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on a physique that looked like it had been carved out of marble. His muscles were dense and battle-ready, marked by a few faint, silvery scars from electrical burns that resembled the branching patterns of lightning strikes.

 

Toshinori Yagi stood on the boardwalk, in his skeletal form, looking up at his protégé with immense pride.

 

"You did it, young Midoriya," Toshinori said, checking his watch. "And with two hours to spare before the exam."

 

Izuku looked down at his hands. He clenched them into fists. He felt strong. Not just physically, but mentally. The crushing weight of ten years of bullying had been forged into an unbreakable resolve.

 

He reached out his right hand.

 

From the rusted pile of junk behind him, Mjolnir tore itself free, flying straight into Izuku’s palm with a satisfying, heavy thwack. He hooked the leather strap onto a specially designed, reinforced loop on his belt.

 

"I'm ready," Izuku said, his green eyes burning with determination.

 

 

 

The gates of U.A. High School were massive, intimidating monoliths of glass and steel. Izuku stood before them, wearing his middle school uniform, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and Mjolnir hanging heavy at his waist.

 

He had registered the hammer with the school board as a "Support Item." It was a loophole Dr. Sato and Tsukauchi had arranged. The official documentation claimed Izuku possessed an electromagnetic Quirk and required the dense metal hammer as a grounding rod and conduit to safely channel his electricity. It wasn't entirely a lie, but it hid the mystical truth.

 

As Izuku walked toward the entrance, he heard a familiar, angry voice.

 

"Out of my way, Deku."

 

Izuku turned. Katsuki Bakugo was walking up the path, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his red eyes glaring daggers.

 

Bakugo hadn't spoken to Izuku in the ten months since the Sludge Villain incident. In fact, Bakugo had actively avoided him. The sight of Izuku wielding a power that defied reality, summoning a storm, and obliterating a villain that had nearly killed Bakugo... it had shattered Bakugo’s fragile superiority complex. He didn't understand it, and what Bakugo didn't understand, he hated.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't look down. He didn't stutter. He simply stepped to the side, letting Bakugo pass.

 

"Good luck, Kacchan," Izuku said evenly.

 

Bakugo stopped. He looked at Izuku, his eyes darting to the heavy hammer resting on Izuku’s hip. A flash of something akin to fear crossed Bakugo’s face, quickly masked by a sneer. He clicked his tongue and kept walking.

 

Izuku let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He took a step forward, but his heavy boot caught on a slightly raised paving stone.

 

He tripped.

 

Oh no, ten months of training and I'm going to faceplant on the first day, Izuku thought, bracing for impact.

 

But he didn't hit the ground.

 

"Are you okay?" a cheerful voice asked.

 

Izuku looked up. A girl with a round face, large brown eyes, and permanent blush on her cheeks had tapped his shoulder. He was floating in mid-air, completely weightless.

 

"I used my Quirk on you, sorry! I just thought it would be bad luck if you fell right before the exam!" She clasped her hands together, releasing the Quirk. Izuku dropped the remaining few inches to the ground, landing lightly on his feet.

 

"Th-thank you!" Izuku stammered, the confident warrior facade instantly melting back into a flustered teenager at the presence of a pretty girl talking to him.

 

"I'm Ochaco Uraraka!" she beamed. "Let's do our best!"

 

She waved and jogged inside. Izuku stood there, a goofy smile on his face. I talked to a girl!

 

 

 

The orientation in the auditorium was a sensory overload. Present Mic, the Voice Hero, was screaming into the microphone, explaining the rules of the practical exam.

 

They were going to be placed in a mock city. Their goal was to destroy robotic "Villains" worth one, two, or three points.

 

"And watch out for the Zero Pointer!" Present Mic yelled. "It's an obstacle! A massive gimmick! If you see it, just run away!"

 

Izuku sat in his seat, furiously analyzing the information. It's a pure destruction test. That's a problem.

 

He looked down at Mjolnir resting in his lap. The hammer was the ultimate weapon of destruction. That was exactly the issue.

 

During his training at Dagobah, Izuku had realized that Mjolnir was not a surgical instrument. It was a sledgehammer meant for gods. When he hit things with it, things exploded. Shockwaves rippled. Lightning chained. If he went all out in a confined city street filled with other teenagers, the collateral damage would be catastrophic.

 

He couldn't use the lightning. He couldn't throw the hammer at full speed. He had to hold back. He had to rely solely on the physical weight of the hammer and his own reinforced strength.

 

I'm essentially fighting with one hand tied behind my back, Izuku realized. But a hero protects people first. Points come second.

 

 

 

"START!"

 

Present Mic’s voice echoed over the towering gates of Battle Center B.

 

Before the other examinees even registered the command, Izuku sprinted forward. Ten months of hauling trucks across sand had given his legs explosive power. He burst through the opening gates, leaving the others in the dust.

 

He turned the corner onto a main street and immediately encountered a cluster of three one-point robots. They whirred to life, aiming their optical sensors at him.

 

"Target acquired," the robots buzzed.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He unclipped Mjolnir from his belt. He didn't summon the storm. He kept his emotions locked down tight, preventing the runes from glowing.

 

He dashed forward, ducking under a metallic punch. He swung the hammer upward in a tight, controlled arc, striking the center robot squarely in the chassis.

 

CRUNCH.

 

The sheer density of the metal, combined with Izuku’s immense physical strength, crumpled the robot’s armor like tin foil. The robot was blasted backward, crashing into a concrete wall and sparking violently.

 

That's one, Izuku thought.

