What if Deku saved Touya in Sekoto Peak by travelling back in time

 

The sky above the ruins of Japan was not a sky at all. It was a bruised, bleeding canvas of red and black, choked by ash and the sheer, oppressive weight of unleashed Quirks.

 

Izuku Midoriya, the ninth wielder of One For All, stood at the epicenter of the apocalypse. His breathing came in ragged, wet gasps. Blood dripped from his brow, stinging his eyes, but he couldn’t afford to blink. He couldn't afford to even flinch. Before him stood Tomura Shigaraki, or whatever horrific amalgamation of Shigaraki and All For One currently puppeteered the decaying body.

 

The battlefield was unrecognizable as a city. It was a cratered wasteland, glassed by intense heat and shattered by seismic impacts. Izuku’s body was pushed entirely beyond its limits. He was running at one hundred and twenty percent, his muscles tearing and knitting together in a continuous, agonizing cycle. The shimmering energy of Fa Jin wrapped around his legs, while the ethereal black tendrils of Blackwhip anchored his shattered left arm to his torso. Danger Sense was a continuous, deafening siren in his skull, so loud and constant that it had faded into a blinding migraine.

 

"It ends here, Midoriya Izuku!" the demon with Shigaraki’s face roared, his voice a distorted, overlapping cacophony of a hundred stolen Quirks.

 

A mass of grotesque, swelling flesh erupted from the villain's back, forming a twisted network of arms, mouths, and glowing red energy nodes. The air around the villain began to warp, bending like heat waves on asphalt. It was a culmination attack, a desperate, final strike combining Spatial Distortion, Kinetic Accumulation, and a bastardized fragment of Rewind that All For One had harvested from the Shie Hassaikai remnants.

 

Izuku didn't step back. He couldn't. Behind him were the exhausted, battered bodies of his friends. Katsuki, Shoto, Ochaco. If he fell, the world fell with him.

 

Within the infinite, star-swept void of his mind, the Vestiges of One For All stood at his back. He could feel the comforting hand of Nana Shimura on his shoulder, the steadfast presence of the First, Yoichi Shigaraki.

 

We are with you, Ninth, Yoichi’s voice echoed, resonant and calm despite the end of the world bearing down on them. Everything we are, everything we have been... give it to him.

 

Izuku gritted his teeth, feeling the gears of reality lock into place as he activated the Second User's Quirk: Gearshift. The world around him slowed to an agonizing crawl. The dust motes hanging in the air froze. The grotesque wave of annihilation expanding from Shigaraki crept forward inch by microscopic inch.

 

"Detroit..." Izuku whispered, the sound torn from his bleeding throat. He planted his foot, feeling the bedrock shatter beneath his iron-clad soles. He drew upon every drop of power in his soul, every memory, every sacrifice. "...Smash!"

 

He launched himself forward, a comet of prismatic lightning.

 

His fist connected with the epicenter of Shigaraki's spatial attack.

 

The sound was not an explosion. It was the sickening crack of reality fracturing. For a fraction of a millisecond, the unstoppable force of One For All met the immovable, reality-bending singularity of All For One's ultimate attack.

 

Then, the world shattered like a mirror.

 

There was no heat, no cold, no pain. There was only a blinding, violent kaleidoscope of colors and a sensation of falling that made Izuku’s stomach invert. Danger Sense didn't just spike; it short-circuited. The temporal energy of the bastardized Rewind Quirk, mixed with the spatial distortion and the raw, unadulterated mass of One For All, created a localized tear in the fabric of existence.

 

Izuku saw flashes of things that had been, things that were, and things that could be. He saw All Might smiling in his prime. He saw Shoto crying over a frozen battlefield. He saw a blue flame consuming a mountain. He saw a white-haired child weeping.

 

Hold on! a voice screamed—maybe his own, maybe a vestige's.

 

Blackwhip lashed out instinctively, trying to grapple onto the very fabric of time, but there was nothing to hold. Izuku tumbled backward, breathless, weightless, consumed by an ocean of blinding, soundless white light.

 

Then, he hit the ground. Hard.

 

 

 

The first thing Izuku registered was the smell.

 

It wasn't the metallic tang of blood, nor the sickeningly sweet scent of decaying flesh that had haunted the battlefields of the final war. It was pine. Fresh, crisp pine, damp earth, and the faint, nostalgic scent of a mountain winter.

 

The second thing he registered was the silence. The deafening roar of decay, the explosions, the screaming—all of it was gone. Only the soft rustling of wind through branches and the distant, rhythmic chirping of crickets met his ears.

 

Izuku bolted upright, a strangled gasp tearing from his throat. He immediately dropped into a defensive stance, One For All sparking to life at forty-five percent. Emerald lightning crackled violently around his body, illuminating the darkness.

 

He was in a forest. Tall, ancient cedar and pine trees loomed over him like silent sentinels. The ground was blanketed in a thick layer of dead needles and moss. Above, through the canopy, the night sky was clear and littered with stars. It was pristine. Untouched.

 

"Where..." Izuku rasped, his voice sounding entirely too young, too clear. He coughed, expecting the familiar, agonizing burn of ash in his lungs, but inhaled only cool, clean air.

 

He looked down at his hands. He was still wearing his hero costume—Costume Zeta, the heavily armored, battle-worn suit he had worn into the final war. Gran Torino's tattered yellow cape was wrapped securely around his shoulders, and the metal bracers built to support his ruined arms were locked in place.

 

But as he pulled off his right gauntlet, his breath hitched. The jagged, lightning-bolt scars that ran up his arm—the permanent souvenirs of his battles with Muscular and Shigaraki—were still there. Yet, the muscles beneath felt different. The deep, aching fatigue that had settled into his bones over the last year of continuous warfare was gone. He felt... rested. He felt light.

 

Vestiges? Izuku called out in his mind, closing his eyes.

 

Silence greeted him. For a terrifying second, he thought he had lost them. But then, a faint, fuzzy sensation brushed against his consciousness. It was like trying to tune a radio that was just out of range. He could feel their presence—all eight of them—but they were dormant, locked behind a heavy mental fog. Whatever had happened in that clash of Quirks had exhausted the Vestiges, forcing them into a state of hibernation to protect his core.

 

He was alone, but he still had their Quirks.

 

Suddenly, a sharp, piercing pain stabbed directly into the center of his forehead. Danger Sense.

 

Izuku flinched, clutching his head. The quirk wasn't reacting to immediate malice aimed at him. It was a different frequency. Over the years, Izuku had learned to interpret the nuances of the Fourth User's Quirk. This wasn't the cold, calculated intent of a villain like Overhaul, nor the overwhelming, chaotic hatred of Shigaraki.

 

This was raw, unadulterated tragedy. It was the sensation of a life ending. It was panic, despair, and an uncontrollable, catastrophic force.

 

And it was close.

 

Izuku snapped his head up, his eyes scanning the treeline. The smell of pine suddenly shifted, layered with the acrid, stinging odor of smoke. Not normal smoke. The air felt unnaturally dry, the humidity being violently sapped from the atmosphere.

 

Through a break in the trees, Izuku looked up toward the summit of the mountain he had landed on.

 

His emerald eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.

 

Illuminating the night sky was a glow. But it wasn't the warm orange and red of a forest fire. It was blue. A brilliant, terrifying, incandescent cobalt blue that burned so brightly it cast long, eerie shadows through the forest. The flames licked the sky, roaring with a sound like a jet engine, devouring the peak of the mountain with an unnatural, hungry ferocity.

 

Blue fire.

 

Izuku’s mind, a brilliant tactical machine honed by years of analyzing Quirks and heroes, snapped the pieces together with horrifying speed.

 

He was on a mountain.

There was a catastrophic forest fire.

The flames were blue.

 

"I used to go up to Sekoto Peak... to train. I thought if I pushed myself hard enough, he would look at me again. But my flames... they were too hot. I couldn't stop them."

 

The voice of Dabi—no, Touya Todoroki—echoed in Izuku's memory, pulled from the chaotic confessions broadcasted to the world during the war, and from the agonizing conversations Izuku had shared with Shoto in the dorms.

 

Sekoto Peak. The winter Touya Todoroki burned to death.

 

"No," Izuku whispered, the blood draining from his face. "No, it's not possible."

 

Time travel was a theoretical impossibility. Even with Rewind, Eri could only revert a specific biological body to a previous state. She couldn't rewind the world itself. But a localized spatial distortion colliding with accumulated kinetic energy and a hijacked temporal quirk? What kind of rift had they torn open?

 

Izuku didn't have time to ponder the theoretical physics of his existence. The Danger Sense in his skull throbbed so violently he tasted blood.

 

Someone is dying up there right now.

 

A thirteen-year-old boy was burning alive, screaming for a father who would not come, his body slowly being reduced to a charred jawbone that would shatter his family and eventually set Japan on fire a decade later.

 

"I won't let it happen," Izuku snarled, his voice trembling with a ferocious, desperate resolve. "Not again!"

 

Red veins of power erupted across his skin. Emerald lightning exploded outward, vaporizing the moisture in the air around him. The ground beneath his feet cratered as he engaged One For All at fifty percent. He didn't care about stealth. He didn't care about the consequences of altering the timeline. If there was someone crying out for help in front of him, he was going to save them. That was what made a hero.

 

Izuku shot into the canopy like a railgun projectile.

 

He moved faster than the human eye could track, a blur of green light tearing up the side of the mountain. He used the trees as springboards, bounding from trunk to branch, shattering heavy timber with the sheer force of his leaps. Blackwhip tore from his arms, lashing onto distant branches to pull him forward in massive, pendulum-like swings, propelling him up the steep incline.

 

As he ascended, the temperature skyrocketed. The cool winter air was violently replaced by an oppressive, suffocating heat that made the inside of his lungs feel like they were blistering. The smell of burning pine was completely overwhelmed by the scent of ozone and something sickeningly sweet—burning flesh.

 

Faster! Izuku commanded himself. He engaged Fa Jin, feeling the kinetic energy pool in his thighs. He released it in one explosive burst, launching himself over the final ridge and into the heart of the inferno.

 

He landed in a crouch, and the sheer heat of the environment instantly seared his exposed skin.

 

Izuku gasped, throwing his arms up to shield his face. The clearing at the top of Sekoto Peak was a vision of hell. The trees were entirely engulfed in towering pillars of cobalt fire. The ground itself was cracking, the rocks glowing red hot beneath the assault of the blue flames. The heat was so intense that the air rippled and warped, making it difficult to see.

 

But Izuku didn't need to see clearly to spot the source.

 

In the dead center of the clearing, surrounded by a maelstrom of blue fire, was a small, fragile figure.

 

Touya Todoroki.

