what if deku was in gta 6

 

 

The sky above Musutafu had been a brilliant, unblemished blue before the fabric of reality tore open.

 

Izuku Midoriya remembered the exact sequence of events with the hyper-focused clarity of a Pro-Hero in training. The villain, a desperate man backed into a corner after a botched bank robbery, possessed a Quirk Izuku hadn’t encountered before. It didn't manipulate fire, or enhance muscle mass, or telekinetically move objects. It manipulated space. When the man panicked, he didn't just lash out; he screamed, his hands glowing with a sickening, ultraviolet light, and punched the air. The air shattered like glass.

 

Izuku had been mid-leap, One For All coursing through his veins in a familiar, comforting web of emerald lightning. He had been reaching out, a reassuring smile etched onto his face to calm the hostages, his arm extended to apprehend the rogue.

 

Instead, he plunged into a kaleidoscope of screaming colors.

 

The void between worlds had no temperature, no sound, and no gravity. It was a sensory deprivation tank filled with the feeling of falling at terminal velocity. Izuku couldn’t breathe. He couldn't think. The immense pressure squeezed his lungs, threatening to crush his ribs inward. The emerald electricity of One For All sputtered and died against the overwhelming vacuum of the rift. He flailed, his reinforced iron soles kicking against nothingness, his Air Force gloves grabbing at ethereal, shadowy wisps that dissolved upon contact.

 

Am I dying? The thought flashed through his mind, cold and terrifying. No. I can’t die. I haven't… I haven't mastered it yet. I haven't saved everyone.

 

Just as his consciousness began to fray at the edges, a violent, blinding white light erupted beneath him. The pressure broke, replacing the silent vacuum with a rushing roar of wind. Gravity, harsh and unforgiving, snatched him out of the void.

 

He was falling.

 

Izuku blinked against the stinging wind, his eyes watering wildly. Below him was not the concrete jungle of urban Japan, nor the sprawling, polished campus of U.A. High. It was a vast, unending expanse of vibrant, aggressive green. It looked like an ocean of vegetation, broken only by winding veins of muddy brown water that reflected the blinding afternoon sun.

 

"Full Cowl!" Izuku roared, forcing his Quirk to activate.

 

It was difficult. His body felt incredibly heavy, as if the dimensional transit had drained the stamina right out of his marrow. But the familiar surge of power—the legacy of the predecessors—sparked to life. Green lightning arced across his torn hero costume, illuminating the dark green fabric and the scuffed metal of his bracers. Five percent. It was all he could muster through the exhaustion.

 

He didn't have time to angle for a clean landing. He plummeted through the canopy of a massive, moss-draped tree. Branches the size of steel girders whipped and snapped against his forearms as he crossed them over his face to protect his head. Leaves tore at his clothes, and the sheer velocity of his fall stripped away the last of his momentum.

 

With a sickening splash and a heavy thud that forced the air from his lungs, Izuku crashed into a shallow pool of stagnant, muddy water.

 

Mud geysered into the air, raining down upon the broad, fan-like leaves of the surrounding flora. Izuku lay there for a moment, half-submerged in the lukewarm muck, staring up through the jagged hole he had punched through the forest canopy. The sky above was a hazy, humid white-blue, completely unlike the crisp skies of his home.

 

His ears rang. His left shoulder throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, likely dislocated or heavily bruised by one of the thicker branches. The metallic taste of blood pooled in his mouth, the result of a bitten lip.

 

Slowly, painfully, Izuku pushed himself up. The water around him was thick, smelling strongly of sulfur, rotting vegetation, and rich, damp earth. It clung to his costume, weighing down his already heavy boots.

 

"Aizawa-sensei?" Izuku croaked, coughing violently as he tapped the communication earpiece secured to his ear. Static hissed back at him—a flat, lifeless sound. "Todoroki? Uraraka? Is anyone… is anyone on this frequency?"

 

Nothing. Not even the faint interference of distant chatter.

 

He dragged himself out of the water and onto a muddy embankment, his boots squelching loudly in the quiet wilderness. He took stock of his equipment. His mask was torn, hanging uselessly around his neck. The right sleeve of his gamma suit was shredded from the shoulder down, exposing skin that was rapidly becoming painted with mosquito bites. His utility belt was intact, though covered in a thick layer of brown sludge.

 

"Okay. Okay, think, Izuku," he muttered to himself, falling back on his habit of verbalizing his thoughts. His emerald eyes darted around the oppressive environment. "The villain's Quirk was spatial. A teleporter? No, the energy signature felt unstable. A banishment Quirk? If so, I could be anywhere in the world. The climate is incredibly humid, subtropical or tropical. Mangroves, sawgrass, cypress trees draped in what looks like Spanish moss. I could be in Southeast Asia? South America? Or maybe the southern United States?"

 

He wiped a smear of mud from his freckled cheek. The heat was stifling, wrapping around him like a wet blanket. The air was so thick with moisture that every breath felt heavy. The silence of the swamp was a deceptive one; it was actually a cacophony of buzzing insects, the distant shrieks of unseen birds, and the occasional, unsettling splash in the dark waters nearby.

 

Suddenly, a sharp, stabbing sensation pierced his skull. Danger Sense.

 

It wasn't the overwhelming, paralyzing spike that accompanied a villain like Shigaraki or All For One. It was a low, primal thrum—the warning of a predator.

 

Izuku dropped into a defensive crouch, his eyes scanning the murky water. A few yards away, a pair of reptilian eyes and a dark, ridged snout broke the surface. The creature was massive, easily ten feet long, moving with silent, terrifying grace through the water. A crocodile? No, the snout was too broad. An alligator.

 

Izuku relaxed his stance slightly, though the green sparks of One For All continued to dance across his skin. Just an animal, he thought, exhaling a shaky breath. It's just nature. I'm encroaching on its territory.

 

He backed away slowly, giving the creature a wide berth. He needed to find high ground. He needed to find civilization, contact a local Pro-Hero agency, and get in touch with the Japanese embassy. Wherever he was, there had to be a system in place. Heroes were a global phenomenon, after all. He just needed to find a police officer or a local hero on patrol.

 

He began to trudge through the dense sawgrass, the sharp edges of the blades scraping against his reinforced pants. He had no idea which direction he was walking, but he knew he couldn't stay in the water. As he pushed through the oppressive humidity, he tried to formulate a plan. Find a road. Follow the road to a town. Use his minimal English—if he was indeed in an English-speaking country—to explain his situation.

 

But as Izuku marched deeper into the swamp, he couldn't shake the creeping sense of dread settling in his stomach. The air here felt… different. It wasn't just the humidity or the heat. There was an absence of something. The latent, bustling energy of a Quirk-filled society, the distant echoes of superhuman clashes that had become the background noise of his life—it was all gone.