 

But as he swung back to hit the second robot, a laser blast scorched the ground near his feet. He had to dodge, throwing his balance off. The hammer swung wide, striking a nearby light pole. The pole snapped instantly, the top half crashing down toward the street where other students were now arriving.

 

"Look out!" Izuku yelled. He threw himself forward, catching the falling pole with his free hand, his muscles straining under the weight of the steel, before tossing it safely aside.

 

By the time he recovered, a boy with engines in his legs had zoomed past him, kicking the heads off the remaining two robots.

 

"Six minutes left!" Present Mic’s voice boomed.

 

Izuku gritted his teeth. He was falling behind.

 

For the next five minutes, it was a frustrating, grueling slog. Izuku was forced to pull his punches. Every time he swung Mjolnir, he had to calculate the trajectory, the backswing, and the potential shrapnel. He couldn't throw it, because if he missed, the hammer would punch through three buildings before stopping.

 

He managed to physically smash a few two-pointers and a three-pointer, using the hammer like a dense club rather than a magical artifact.

 

"Thirty-two points," Izuku panted, wiping sweat from his brow. "Is that enough? I don't know the cutoff!"

 

Suddenly, the ground began to shake.

 

It wasn't a minor tremor. It was an earthquake. The asphalt beneath Izuku’s boots cracked.

 

At the end of the main street, the buildings were suddenly ripped apart. A colossal, mechanical monstrosity towered over the mock city. It was the size of a skyscraper, rolling forward on massive tank treads.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

"Less than two minutes remaining!"

 

Panic erupted. The examinees screamed, turning and fleeing in the opposite direction. It was a force of nature. There was no fighting it. Present Mic had said to run, and they were running.

 

Izuku turned to run as well. He knew his limits. If he hit that thing with raw physical force, he'd only dent a tread.

 

But as he turned, he heard a sound that froze the blood in his veins.

 

"Ow... it hurts."

 

Izuku snapped his head back.

 

There, fifty yards away, directly in the path of the colossal robot’s crushing treads, was the girl from the entrance. Uraraka. Her leg was pinned under a massive slab of concrete rubble that had fallen from a destroyed building. She was trapped, struggling frantically, but she couldn't move.

 

The shadow of the Zero Pointer fell over her.

 

The other students were still running. Nobody looked back.

 

Izuku’s heart hammered in his chest. His breath caught in his throat.

 

She's going to die.

 

The rational part of his brain—the part that had trained for ten months, the part that calculated recoil and momentum and collateral damage—screamed at him. You can't use the lightning! You haven't practiced a blast that big! The recoil will shatter your bones! The voltage will fry your nervous system! Your vessel isn't ready!

 

But then, he remembered the rooftop. He remembered All Might’s skeletal form. He remembered the Sludge Villain.

 

A hero, Izuku thought, his eyes narrowing, is someone who smashes through every obstacle, even their own limits, to save a life.

 

Izuku Midoriya stopped running away.

 

He turned around. He planted his feet into the cracked asphalt.

 

He gripped the leather hilt of Mjolnir with both hands. He didn't lock his emotions down. He let them out. He let the terror, the desperation, and the absolute, unwavering will to protect the girl flood into the metal.

 

The response was immediate and terrifying.

 

The blue runes on the side of the hammer didn't just glow; they erupted in blinding, brilliant white light. The air pressure in the mock city instantly plummeted. The sky above Battle Center B, previously clear, violently churned into a localized maelstrom of black thunderclouds.

 

The fleeing students stopped, looking up in horror at the sky.

 

In the observation room, the Pro Hero teachers gasped.

 

"What the hell is that?!" Midnight yelled, pointing at the monitors.

 

"Atmospheric pressure is dropping!" Snipe shouted. "Is that a student's Quirk?!"

 

Aizawa Shota stared intensely at the screen, his tired eyes wide. "No... that's not a normal Quirk."

 

Down in the city, Izuku felt the power surging into his arms. It was too much. It was way too much. The skin on his forearms began to blister, the flesh turning an angry, glowing red as the sheer voltage of the gathering storm channeled through his mortal body.

 

He didn't care.

 

"HEY!" Izuku roared, his voice magically amplified, echoing like thunder across the ruined city.

 

The massive optical sensor of the Zero Pointer shifted downward, locking onto the tiny human standing in the street.

 

Izuku swung the hammer in a rapid circle, generating a vortex of wind that lifted him off his feet.

 

With a deafening battle cry, he launched himself straight up into the air, flying on a collision course with the robot's face.

 

As he reached the apex of his flight, level with the mechanical titan’s glowing red eye, Izuku pulled the hammer back over his head. He looked up into the black storm clouds.

 

GIVE ME EVERYTHING! he screamed in his mind.

 

The sky answered.

 

A colossal pillar of blue-white lightning, thicker than a redwood tree, struck from the clouds, hitting Mjolnir perfectly.

 

The voltage ripped through Izuku. He screamed in agony, his right arm feeling like it was submerged in molten lava. The bones in his forearm fractured under the kinetic pressure of holding the divine energy.

 

But he didn't let go.

 

He channeled the strike. He swung the hammer down, striking the top of the Zero Pointer’s head.

 

KKKRRR-THOOOOOM!

 

The impact was apocalyptic.

 

The localized lightning strike was channeled entirely into the robotic titan. The EMP blast instantly fried every circuit in a quarter-mile radius. The immense kinetic force of the hammer striking the armor caused the robot’s head to crumple inward like an aluminum can hit by a sledgehammer.