 

He was so small. Only thirteen, yet he looked even younger as he thrashed on his knees. His red hair, which would one day turn stark white from Marie Antoinette syndrome and the sheer trauma of this night, was currently being singed and darkened by the heat. His clothes were already gone, burned away to nothing.

 

The fire was erupting directly from his body. It wasn't a controlled release; it was a geyser, a violent, unstoppable expulsion of energy. His body, inherited from his mother, was built to withstand freezing temperatures, not the hellfire he had inherited from his father. The flames were literally cooking him from the inside out.

 

"DAD!" The scream that tore from Touya's throat was the most agonizing sound Izuku had ever heard. It wasn't the hateful, cynical rasp of the villain Dabi. It was the terrified, desperate wail of a child who just wanted his father to look at him, to save him, to tell him he was good enough. "DAD! IT HURTS! PLEASE! I'M SORRY! I'LL BE GOOD!"

 

Tears streamed down Touya's face, but they evaporated into steam before they could even fall from his chin. His skin was blistering, blackening, and peeling away in horrifying patches, revealing raw, red muscle beneath that was immediately scorched by the blue fire.

 

Izuku’s heart shattered. He had seen the aftermath of this abuse. He had fought the monster that this boy would become. But seeing the genesis—seeing a child torturing himself to death just for a shred of validation from a man who had abandoned him—ignited a fury in Izuku's chest that rivaled the flames around him.

 

"I'm here!" Izuku roared, though his voice was swallowed by the roaring inferno.

 

He took a step forward, but the heat was a physical wall. Even at fifty percent of One For All, the ambient temperature was enough to start melting the soles of Izuku’s iron boots. His skin blistered, a stark reminder that while he had immense power, his body was still human.

 

He couldn't just walk in there and pick the boy up. Touya's flames were burning at over two thousand degrees Celsius. If Izuku touched him, they would both burn. Furthermore, Touya was in a state of absolute hysteria. His Quirk was out of control, fueled by his panic. To stop the fire, Izuku had to extinguish it and incapacitate the boy immediately.

 

Izuku’s mind raced, processing thousands of variables a second.

 

Water? No, evaporating too fast, and the steam explosion would flay his remaining skin. Sand? Too slow to gather.

 

He needed to cut off the oxygen. He needed to smother the flame instantly while insulating Touya from his own heat.

 

Smokescreen. Blackwhip.

 

"Hang on, Touya!" Izuku shouted, dropping into a sprinter's stance.

 

He activated the Sixth User's Quirk. Thick, heavy, violet smoke erupted from Izuku's body in a massive, dense cloud. But he didn't just let it billow out wildly. He used his precise control, compressing the smoke, making it incredibly dense—a localized, oxygen-starved atmosphere.

 

Simultaneously, six thick tendrils of Blackwhip burst from his forearms. He channeled One For All directly into the tendrils, not to make them strike harder, but to reinforce their structural integrity, creating an energy barrier around the dark energy constructs to protect them from the immediate heat.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He took a deep breath of clean air, held it, and dove directly into the pillar of blue fire.

 

The heat was absolute agony. It felt as though he had jumped into a pool of magma. His costume, despite its thermal resistance, began to smoke and char instantly. The exposed skin on his face and arms felt like it was being stripped away. His eyes watered, and his vision swam, but he kept his gaze locked on the screaming child in the center.

 

"I've got you!" Izuku bellowed, projecting his voice through the roar of the flames.

 

Touya didn't hear him. He was completely lost in his own agony, his hands clawing at his burning face, the blue flames surging higher.

 

Izuku released the compressed Smokescreen. The dense, violet gas exploded outward, violently displacing the oxygen in a ten-meter radius. The blue flames, starved of their fuel, instantly choked, sputtering and shrinking back.

 

In that split second of suppression, Izuku struck.

 

The six tendrils of Blackwhip shot forward, wrapping around Touya’s wrists, his torso, and his ankles. Izuku didn't pull tight—he knew the boy's skin was already compromised, and applying pressure would peel it right off his muscles. Instead, he formed a cage, lifting the thrashing, burning boy into the air, away from the superheated ground.

 

With Touya suspended, Izuku unleashed the rest of the Smokescreen directly onto the boy's body. The violet smoke wrapped around Touya like a thick blanket.

 

Without oxygen, the fire could not burn.

 

The blue flames flickered, fought desperately for air, and then, with a sharp hiss, they died.

 

The sudden absence of the roaring fire left a ringing silence in the clearing, broken only by the crackling of the burning trees around them and the wet, ragged sobbing of the boy suspended in the air.

 

Izuku didn't stop moving. He engaged Fa Jin and leaped backward, pulling the Blackwhip cage with him, launching them both out of the superheated epicenter and into the cooler, unburned section of the forest on the lower slope of the mountain.

 

They crashed into the snow and damp earth. Izuku rolled, absorbing the impact, immediately retracting Blackwhip as gently as he could.

 

He scrambled to his knees, ignoring the agonizing burns covering his own arms and face, and rushed to Touya’s side.

 

The boy was in a horrific state. The lower half of his face, his chest, and his arms were a mess of third-degree burns. The skin was charred black and cracked, weeping blood and clear fluid. The smell was enough to make a lesser man vomit, but Izuku had held dying heroes in his arms. He had seen the absolute worst of humanity. He pushed his own horror down, letting his medical training and crisis management take over.

 

Touya was convulsing, his eyes rolled back in his head. He was slipping into hypovolemic shock. His body had lost too much fluid, and the pain was overloading his nervous system.

 

"Hey. Hey, look at me," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady, adopting the same gentle, commanding tone All Might used when rescuing civilians.

 

He shrugged off his tattered, fire-resistant yellow cape—Gran Torino’s cape—and carefully draped it over Touya. He didn't wrap him tightly, knowing the fabric would stick to the wounds, but he needed to retain the boy's body heat now that the fire was gone and the freezing winter air was rushing in.

 

Touya’s brilliant blue eyes—so much like Shoto’s, yet so fundamentally broken—flickered down to look at Izuku. The boy’s lips, cracked and bleeding, moved, but no sound came out. He was looking at Izuku with sheer terror, expecting this strange, green-haired figure to finish him off, or worse, drag him back to his father.

 

"You're safe," Izuku said firmly, looking directly into those terrified eyes. "The fire is out. You're going to be okay. I promise you, I will not let you die here."

 

Touya stared at him, a tear cutting a clean line through the soot and ash on his unburned cheek. Then, his eyes rolled back, and he went entirely limp, blessedly passing out from the pain.

 

Izuku checked his pulse. It was thready, incredibly fast, and weak. He had minutes, maybe an hour at most, before the boy's organs started shutting down from the trauma.

 

He needed to get him to a hospital.

 

Izuku moved to scoop the boy up, taking extreme care to support his neck and avoid the worst of the burns on his torso. But as he stood, a sharp, cold spike of malice drilled into the base of his skull.

 

Danger Sense.

 

It wasn't the tragedy of the fire this time. This was directed, focused intent. It was cold, clinical, and utterly devoid of humanity.

 

Izuku froze, his emerald eyes darting to the shadows of the forest below.

 

Someone is watching.

 

Izuku remembered the files from the war. The HPSC and the police had investigated Touya Todoroki's death extensively. They found only a piece of his jawbone. For years, everyone believed he had burned to ash. But Dabi had revealed the truth during his broadcast.

 

“I fell into the river. I woke up three years later in a facility run by a madman.”

 

Dr. Garaki. All For One's loyal servant. The creator of the Nomu.

 

Garaki had eyes everywhere. He actively hunted for children with powerful Quirks who slipped through the cracks of society, children broken by the system or by their families, to turn them into vessels or experiments. Garaki must have been monitoring the Todoroki household, waiting for a chance to snatch Endeavor's failed masterpiece.

 

If Izuku took Touya to a hospital right now, what would happen?

 

Endeavor would be called. The Pro Hero would arrive, see the broken, burned husk of his son, and what then? Would he learn his lesson? No. The Endeavor of this era was still consumed by his obsession with surpassing All Might. He would likely lock Touya away in a specialized ward, hiding his greatest failure from the public eye, pushing Rei further into madness, and continuing his brutal training of Shoto.

 

Or worse, Garaki’s agents would intercept the ambulance. They would steal the boy, put him in a coma for three years, staple his decaying flesh together, and warp his mind until he became the mass murderer known as Dabi.

 

Izuku looked down at the fragile, broken boy in his arms.

 

If I take him back, he dies. Either his body dies in a lab, or his soul dies in that house.

 

Izuku made a choice. It was a choice that would irreparably fracture the timeline, destroying the history he knew. But looking at the burns on the boy's skin, Izuku knew he couldn't play by the rules of time travel. He couldn't preserve a timeline built on the ashes of a child.

 

"I'm sorry, Shoto," Izuku whispered to the night sky, thinking of his best friend in the future. "I'm going to change your past. But I promise... I'll give you your brother back."

 

Izuku shifted his grip on Touya, holding the boy securely against his chest. He flared One For All to thirty percent, keeping the output low to minimize the wind pressure that could further hurt the boy.

 

He didn't run toward the city lights of Musutafu. He turned his back on civilization, bounding deep into the untamed wilderness of the mountain range, moving like a phantom through the trees.

 

Behind him, the blue flames on Sekoto Peak slowly began to die out, leaving nothing but scorched earth and a mystery that would consume Endeavor for the rest of his life.

 

The clock of the world had been violently rewound, but Izuku Midoriya was already writing a new future.

 

 

 

Two Hours Later - Abandoned Industrial Sector, Saitama Prefecture

 

The wind howled through the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse, rattling the corrugated iron roof. The space was immense, filled with rusted machinery and forgotten shipping crates, blanketed in a thick layer of dust. To anyone else, it was a derelict ruin. To Izuku, it was salvation.

 

During his vigilante days—the dark period he spent hunting All For One's assassins alongside All Might and the top Pro Heroes—Izuku had memorized the locations of dozens of underground safehouses and villain caches. This particular warehouse had belonged to a black-market medical supplier tied to the Yakuza, long before Overhaul took power. In Izuku’s timeline, it was raided by Mirko five years from now. Tonight, it was untouched.

 

Izuku kicked the heavy steel door open, carrying Touya’s limp body inside.

 

He quickly scanned the area, his night vision excellent thanks to the residual ambient light and the faint glow of One For All. He found the hidden sub-level exactly where the police reports said it would be. He tore the padlock off the heavy iron hatch with a flick of his finger and descended into the dark.

 

He flicked a switch. A row of flickering fluorescent lights buzzed to life, revealing a fully sterile, heavily stocked underground trauma bay. There were surgical tables, IV stands, refrigerators full of blood and medicine, and cabinets packed with bandages and burn salves. It was a criminal chop-shop, designed to patch up villains who couldn't go to normal hospitals.