 

Here, there was only the wild.

 

 

 

Two miles away, the wild was being violently interrupted by the deafening roar of a 500-horsepower Chevy V8 engine strapped to the back of a fiberglass hull.

 

"Keep it steady! Keep it straight, Jason, you're drifting!" Lucia screamed over the thunderous noise of the airboat's fan.

 

"I'm trying! This thing drives like a bathtub on ice!" Jason yelled back, his hands gripping the rusty steering stick so tightly his knuckles were bone-white. His baseball cap had flown off a mile back, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and swamp water.

 

Lucia knelt at the front of the flat-bottomed boat, her hands white-knuckling a pump-action shotgun. She risked a glance over her shoulder, her dark eyes squinting against the spray of murky water. Through the dense thickets of cypress trees and hanging moss, the flashing red and blue lights of the Leonida County Sheriff's Department airboats were piercing the gloom. They were gaining.

 

"They're still on us! Take a left at the next fork! Get into the shallows, their boats are heavier!" she ordered, racking the shotgun with a sharp, metallic clack.

 

"If I hit a mudbank at this speed, we're going flying, Lu!"

 

"If they catch us, we're going to Bolingbroke Penitentiary for the next twenty years!" she fired back, her voice cracking with desperation. "Take the damn left!"

 

It was supposed to be a simple job. An easy score. A small-time pawn shop on the outskirts of Port Gellhorn, rumored to be holding a stash of untraceable Cuban cigars and dirty cash for a local fence. They had cased the place, memorized the owner's routine, and disabled the primary alarms. It should have been a five-minute in-and-out.

 

But nothing in Leonida was ever simple.

 

The owner had kept a sawed-off shotgun under the counter and hadn't been afraid to use it. The ensuing firefight had blown out the front windows, triggered the silent alarm, and drawn every bored county deputy within a ten-mile radius. They had been forced to ditch their getaway car in a drainage ditch and steal the nearest vehicle they could find at a local swamp-tour dock—a rusted, neon-orange airboat named The Gator's Kiss.

 

Now, they were tearing through the Everglades, a chaotic blur of noise and adrenaline, fleeing from the inevitable consequences of a life they couldn't seem to escape.

 

Lucia's heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her clothes were soaked, sticking uncomfortably to her skin. Her lungs burned. She looked down at the duffel bag resting at her feet. It was half-empty, containing only a few wads of crumpled bills and a handful of cheap gold chains. It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to enough to pay off the Haitian Kings, the syndicate that currently held their lives in a stranglehold.

 

"Jason, they're fanning out!" Lucia shouted, pointing to the left and right. The sheriff's boats were attempting a pincer movement, cutting through the thinner reeds to flank them.

 

"I see 'em, I see 'em!" Jason grunted, throwing his weight into the steering stick. The airboat lurched violently to the left, skimming over a patch of slick mud and crushing a swath of sawgrass beneath its flat hull.

 

The engine roared in protest, screaming as it pushed the boat through the dense vegetation. Branches whipped at their faces, leaving stinging red welts on Jason's cheeks. The airboat was fast, but it was practically uncontrollable in the tight, winding channels of the deeper swamp.

 

Suddenly, a voice boomed over a megaphone, echoing eerily through the trees. "Suspects in the stolen airboat! Cut your engine and surrender your weapons! You have nowhere to run! This is your final warning!"

 

"Eat shit!" Lucia muttered, though her hands trembled as she aimed the shotgun at the water behind them, firing a warning shot that threw up a geyser of mud.

 

"Lu, hold on! Log!" Jason screamed.

 

Lucia spun around. Dead ahead, obscured by the murky water and the shadows of the canopy, was a massive, waterlogged cypress trunk blocking the narrow channel.

 

"Turn! Turn!"

 

Jason yanked the steering stick hard to the right, cutting the throttle in a desperate attempt to drift around the obstacle. But the momentum was too great. The heavy V8 engine on the back acted like a pendulum. The back end of the boat swung out, the fiberglass hull slamming violently into the submerged log with the sound of a thunderclap.

 

The impact threw Lucia backward, her back slamming against the metal cage protecting the fan. The shotgun clattered out of her hands, sliding across the wet deck. Jason was thrown forward, his ribs cracking against the steering console.

 

The airboat spun out of control, careening up a steep, muddy embankment before coming to a violent, shuddering halt in a thicket of dense mangroves. The massive fan on the back sputtered, coughed out a cloud of black smoke, and died with a pathetic hiss.

 

Suddenly, the deafening roar of the chase was replaced by a ringing silence.

 

Lucia groaned, her head spinning. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. She touched her forehead, her fingers coming away slick and red. "Jason…" she gasped, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Jason, you alive?"

 

Jason was slumped over the console, clutching his side. He let out a ragged breath and spat a glob of saliva into the mud. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Ribs feel like they're on fire." He slowly raised his head, looking around at the impenetrable wall of roots and vines surrounding them.

 

"The cops," Lucia said, panic clawing at her throat. She scrambled across the deck, grabbing her shotgun.

 

They listened. For a terrifying moment, there was nothing but the buzz of mosquitoes. Then, the sound of the sheriff's airboats echoed in the distance, followed by the muffled curses of deputies.

 

"They missed the turn," Jason whispered, his eyes wide. "They went past us down the main channel."

 

Lucia slumped against the side of the boat, letting out a shaky breath. "Oh, thank God. Thank God."

 

"Don't thank Him yet," Jason muttered, pushing himself off the console. He climbed to the back of the boat, inspecting the engine. He jiggled a few wires, kicked the starter motor, and turned the key.

 

Click. Click. Click.

 

"Alternator's busted, or the starter is jammed," Jason said, wiping grease onto his jeans. He looked around the swamp, the claustrophobic dread beginning to set in. The sun was beginning to dip lower in the sky, casting long, eerie shadows across the dark water. "We're stuck."

 

"Can you fix it?"

 

"I'm a mechanic, Lu, not a magician. I don't have tools. And if I make too much noise banging on this thing, the cops will double back and find us."

 

Lucia stared out into the murky water separating their mudbank from the rest of the swamp. The water was still, almost unnaturally calm. The heat was suffocating. "So what? We just sit here and wait to get eaten by mosquitoes? Or worse?"

 

"We wait for it to get dark," Jason decided, pulling a 9mm pistol from his waistband and checking the magazine. "Once the sun goes down, the sheriffs will call off the air search. We can try to hike out to the highway. Route 68 shouldn't be more than five miles west."

 

"Five miles through this?" Lucia gestured to the impenetrable jungle. "In the dark? With the panthers and the snakes?"