 

The Zero Pointer’s internal core overloaded. The massive machine violently exploded from the inside out, shattering into thousands of burning pieces.

 

The shockwave blew the clouds away, shattering windows in the surrounding mock city and blowing Uraraka and the rubble pinning her safely backward.

 

High in the air, the explosion threw Izuku backward.

 

The divine energy vanished, leaving him mortal once more.

 

The pain was unimaginable. His right arm hung completely useless at his side. The skin was blackened, branching lines of red electrical burns—Lichtenberg figures—scarring their way up his bicep and over his shoulder. The bones in his right wrist and forearm were shattered in multiple places from the recoil.

 

He was falling. Fast.

 

I'm going to hit the ground, Izuku thought in a daze, the wind rushing past his ears. My right arm is broken. I can't throw the hammer to fly.

 

He looked down. He was a hundred feet in the air.

 

He gripped Mjolnir tightly in his uninjured left hand. He couldn't fly, but he could manipulate wind.

 

He waited until he was fifty feet from the ground. With a pained grimace, he swung the hammer downward with his left hand, unleashing a localized burst of wind pressure against the street below.

 

The opposing force slowed his descent drastically, but not completely.

 

He hit the ground hard, tumbling and skidding across the asphalt until he came to a stop near the smoldering wreckage of the Zero Pointer.

 

He lay there on his back, staring up at the clear blue sky, his chest heaving, his right arm radiating blinding pain.

 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic’s voice echoed across the silent city.

 

Izuku let his head fall back against the concrete.

 

I didn't get any more points, he thought, tears of pain and frustration prickling his eyes. I broke my arm. I failed.

 

He heard footsteps rushing toward him. He saw the faces of other students peering over him in awe and terror. He saw Uraraka, limping over, tears in her eyes, looking at him like he was a god who had just descended from the heavens.

 

But as the darkness of unconsciousness crept in at the edges of his vision, Izuku didn't feel like a god.

 

He felt like a hero.

 

The heavy, cream-colored envelope bearing the U.A. High School crest sat on the Midoriya family’s cheap dining table like an unexploded bomb.

 

For an hour, Izuku could only stare at it. His right arm, heavily bound in layers of compression bandages and a thick medical sling, throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache that synced perfectly with his racing heart. Beneath the gauze, the skin of his forearm was a canvas of deep, branching purplish-red scars—Lichtenberg figures. The permanent, fractal burns of a mortal body that had dared to channel the unfiltered wrath of the sky.

 

Recovery Girl’s Quirk had healed the shattered bones in seconds, knitting the radius and ulna back together at the cost of immense stamina, but even she couldn't erase the electrical burns. “Your body is a circuit board, son,” she had scolded him, tapping his uninjured leg with her syringe-cane. “You pushed ten million volts through wiring meant for a flashlight. You’re lucky you still have the arm at all.”

 

Izuku knew she was right. He had failed the entrance exam. He had secured zero villain points. The robot he destroyed was the Zero Pointer—an obstacle worth nothing. He had shattered his arm, terrified the other examinees, and undoubtedly proven to the U.A. staff that he was a liability who couldn't control his own power.

 

"Izuku?" his mother’s trembling voice broke the silence. Inko stood in the doorway of the kitchen, nervously wiping her hands on her apron. "Are you... are you going to open it?"

 

Izuku swallowed the dry lump in his throat. He reached out with his left hand, his fingers brushing the wax seal. "Yeah. I should just get it over with."

 

He tore the top of the envelope. Instead of a letter, a small, metallic disc slid out, clattering onto the wooden table. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the disc whirred to life, projecting a crisp, three-dimensional hologram into the air.

 

Izuku gasped.

 

"I AM HERE as a projection!" the booming, larger-than-life voice of All Might echoed in the small apartment. The Number One Hero, in his muscular form, pointed dramatically at the camera. "Young Midoriya! I know it has been a few days since the exam! I apologize for the delay, but I had to finalize some paperwork regarding my new position as a teacher here at U.A.!"

 

Izuku leaned forward, his green eyes wide. All Might was a teacher?

 

"You passed the written exam with flying colors," All Might continued, his holographic image shifting to show a scoreboard. "However, in the practical exam, you scored exactly zero villain points."

 

The words hit Izuku like a physical blow. He bowed his head, staring at the grain of the wooden table. He had known. But hearing it out loud, from his mentor, crushed him.

 

"But!" All Might’s voice suddenly softened, losing the booming theatricality. The hologram shifted again, this time displaying footage from a security camera in the mock city. It showed a brown-haired girl with permanent blush—Uraraka—marching into the judges' room.

 

“Excuse me!” the recorded Uraraka pleaded, bowing deeply to Present Mic. “The boy with the green hair and the... the hammer! He saved me! He lost all his time trying to protect me. Can I give him some of my points? Please!”

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. She had gone to bat for him. A girl he barely knew.

 

"A hero course that rejects those who do the right thing is no hero course at all!" All Might declared proudly. The scoreboard appeared again. "We have another metric! Rescue Points! A panel of judges evaluates the actions of every student. Izuku Midoriya, for risking your life—and your limb—to save a fellow examinee against an insurmountable threat, you have been awarded sixty Rescue Points!"

 

The scoreboard updated. Izuku’s name rocketed past dozens of others, settling comfortably near the top.

 

"You passed, young Midoriya," All Might smiled, his blue eyes seeming to pierce right through the hologram. "Welcome to your Hero Academia."