 

Izuku moved with frantic precision. He laid Touya gently onto the stainless steel examination table, immediately wincing at the way the boy’s burned skin stuck slightly to the metal.

 

"Okay. Okay, think. What did Recovery Girl do? What did the doctors do for Shoto?" Izuku muttered to himself, his hands flying over the cabinets.

 

He found a pair of trauma shears and carefully cut away the remains of Touya’s charred clothing, leaving only what was melted into the skin, knowing pulling it off now would cause massive hemorrhaging. He grabbed bags of saline solution, rigged up an IV pole, and, with steady hands forged by tying tourniquets in active warzones, found an unburned vein in Touya’s upper arm and inserted the needle. He needed to flood the boy's system with fluids to combat the hypovolemia.

 

Next came the pain management. Izuku found vials of high-grade morphine. He calculated the dosage for a severely underweight thirteen-year-old and injected it into the IV line.

 

"That should keep you under while I clean this," Izuku breathed, wiping a mixture of sweat and soot from his own brow.

 

He spent the next three hours in a state of hyper-focused medical triage. He used sterile saline to gently wash the soot and ash from Touya’s burns. The damage was catastrophic. The tear ducts were likely damaged, the lips were burned away, and the dermal layer on his chest was entirely gone. Izuku applied thick layers of silver sulfadiazine cream—a heavy-duty burn ointment he found in the Yakuza stash—over the worst of the wounds.

 

He worked methodically, wrapping the boy in sterile gauze, making sure not to wrap too tightly, allowing for swelling. He monitored Touya’s breathing, which remained shallow but steady.

 

By the time he was finished, Touya looked like a mummy, wrapped in white bandages from his jawline down to his waist, and up both arms to the shoulders. Only his nose, his closed eyes, and his red hair remained visible.

 

Izuku stepped back, his legs finally giving out. He slumped against a metal cabinet, sliding down to the cold concrete floor.

 

The adrenaline that had sustained him for the last... however many hours, finally crashed. The sheer reality of his situation crashed down upon him like a physical weight.

 

He was in the past.

 

He looked down at his own hands. They were trembling. The burns on his own arms and face throbbed with a dull, vicious ache, but he ignored them. He had a rapid-healing factor thanks to his enhanced stamina, though the scars would likely remain.

 

He pulled his knees to his chest, resting his forehead on his arms.

 

Mom. Uraraka. Iida. Kacchan. All Might.

 

A lump formed in his throat, thick and suffocating. He had won the war, or at least, he had landed the final blow. But he had been torn away from his home, from his family, from everyone he loved. They would think he was dead. Or maybe, if the timeline worked like a branching path, they would live on in a world without him.

 

A single tear slipped down Izuku's soot-stained cheek, leaving a clean trail in the grime.

 

He allowed himself to cry. He cried for the friends he lost, for the world he left behind, and for the sheer, terrifying isolation of being a time-traveler stranded a decade in the past. He wept silently in the cold, sterile basement of a villain's safehouse, the only sound the steady drip-drip-drip of the saline IV.

 

But as he cried, his eyes drifted back up to the boy on the table.

 

Touya Todoroki. The boy who was supposed to die tonight. The boy who was supposed to murder thirty Pro Heroes and incinerate a city. The boy who was supposed to break Shoto’s heart.

 

He was breathing. He was alive.

 

Izuku wiped his eyes with the back of his scarred hand. He took a deep, shuddering breath, locking his grief away in a small, quiet box in his mind. He couldn't afford to fall apart. Not now. He was the Ninth wielder of One For All. He was the Symbol of Hope, even if this world didn't know it yet.

 

He stood up, his joints popping, and walked over to the examination table. He pulled up a metal stool and sat beside the unconscious boy.

 

"You're going to wake up soon," Izuku whispered softly, resting his hand gently over Touya’s unburned forehead, feeling the faint, feverish warmth of life beneath his palm. "And when you do, everything is going to be different. I won't let you become a monster. I won't let him hurt you anymore."

 

Izuku leaned back in the chair, his emerald eyes hardening with a resolute, unbreakable steel.

 

"I'm going to save you, Touya. And then... I'm going to save everyone else."

 

Above them, the sun slowly began to rise over the city of Musutafu, casting the first golden rays of a new timeline across the sky. The clock had been rewound, and the hands had already begun to tick in a completely different direction.

 

 

 

Four Days Later

 

The pain was the first thing to return.

 

It wasn't a sharp, localized pain. It was a suffocating, all-encompassing agony that felt as though he were encased in molten lead. Every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of fire washing over his chest, his arms, his neck.

 

Touya Todoroki tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt heavy, encrusted with sleep and something sticky. He forced them open, his vision blurry and swimming with harsh, artificial white light.

 

He tried to inhale deeply, to scream, but his throat was drier than sand. He choked, a pathetic, raspy wheeze escaping his lips.

 

Where am I?

 

The memories hit him like a physical blow. The mountain. The wind. The absolute desperation as he pushed his Quirk harder, hotter, trying to create a fire so bright, so magnificent, that his father would have no choice but to look at him.

 

And then... he lost control. The fire didn't stop. It consumed him. He remembered screaming for his father. He remembered the smell of his own flesh cooking.

 

I died, Touya thought, panic seizing his chest, causing his heart rate monitor—wait, he was hooked to a monitor?—to spike loudly in the quiet room. I burned to death. Dad didn't come.

 

"Hey. Don't move too fast. Your skin needs time to knit together."

 

The voice was young, surprisingly soft, but carried a weight that commanded immediate attention.

 

Touya’s head snapped to the side, a jolt of fresh agony shooting up his neck.

 

Sitting in a metal chair beside his bed was a teenager. He looked maybe sixteen or seventeen. He had a mop of unruly, dark green hair and piercing emerald eyes that looked far too old for his face. He was wearing a strange, heavily armored dark green suit, though the sleeves were rolled up, revealing arms covered in jagged, terrifying scars that looked like lightning strikes. The teenager’s face also bore fresh, pink burn marks—marks that looked suspiciously like they came from blue fire.

 

Touya’s breath hitched. He didn't know this guy. He wasn't one of his father’s sidekicks. He wasn't a doctor at the Endeavor Agency.

 

"Who..." Touya rasped, his voice cracking painfully. "Who're you?"

 

The green-haired teen stood up, grabbing a plastic cup of water with a straw. He moved with a strange, fluid grace, a hyper-awareness that made Touya instantly realize this guy was dangerous. A Pro? No, he was too young.

 

"Drink first. Slowly," the teen said, holding the straw to Touya’s lips.

 

Touya was too thirsty to argue. He sucked the water down eagerly, the cool liquid soothing the sandpaper rawness of his throat. He pulled away, panting slightly.

 

He looked down at his own body. He was covered in thick white bandages from the neck down. He couldn't feel his fingers properly.

 

"You're in a safehouse," the teen said, setting the cup down. "You suffered extensive third and fourth-degree burns over forty percent of your body. Your tear ducts are damaged, and the dermal layer on your chest and lower jaw is severely compromised. I've been applying silver sulfadiazine and keeping you hydrated, but it's going to be a long recovery."

 

Touya stared at him, his mind struggling to process the clinical, professional assessment. "You... you saved me?"

 

"Yes."

 

Touya’s eyes widened. Then, the reality of his situation crashed over him. He was alive. He survived the fire. That meant...

 

"My dad," Touya gasped, his chest heaving, the bandages pulling painfully against his skin. "Endeavor. Did you call him? Is he here? He's going to be so mad. He told me not to go to the mountain. He told me I was a failure! If he sees me like this, if he sees that my fire hurt me again, he'll lock me away! He'll only care about Shoto!"

 

Panic seized the young boy. He tried to sit up, his hands scrabbling weakly against the metal table. "Please! Don't let him take me! Don't tell him I'm alive! I'll do anything, just don't tell him!"

 

"Touya. Touya, stop!"

 

The teenager placed a firm, but incredibly gentle hand on Touya’s unburned shoulder, pushing him back down onto the mattress.

 

Touya froze, his eyes wide and terrified. "How... how do you know my name?"

 

The green-haired teen looked down at him. The sheer depth of sorrow and empathy in those emerald eyes made Touya’s breath catch. It was a look no one had ever given him. His mother looked at him with fear. His father looked at him with disappointment. But this stranger looked at him with complete, unwavering understanding.

 

"I know a lot of things, Touya," the teen said quietly. "I know that your body was built for ice, but you inherited a fire hotter than hell. I know that Enji Todoroki pushed you to the brink of insanity to fulfill his own selfish obsession, and then threw you aside when you broke."

 

Touya’s jaw trembled. Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, stinging the burned skin around them, but he couldn't stop them. Hearing a complete stranger validate the agonizing reality of his existence... it broke the dam he had built around his heart.

 

"I know what he did to you," the teen continued, his voice hardening with a quiet, terrifying anger that wasn't directed at Touya, but at the man who broke him. "And I know what happens if you go back there."

 

"Who are you?" Touya whispered, his voice breaking into a sob. "Are you a hero?"

 

Izuku Midoriya looked at the broken, burned boy. He thought of the Hero Public Safety Commission. He thought of the Pro Hero society that turned a blind eye to Endeavor’s abuse because he had a high case-closure rate. He thought of the system that created villains like Dabi.

 

In his timeline, Izuku was the greatest hero in the world. But in this timeline? To protect Touya, to dismantle All For One before he could rise, and to save his friends without the constraints of a corrupt system?

 

Izuku gave the boy a sad, determined smile.

 

"No," Izuku said, crossing his arms, the yellow cape shifting over his shoulders. "I'm not a registered Pro Hero. You can call me Midori. I'm just someone who is going to make sure you never have to step foot in that house again."

 

Touya stared at him, the words ringing in the sterile air of the bunker. Never have to go back.

 

"But... but what am I supposed to do?" Touya cried, the reality of being a runaway hitting him. "I'm broken! My fire hurts me. I can't be a hero! I can't do anything!"

 

"That's a lie," Midori said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. He leaned forward, his green eyes burning with an intensity that rivaled Touya’s own flames. "Your Quirk isn't a curse, Touya. You just haven't been taught how to use it right. You're trying to use fire like your father does. But you aren't him."

 

Touya blinked, stunned into silence.

 

"When you recover," Midori continued, "I am going to train you. I'm going to teach you how to balance your internal temperature. I'm going to teach you how to be stronger than Endeavor ever was. Not for his sake. For yours."