 

"You prefer a concrete cell?" Jason countered, his voice hard.

 

Lucia glared at him, but she knew he was right. She sat down on the edge of the boat, her legs dangling dangerously close to the water, and rested the shotgun across her lap. She stared down at her muddy boots, the crushing reality of their situation pressing down on her shoulders. They were broke, stranded, hunted, and entirely alone.

 

Then, the water rippled.

 

It was a subtle movement, barely noticeable over the ambient ripples caused by the breeze. But Lucia caught it out of the corner of her eye. A V-shaped wake appearing a few yards from the boat, moving slowly, deliberately toward them.

 

"Jason," she whispered, her voice tight.

 

"What?"

 

"Look."

 

Jason followed her gaze. The blood drained from his face.

 

Rising from the murky depths of the swamp was a creature out of a prehistoric nightmare. It was a Leonida bull alligator, older than the trees around them, its hide a scarred, knobby armor of dark green and black. Its head alone was the size of an oil drum, and as it glided closer, its sheer length became terrifyingly apparent. Fourteen, maybe fifteen feet of pure, apex muscle.

 

It didn't hiss. It didn't splash. It just floated there, its cold, reptilian eyes locked onto Lucia's legs dangling off the side of the boat.

 

"Lu. Pull your legs up. Now. Slowly," Jason commanded, his voice trembling. He raised his 9mm, his hands shaking.

 

Lucia didn't need to be told twice. She carefully shifted her weight, pulling her knees to her chest. But the sudden movement on the boat was all the trigger the predator needed.

 

With a speed that defied its massive size, the alligator lunged.

 

The water exploded. The creature propelled itself out of the swamp like a missile, its massive jaws snapping open to reveal rows of jagged, yellowed teeth.

 

Lucia screamed, scrambling backward, but the deck was slick with mud. Her boot caught on a cleat, and she fell hard onto her back. The alligator's jaws slammed shut on the edge of the fiberglass hull, tearing a massive chunk out of the boat mere inches from her foot. The force of the impact rocked the entire airboat, nearly throwing Jason into the water.

 

"Hey! Hey, you ugly bastard!" Jason roared, firing his pistol. Bang! Bang! Bang!

 

The 9mm rounds struck the alligator's thick skull and armored back, but at this angle, they simply deflected off the scutes with wet thwacks, doing nothing but infuriating the beast.

 

The alligator thrashed, its massive tail whipping the water into a frothy frenzy. It hauled its front legs onto the deck of the airboat, its immense weight tilting the vessel dangerously. It was coming aboard.

 

Lucia raised her shotgun, her hands shaking violently. She pumped the action and pulled the trigger.

 

Click.

 

A jam. Mud in the chamber.

 

"No, no, no!" she sobbed, frantically trying to clear the action. The alligator's jaws opened again, a low, guttural hiss vibrating in its throat as it lunged forward, aiming straight for her chest.

 

She squeezed her eyes shut, crossing her arms in a futile gesture of protection. This is it, she thought. This is how I die. In a swamp. For nothing.

 

Suddenly, the air pressure dropped.

 

A sound like tearing canvas ripped through the swamp, accompanied by a blinding flash of emerald light. The airboat rocked so violently that it nearly capsized.

 

Lucia opened her eyes, expecting to feel the agonizing crush of teeth. Instead, she witnessed the impossible.

 

Standing between her and the fifteen-foot alligator was a boy. He couldn't have been older than sixteen. He wore a bizarre, torn green costume with heavy, iron-soled boots and a metal respirator hanging loosely around his neck. But that wasn't what made Lucia's breath catch in her throat.

 

The boy was glowing. Vivid, crackling arcs of green lightning surged over his skin, illuminating the dark swamp like a neon sign.

 

The alligator, unfazed by the light show, snapped its jaws toward the boy’s waist.

 

"No you don't!" the boy shouted in a language Lucia didn't understand.

 

He didn't pull a gun. He didn't use a knife. He simply reached down with his bare hands, grabbed the top and bottom of the alligator's massive jaws, and pushed.

 

Lucia watched in utter disbelief as the boy, who looked like he weighed a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet, stopped the lunging, two-thousand-pound predator dead in its tracks. The muscles in the boy's arms corded, the fabric of his torn sleeves ripping further as the green lightning flared brighter.

 

The alligator thrashed wildly, its tail slamming against the boat, but it couldn't budge the boy's grip.

 

"I don't want to hurt you!" the boy yelled at the beast, his face contorted in a mix of exertion and… empathy? "Just go away!"

 

With a grunt of effort, the boy twisted his hips and hurled the massive alligator backward. The beast was thrown through the air as if it were made of stuffed cotton, flying a full twenty feet before crashing back into the deep water with a monumental splash. It surfaced a moment later, thoroughly spooked, and rapidly swam away, disappearing into the dark reeds.

 

Silence fell over the swamp once more, save for the crackling of the green energy that slowly faded from the boy's skin.

 

Izuku stood panting on the tilted deck of the airboat. His entire body ached. Using One For All, even at a low percentage, immediately after a dimension-tearing transit felt like pouring battery acid over his muscles. He gripped his dislocated left shoulder, wincing as he took a deep, shuddering breath.

 

He turned around to check on the civilians. Are they hurt? Did I get here in time?

 

He found himself staring down the barrel of a 9mm pistol.

 

Jason was standing near the engine, his gun aimed squarely at the center of Izuku's chest. His hands were shaking, but his eyes were wide with a mix of absolute terror and hostile adrenaline. Lucia was still on the floor, having finally cleared the jam in her shotgun, and was currently pointing it at Izuku's knees.

 

"Whoa, hey, hey!" Izuku raised his uninjured right hand in the universal gesture of surrender. "It's okay! You're safe! I'm a Pro-Hero in training!" he said rapidly in Japanese.

 

"Don't move! Don't you fucking move, you freak!" Jason yelled in English, his finger trembling on the trigger.

 

Izuku blinked. English. Okay, they're speaking English. I am definitely not in Japan.

 

He took a slow breath, trying to recall the intensive English lessons Present Mic had drilled into them. His accent was thick, and his vocabulary was rusty, but he had to try.

 

"P-please," Izuku stammered, holding his hand up. "I… am hero. No hurt you. I save."

 

"What the hell are you?!" Lucia demanded, slowly getting to her feet, never letting the shotgun waver. She stared at him as if he were an alien. "How did you do that? How did you pick up a gator with your bare hands? Where did that light come from?!"

 

"It… my Quirk?" Izuku said, confusion furrowing his brow. Why were they acting so surprised? Even in rural areas, Quirks were a standard part of human biology. Enhanced strength wasn't even considered a flashy Quirk anymore. "My power. One For All. You know?"