 

Izuku didn't realize he was crying until a tear fell onto the metallic disc, distorting the hologram. He slumped forward, burying his face in his left arm, his shoulders shaking with violent, relieved sobs. He had done it. Against all the odds, against the decree of biology and society, he had made it.

 

 

 

Two Weeks Later: The First Day of U.A.

 

Izuku stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at his reflection. He was wearing the standard U.A. uniform—a gray blazer, white shirt, and red tie. It fit his new, muscular frame snugly.

 

He unbuttoned the cuff of his right sleeve and rolled it up, exposing the Lichtenberg scars. They crawled from his wrist, over his bicep, and vanished over his shoulder. They didn't hurt anymore, but they were a stark, permanent reminder.

 

I am not a god, Izuku told his reflection, his expression hardening. I am a vessel. If I let my emotions consume me, the hammer will shatter the vessel.

 

He rolled the sleeve down and buttoned it. He stepped out of the bathroom and walked over to his bed.

 

Resting on the mattress was Mjolnir.

 

Thanks to Detective Tsukauchi’s intervention and Dr. Sato’s forged medical documents, Mjolnir was officially registered as a "Support Item" necessary for Izuku to channel his "Electromagnetic Accumulation Quirk." It was a brilliant, necessary lie to keep the government and villains from descending upon him. The school board had approved it, though with a strict warning that he was responsible for any damage the heavy item caused.

 

Izuku had spent the last two weeks visiting a specialized blacksmith in the city to modify his uniform. He picked up a custom-made, heavy-duty leather belt reinforced with steel threading, featuring a solid steel loop resting on his right hip.

 

He grabbed Mjolnir by the leather handle. The familiar, comforting hum of ancient energy vibrated against his palm, greeting him like an old friend. He slid the handle through the steel loop on his belt, securing the heavy rectangular head against his hip. To anyone else, it would be an agonizing forty-two pounds of dead weight pulling their pants down. To Izuku, it weighed nothing. It simply felt like an anchor, grounding him to the earth.

 

"Izuku! You're going to be late!" Inko called from the kitchen.

 

"Coming, Mom!"

 

 

 

The hallways of U.A. High School were cavernous, designed to accommodate students with gigantism or mutation Quirks. Izuku navigated the maze of corridors, the gentle thud-thud of Mjolnir tapping lightly against his thigh with every step.

 

He finally found a massive door with the designation 1-A painted in bold red letters.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. This is it. The starting line.

 

He slid the massive door open.

 

"Remove your foot from that desk immediately! It is highly disrespectful to the upperclassmen who sat there before us, and to the craftsmen who made it!"

 

The loud, commanding voice belonged to a tall boy with glasses and dark blue hair, the same boy who had chastised Izuku at the orientation. He was chopping the air rigidly with his hand.

 

"Hah?! What do you care, Four-Eyes?" a terrifyingly familiar, gravelly voice snapped back. "What junior high did you go to, you extra?!"

 

Izuku’s stomach dropped. Sitting at a desk near the front, leaning back with his feet propped up, was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Izuku froze in the doorway. He had known, logically, that Bakugo would be in the hero course. But seeing him here made the reality sink in.

 

Bakugo turned his head. His crimson eyes locked onto Izuku standing in the doorway. The casual arrogance on Bakugo’s face instantly vanished, replaced by a visceral, twisted snarl of absolute fury.

 

The entire classroom seemed to go quiet as the explosive blonde slowly lowered his feet from the desk. He stood up.

 

"Deku," Bakugo growled. The word was laced with venom.

 

Izuku stood his ground. He didn't shrink away. He rested his right hand casually on the head of Mjolnir at his hip. "Good morning, Kacchan."

 

Bakugo kicked his chair back, storming toward the front of the room. The other students watched in tense silence.

 

"How the hell did you get in here?" Bakugo demanded, stopping inches from Izuku’s face. Tiny sparks of nitroglycerin popped off his palms, smelling of burnt sugar and sulfur. "You scored zero points in the practical. I checked the damn boards. And yet, here you are. Wearing that uniform."

 

"I got Rescue Points," Izuku said calmly, refusing to break eye contact.

 

"Rescue Points?" Bakugo sneered, his eyes darting down to the hammer resting on Izuku’s hip. His jaw twitched. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you? Playing the helpless, quirkless loser for ten years. Letting me kick the crap out of you. Making me look like an idiot."

 

Izuku frowned. "What are you talking about?"

 

"Don't play dumb with me!" Bakugo roared, grabbing Izuku by the collar of his blazer. "The sludge villain! The giant robot! You've had a weather Quirk this whole damn time! You hid it from me! You looked down on me for a decade, hiding your power, just waiting to show me up!"

 

"Hey! Unhand him!" the boy with glasses shouted, rushing over. "Such violent behavior is unbecoming of a U.A. student!"

 

Izuku held up his left hand, stopping the boy. He looked back at Bakugo. He understood now. Bakugo’s entire worldview was predicated on his own absolute superiority. The idea that Izuku had suddenly gained a power greater than his own was impossible for Bakugo to compute. The only logical explanation in Bakugo’s mind was that Izuku had been lying to him since childhood.

 

"I didn't lie to you, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice quiet, but carrying a heavy, undeniable firmness. "I was quirkless. I am quirkless."

 

"Then what the hell is that?!" Bakugo shouted, pointing a trembling, furious finger at the hammer. "You brought down a localized thunderstorm on the Zero Pointer! You broke the sound barrier! You call that quirkless?!"

 

"It took you eight seconds to quiet down."

 

A new, monotone voice cut through the tension like a rusted blade.