 

Touya looked at the scars on Midori's arms, the burn marks on his face. He looked at the quiet, unshakeable confidence radiating from the older teen. For the first time in his thirteen years of life, Touya didn't feel like a failed experiment. He felt like someone actually saw him.

 

"Why?" Touya whispered, his voice trembling. "Why are you doing this for me?"

 

Izuku reached out, gently ruffling the unburned patch of Touya’s red hair, a gesture of pure, familial comfort that Touya hadn't felt since he was a toddler.

 

"Because saving people who need to be saved," Izuku smiled, the smile of a true Symbol of Peace, "is what heroes do. Now rest. We have a lot of work to do."

 

Touya closed his eyes. The pain was still there, a roaring fire across his skin, but for the first time in his life, the fire inside his chest—the suffocating, desperate need for his father's approval—began to die.

 

In its place, an ember of genuine hope began to glow.

 

He was dead to Enji Todoroki. But here, in the dark, with the Green Ghost watching over him, Touya Todoroki was born again.

 

The rhythmic, electronic hum of the heart monitor was the only sound in the underground bunker, a steady beep-beep-beep that anchored Izuku Midoriya to reality.

 

It had been an hour since Touya had fallen back asleep, succumbed to the heavy cocktail of morphine and sheer physical exhaustion. The thirteen-year-old boy looked so small on the stainless steel examination table, a fragile collection of bones and severe burns wrapped tightly in white gauze.

 

Izuku sat on the metal stool beside him, his elbows resting on his knees, his scarred hands clasped tightly together. He stared at the rising and falling of Touya’s chest. Every breath the boy took was a victory against the timeline. Every heartbeat was a defiance of fate.

 

But the adrenaline of the rescue had entirely evaporated, leaving behind a bone-deep, hollow exhaustion that made Izuku feel like his skeleton was made of lead.

 

He leaned back and closed his eyes, reaching inward, searching for the familiar warmth of his predecessors. Vestiges? Are you there? Nana? First?

 

He felt a faint, sluggish stirring in the void of his mind, like a heart beating at the bottom of a deep, dark ocean. The Vestiges were there, but they were walled off behind an impenetrable mental fog. The sheer amount of energy it had taken to punch through the fabric of time—combining Gearshift, Fa Jin, the localized rewinding spatial distortion of Shigaraki’s attack, and the raw singularity of One For All—had drained the spirits of the past users. They had thrown every ounce of their conscious energy into shielding Izuku’s soul from being ripped apart in the temporal rift. Now, they were hibernating.

 

He still had access to their Quirks. He could feel the coiled tension of Blackwhip in his forearms, the floating weightlessness of Float in his chest, the sharp prickle of Danger Sense in his skull. But the voices, the guidance, the comforting presence of the family he had built in his mind—they were gone. For now, at least.

 

"I'm alone," Izuku whispered to the empty room.

 

The words hung in the sterile air, heavy and terrifying. He was sixteen years old. He was a decade in the past. His mother, Uraraka, Iida, Kacchan, Aizawa—they were all out there, somewhere in this world, but they were younger. They didn't know him. To them, he was a ghost.

 

A lump rose in his throat, thick and suffocating. The urge to break down, to curl into a ball and weep for the world he had lost, was overwhelming. He had fought so hard, sacrificed so much, just to see his friends smile again, only to be ripped away from them at the final second.

 

No, Izuku thought, his jaw clenching. He forced the tears back, channeling his grief into a cold, hardened resolve. I can't afford to fall apart. Not when he needs me.

 

Izuku stood up, his joints popping in protest. He looked down at his own arms. The deep, jagged scars from his battles with Muscular and Shigaraki ached with a phantom pain. His face and hands were mottled with fresh, pink burns from diving into Touya's blue flames. He walked over to a metal cabinet, found a tube of standard burn salve, and methodically applied it to his own skin. He didn't have time to baby his own injuries. His accelerated healing, a byproduct of One For All constantly breaking and rebuilding his body, would handle it in a few days.

 

Right now, he needed to secure their sanctuary.

 

Leaving the med-bay, Izuku walked up the short flight of concrete stairs that led to the main floor of the abandoned warehouse. He pushed the heavy iron hatch open, stepping into the cavernous, shadowy space above.

 

The warehouse was massive, situated in the derelict industrial sector of Saitama Prefecture, a fair distance from Musutafu and the Todoroki estate. Through the shattered skylights, the pale light of the winter moon cast long, eerie shadows over rusted conveyor belts, stacked shipping crates, and forgotten machinery.

 

In Izuku’s timeline, this place had been a heavily guarded staging ground for the Shie Hassaikai and various black-market arms dealers. Pro Hero Mirko had raided it during a massive crackdown when Izuku was in middle school. But right now, a decade earlier, it was a dormant cache, secretly stocked and waiting for criminal elements that hadn't yet moved in.

 

Izuku activated One For All at five percent. The familiar, comforting crackle of emerald lightning wrapped around his body, casting a green glow across the dust-motes dancing in the air. He moved through the warehouse with the silent, lethal grace of a veteran underground hero, checking every corner, every shadow.

 

Danger Sense remained completely silent. They were entirely alone.

 

He found the main office overlooking the warehouse floor. Kicking the rusted door open, he began tearing through the filing cabinets and floorboards. He knew how these syndicates operated; they always left emergency funds. Sure enough, hidden beneath a loose floorboard wrapped in a plastic tarp, Izuku found a steel lockbox. He popped the lock with a flick of his thumb. Inside were several stacks of yen, unregistered burner phones, and a few fake identification cards.

 

"Perfect," Izuku muttered. They had capital. They wouldn't have to starve, and he could buy the specific medical supplies the bunker lacked.

 

Izuku spent the next two hours securing the perimeter. He used heavy machinery to barricade the large rolling bay doors. Then, using Blackwhip, he strung nearly invisible, razor-thin tendrils of dark energy across the windows and secondary entrances. If anyone tried to break in, Blackwhip would instantly alert him, acting as a tripwire tied directly to his nervous system.

 

By the time he finished, the warehouse was a fortress. It was cold, dark, and utterly isolated, but to Izuku, it was a castle. It was a place where Endeavor couldn't reach, and where Dr. Garaki’s vile hands couldn't grab hold.

 

He descended back into the bunker, the heavy iron hatch clanging shut behind him.

 

The real battle was just beginning.

 

 

 

The first two weeks were a blur of absolute, unadulterated hell.

 

Healing from third and fourth-degree burns was not a passive process. It was violent, agonizing, and constantly fraught with the threat of death. Izuku quickly realized that keeping Touya alive required him to step far beyond the boundaries of a hero and into the role of a trauma surgeon—a role he was wholly unqualified for, but forced to adapt to through sheer, desperate necessity.

 

During the war, Izuku had spent months living in the ruins of Japan, fighting alongside Pro Heroes and field medics. He had watched them treat Dabi’s self-inflicted burns. He had helped patch up Shoto. He knew the theory, he knew the medications, but applying it to a screaming thirteen-year-old was a nightmare that tested his sanity.

 

It was day five when the fever hit.

 

Izuku was dozing in the metal chair when the heart monitor’s tempo spiked drastically. He jolted awake, his eyes snapping to the table. Touya was thrashing weakly against the restraints Izuku had been forced to apply to keep the boy from tearing his own skin off in his sleep.

 

Touya’s unburned skin was flushed a violent, angry red. He was panting, his chest heaving, his blue eyes rolled back as a terrifyingly high fever cooked his brain. Infection. The greatest killer of burn victims. The skin was the body’s armor, and Touya’s armor had been burned away, leaving his immune system utterly defenseless against the bacteria of the outside world.

 

"Dammit," Izuku hissed, leaping into action.

 

He grabbed a thermometer, checking the boy's temperature. Forty degrees Celsius. Too high. Way too high.

 

"Dad..." Touya whimpered, thrashing his head from side to side, trapped in a delirious nightmare. "Dad, I'm sorry... look at me... my flames... they're so bright..."

 

Izuku’s heart twisted, a spike of pure hatred for Enji Todoroki flaring in his chest. But he pushed the anger aside. He needed to be cold. He needed to be clinical.

 

He rushed to the medical cabinet, pulling out heavy-duty, broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics. He injected them directly into Touya’s IV line. But he knew the medicine would take hours to work, and the fever was cooking the boy's internal organs right now.

 

He needed to cool him down, but he couldn't use ice baths or cold water, as the shock would kill the boy's compromised circulatory system, and the moisture would breed further bacteria in the open wounds.

 

Izuku grabbed a pair of sterile surgical scissors and began the most agonizing part of the day: the bandage change.

 

"I'm sorry, Touya. I know it hurts. I'm right here," Izuku murmured softly, keeping his voice a low, steady baritone, trying to project the same aura of safety All Might always had.

 

He began to unwrap the gauze from Touya’s chest. The bandages had adhered to the weeping wounds, glued down by dried plasma and blood. Every millimeter Izuku pulled back tore at the fragile, newly forming tissue. Touya screamed—a raw, broken sound that echoed off the concrete walls—his body convulsing in agony.

 

"Hold on, hold on, breathe," Izuku commanded, his own hands trembling.

 

To keep his hands perfectly steady, Izuku activated One For All at exactly one percent. The microscopic hum of power locked his muscles into perfect, immovable precision. He couldn't afford a single slip.

 

Using tweezers and sterile saline, Izuku performed debridement—the excruciating process of peeling away dead, necrotic skin to prevent gangrene from setting in and to allow fresh tissue to grow. He had to scrape away the black, charred flakes of flesh from Touya’s jaw, his shoulders, his chest.

 

Touya sobbed, his delirious mind warping the reality of the bunker. "Stop... please... I'll train harder... Dad, it hurts... why won't you look at me..."

 

"I'm not him," Izuku said fiercely, wiping sweat from his own brow. He leaned over the boy, making sure he was the only thing in Touya’s blurry line of sight. "Look at my eyes, Touya. I'm Midori. I'm right here. You are safe."

 

Through the haze of the fever, Touya’s glazed blue eyes locked onto Izuku’s emerald ones. The pure, unadulterated focus of Izuku’s gaze seemed to pierce through the nightmare. The thrashing lessened, just a fraction.

 

"Midori..." Touya wheezed, blood weeping from his cracked lips.

 

"That's right. I'm here. You're doing so good. You're so strong, Touya," Izuku praised, his voice thick with emotion as he continued to meticulously clean the wounds.

 

Once the dead tissue was removed, Izuku coated the raw, exposed muscle in a thick layer of silver sulfadiazine, the heavy white cream offering a brief, cooling relief to the burning agony. He re-wrapped the chest with fresh, sterile gauze.