 

"Quirk? What the fuck is a Quirk?" Jason asked, exchanging a panicked look with Lucia. "Is he on something? Bath salts? Bull shark testosterone? Did he escape from a Humane Labs facility?"

 

"I don't know, but he's not normal!" Lucia said.

 

Izuku's highly analytical mind began to race, calculating variables at lightning speed. They don't know what a Quirk is. They're terrified of a basic strength enhancement. They're heavily armed, covered in mud and blood, and they have bags of loose cash and jewelry sitting on the floor of a crashed boat.

 

A cold realization washed over him. He hadn't just rescued lost tourists.

 

They're criminals.

 

Before Izuku could process this fully, the rhythmic thwup-thwup-thwup of a helicopter rotor echoed through the swamp. A bright spotlight pierced the canopy, sweeping across the water and illuminating the trees mere hundred yards away.

 

"Shit! Air unit!" Jason cursed, lowering his gun slightly to look up. "They found us!"

 

The sheriff's department was closing in.

 

Izuku looked at the two terrified people in front of him. They were criminals, yes. But they were also panicked, injured, and desperate. In a world where they didn't know what Quirks were, they were just two ordinary people against a militarized police force. As a hero, his duty was to apprehend villains, but these two didn't feel like the villains he fought back home. They felt like civilians who had made a terrible mistake.

 

And more importantly, they were his only link to understanding where he was. If they got arrested now, Izuku would be left alone in this swamp, likely to be hunted down as an unregistered "freak" by the authorities.

 

"I can help," Izuku said in English, his voice firming up.

 

"Help? How are you gonna help, glow-stick?" Jason snapped. "The boat is stuck on the mudbank! The engine is dead!"

 

Izuku didn't answer. Instead, he stepped past Jason, moving to the stern of the boat. He ignored the guns pointed at his back. He placed his right hand against the thick, gnarly trunk of the mangrove tree that the airboat was wedged against.

 

"What is he doing?" Lucia whispered.

 

"Get ready to shoot him if he tries anything," Jason muttered.

 

Izuku closed his eyes. He didn't need much power for this. Just a precise application of kinetic force. He let One For All flow into his right arm, the familiar red veins glowing beneath his skin.

 

Delaware Smash: Air Force.

 

He flicked his fingers.

 

The resulting shockwave was concentrated and explosive. A blast of pressurized air struck the mangrove tree, shattering the thick roots and violently shoving the heavy fiberglass airboat backward.

 

The boat slid off the mudbank with a loud scrape, splashing heavily back into the deep channel of the swamp water. The sudden movement threw Jason and Lucia off balance, sending them both tumbling to the deck once again.

 

The boat bobbed in the water, free from the trap.

 

"Holy shit," Jason breathed, staring at the shattered remains of the tree trunk. "He blew it up. He just blew it up with his fingers."

 

The helicopter spotlight swept closer, illuminating the channel they were in.

 

"Engine!" Izuku shouted, pointing at the fan. "Go!"

 

Jason scrambled to the console. He turned the key. The alternator sparked, the engine coughed, and by some miracle of redneck engineering, the V8 roared back to life, its massive fan spinning into a blur.

 

"Hold on!" Jason yelled, throwing the throttle forward.

 

The airboat surged forward, tearing through the water and plunging deeper into the dark, uncharted heart of the Everglades, leaving the police spotlight grasping at empty water behind them.

 

Izuku watched the lights fade. The adrenaline that had been sustaining him finally began to crash. The dimensional transit, the fall, the use of his Quirk, the heat—it all hit him at once like a physical blow.

 

The world tilted on its axis. The roar of the fan became a distant, muffled hum. The bright green of the swamp faded to black.

 

He fell backward onto the hard metal deck of the boat.

 

"Hey! Hey, kid!"

 

Through a narrowing tunnel of vision, Izuku saw the girl, Lucia, leaning over him. The fear in her eyes had been replaced by a tentative, cautious concern. She was saying something, but the words were lost in the ringing of his ears.

 

Where am I? Izuku thought, his eyes fluttering shut. All Might… I don't think we're in Musutafu anymore.

 

Then, everything went dark.

 

 

 

When Jason finally dared to cut the engine, they were miles away from the search grid, hidden in a secluded cove overhung by weeping willows and thick vines. The silence of the swamp returned, thick and oppressive.

 

Jason slumped over the steering stick, breathing heavily. "Did we lose 'em?"

 

Lucia stood at the bow, peering through the darkness. "No lights. No sirens. I think we're clear."

 

She turned around and looked down at the deck.

 

The kid was still unconscious. In the dim moonlight filtering through the trees, he looked even younger. His strange, green costume was stained with dark mud and darker blood from a nasty gash on his forehead.

 

Jason walked over, keeping his pistol drawn, though pointed at the floor. He nudged the boy's heavy metal boot with his sneaker.

 

"What do we do with him?" Jason asked, his voice hushed. "We can't just leave him here. The gators will finish what they started."

 

"We can't take him to a hospital either," Lucia pointed out. "If the cops find him, they'll trace him back to us. Plus… look at him, Jason. Did you see what he did?"

 

"I saw it," Jason said, shivering despite the heat. "I've seen guys on top-tier combat stims rip car doors off their hinges in Vice City. I've seen cartel enforcers take a shotgun blast to the chest and keep walking. But this? Glowing in the dark and blasting trees apart with a finger flick? This ain't human. This is some government black-project shit."

 

Lucia knelt beside the boy. Up close, he didn't look like a government weapon. He looked like a teenager. He had freckles. His face was soft, lacking the hardened, cynical edge that everyone in Leonida seemed to be born with. He had put himself between her and a prehistoric monster without a second thought.

 

She noticed a small, waterproof pouch attached to his utility belt. Cautiously, she unclipped it and opened it, hoping to find an ID.

 

Instead, she pulled out a heavily scorched, waterlogged notebook. The cover was written in strange, blocky characters.

 

"What's that?" Jason asked.

 

"I don't know. Looks like a diary or something. The writing is… Asian. Japanese, maybe? Or Chinese? I can't read it." She carefully flipped through the damp pages. They were filled with intricate sketches of people in costumes, detailed diagrams of weapons, and pages upon pages of dense, illegible notes.

 

"So, what? A foreign spy?" Jason scoffed. "Dressed like a radioactive leprechaun?"

 

"He saved my life, Jason," Lucia said quietly, looking up at her partner.

 

Jason sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. He knew that tone. It was the same tone she used when she found stray dogs in the alleyways of Little Haiti. "Lu, no. We are on the run. We owe fifty grand to the Kings. We are facing federal time if we get caught. We do not have the time or the resources to babysit a glowing amnesiac."