 

Everyone froze. Bakugo slowly released Izuku’s collar, turning toward the hallway.

 

Lying on the floor, wrapped entirely in a bright yellow sleeping bag, was a haggard-looking man with messy black hair and heavy bags under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like an exhausted caterpillar.

 

"Time is a precious resource," the man said, unzipping the sleeping bag and stepping out. He was wearing an all-black jumpsuit and a strange, loose scarf wrapped multiple times around his neck. "You lot aren't rational enough."

 

Izuku’s mind raced. He's a teacher? He looks so tired. Wait, that scarf... the goggles hidden underneath... Eraserhead? The Underground Hero!

 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa," the man grunted, confirming Izuku’s suspicion. Aizawa reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white P.E. uniforms. "It's sudden, but put these on and go out to the athletic field."

 

"What about the entrance ceremony?" Uraraka asked, having quietly walked up behind Izuku. "And orientation?"

 

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

 

Aizawa stopped and glanced over his shoulder, his dark eyes locking onto Izuku. More specifically, they locked onto the hammer hanging from Izuku’s belt.

 

"Midoriya."

 

Izuku stiffened. "Yes, sir?"

 

"The principal approved your Support Item. I read the file. A focus point for your electromagnetic buildup," Aizawa said, his voice laced with heavy skepticism. "If it slows you down, or if you use it as a crutch, you will fail. Take it to the field. Let's see if this 'tool' is worth the exemption."

 

Izuku gripped the leather hilt. "Yes, sir."

 

 

 

The sun beat down on the sprawling, immaculate dirt of the U.A. athletic field. The twenty students of Class 1-A stood in a cluster, wearing their blue P.E. uniforms. Izuku had threaded his custom belt over his uniform pants, Mjolnir hanging steadily at his side.

 

Aizawa stood before them with a digital pitch-recording device in his hand.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" the class echoed in unison.

 

"Exactly," Aizawa said, his eyes scanning the students like a predator calculating which of its prey was the weakest. "In junior high, you did physical fitness tests where you weren't allowed to use your Quirks. It's an irrational system. The Ministry of Education is procrastinating. Bakugo, you finished first in the practical exam, didn't you?"

 

Bakugo scowled, crossing his arms. "Yeah."

 

"In junior high, what was your best result for the softball throw?"

 

"Sixty-seven meters."

 

"Try doing it with your Quirk," Aizawa instructed, tossing a baseball to Bakugo. "Do whatever you want, just don't leave the circle."

 

Bakugo stepped into the white chalk circle. He stretched his arms, a feral grin spreading across his face. He wound up, his right palm sparking violently.

 

"DIIIIEEEEE!" Bakugo roared, unleashing a massive, concussive explosion right behind the ball.

 

The blast sent a shockwave of hot air over the students. The ball rocketed into the sky, leaving a trail of black smoke. Aizawa held up the digital device. It beeped.

 

"Know your own maximum first," Aizawa said, turning the screen to the class.

 

705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted into excited chatter.

 

"705 meters?! Are you kidding me?!"

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

"Awesome!"

 

Aizawa’s expression darkened. The atmosphere instantly shifted, the temperature seemingly dropping ten degrees.

 

"Fun, huh?" Aizawa muttered, glaring at the teenagers. "You have three years to become heroes. Are you going to have an attitude of 'fun' the whole time?"

 

He smiled, but it was a terrifying, feral expression. "Alright. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential, and will be punished with expulsion."

 

"Expulsion?!" Uraraka cried out. "But it's the first day! Even if it wasn't, that's totally unfair!"

 

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, and selfish villains," Aizawa droned, turning to face her. "Calamities whose time and place cannot be predicted. Japan is covered with unfairness. Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you wanted to go talk to your friends at a cafe after school, too bad. For the next three years, U.A. will inflict hardship after hardship on you. Go Plus Ultra. Overcome it with all you've got."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. His grip on Mjolnir tightened.

 

Expulsion.

 

He had fought too hard for this. He had broken his own body for this. He couldn't go home on the first day.

 

But a cold dread settled in his stomach. Eight physical tests. He couldn't use the lightning—it would fry the recording equipment, destroy the field, and likely hospitalize the students around him. Mjolnir was a weapon of mass destruction, not a fine-tuned instrument for a track-and-field meet. He had to rely almost entirely on the physical conditioning All Might had put him through, and only use the hammer's raw kinetic weight when absolutely necessary.

 

"Test 1: 50-Meter Dash."

 

Izuku lined up at the starting line alongside a boy with a frog-like mutation and a boy with engines in his calves—Iida.

 

I can't throw the hammer and fly, Izuku thought, his mind racing as a robotic camera hovered nearby. If I take off at Mach 1, the wind pressure alone will blow Iida and the others off the track. I have to run.

 

"On your marks... Get set..."

 

BANG!

 

Izuku exploded off the line. Ten months of dragging rusted trucks through the sand of Dagobah Beach had turned his leg muscles into coiled steel springs. He dug his boots into the dirt, pumping his arms, Mjolnir secured tightly to his hip so it wouldn't swing and throw off his balance.

 

He crossed the finish line in a blur.

 

"5.80 seconds," the robotic voice announced.

 

Izuku panted, putting his hands on his knees. It was incredibly fast for a normal human—faster than his middle school records by a massive margin—but he watched as Iida crossed the line in 3.04 seconds using his engines, and Bakugo blasted himself across in 4.13 seconds.

 

He was holding back, and it was costing him.

 

"Test 2: Grip Strength."