 

To break the fever, Izuku stripped off his heavy armored jacket and gloves. He took a clean cloth, soaked it in tepid water, and gently applied it to the unburned sections of Touya’s forehead and neck, carefully avoiding the bandages. He sat beside the boy for twelve straight hours, continually re-wetting the cloth, murmuring stories about a world of heroes to keep the darkness at bay, until the fever finally broke and Touya slipped into a natural, exhausted sleep.

 

When it was over, Izuku collapsed against the wall, sliding to the floor. His hands were covered in Touya’s blood and burn ointment. He looked up at the flickering fluorescent lights, his chest heaving as he fought off a panic attack.

 

He was a hero. He knew how to punch villains. He knew how to smash through concrete. But sitting here, peeling dead skin off a thirteen-year-old boy who cried for the father that destroyed him... it took a toll on Izuku’s soul that no physical battle ever could.

 

I will save him, Izuku vowed silently, staring at the ceiling. If it's the last thing I do in this timeline, I will give this boy his life back.

 

 

 

By the middle of the third week, the most critical danger had passed. Touya was no longer on death's door. The burns were beginning the slow, agonizing process of scarring over, turning from open, weeping wounds into thick, tight, dark purple keloids that pulled uncomfortably at his remaining skin.

 

But as the physical danger receded, the reality of their situation began to set in. Their medical supplies were running dangerously low, and their food—mostly canned rations found in the bunker—was gone.

 

Izuku had to leave.

 

"I'll be back in exactly four hours," Izuku said, standing over Touya’s bed. He was wearing normal clothes—a black hoodie pulled up over his head, and a surgical mask covering the lower half of his face, concealing his own burn scars. He had tucked Gran Torino's cape into his backpack.

 

Touya, who was propped up slightly on a few pillows, watched him with wide, anxious eyes. He was lucid now, the morphine dosage significantly lowered. He looked like a patchwork doll, his face a mix of pale, unburned skin and horrifying, stapled-together scar tissue.

 

"You're... you're coming back, right?" Touya asked, his voice a raspy whisper. His vocal cords had been slightly damaged by the smoke, leaving him with a permanent, gravelly edge that sounded eerily like his future self.

 

"I promise," Izuku said, tapping the edge of the metal table twice. "I've locked the bunker from the outside, and the warehouse is rigged. Nobody can get in. Just rest."

 

Touya nodded slowly, though his fingers clenched the thin bedsheet. The fear of abandonment was deeply ingrained in him. He had been thrown away by his family; it was only a matter of time before this strange, powerful teenager realized he was too much trouble and left him, too.

 

Izuku saw the fear in the boy's eyes. He walked back, reaching into his pocket, and pulled out an old, beat-up MP3 player he had found in the Yakuza stash. He placed it carefully on Touya’s chest and put the earbuds gently into the boy's ears.

 

"There's some old pre-quirk era rock on there," Izuku smiled, his eyes crinkling above his mask. "Listen to the music. Count the songs. By the time you hit fifty, I'll be walking through that door with actual food. Deal?"

 

Touya stared at the small device, his scarred chest tightening with an emotion he didn't quite know how to process. "Deal."

 

Izuku turned and ascended the stairs, disappearing into the warehouse.

 

Stepping out into the city of Musutafu a decade in the past was a surreal, dizzying experience for Izuku.

 

He stood on the roof of a six-story apartment building, looking out over the sprawling metropolis. The sky was clear and blue, untouched by the ash of war. The streets below were bustling with normal people going about their normal lives. Cars honked, children laughed on their way home from school, and giant holographic billboards played advertisements for hero agencies.

 

Dominating the skyline was a massive, glowing billboard of All Might in his prime, flashing his trademark, invincible smile.

 

“I am here! And you are safe!” the billboard blared cheerfully.

 

Izuku felt a physical ache in his chest. It was so bright. It was so peaceful. The Pro Hero society was at the absolute peak of its Golden Age. The crime rate was incredibly low, the streets were pristine, and the public’s faith in heroes was absolute, untarnished by the catastrophic failures that would come ten years later.

 

But Izuku knew the truth. He knew this peace was a fragile, gilded cage. Beneath this shining society, the Hero Public Safety Commission was grooming children into assassins. Endeavor was buying wives and torturing his children to breed a weapon. All For One was lurking in the shadows, amassing Quirks and preparing his masterpiece of decay.

 

I can't save the world right now, Izuku reminded himself, pulling his hood down lower. I have to start with the boy in the bunker.

 

Izuku engaged One For All at twenty percent, leaping from the rooftop. He moved like a ghost, a blur of dark green against the skyline, invisible to the casual observer.

 

His first stop was a black-market pharmacy he remembered raiding during his vigilante days. Using his knowledge of the criminal underworld, he bypassed the front of the shop and dropped into the alleyway behind it. He didn't bother knocking. He kicked the reinforced steel door off its hinges with a single, controlled strike.

 

Inside, three low-level thugs were counting cash. They jumped up, drawing illegal support-gear weapons, but Izuku moved faster than they could track. Blackwhip erupted from his arms, disarming them and pinning them to the walls in less than a second.

 

Izuku didn't say a word. He walked past the terrified thugs, grabbed a duffel bag, and systematically cleared the shelves of high-grade burn ointments, sterile bandages, painkillers, and antibiotics. He dropped a stack of the Yakuza cash he had found on the counter—he wasn't a thief, he was making a mandatory purchase—and vanished out the back door before the thugs could even blink.

 

Next was food. He went to a quiet district and bought high-protein broths, fresh fruit, vitamins, and easily digestible meals. He also bought a few sets of loose, soft cotton clothing that wouldn't irritate Touya’s scars.

 

As he was leaping back across the rooftops toward the industrial sector, Danger Sense suddenly pricked the back of his skull.

 

Izuku skidded to a halt on a water tower, peering down into an alleyway three blocks over. A woman was backed against a wall, clutching her purse, surrounded by three men with mutation Quirks. One of them had a knife drawn.

 

Don't get involved, the logical, time-traveling part of Izuku’s brain warned. You can't leave a footprint here.

 

But Izuku Midoriya’s body moved before his brain could finish the thought.

 

He dropped into the alleyway like a meteor. He didn't use full power—he didn't want to kill them. He used Smokescreen to blind the assailants, followed by a rapid succession of precise, brutal martial arts strikes. He swept the legs of the knife-wielder, dislocated the shoulder of the second, and used Blackwhip to yank the third man head-first into a dumpster.

 

The entire fight lasted four seconds.

 

The woman collapsed to her knees, trembling. "Thank... thank you! Pro Hero, what's your name?"

 

Izuku stood in the dissipating violet smoke, his hood casting a shadow over his face. He didn't answer. He fired Blackwhip to the roof and vanished into the sky.

 

The media would start reporting rumors of a "Green Ghost" within the week. Izuku didn't care. He had a promise to keep.

 

Exactly three hours and forty-five minutes after he left, the heavy iron hatch to the bunker clanged open.

 

Touya flinched, ripping the earbuds out of his ears, his heart pounding. But then Izuku descended the stairs, carrying two massive duffel bags and a plastic bag filled with takeout containers.

 

The older teen pulled off his mask and offered a warm, exhausted smile. "Song forty-seven. I'm early."

 

Touya stared at the bags, and then back up at Izuku. A knot in his chest that he hadn't realized he was holding tightly finally released. He let out a shaky, rattling breath.

 

"You came back," Touya whispered, sounding genuinely shocked.

 

"I told you I would," Izuku said, setting the bags down on a metal table. He opened the takeout bag, and the smell of warm pork broth and noodles filled the sterile air of the bunker. "Now, let's get some actual food in you. Your body needs calories to rebuild."

 

For the first time since Sekoto Peak, Touya Todoroki ate. Izuku had to feed him slowly, lifting the broth to his lips, making sure the heat didn't aggravate the burns around his mouth. It was a slow, messy process, but as the warm food settled in his empty stomach, a sliver of color returned to Touya’s pale cheeks.

 

After they ate, the silence in the bunker felt different. It was no longer the oppressive, sterile silence of a hospital room. It was comfortable. It was the silence of two people who had survived a war and were resting in the trenches.

 

Touya looked down at his bandaged hands, resting on his lap. He flexed his fingers slowly, wincing as the newly formed scar tissue pulled tight over his knuckles.

 

"Midori?" Touya asked, his voice low in the quiet room.

 

"Yeah?" Izuku replied, sorting through the new medical supplies.

 

"Why did my fire do this to me?"

 

The question was heavy, dripping with years of internalized self-hatred and confusion. Touya looked up, his blue eyes begging for an answer that made sense of his suffering. "Dad always said I was a failure. He said my fire was perfect, but my body was trash. That I was a mistake."

 

Izuku stopped what he was doing. He turned around, his expression hardening, not with anger at Touya, but with a profound, deep-seated fury toward the system that taught a child to view himself as a discarded tool.

 

Izuku pulled up his stool and sat directly facing Touya, leaning in close.

 

"Your father," Izuku said, his voice deadly serious, "is a fool. He only views Quirks as weapons to surpass All Might. He looks at you and sees a failed weapon. But Quirks aren't weapons, Touya. They're just physical extensions of our bodies. Like a muscle."

 

Touya frowned, confused. "But my fire burns me."

 

"Because you were taught to use it wrong," Izuku explained, tapping into the extensive research he had done on Dabi’s biology during the war. "Let me explain what your body actually is. You inherited your father's fire... but you didn't inherit his heat resistance. You inherited your mother's constitution."

 

"I know," Touya spat bitterly, looking away. "I'm weak to heat. I have an ice body."

 

"You don't have an 'ice body', Touya. You have a heat-sink body," Izuku corrected sharply, making the boy look back at him in surprise. "Think about it. Your mother's family, the Himura bloodline, they generate ice. To survive generating freezing temperatures, their bodies have to naturally retain heat and aggressively combat cold. Your body is biologically designed to pull temperatures down and insulate."

 

Izuku pointed to Touya’s chest. "When you use your father's fire, you're trying to push the heat outward, like an explosion. But your body is desperately trying to pull the heat inward to protect you from the cold it thinks is coming. You're fighting your own biology. Your fire and your body are engaged in a tug-of-war, and your skin is the rope."

 

Touya’s eyes widened. He had never heard it explained like this. Endeavor had just yelled at him to push past his limits, to ignore the pain. He had never stopped to analyze the mechanics of his own son's genetics.

 

"So... what does that mean?" Touya asked, his breath hitching. "Does that mean I can't use my fire? That I really am useless?"

 

"No," Izuku smiled fiercely. "It means you have the potential to be something completely unique. You don't need to explode your fire outward. If you learn to internally cycle the heat—using your natural resistance to cold to rapidly cool the fire as it leaves your body—you can create a localized, sustained flame that doesn't burn you. In the future, I know a technique... it's called Phosphor."