 

"If we leave him, he dies."

 

"If we take him, we might die! If he wakes up and decides to punch a hole through my chest, what then?"

 

"He told the gator he didn't want to hurt it," Lucia pointed out. "Who apologizes to an alligator before throwing it twenty feet?"

 

"A crazy person!"

 

"He's coming with us," Lucia stated with a finality that made Jason groan. "We need to lay low anyway. We can stash the boat at Old Man Earl's abandoned dock, take the truck to the motel in Vice City, and figure things out. When he wakes up, we get answers. If he's dangerous, you can shoot him. Deal?"

 

Jason looked at the unconscious boy, then at Lucia's stubborn, pleading eyes. He knew he had lost this argument before it even began.

 

"Fine," Jason grumbled, holstering his gun. "But I'm tying his hands with zip-ties. Not that it'll do much good if he can shatter a tree, but it'll make me feel better."

 

Lucia nodded. "Fair enough."

 

Together, they grabbed the boy by the arms and dragged him toward the center of the boat, laying him gently against the duffel bag full of stolen cash.

 

As Jason moved back to the console to hotwire the engine once more, Lucia took one last look at the boy's face. He looked peaceful, completely at odds with the violent, unforgiving world he had just crashed into.

 

Whoever you are, kid, Lucia thought as the airboat hummed back to life, welcome to Leonida.

 

She turned forward as the boat glided out of the cove, heading east toward the neon-soaked skyline of Vice City that glowed faintly on the horizon—a city of vice, greed, and survival, about to be turned upside down by a hero who didn't know how to look the other way.

 

 

 

Consciousness did not return to Izuku Midoriya all at once. It bled in slowly, seeping through the edges of a dark, heavy fog, bringing with it a symphony of aches and pains.

 

The first thing he registered was the smell. It was a potent, aggressive mixture of stale cigarette smoke, cheap pine-scented bleach, damp carpet, and the unmistakable, greasy aroma of deep-fried food. It lacked the sterile, comforting scent of Recovery Girl’s clinic, or the crisp, ocean-breeze freshness of his dorm room at Heights Alliance. This smell was gritty. It felt like it was coating the inside of his lungs.

 

The second thing was the sound. A low, rhythmic mechanical rattling vibrated against the wall near his head—a struggling air conditioning unit fighting a losing battle against the humid air. Beyond that, muffled by thin drywall, was a chaotic, distant roar. Honking horns, the wailing siren of a police cruiser, the deep, chest-rattling bass of a passing car stereo, and the indistinct shouts of people in the street.

 

Where am I?

 

Izuku’s eyelids felt like they were lined with lead, but he forced them open. His vision swam, blurry and sensitive to the harsh, flickering yellow light emanating from a single, cheap lamp on a nightstand. He blinked rapidly, his analytical mind automatically kicking into gear despite the throbbing headache pounding behind his temples.

 

He was lying on a lumpy, sagging mattress covered by a thin, floral-patterned bedspread that had likely not been washed in a decade. The wallpaper, peeling at the corners, was a faded, nicotine-stained beige. The room was small, suffocatingly so, with a small CRT television sitting atop a scratched wooden dresser, currently turned off.

 

He tried to sit up, but a sharp, biting pain in his left shoulder made him gasp. He looked down. His hero costume—his pride and joy, tailored by his mother and upgraded by Hatsume—was in ruins. The top half had been unzipped and pulled down to his waist. His torso was exposed, wrapped haphazardly but securely in pristine white gauze that starkly contrasted with his dirt-smudged skin. Someone had popped his dislocated shoulder back into place and bandaged his bruised ribs.

 

He moved his hands, intending to inspect the bandages, but his wrists wouldn't separate.

 

Izuku frowned, looking down. A thick, heavy-duty black plastic zip-tie bound his wrists together in front of his stomach. It was pulled agonizingly tight, the rigid plastic digging into his skin, leaving a red ring around his forearms.

 

For a split second, panic flared. Villains. The League? Shigaraki?

 

But no, that didn't make sense. The League of Villains didn't use zip-ties and cheap motels. They used quirk-suppressing cuffs and reinforced steel restraints. And they certainly wouldn't have bandaged his wounds with such care. The memories of the swamp rushed back in a fragmented, dizzying wave. The spatial Quirk. The fall. The alligator. The two terrified civilians with the guns.

 

They had brought him here. They had treated his wounds, but they had also bound him like a prisoner.

 

Izuku sighed. He knew he looked intimidating in his torn, bloodied costume, and he had used his Quirk in front of them without context. They were frightened. It was a natural, human reaction.

 

"I need to talk to them," Izuku murmured to himself in Japanese. His voice was hoarse, his throat dry as sandpaper.

 

He needed to get up, but the zip-ties were restricting his balance. Without a second thought, acting purely on the muscle memory of a hero-in-training accustomed to breaking through solid concrete, Izuku subtly flexed his wrists outward.

 

He didn't even activate One For All. The baseline physical conditioning he had endured under All Might’s grueling beach-clearing regimen was more than enough.

 

Snap.

 

The heavy-duty, industrial-grade zip-tie—designed to hold two hundred pounds of resisting force—shattered like dry pasta. The plastic pieces flew across the room, clattering against the cheap linoleum floor of the kitchenette area. Izuku rubbed his wrists, wincing slightly at the chafed skin, and swung his heavy iron-soled boots over the side of the bed.

 

At that exact moment, the motel room door unlocked with a loud clack.

 

Izuku froze, sitting on the edge of the bed.

 

The door swung open, letting in a wave of sticky, neon-lit heat from the outside world. Jason walked in first, carrying two grease-stained paper bags emblazoned with a giant, cartoonish yellow bell. Lucia followed close behind, holding a plastic tray holding four massive, sweating cups of soda.

 

Jason pushed the door shut with his foot, laughing at something Lucia had said. "I'm telling you, the guy at the drive-thru was totally tweaked out of his mind, he gave us three extra orders of Cluckin' Fries—"

 

Jason stopped dead in his tracks.

 

His eyes locked onto Izuku, who was sitting upright, fully conscious, rubbing his freed wrists. Jason’s gaze drifted slowly from Izuku’s face, down to his hands, and then to the shattered pieces of the black zip-tie scattered across the floor.

 

The silence in the room became absolute, save for the rattling AC unit.

 

"Uh," Izuku started, raising a hand in a friendly wave. "Hello. Thank you for the—"

 

"Holy shit!" Jason yelled, dropping the Cluckin' Bell bags. Fries and foil-wrapped chicken sandwiches spilled across the dirty carpet. In a flash of panicked adrenaline, Jason’s hand darted to the waistband of his jeans, drawing the 9mm pistol and leveling it straight at Izuku’s head.