 

Izuku stood next to a towering boy with multiple arms, Shoji. Izuku held the digital grip-meter in his left hand. He squeezed. His bicep bulged, veins popping on his forearm.

 

The machine beeped. 82 kg.

 

It was strong. Very strong. But he looked over to see Shoji score a monstrous 540 kg.

 

"Test 3: Standing Long Jump."

 

Izuku watched as a boy fired a laser from his navel to fly across the sandbox, and Bakugo used his explosions to clear the pit entirely.

 

It was Izuku's turn. He stood at the edge of the sand. I have to use it. Just a little. A controlled burst.

 

Izuku unclipped Mjolnir. He gripped it tightly in his right hand, ignoring the faint twinge in his scarred skin. He bent his knees. He didn't summon a storm. He just commanded a tiny, concentrated burst of wind.

 

He swung the hammer downward behind him, jumping at the exact same moment.

 

FWOOSH!

 

The burst of wind propelled him forward, launching him high over the sandbox. But the control wasn't perfect. Without the heavy, aerodynamic momentum of a full throw, the localized wind was jerky. Izuku overshot the sand entirely, flailing in the air, and crashed hard into the dirt track, rolling several times before coming to a painful stop.

 

"Ouch," Izuku groaned, rubbing his shoulder. He had cleared the pit, but his landing was a disaster.

 

From the sidelines, Aizawa watched through half-lidded eyes, jotting notes on his clipboard. He has immense physical strength, but he's treating that Support Item like a live grenade. He's terrified of it. He’s hesitating. If he can't use his tool without hurting himself or losing control, his potential is zero.

 

As the tests continued—repeated side steps, seated toe-touch, distance run—Izuku found himself solidly in the middle of the pack. His physical fitness was peak human, but against Quirks specifically adapted for these tasks, he was struggling to stand out.

 

The dread in his stomach grew heavier. Last place gets expelled. Am I last? No, Mineta did worse on the dash, and Uraraka struggled on the side-steps. But it's close. Too close.

 

"Test 5: Softball Throw."

 

This was it. The equalizer.

 

Izuku watched as Uraraka stepped into the circle. She tapped the ball, removing its gravity, and threw it. It sailed into the sky forever.

 

"Infinity," Aizawa announced, showing the screen. The class cheered.

 

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

 

The chatter died down. Every eye in the class turned to Izuku. Bakugo glared at him from the back of the group, small wisps of smoke rising from his clenched fists.

 

Izuku walked slowly toward the white chalk circle. Mjolnir felt incredibly heavy against his hip, not in physical mass, but in the psychological weight of what it represented.

 

He stepped into the circle. Aizawa handed him the ball.

 

This is it, Izuku thought, his heart pounding in his ears. This is a pure demonstration of power. I have to throw this ball as far as I can.

 

He looked down at his right arm. The Lichtenberg scars were stark against his pale skin. He remembered the blinding agony of channeling the lightning during the entrance exam. He remembered the sound of his own bones snapping.

 

If I summon the lightning to blast the ball... I might break my arm again. Aizawa said that using a tool that breaks your own body makes you a liability. I can't be a liability on the first day.

 

Izuku unclipped Mjolnir with his left hand, transferring it to his right. He gripped the leather hilt tightly.

 

No lightning. No storms. Just raw, unadulterated kinetic force.

 

Mjolnir was virtually indestructible and carried infinite mass when Izuku willed it to. If he swung it like a bat and hit the ball, the kinetic transfer would be astronomical.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He tossed the softball into the air with his left hand.

 

He stepped back, planting his feet firmly into the dirt. He raised Mjolnir behind his right shoulder, winding up his waist. His muscles coiled, preparing to unleash a brutal, perfectly timed swing to hit the ball mid-air.

 

From the edge of the circle, Shota Aizawa watched intently.

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. He had read Midoriya’s file. Electromagnetic buildup channeled through a dense metal Support Item. During the entrance exam, Aizawa had watched the footage of this boy summoning a storm that shattered a Zero Pointer, completely breaking his own arm in the process.

 

He’s going to do it again, Aizawa concluded, a cold, professional anger flaring in his chest. He hasn't learned a thing. He's going to overload his tool, break his arm to get a high score, and expect someone to fix him. That is the pinnacle of irrationality.

 

As Izuku’s arm began to snap forward, Aizawa activated his Quirk.

 

His long, black scarf rose into the air, floating like an anti-gravity serpent. His dark eyes snapped open, glowing a furious, brilliant red. He stared directly at Izuku Midoriya, finding his center of gravity, and forcefully erased his Quirk factor.

 

Your power is gone, kid, Aizawa thought. Let's see you try to break your arm now.

 

Inside the circle, Izuku didn't feel a thing.

 

He had no Quirk factor for Aizawa to erase. He was a biologically normal human wielding an alien, cosmic artifact forged in the heart of a dying star.

 

Izuku’s eyes locked onto the falling softball. He tightened his grip on Mjolnir. He channeled his physical strength, enhanced by ten months of hellish labor, and swung the hammer forward with everything he had.

 

The dark, square head of the hammer connected with the leather surface of the softball perfectly.

 

KRRR-ACK!

 

The sound was not that of a bat hitting a ball. It was the deafening, bone-rattling crack of a sonic boom.

 

The sheer kinetic force of a perfectly dense, infinitely heavy object moving at supersonic speeds transferred entirely into the small, squishy mass of the softball.

 

The ball didn't just fly; it violently ruptured the air around it. A massive shockwave of wind erupted from the point of impact, blowing outward in a violent ring. The dirt beneath Izuku’s feet was instantly blasted away, carving a crater into the chalk circle.