 

Izuku was referencing the ultimate move Shoto and Dabi had both developed in the final war—the technique that perfectly balanced the freezing and burning sides of their bloodline.

 

"Phosphor..." Touya whispered the word, testing it on his tongue.

 

"You aren't a mistake, Touya," Izuku said softly, reaching out to gently touch the unburned patch of hair on the boy's head. "You are a masterpiece. You just aren't the painting your father wanted to paint. But he doesn't get to hold the brush anymore. You do."

 

A tear slipped from Touya’s eye, trailing down his cheek and soaking into the white bandages covering his face. He didn't wipe it away. For the first time in his life, someone had looked at the fundamental, genetic makeup of his soul, and told him it wasn't trash.

 

"You said you'd train me," Touya said, his voice trembling with a sudden, fierce desperation. "When I get better. You said you'd teach me."

 

"I did," Izuku nodded. "And I will. But you have to promise me something first."

 

Touya looked at him, hanging on his every word.

 

"You have to stop trying to be Endeavor," Izuku said, his emerald eyes boring into Touya’s soul. "You have to stop wanting him to look at you. If you train with me, you train to become a hero for yourself. To save people who are cast aside by society, just like you were. You train to be Bluefire. Not Endeavor's son."

 

Touya stared at the teenager before him. He thought of the mountain. He thought of the agony, the screaming, the absolute certainty that his father would let him burn just because he wasn't perfect.

 

Then he looked at Midori. A stranger with green hair and lightning scars who had walked through hellfire to pull him from the ashes, who had sat with him through fever dreams, who wiped his blood away, and who looked at him like he was worth saving.

 

The obsessive, suffocating love and hatred he held for his father fractured in that moment, shattering into a million pieces. Endeavor was a ghost of a past life.

 

Touya Todoroki sat up slightly, wincing as the bandages pulled, but he didn't stop. He looked Izuku dead in the eye, his own blue eyes burning with a new, colder, far more stable fire.

 

"I promise," Touya swore, his raspy voice echoing in the underground bunker. "I'm not his son anymore. Teach me, Midori. Teach me how to be a hero."

 

Izuku smiled, a genuine, blinding smile that reached all the way to his eyes.

 

"Alright," Izuku said, standing up. "But first, we have to get you walking again. It's going to hurt like hell."

 

 

 

Two Weeks Later

 

"I can't!" Touya screamed, his voice raw with frustration and pain.

 

He was standing in the center of the bunker. He was wearing loose grey sweatpants and a tank top. The bandages were gone, finally removed to reveal the extent of the scarring. His lower jaw, down his neck, across his chest, and down both arms past the elbows were covered in thick, dark purple, stapled-looking keloid scars. The skin was incredibly tight, shiny, and horrifying to look at.

 

But worst of all was the pain of movement.

 

Because the skin had shrunk as it scarred, extending his arms or standing up straight physically tore at the new tissue. It was a suffocating, tearing agony that made every movement feel like he was being stretched on a medieval rack.

 

He was currently trying to take five steps toward Izuku, who stood across the room with his arms crossed.

 

Touya took one step. His right leg dragged. He tried to straighten his back, but the scars on his abdomen pulled tight, sending a sharp, stabbing pain through his torso. He gasped, his knees buckling, and he pitched forward toward the concrete floor.

 

Before he could hit the ground, a tendril of black energy whipped out, wrapping around his waist and gently holding him upright.

 

Izuku walked forward, releasing Blackwhip, and grabbed Touya by the shoulders, supporting his weight.

 

"You can," Izuku said calmly, refusing to let the boy wallow in self-pity. "Your muscles haven't atrophied completely, but the skin is fighting you. You have to force it to stretch. If you don't break the scar tissue now, it will permanently fuse and limit your mobility forever. You have to push through it."

 

"It feels like I'm ripping in half!" Touya sobbed in frustration, leaning heavily against Izuku. He hated being weak. He hated that his body betrayed him at every turn.

 

"I know," Izuku said softly, adjusting his grip. "Look at my arms."

 

Touya, panting heavily, lifted his head and looked at Izuku’s bare arms. He had seen the jagged, lightning-bolt scars before, but he hadn't realized how deeply they ran. They weren't just surface burns; the muscle itself looked as though it had been violently ruptured from the inside out and poorly stitched back together.

 

"I broke my arms... more times than I can count," Izuku said quietly, his eyes distant as he remembered the battles against Muscular, against Overhaul, against Shigaraki. "My Quirk was too strong for my body. Every time I used it, it shattered my bones to dust and tore my muscles to ribbons. The doctors told me if I kept going, I would lose the use of my arms completely. The scar tissue inside my arms was so thick I couldn't even make a fist without screaming."

 

Touya’s eyes widened. He had assumed Midori's scars were from fire, from a villain attack. To hear that Midori's own Quirk destroyed him... it struck a chord so deep within Touya’s soul it made his breath catch.

 

"You... your Quirk did that to you?" Touya whispered. "You're just like me."

 

Izuku looked down at the younger boy and offered a sad smile. "Yeah. I am. I know exactly what it feels like to have a body that hates you for trying to be a hero. I know the pain of forcing broken fingers to bend, of forcing shattered arms to punch."

 

Izuku gently released Touya, stepping back half a pace, forcing the boy to support his own weight.

 

"The pain you feel right now," Izuku said, his voice echoing with the weight of a veteran hero, "is the weakness leaving your body. Every time you step, every time you stretch, you are breaking the chains your father put on you. You have to fight for your own body, Touya. Nobody else can do it for you."

 

Touya looked at his own scarred hands. He flexed them. The skin pulled, screaming in protest, feeling as though it would split open and bleed.

 

But he thought of Midori's arms. He thought of this teenager, who broke himself repeatedly to save others, who walked through fire to pull him from the ashes. Midori didn't let his broken body stop him. He kept fighting.

 

Touya gritted his teeth. A fierce, stubborn pride ignited in his chest. He was a Todoroki. He was built to endure. But he wouldn't endure for Endeavor anymore. He would endure for himself.

 

He forced his back to straighten. The scars on his chest pulled agonizingly tight. He let out a sharp hiss of pain, tears pricking his eyes, but he didn't slouch.

 

He lifted his right foot, forcing his knee to bend against the stiff, scarred skin, and took a step. Then, he took another.

 

He didn't look at the ground. He kept his eyes locked on Midori's emerald gaze, drawing strength from the unwavering belief he saw there.

 

Three steps. Four steps. Five.

 

He crossed the distance and practically collapsed against Izuku's chest. Izuku caught him instantly, wrapping his arms around the boy in a tight, protective hug, careful of the tender skin.

 

"I did it," Touya panted, his voice muffled against Izuku’s shirt, exhaustion radiating from his trembling limbs.

 

"You did," Izuku praised, his hand gently rubbing the back of Touya’s head. "I'm proud of you, Touya. I really am."

 

Hearing those words—I'm proud of you—spoken not as a conditional reward for Quirk training, but simply as a validation of his own perseverance, caused something final to click into place within Touya’s fractured mind.

 

The thirteen-year-old boy closed his eyes, burying his face in the shoulder of the time-traveling hero who had become his entire world.

 

Outside, the winter winds of Musutafu howled, carrying the distant sirens of Pro Heroes and the murmurs of a society standing on the precipice of ruin. But down here, in the shadows of an abandoned bunker, Izuku Midoriya was quietly forging a different kind of weapon. Not a tool of vengeance, but a shield against the darkness to come.

 

The sanctuary was built. The healing had begun. Now, it was time to change the future.

 

The wind howling across the summit of Sekoto Peak was bitter and unyielding, carrying with it the sickening, acrid scent of charred earth and flash-vaporized pine. The snow that normally blanketed the mountain during the winter months was entirely gone, replaced by a massive crater of blackened, glassed rock.

 

Enji Todoroki stood at the epicenter of the destruction, his massive frame completely rigid. The flames that normally wreathed his face and shoulders were extinguished, leaving him looking strangely hollowed out in the pale morning light.

 

Dozens of police officers and fire investigators crawled across the ruined landscape, their faces pale, their voices hushed. The air was heavy with an oppressive, suffocating silence. No one wanted to look directly at the Number Two Pro Hero. No one wanted to be the one to speak.

 

Enji’s turquoise eyes, wide and bloodshot, were locked onto the ground.

 

“Look at me, Dad! I can do it! I can be the one to surpass him!”

 

Touya’s voice echoed in Enji’s ears, a phantom sound that cut through the roaring wind. He remembered the manic desperation in his eldest son’s eyes, the way the boy had tugged at his sleeves, begging for just a fraction of his attention. He remembered slapping the boy, casting him aside, telling him his body was a failure, a mistake of genetics.

 

I just wanted him to stop, Enji thought, his mind scrambling to rationalize the cavernous pit opening in his chest. I wanted him to give up so he wouldn't hurt himself. I told him to play with Natsuo and Fuyumi. I told him to forget about being a hero.

 

But Touya hadn't forgotten. He had come up here, to the place they used to train in secret, and he had pushed his defective body beyond the point of no return.

 

"Endeavor, sir..."

 

Enji slowly turned his head. A police detective stood a few feet away, holding a small, clear evidence bag. The man’s hands were trembling. Inside the plastic bag rested a single, soot-stained fragment of bone. It looked like a piece of a lower jaw.

 

"This... this was found near the center of the blast radius," the detective said, his voice cracking. "The temperature of the fire was... it was unprecedented, sir. Over two thousand degrees. A human body... it wouldn't just burn. It would incinerate. It would turn to ash. This is... this is all we could find."

 

Enji stared at the piece of bone. The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

 

He didn't cry. Crying was for the weak. Crying was for those who couldn't carry the weight of their ambitions. But as he looked at the only remaining physical evidence of his firstborn child, a twisted, jagged shard of pure agony lodged itself directly in Enji's heart.

 

He reached out with a massive, trembling hand and took the plastic bag.

 

My masterpiece, Enji thought, his mind fracturing under the weight of his own hubris. He had the perfect fire. He had the power to burn All Might’s legacy to the ground. If only his body wasn't so fragile. If only Rei's cursed blood hadn't ruined him.

 

In that moment of profound, catastrophic grief, Enji Todoroki did not look inward to find his own faults. He did not blame his relentless ambition, nor his cruel neglect. His ego, a towering fortress of narcissism and obsession, simply could not process the guilt. If he accepted that he had driven his son to suicide, he would shatter.

 

So, he redirected the blame. He blamed the weakness of the Himura bloodline. He blamed the insurmountable, suffocating presence of All Might, which forced him to push his children so hard.