 

Lucia dropped the tray of drinks. Soda exploded across the floor in a sticky brown wave. She reached into her jacket, pulling out a snub-nosed revolver.

 

"Don't move! Put your hands in the air, right now!" Jason screamed, his face pale, the gun shaking in his grip. "How the hell did you break those?! Those were riot ties!"

 

Izuku immediately raised his hands above his head, palms open and facing them. He didn't flinch at the guns; he had stared down villains that could level city blocks with a thought. A firearm, while dangerous, was a known, manageable variable. But he didn't want to fight them. He needed to de-escalate.

 

"Please, calm down," Izuku said, speaking English as clearly as he could, though his heavy accent made him stumble over the consonants. "I not hurt you. I broke them because... because they hurt my arms. I am sorry for scaring."

 

"You're sorry?!" Jason barked, taking a step back toward the door, keeping the gun trained on the teenager. "You rip through military-grade plastic like it's paper, and you're sorry? Lu, I told you! I told you he was a freak! He's a cyber-psycho or something!"

 

"Shut up, Jason, keep your voice down," Lucia hissed, her eyes darting to the thin walls. She kept her revolver aimed at Izuku's chest, but her hands were steadier than Jason's. She analyzed the boy. He was battered, bandaged, and currently sitting on a motel bed looking more apologetic than murderous.

 

"Who are you?" Lucia demanded, her voice hard, authoritative. "What's your name? Who do you work for? The FIB? The IAA? Are you Cartel?"

 

Izuku blinked, struggling to translate the acronyms. "FIB? IAA? I... I don't know these. My name is Izuku Midoriya. My Hero name is Deku. I am a student at U.A. High School. In Japan."

 

"Japan?" Jason scoffed, his eyes wide with disbelief. "You swam here from Japan? Look at you! You're wearing a tactical Halloween costume! And what the hell is a 'Hero name'?"

 

Izuku lowered his hands just a fraction, his brow furrowing in deep confusion. "You... you do not know Heroes? Pro-Heroes? Like All Might? Endeavor? Hawks?"

 

Lucia and Jason exchanged a completely bewildered look.

 

"Is he naming energy drinks?" Jason whispered to Lucia.

 

"Kid," Lucia said, stepping forward slightly, her gun still raised. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, or what kind of drugs the syndicate pumped into your veins, but we saw what you did in the swamp. You picked up a fifteen-foot gator and chucked it. You blew a mangrove tree to splinters by flicking your fingers. You were glowing green. People don't do that."

 

"It is my Quirk," Izuku explained earnestly, tapping his chest. "My power. Most people have Quirks. I... eighty percent of the world has a Quirk. Superpowers. It is biology."

 

Jason let out a sharp, hysterical laugh. "Superpowers? Biology? Lu, he's brain-damaged. The gator must have whacked him in the head. Or he’s on a massive dose of that new Cartel synthetic, 'Epsilon-9'. He thinks he's a comic book character from an Up-n-Atom issue."

 

"I am not on drugs," Izuku said firmly, offended by the accusation. "I am a hero-in-training. I was fighting a villain in Musutafu. He had a spatial-distortion Quirk. A teleportation power. He pushed me into a portal, and I woke up in the water. I don't know where I am."

 

He looked at them pleadingly. "Please. You helped me. You bandaged my wounds. I am grateful. But I need to know... where am I? What city is this?"

 

Lucia stared into his emerald eyes. She had spent her entire life on the streets, reading people, looking for the lie, the con, the angle. But looking at this kid, she saw absolutely zero deception. He wasn't lying. He actually, genuinely believed everything he was saying.

 

Slowly, against every survival instinct she possessed, Lucia lowered her revolver.

 

"Lu, what are you doing?" Jason hissed. "Keep your gun up!"

 

"Look at him, Jay. He's not attacking. If he wanted us dead, we'd be dead in the swamp," Lucia said softly. She holstered her weapon and took a step toward the bed. "You really don't know where you are, do you?"

 

Izuku shook his head.

 

Lucia sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "You're in Leonida. Specifically, you're in Vice City. The Washington Beach district."

 

"Leonida?" Izuku tested the word on his tongue. It sounded American. "United States?"

 

"Yeah. The good ol' US of A," Jason muttered, finally lowering his gun but not holstering it. "The capital of sunshine, scams, and psycho-killers. And let me get this straight. You think you're from a world where everyone flies around in capes shooting lasers out of their eyes?"

 

"Not everyone," Izuku corrected automatically, the hero-nerd inside him unable to let the inaccuracy slide. "Only Pro-Heroes are licensed to use Quirks in public. And I don't have a cape. Capes are a snag hazard in close-quarters combat."

 

Jason stared at him for a long, agonizing moment. Then, he holstered his gun, grabbed his hair with both hands, and groaned loudly. "I need a drink. I need a very, very stiff drink. I survived a gator attack, I evaded the cops, and now I'm harboring a delusional, superhuman anime character."

 

Jason stomped over to the kitchenette, stepping over the puddle of spilled soda, and yanked open the mini-fridge, pulling out a brown glass bottle of Pisswasser beer.

 

Lucia ignored him, her pragmatic mind already calculating the variables. "Okay. Let's say I believe you. Let's say you're from... somewhere else. You're saying where you come from, having superpowers is normal?"

 

"Yes," Izuku nodded, relief washing over him that she was at least listening. "It is society. But here... you do not know Quirks? Nobody here has powers?"

 

"Unless you count the ability to smoke an eight-ball of meth and fight five cops naked outside a Liquor Hole store, no," Lucia said dryly. "We don't have magic powers here, kid. Just guns, money, and gravity."

 

Izuku felt a cold, terrifying weight settle in the pit of his stomach. A world without Quirks. He had read about the pre-Quirk era in history books, of course. A time when humanity relied solely on technology, when society was fragile and easily broken by conventional crime. But to actually be in one?

 

"I need to see," Izuku said, standing up.

 

His legs wobbled slightly. The exhaustion was still there, bone-deep, but adrenaline pushed it back. He limped past Lucia, moving toward the heavily draped window at the front of the motel room.

 

"Hey, wait, stay away from the window!" Jason warned, a beer bottle halfway to his lips. "We're laying low!"

 

Izuku ignored him. He reached out and grabbed the edge of the dusty, beige curtain, pulling it back just enough to peek through the dirty glass.

 

The breath caught in his throat.

 

Culture shock did not begin to cover it. It was like someone had taken the neon vibrancy of Kamino Ward, stripped away all the rules, and cranked the volume up to a deafening roar.