 

The other students screamed, throwing their arms over their faces as the gale-force wind hit them, nearly knocking Mineta and Jirou off their feet.

 

The softball vanished. It didn't arc. It simply ceased to be visible, leaving behind a white-hot vapor trail that pierced straight through the lower atmosphere, ascending at an impossibly vertical angle into the stratosphere.

 

Izuku followed through on his swing, coming to a halt. His right arm throbbed slightly from the muscular exertion, but the bones were perfectly intact. No lightning. No burns. Just a perfect, devastating kinetic strike.

 

He exhaled slowly, lowering Mjolnir.

 

Silence descended upon the athletic field. The wind died down. The dust settled.

 

Izuku turned around to look at his teacher.

 

Shota Aizawa stood frozen. His hair was still floating. His eyes were still glowing a furious red. He looked at Izuku, then slowly looked down at his digital recording device.

 

The device was vibrating, the numbers climbing at an absurd rate before finally freezing.

 

Aizawa turned the screen toward the class. His hand was trembling slightly.

 

3,402.6 meters.

 

"Three... three kilometers?!" Kaminari gasped, his jaw dropping.

 

"He hit it so hard it broke the sound barrier!" Iida yelled, frantically adjusting his glasses as if they were malfunctioning. "The physical density required to transfer that much kinetic energy without shattering the bat... it defies physics!"

 

Aizawa blinked. His glowing red eyes faded to black, and his floating hair fell limply to his shoulders. He stared at Izuku, a look of profound, deeply unsettled confusion on his usually apathetic face.

 

He looked at Izuku’s right arm. It wasn't broken. It wasn't burned. The boy was perfectly fine.

 

But that wasn't what was bothering Aizawa.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice dangerously low. He took a slow, deliberate step toward the boy. "What did you just do?"

 

Izuku blinked, taken aback. "I... I hit the ball, sir. I didn't want to use my... my energy... because I didn't want to break my arm like at the entrance exam. So I just used the physical weight of the hammer."

 

Aizawa stopped three feet from Izuku. He leaned in, his dark eyes boring into Izuku’s soul.

 

"I used my Quirk on you, Midoriya," Aizawa said softly, so the rest of the class couldn't hear. "My Quirk erases the Quirk factor of anyone I look at. I looked at you. I erased your Quirk. Your 'Electromagnetic Accumulation' should have been nullified. And yet, you just swung a piece of metal with enough force to launch a ball three kilometers. The physics of that are impossible without a strength-enhancement Quirk, or a localized gravity manipulation Quirk."

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "So, I will ask you again. Why didn't my Erasure work on you?"

 

Izuku’s blood ran cold.

 

He erased my Quirk? Izuku realized. But I don't have a Quirk. That means... he knows. He knows the file is a lie.

 

Izuku looked into Aizawa’s intense, uncompromising eyes. This was the Underground Hero. A man who lived in the shadows, who relied on logic and truth to survive against villains. If Izuku lied to him now, Aizawa would see right through it.

 

Izuku made a split-second decision. He was going to trust his teacher.

 

"Because, sir," Izuku whispered back, his voice steady. "I don't have a Quirk."

 

Aizawa’s eyes widened a fraction of a millimeter. It was the most emotion he had shown all day.

 

Izuku slowly unhooked Mjolnir from his belt. He held it up by the leather strap, presenting the dark, rune-covered metal to his teacher.

 

"My file says I use a Support Item to channel an electromagnetic Quirk," Izuku explained quietly. "That was a lie created by the principal, the police, and the museum registry to protect me. I am Quirkless. The power doesn't come from my biology, Mr. Aizawa. It comes from the weapon. The hammer is the source of the lightning, the wind, and the strength. It chose me."

 

Aizawa stared at the hammer. He looked at the faint, ancient runes etched into the metal. His logical brain screamed that this was a fairy tale. That magic didn't exist. But he was a man of evidence. He had looked at the boy, erased his genetics, and the boy had still shattered the sound barrier.

 

The logic dictated the impossible: The boy was telling the truth.

 

Aizawa let out a long, slow breath, rubbing his temples as if a massive migraine had just blossomed behind his eyes.

 

"A magical artifact," Aizawa muttered, sounding profoundly exhausted. "The principal allowed a quirkless teenager to bring a mythical weapon of mass destruction into my classroom, disguised as a Support Item."

 

"I can control it, sir," Izuku pleaded earnestly. "I trained for ten months just to build a body capable of swinging it without killing myself. I know my limits now. That's why I didn't use the lightning today."

 

Aizawa looked at Izuku. He saw the Lichtenberg scars peeking out from under the P.E. sleeve. He saw the sheer, unyielding determination in the kid's green eyes. The boy wasn't arrogant. He was terrified of his own tool, yet brave enough to wield it rationally.

 

"A loophole," Aizawa finally said, his voice returning to its normal, flat drawl. "You bypassed my Quirk, and the school's regulations, on a technicality."

 

Aizawa turned around, facing the rest of the class.

 

"Listen closely, Midoriya," Aizawa said, loud enough for only Izuku to hear. "I don't care if that hammer is a Quirk, a Support Item, or a gift from the heavens. In the field, villains won't care either. If you rely entirely on an external object for your power, what happens if you drop it? What happens if a villain separates you from it? If you are nothing without that hammer, you are not fit to be a hero."

 

Izuku nodded firmly. "I understand, sir. I won't let it become a crutch. I am the hero. This is just my tool."