 

Enji crushed the plastic bag in his fist, his expression hardening into a terrifying mask of absolute, unyielding stone. Hellfire violently erupted around his face and shoulders, roaring into the cold mountain air, forcing the detective to stumble backward in terror.

 

"Endeavor-sir?"

 

"Call off the search," Enji ordered, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble devoid of all human emotion. "He is dead."

 

Enji turned his back on the ashes of his son and began the long walk down the mountain.

 

When he arrived back at the traditional, sprawling Todoroki estate, the atmosphere was equivalent to a mausoleum. The servants kept their heads down, terrified.

 

Enji slid open the shoji doors to the main living room.

 

Rei was kneeling on the tatami mats. Her pure white hair was disheveled, her pale eyes wide and utterly vacant. Fuyumi, only twelve, was clutching her mother’s arm, sobbing uncontrollably. Natsuo, just eight, sat in the corner, staring at his father with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred that no child should ever possess.

 

And then there was Shoto. Five years old. His heterochromatic eyes were wide with innocent confusion, his small hands gripping his mother’s kimono.

 

"Enji..." Rei whispered, her voice like cracking ice. "Where is he? Where is my boy?"

 

Enji didn't look at her. He didn't look at Fuyumi or Natsuo. He strode across the room, his heavy footsteps thudding against the floorboards, and stopped directly in front of Shoto.

 

Rei flinched, trying to pull Shoto behind her, but Enji reached down and grabbed the five-year-old by the arm, yanking him to his feet.

 

"Enji, stop!" Rei shrieked, the sound tearing from her throat. "He's just a baby! Touya—"

 

"Touya is gone," Enji barked, his voice echoing through the estate like a thunderclap. The sheer volume silenced the room. "He was weak. His body couldn't handle his own power. He burned to ash because he refused to accept his limitations."

 

Rei covered her mouth, a broken, animalistic wail escaping her lips as she collapsed forward onto the mats. Fuyumi screamed for her brother. Natsuo stood up, his small fists clenched, tears streaming down his face as he glared at his father.

 

Enji ignored them all. He knelt down, bringing his flaming face level with Shoto’s terrified gaze.

 

"Look at me, Shoto," Enji commanded, his grip tightening on the boy's small arm. "Your brother was a failure. But you... you are perfect. You have my fire, and you have her ice to protect you. You are the only one left who can fulfill my ambition. From today on, there is no more playing. There is only training."

 

"Dad... it hurts," Shoto whimpered, trying to pull his arm away.

 

Enji stood up, dragging the boy toward the training dojo in the back of the estate.

 

"Pain is weakness leaving the body," Enji said coldly, locking the door to his heart forever. "You will not end up like Touya. You will surpass him. You will surpass everyone."

 

Behind him, the Todoroki family fractured into a million irreparable pieces. But Enji didn't care. He had his masterpiece.

 

 

 

Miles away, hidden deep beneath the rotting floorboards of an abandoned warehouse, the ghost of Enji Todoroki’s ambition sat in front of a mirror, silently weeping.

 

It had been nearly a month since the fire on Sekoto Peak.

 

Touya Todoroki sat on the edge of the surgical table in the bunker, wearing a loose-fitting black tank top and soft grey sweatpants. The bandages were completely gone now, leaving him fully exposed to his own reflection.

 

Izuku had found a large, standing mirror in the warehouse above and brought it down so Touya could monitor his own physical therapy, to ensure his posture was straight to prevent the scar tissue from contracting. But right now, the mirror was an instrument of psychological torture.

 

Touya stared at the monster in the glass.

 

His face was cleanly divided. The upper half was pale, unblemished, with his striking, vibrant blue eyes and a shock of crimson hair that was slowly beginning to show stark white roots at the base. But from the bridge of his nose down, across his jaw, down his throat, and spreading over his collarbones and chest, the skin was a jagged, horrifying tapestry of deep purple keloids. The skin was unnaturally tight, shiny, and completely devoid of hair follicles or sweat glands.

 

His arms, from the mid-bicep down past his elbows, bore the same horrific scarring. He looked as though someone had forcefully sewn the bottom half of a burned corpse onto the top half of a healthy teenager.

 

"Trash," Touya whispered to the mirror, his raspy voice scraping against his vocal cords.

 

He lifted his right hand. He stared at his palm, focusing on the center. He didn't want to create a massive inferno. He just wanted a spark. A tiny, controlled flame. If he couldn't even do that, then Midori was wrong. He couldn't be a hero. He couldn't be anything.

 

Touya took a deep breath, trying to summon the familiar heat in his gut. He visualized a candle flame. Just a candle flame.

 

He pushed the energy into his palm.

 

FWOOSH.

 

A jet of brilliant, roaring blue fire erupted from his hand, entirely bypassing the small spark he had envisioned. The heat was instantaneous and absolute.

 

Before Touya could even marvel at the flame, a sharp, searing agony ripped through his scarred palm. The damaged skin instantly began to blister and weep under the two-thousand-degree heat.

 

"Ah!" Touya cried out, violently clenching his fist to extinguish the flame. He fell backward off the table, clutching his hand to his chest, hyperventilating as the pain radiated up his arm.

 

He curled into a ball on the cold concrete floor, tears streaming from his eyes, mixing with the soot and sweat on his face.

 

"I can't do it," he sobbed to the empty room, slamming his uninjured fist against the floor. "I can't even make a spark without burning myself! I'm useless! Dad was right! I'm just a defective freak!"

 

The heavy iron hatch at the top of the stairs groaned open.

 

Izuku descended rapidly, dropping a bag of groceries on the floor as he saw Touya curled up on the ground. He was at the boy's side in an instant, his hands glowing faintly with the green energy of One For All as he knelt down.

 

"Touya, what happened?" Izuku asked, his voice tight with concern. He gently pried Touya’s arm away from his chest, inspecting the blistering palm.

 

"I tried," Touya gasped, looking away in shame. "I just wanted to make a small fire. But it just explodes. And it hurts, Midori. It hurts so much. My body hates my Quirk."

 

Izuku sighed, a soft, sad sound. He didn't yell. He didn't scold. He went to the medical cabinet, retrieved a tube of burn cream and some light gauze, and returned to the floor, sitting cross-legged next to the weeping boy.

 

"Give me your hand," Izuku said gently.

 

Touya offered his trembling, blistered hand. Izuku carefully applied the cool cream, his movements practiced and incredibly tender.

 

"You're trying to drive a sports car in first gear while slamming on the gas," Izuku said quietly, his eyes focused on the bandages. "Your fire doesn't have a 'low' setting, Touya. Because of your emotional state and the sheer raw power of your genetics, your flames combust at their absolute maximum temperature the second they hit oxygen."

 

"Then I can't use them," Touya said bitterly. "If I can't control the output, I'll just burn myself to ash again."

 

"I never said you needed to lower the temperature," Izuku corrected, tying off the bandage. He let go of Touya’s hand and met the boy's blue eyes. "I said you need to change how your body handles the heat. Come on. Get up. It's time we had a real talk about Quirk theory."

 

Izuku stood up and offered a hand. Touya hesitated, then took it, letting the older teen pull him to his feet.

 

Izuku walked over to the corner of the bunker and dragged out a large, rolling whiteboard he had scavenged from the warehouse office a few days prior. He grabbed a black dry-erase marker.

 

Touya sat back on the surgical table, wiping his eyes, watching curiously.

 

"Alright," Izuku began, uncapping the marker. "Let's talk about the Todoroki and Himura genetics."

 

He drew a stick figure on the board, coloring the right side red and the left side blue.

 

"This is how your father envisioned his perfect successor. This is how your brother, Shoto, operates. He is a perfect fifty-fifty split. Half-Cold, Half-Hot. His right side generates freezing temperatures, his left side generates extreme heat. They exist independently, separated by a biological meridian line down the center of his body."

 

Izuku drew an arrow between the two halves. "When Shoto uses his fire, his body temperature skyrockets. To prevent heatstroke, he uses his ice side to physically cool his blood down. When he uses his ice, he risks frostbite, so he uses his fire to warm himself up. It's a binary system. Hot and Cold. On and Off."

 

Touya stared at the board, a deep scowl forming on his face at the mention of his younger brother's perfection. "Yeah. Dad’s masterpiece. The perfect thermostat. So what?"

 

Izuku erased the split stick figure and drew a new one. This one, he colored entirely purple.

 

"This is you," Izuku said, tapping the board with the marker. "You are not a binary system, Touya. You are a blended system. You don't have a 'fire side' and an 'ice side.' Your parents' genetics didn't separate inside of you; they crashed into each other and fused."

 

Izuku drew a heart in the center of the figure. "You inherited your father’s fire, but it mutated to be exponentially hotter. Blue fire. But you inherited your mother's constitution—the physical hardware required to survive generating ice. You are a walking contradiction. A nuclear reactor inside a refrigerator."

 

"Which is why the reactor melts the fridge," Touya muttered, looking at his scarred chest.

 

"Exactly," Izuku nodded, his eyes shining with the analytical brilliance that had defined his youth. "When you activate your fire, your body panics. The Himura genetics in your cells say, 'Wait, it's getting hot, we are built for ice!' So, your body tries to pull the heat inward to protect your vital organs, while your Quirk is trying to violently expel the heat outward. You burn because your fire and your body are fighting against each other."

 

Izuku stepped closer to Touya, his expression deadly serious.

 

"To stop burning, you have to stop fighting your mother's blood, Touya. You have to embrace it."

 

Touya flinched, his eyes widening. "Embrace it? I don't have ice! I can't generate frost!"

 

"You don't generate it externally, no," Izuku said, tapping his own chest, right over his heart. "But it's inside you. The capacity for absolute zero is written into your DNA. You just haven't figured out how to turn the key, because your father taught you that your mother's blood was a weakness. He taught you to rely solely on the fire."

 

Izuku grabbed the marker and wrote a single word on the whiteboard in large, bold letters.

 

PHOSPHOR.

 

"Phosphor," Izuku said, the word hanging heavy in the air. "It is the ultimate culmination of your bloodline. It is a technique that doesn't just balance the temperatures... it merges them. To use Phosphor, you must ignite your fire and your latent ice simultaneously."

 

Touya stared at the word, his mind reeling. "How is that even possible?"

 

"Your heart," Izuku said, leaning in. "Your heart is the engine. When you activate your fire, I want you to focus all of your mental energy on your heart. You have to forcefully activate the Himura genetics. You have to freeze your own heart, Touya. You have to turn your heart into a block of solid ice, pumping freezing, sub-zero blood through your veins."

 

Touya’s breath hitched. The very concept sounded suicidal. "Freeze my own heart? Midori, that would kill me! It would stop beating!"