 

The motel overlooked a bustling coastal street—Ocean Drive. On one side was a wide, sandy beach glowing pale under a massive, silver moon, the dark ocean crashing against the shore. But the street itself was a river of chaotic light and noise.

 

Massive, towering hotels built in pastel pinks, blues, and seafoam greens lined the boulevard, their Art Deco facades illuminated by miles of glaring neon tubing. The street was jammed bumper-to-bumper with cars unlike anything Izuku had ever seen. They weren't the practical, boxy commuter vehicles of Musutafu. These were violently colorful, absurdly loud supercars, lowriders bouncing on hydraulics, and massive, lifted pickup trucks covered in mud. Engines revved aggressively, the smell of exhaust and burning rubber seeping through the sealed window pane.

 

The sidewalks were overflowing with people. It was well past midnight, yet the city was aggressively awake. Izuku watched, his eyes wide, as a group of people in skimpy bathing suits and glowing jewelry stumbled out of a massive nightclub called "The Malibu," laughing hysterically.

 

But it wasn't the partying that horrified Izuku. It was the casual, unfiltered brutality of the environment.

 

Right across the street, in front of a neon-lit liquor store, a man in a Hawaiian shirt shoved another man into a trash can. A fistfight broke out instantly. Blood sprayed onto the sidewalk.

 

Izuku’s muscles tensed. His instinct, drilled into him by Aizawa and Gran Torino, screamed at him to act. A civilian is in danger. Intervene. Subdue. Restrain.

 

He placed his hand on the glass, green sparks flickering to life across his knuckles.

 

But then, he saw the reaction of the crowd.

 

Nobody screamed for help. Nobody ran to find a Pro-Hero. Nobody even looked shocked. Instead, half a dozen bystanders pulled out small, glowing rectangles—smartphones—and formed a circle around the bleeding men. They were cheering. They were recording it.

 

"WORLDSTAR!" a voice drifted up through the glass, followed by raucous laughter.

 

"What are they doing?" Izuku whispered in horror. "Why isn't anyone stopping it? Where are the police? Where are the Heroes?"

 

Lucia walked up behind him, keeping a safe distance, and looked over his shoulder. She let out a cynical, tired sigh. "I told you, kid. There are no heroes here. Just people trying to get theirs before someone else takes it. They're filming it for Bleeter or Weazel Video. Getting likes is more important than calling an ambulance."

 

Izuku watched as the victor of the brawl casually kicked the unconscious man, picked up his dropped wallet, and walked away. The crowd dispersed, looking bored, returning to their drinks and their phones. The bleeding man was left groaning in the gutter.

 

Izuku let the curtain fall shut. He stepped back from the window, his chest heaving as if he couldn't get enough oxygen.

 

This wasn't just a different country. This was a different reality. A reality that was entirely, inherently broken by his standards.

 

"This is wrong," Izuku muttered, pacing the small room, his hands gripping his green hair. "This is completely wrong. If there are no Quirks... if there are no Heroes... how does society function? Who protects the weak?"

 

"Nobody," Jason said flatly, taking a long swig of his beer. He sat down on a cheap vinyl chair that squeaked in protest. "The rich protect themselves with private security, and the rest of us just try not to get shot. Welcome to Leonida, kid. Hope you survive the experience."

 

Izuku stopped pacing. He looked at Jason, then at Lucia. He remembered the guns. He remembered the bags of money he had seen on the boat.

 

"You're criminals," Izuku stated, not as an accusation, but as a tragic realization. "You were running from the police in the swamp. You stole that money."

 

Jason stiffened, his hand hovering near his holster again. "Watch your mouth, kid. We saved your life."

 

"I am not judging you," Izuku said quickly, raising his hands. "In my world... people turn to crime when the system fails them. Or when they feel they have no other choice. A true hero doesn't just punch villains; a hero tries to understand why they are villains. But... I cannot be an accomplice to crime. I am a representative of U.A. High."

 

Izuku straightened his posture, wincing at the pain in his ribs, but pushing through it. He looked dead into Lucia's eyes with an expression of unwavering, stubborn resolve that made her take a half-step back. It was an expression she had never seen on anyone in Vice City. It was pure, unadulterated conviction.

 

"I need to go to the police," Izuku declared.

 

Jason choked on his beer, coughing violently and spitting foam onto the carpet. "Are you out of your goddamn mind?!"

 

"It is standard protocol," Izuku explained logically. "If a Pro-Hero or a student is lost in foreign territory, they are to seek out local law enforcement. The police can contact the government. The government can contact the Japanese embassy. They will have scientists, or maybe anomalous researchers. If I am in an alternate universe, it is a matter of international—or inter-dimensional—security. They can help me get home."

 

"Oh, absolutely not," Jason stood up, his face red with anger. "No way in hell. Lu, tell him!"

 

Lucia walked over to Izuku. She didn't draw her gun, but her face was carved from stone.

 

"Listen to me very carefully, Izuku," she said, using his name for the first time. Her voice was low, intense, and deadly serious. "You do not want to go to the cops in Vice City."

 

"They are the law," Izuku argued. "They have to help citizens."

 

Lucia let out a laugh that held zero humor. It was a sound of pure bitterness. "The VCPD? The Leonida State Police? Kid, you think the guys out on that street are bad? The cops are the biggest gang in the state. They just have badges to make their extortions legal."

 

She pointed a finger at his chest, right over the bandages. "You walk into a precinct looking like that? Talking about alternate dimensions and magic powers? Best case scenario, they throw you in a straightjacket and lock you in the psychiatric wing of Mount Zonah Medical. You'll spend the rest of your life drugged out of your mind."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. "And the worst case?"

 

"Worst case?" Jason chimed in, walking over, his voice dripping with grim reality. "You show them what you can do. You flick your finger and blow up a desk. You know what happens then? They don't call your embassy, kid. They call the FIB. The Federal Investigation Bureau."

 

Jason leaned in close, smelling of stale beer and fear. "They will black-bag you. They will take you to a subterranean bunker in the middle of nowhere. They will strap you to a table, cut you open, and figure out how to put whatever is inside you into a super-soldier serum. You won't be a hero. You'll be a lab rat. Forever."

 

Izuku stared at them. His heart hammered in his chest. He wanted to call them liars. He wanted to believe that justice was a universal constant, that the police were noble, that society was inherently good. That was the core of All Might’s teachings.

 

But as he looked into Lucia’s dark, tired eyes, he saw the truth. She wasn't trying to manipulate him. She was warning him. She was terrified for him.

 

"This world..." Izuku whispered, his voice trembling slightly, the crushing isolation finally beginning to set in. "It's... it's broken."

 

"Yeah," Lucia said softly. "It is."

 

Izuku walked over to the sagging bed and sat down heavily. He rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his scarred, calloused hands.