 

Aizawa smirked slightly, though he quickly hid it in his scarf. "Good answer. Rejoin the class."

 

Izuku turned to walk back to the group. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. He had passed the test. He hadn't broken his arm. And his teacher, while terrifying, was rational.

 

"DEKU!"

 

The roar was primal, filled with a rage so absolute it sent shivers down Izuku’s spine.

 

Izuku whipped around.

 

Katsuki Bakugo was charging at him like a rabid animal. His face was contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. Massive explosions crackled in both his palms, kicking up dirt as he propelled himself forward.

 

Bakugo had watched the whole thing. He had seen the shockwave. He had seen the three-kilometer score. And in Bakugo’s mind, the fragile reality he had clung to had finally shattered. Deku wasn't just hiding a Quirk; he was mocking him. He was using a fraction of his power to beat Bakugo effortlessly.

 

"TELL ME HOW YOU DID THAT!" Bakugo screamed, raising a sparkling hand, aiming directly for Izuku’s face. "WHAT KIND OF TRICK IS THIS?! YOU QUIRKLESS NOBODY!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't cower like he would have ten months ago. His right hand casually drifted down to the hilt of Mjolnir, his thumb resting over the leather loop. If Kacchan attacked, Izuku would parry.

 

But he didn't have to.

 

Suddenly, thick bands of gray cloth wrapped tightly around Bakugo’s torso and arms, binding him like a mummy. Bakugo was yanked backward, his feet leaving the ground, stopping inches before his explosions could reach Izuku.

 

"What the...?! This cloth is stiff!" Bakugo grunted, struggling violently against the bindings.

 

Aizawa stood ten feet away, holding the end of the capture weapon. His hair was floating again, and his red eyes were glaring holes into the back of Bakugo’s head.

 

"They're weapons for capture made of carbon fibers woven with metal wire made of a special alloy," Aizawa said coldly. "Stand down, Bakugo."

 

"Let me go!" Bakugo roared, trying to ignite his palms, but nothing happened. "My Quirk! I can't use it!"

 

"That's because I'm erasing it," Aizawa said. "I have a dry eye, so stop making me use my Quirk so much. It's annoying."

 

Aizawa blinked, his hair dropping. He yanked the capture weapon, spinning Bakugo around and releasing him. Bakugo stumbled, catching himself, breathing heavily. He glared at Izuku with a hatred so profound it felt physical, but he didn't attack again. He knew he couldn't beat the teacher.

 

"We're wasting time," Aizawa sighed, rolling up his scarf. "Whoever is next, get in the circle."

 

 

 

The rest of the tests went by in a blur. Izuku’s massive score on the ball throw comfortably elevated his overall average.

 

When the final results were projected onto the holographic screen, Izuku scanned the list.

 

1. Momo Yaoyorozu

2. Shoto Todoroki

3. Katsuki Bakugo

...

9. Izuku Midoriya

...

20. Minoru Mineta

 

Izuku let out a massive sigh of relief. He was safe. He was right in the middle.

 

Mineta, however, dropped to his knees, bawling his eyes out. "I'm going to be expelled! I didn't even get to see the girls' locker room!"

 

"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion," Aizawa said casually, turning off the projection device.

 

The entire class froze.

 

"It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your Quirks," Aizawa smiled, a wide, terrifying grin.

 

"WHAT?!" the class shrieked.

 

"Of course it was a lie," Yaoyorozu sighed, shaking her head. "It was quite obvious if you just thought it through."

 

Izuku chuckled nervously. Rational deception. Right. That was terrifying.

 

"With that, we're done here," Aizawa said, turning to walk away. "There are handouts with the syllabus and such in the classroom. When you get back, look them over."

 

As Aizawa walked past Izuku, he paused for a fraction of a second.

 

"You managed to use your tool without breaking your body today, Midoriya," Aizawa muttered quietly. "Keep that up. But remember what I said. Don't drop it."

 

"I won't, Mr. Aizawa," Izuku promised, gripping Mjolnir.

 

As the class began to walk back to the locker rooms, Uraraka and Iida flanked Izuku.

 

"Midoriya, that throw was incredible!" Iida chopped the air enthusiastically. "Three kilometers! You truly possess an extraordinary Quirk!"

 

"Yeah, Deku, you were so cool!" Uraraka beamed.

 

Izuku blinked. "Deku? Why did you call me that?"

 

"Oh!" Uraraka blushed. "During the fitness test, that angry guy with the explosions called you 'Deku'. I thought that was your name!"

 

"It's... it's an insult," Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, glancing over at Bakugo, who was stalking away furiously. "Kacchan uses it to mean 'someone who can't do anything'."

 

"Really?" Uraraka tilted her head. "I didn't know! I'm sorry! But, you know, when I hear 'Deku', it sounds like the Japanese word for 'You can do it!' It has a really inspiring vibe!"

 

Izuku stopped walking.

 

For ten years, that name had been a chain around his neck. A constant, verbal reminder of his inadequacy. A brand of worthlessness.

 

But now? He had stood on a beach and hauled iron. He had looked an immovable artifact in the face and lifted it. He had summoned lightning to save a life. He had launched a ball into the stratosphere.

 

He wasn't useless anymore. He was worthy.

 

Izuku looked at Uraraka, a bright, genuine smile spreading across his face.

 

"I like it," Izuku said firmly. "You can call me Deku."

 

He adjusted his custom belt, the weight of Mjolnir resting comfortably against his side. The vessel was forged. The power was his. The path was set.

 

Izuku Midoriya—Deku—was finally a hero in training.