 

"Not if you ignite your fire at the exact same time," Izuku countered, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "The fire on your skin will provide the heat necessary to keep your organs functioning and your blood moving, while the freezing blood pumping from your heart will rapidly cool your skin from the inside out, preventing the blue flames from burning your flesh."

 

Izuku pointed at the board. "Cold blood cooling hot skin. Hot skin warming cold blood. A perfect, closed-loop cycle of perpetual energy. You won't just stop burning, Touya. You will become untouchable. A true god of fire."

 

Touya sat completely frozen. He looked at the whiteboard, then down at his scarred hands, then back up to Izuku.

 

For thirteen years, Enji Todoroki had told him his body was a cage. He had told him the Himura blood was a curse that ruined his potential. But now, this green-haired teenager was standing in front of him, explaining that the very thing his father called a weakness was the key to unlocking unimaginable power.

 

His mother's blood wasn't a curse. It was his salvation.

 

"Can..." Touya swallowed hard, his voice trembling violently. "Can you really teach me how to do that?"

 

"I can," Izuku said softly, dropping the marker and crossing his arms. "But it won't be like your father's training. We aren't going to push you until you vomit. We aren't going to break your bones or burn your skin to 'build tolerance.' That's not how heroes are forged."

 

Izuku walked over and placed both of his scarred hands firmly on Touya’s shoulders.

 

"We are going to start with meditation. We are going to start with breathing. You are going to learn how to listen to your body, instead of screaming at it to obey you. It will take months, maybe years, before you can safely activate Phosphor for more than a few seconds. But I swear to you, Touya, I will not let you walk this path alone. I am your mentor now. And my students do not fail."

 

Touya looked into Izuku’s emerald eyes. There was no deceit there. There was no hidden agenda, no selfish ambition. There was only a profound, unconditional desire to see Touya succeed.

 

A dam broke inside Touya’s chest. The suffocating weight of his father’s expectations, the terror of his own Quirk, the deep-seated belief that he was unlovable—it all shattered.

 

Touya surged forward, wrapping his scarred arms around Izuku’s waist, burying his face in the older teen’s chest, and wept. He didn't cry out of pain or despair. He cried out of sheer, overwhelming relief.

 

Izuku gently wrapped his arms around the boy, resting his chin on Touya’s white and crimson hair. He let the boy cry, knowing that this was the true beginning of his healing. The physical scars would remain, but the rot inside his soul was finally being excised.

 

"I'll do it," Touya sobbed into Izuku's shirt. "I'll do whatever you say, Midori. I want to learn. I want to be Bluefire."

 

"I know," Izuku whispered into the quiet bunker, holding the boy tighter. "You're going to be amazing, Touya."

 

 

 

Two Days Later

 

The wind whipped viciously through Izuku’s hair as he crouched on the edge of a rusting water tower on the outskirts of Saitama Prefecture.

 

He was wearing his vigilante gear—the black hoodie pulled up, the surgical mask covering his lower face, and Gran Torino’s tattered yellow cape billowing like a ghost behind him. Below him, the city was quiet, locked in the deep chill of a Tuesday night.

 

Izuku closed his eyes, extending his senses. He had left Touya sleeping in the bunker, completely exhausted after a grueling three-hour meditation session trying to 'find the ice' in his chest.

 

Izuku needed this patrol. Not just to stretch his legs, but to maintain the perimeter. He had fundamentally altered the timeline by saving Touya. He didn't know how the butterfly effect would ripple outward, but he knew one thing for certain: All For One and Dr. Garaki were always watching.

 

Suddenly, a sharp, cold spike of malice drilled into the base of Izuku’s skull.

 

Danger Sense.

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. It wasn't the chaotic, frantic buzz of a mugging or a street brawl. This feeling was dull, hollow, and utterly devoid of humanity. It felt like standing in a morgue.

 

It was the same feeling he got when fighting the Nomu.

 

Garaki, Izuku thought, his blood running cold.

 

He didn't hesitate. Izuku engaged One For All at thirty percent, launching himself off the water tower. Emerald lightning trailed behind him as he tore through the night sky, using Blackwhip to swing from industrial smokestacks and powerlines, moving with blistering speed toward the source of the anomaly.

 

The signal was pulling him north, out of the city limits, back toward the mountainous region of Musutafu. Back toward Sekoto Peak.

 

Izuku landed silently on the thick branch of a towering cedar tree, about a mile from the blackened summit where Touya had almost died. The air here was still crisp, untouched by the fire above.

 

He peered into the darkness below.

 

Moving through the dense underbrush was a monstrosity. It was roughly seven feet tall, its body a grotesque amalgamation of heavily muscled, greyish-purple flesh. Its arms dragged on the ground, ending in razor-sharp, bone-like claws. But the most horrifying aspect was its head. The top of its skull was entirely exposed, revealing a pulsating, enlarged brain protected only by a thin membrane of translucent tissue. Four dead, milky-white eyes were scattered erratically across its face, devoid of pupils or emotion.

 

It was a low-level Nomu. A prototype scout.

 

The creature was crawling on all fours, dragging its face along the forest floor, sniffing the earth like a bloodhound.

 

It's tracking him, Izuku realized, a surge of protective fury igniting in his chest. Garaki knows Touya’s body wasn't found in the ashes. He sent this thing to track his scent, to find his DNA.

 

If this Nomu followed the trail back to the warehouse, it would find the bunker. It would find Touya. And behind this Nomu, All For One would surely follow.

 

Izuku’s eyes narrowed. The playful, supportive mentor from the bunker vanished, replaced entirely by the hardened, merciless war-veteran who had watched Shigaraki dust his friends.

 

You don't get to touch him, Izuku vowed. Not in this timeline.

 

Izuku dropped from the tree.

 

He didn't announce his presence. He didn't give a heroic speech. He simply landed directly on the Nomu’s back with the force of a falling meteor, One For All pulsing at forty-five percent.

 

The impact cratered the earth beneath them, shattering the Nomu’s spine with a sickening CRACK.

 

The monstrosity let out a gurgling, wet shriek, its four eyes rolling wildly as it tried to thrash backward. Its immense physical strength allowed it to ignore the broken spine, its body instantly attempting to regenerate the crushed bone. It twisted, violently swiping a massive claw at Izuku’s head.

 

Izuku didn't even blink. He leaned back, letting the claws slice through the empty air inches from his nose.

 

In a single, fluid motion, Izuku activated the Sixth User’s Quirk. Thick, violet Smokescreen erupted from his body, completely blinding the creature and filling the clearing with a dense fog.

 

The Nomu screeched, blindly swinging its arms, destroying the surrounding trees.

 

From the smoke above, a voice echoed, cold and utterly devoid of mercy.

 

"Blackwhip."

 

Six massive, reinforced tendrils of dark energy shot out of the violet fog. They wrapped around the Nomu’s wrists, its ankles, and its thick neck, pulling taut with the strength of steel cables. The Nomu was hoisted into the air, suspended helplessly like a grotesque marionette.

 

Izuku slowly descended from the smoke, landing lightly on the forest floor. He walked up to the thrashing, screeching creature.

 

He knew this wasn't a human anymore. It was a corpse, reanimated and tortured into servitude by Garaki. The kindest thing he could do was destroy it.

 

Izuku raised his right arm, pulling back his fist. The shimmering, prismatic energy of Fa Jin layered over the crackling green lightning of One For All. Kinetic energy pooled in his muscles, tightening like a coiled spring.

 

"Rest," Izuku whispered.

 

He threw the punch.

 

He didn't strike the body; he struck the exposed brain.

 

The shockwave of the impact tore through the forest, ripping the leaves from the trees in a hundred-yard radius. The Nomu’s head simply ceased to exist, obliterated instantly by the sheer concussive force.

 

The massive, headless body went limp, the regeneration Quirk unable to function without the brain to command it. Izuku retracted Blackwhip, letting the corpse slump into the dirt.

 

Izuku exhaled, the green lightning fading from his skin. The fight had lasted less than ten seconds.

 

He knelt next to the headless corpse, examining it closely. Around its thick, grey neck, partially embedded in the mutated flesh, was a thick steel collar. Embedded in the front of the collar was a small, blinking red light and a tiny camera lens.

 

A live feed, Izuku realized. Garaki had been watching.

 

Izuku reached out and forcefully ripped the collar from the dead flesh. He held it up in the moonlight.

 

Miles away, in a sterilized underground laboratory beneath Jaku Hospital, Dr. Kyudai Garaki sat in front of a massive bank of monitors. His eyes, hidden behind thick, round goggles, were wide with absolute shock.

 

The live feed from his scout Nomu had suddenly been engulfed in purple smoke. Then, a blur of motion, a devastating impact, and static. Now, the feed was back online, but the camera was being held up by a figure draped in shadows.

 

Garaki leaned in, his breath hitching.

 

On the screen, surrounded by violet smoke and wearing a torn yellow cape, was a teenager. The lower half of his face was covered by a black surgical mask, but his eyes...

 

Garaki shuddered. The eyes staring into the camera were a glowing, piercing emerald green. But they held an ancient, crushing weight that Garaki had only ever seen in the eyes of his master, All For One. It was the look of a predator who had found its prey.

 

The green-haired figure pulled the camera closer, until his shadowed eyes filled the entire screen.

 

When he spoke, his voice was muffled by the mask, but the terrifying, icy promise in his tone made the hair on Garaki’s arms stand up.

 

"The boy is gone," the Green Ghost said, his voice echoing through the laboratory speakers. "He burned to ash. There is nothing left for you here."

 

Garaki swallowed hard, his hands trembling over the keyboard.

 

"If you send another one of your monsters to this mountain," the boy continued, his emerald eyes narrowing into glowing slits, "If you ever come looking for him again... I will not stop at destroying your toys. I will find your laboratory, Doctor. And I will tear it down to the bedrock with you inside it."

 

Before Garaki could even process the threat, the screen violently shattered into static as the boy crushed the camera in his hand.

 

In the forest, Izuku dropped the shattered pieces of metal and plastic onto the ground, grinding them into the dirt with his iron-soled boot.

 

He stood up, pulling his hood back over his head. The message was sent. Garaki was a coward who hid behind All For One. A direct, violent threat from an unknown variable possessing incredible power and knowledge of his secret laboratories would make the doctor hesitate. It would make him paranoid. He would recall his scouts to protect himself, buying Izuku the time he needed.

 

Izuku looked up at the moon, a cold, hard smile beneath his mask.

 

All For One and his doctor thought they were playing a game of chess with the world. But they didn't realize that Izuku Midoriya had already seen the board, and he was already flipping the pieces.

 

He turned his back on the mountain and launched himself into the sky, returning to the sanctuary in the shadows. He had a student to train, and a future to rewrite.