 

He was millions of miles away from home. Or maybe in a different universe entirely. His mother was probably terrified, crying in their apartment. Aizawa-sensei was probably tearing Kamino apart looking for him. Uraraka, Iida, Todoroki... they were all out there, fighting villains, becoming heroes.

 

And he was here. In a neon-lit hellscape, sitting in a dingy motel with two fugitives, realizing that his immense, earth-shattering power meant absolutely nothing if there was no society to protect.

 

"What do I do?" Izuku whispered into his hands. It was the first time since he had received One For All that he felt truly, utterly powerless.

 

Jason sighed, some of his anger deflating as he watched the kid break down. He might have been a freak who could throw alligators, but right now, he just looked like a scared, lost teenager.

 

"Look," Jason said, his tone softening just a fraction. "We're stuck together for the moment. We can't let you leave because you know what we look like and you know we're running. And you can't leave because you don't have an ID, you don't have money, and you're wearing a costume that screams 'arrest me'."

 

Jason reached into one of the Cluckin' Bell bags that hadn't spilled, pulled out a squashed chicken sandwich wrapped in foil, and tossed it onto the bed next to Izuku.

 

"Eat," Jason ordered. "You look like you're gonna pass out again. You need calories if your body burns through energy doing that light-show crap."

 

Izuku looked at the foil-wrapped sandwich. His stomach gave a violent, painful rumble, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since lunch at U.A. He picked it up, unwrapped it, and took a tentative bite. It was greasy, excessively salty, and tasted like processed chemicals. It was the best thing he had ever eaten. He devoured it in three bites.

 

Lucia watched him eat, her arms crossed. "Here's the deal, Izuku. We're laying low here for a few days until the heat dies down. We have... debts to pay. To some very bad people. Once we handle our business, we'll try to help you figure out how to get back to your anime-land. But while you're with us, you lay low. No glowing. No blowing up trees. No playing hero. If you see a mugging, you look the other way. You understand?"

 

Izuku stopped chewing. He looked up at her.

 

"Look the other way?" Izuku repeated, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

 

"Yes," Lucia said firmly. "You mind your business. That is rule number one of surviving in Vice City. You do not get involved in other people's problems, or you end up dead in a storm drain."

 

Izuku stared at the grease stains on his hands. The ghosts of the previous One For All wielders seemed to hum softly in the back of his mind, a warm, comforting presence. He remembered the day on the beach, staring at the sunset, when All Might had handed him a strand of hair and told him it was his turn.

 

Meddling where you don't need to... is the essence of being a hero.

 

Izuku looked up at Lucia. He didn't argue. He didn't raise his voice. But his emerald eyes, previously wide with confusion and fear, hardened into a look of absolute, unbreakable resolve.

 

"I understand your rules, Lucia," Izuku said quietly. "And I will try not to draw attention to myself. I do not want to put you in danger after you helped me."

 

He slowly stood up, ignoring the shooting pain in his shoulder. He walked over to the dresser, picking up his torn, mud-stained mask with its long, bunny-like ears. He gripped it tightly in his fist.

 

"But I cannot promise to look the other way," Izuku said, his voice ringing with quiet authority in the cramped motel room. "If someone is in danger, if someone is crying out for help... my body will move on its own. That is what a Hero does. Quirk or no Quirk. Law or no law."

 

Jason groaned, burying his face in his hands. "We're so dead. We are so incredibly dead."

 

Lucia stared at Izuku. She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to tell him how naive, how stupid, how hopelessly idealistic he was. She wanted to explain that Vice City would chew his heroic heart up and spit it out into the ocean.

 

But as she looked at him, standing there in his ruined green costume, bleeding and exhausted, yet radiating an aura of unwavering hope, a strange, unfamiliar feeling fluttered in her chest.

 

It felt suspiciously like awe.

 

"Fine," Lucia said, turning away to hide the slight smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth. "But if you get us killed, kid, I'm gonna be really pissed off."

 

Izuku smiled, a genuine, blindingly bright expression that seemed to illuminate the dark, dingy motel room better than the neon lights outside.

 

"I'll do my best to keep you safe, too," Izuku promised.

 

Outside the window, the sirens of Vice City wailed into the night, oblivious to the fact that something completely alien had just arrived. A city built on corruption, greed, and apathy was about to collide head-on with an unstoppable force of pure, heroic will.

 

Izuku Midoriya had arrived in Leonida. And he had a lot of work to do.

 

 

The morning sun over Vice City did not rise with the gentle, promising warmth that Izuku was accustomed to in Shizuoka. Instead, it hammered through the crack in the cheap motel curtains like an interrogation spotlight, harsh, glaring, and already baking the humid air outside to a suffocating temperature.

 

Izuku Midoriya was awake long before the light hit his face. His internal clock, meticulously calibrated by months of Aizawa-sensei’s grueling dawn training regimens, demanded he rise at 5:00 AM.

 

He lay on the floor of the motel room, having insisted Jason and Lucia take the bed. The thin, scratchy carpet smelled faintly of mildew and old beer, but Izuku ignored it. He was currently in the middle of a modified one-armed plank, balancing his weight carefully to avoid putting pressure on his relocated left shoulder. Sweat dripped from his forehead, stinging his eyes, as he counted under his breath.

 

“…nine hundred and ninety-seven… nine hundred and ninety-eight… nine hundred and ninety-nine… one thousand.”

 

He collapsed onto his stomach, chest heaving, his right arm trembling with lactic acid buildup. It wasn't nearly enough to maintain his physique, but without the ability to use One For All safely in this confined space, baseline calisthenics were all he had.

 

He rolled over, wincing as his bruised ribs protested, and stared at the water-stained ceiling.

 

He had spent the entire night analyzing his situation, trying to find a logical, heroic path forward. He was stranded in a reality completely devoid of Quirks. The authorities were, according to his two reluctant hosts, entirely corrupt and would likely subject him to horrific government experimentation if his powers were discovered. He had no identification, no money, and his hero costume—currently draped over a plastic chair in the corner—was torn and caked in swamp mud.

 

He was a Pro-Hero in training, yet he felt entirely paralyzed.

 

The sound of a key turning in the lock snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts. Izuku sat up instantly, falling into a defensive crouch by the kitchenette, his right hand crackling with a microscopic, invisible spark of One For All.

 

The door swung open. Jason and Lucia stepped inside, and the heavy atmosphere they brought with them instantly choked the room.

 

Jason looked terrible. He was pale, sweating profusely, and a fresh, purple bruise was blooming along his right cheekbone. Lucia looked no better; her jaw was tightly clenched, her eyes darting nervously out to the street before she slammed the door shut and engaged all three deadbolts.

 

"They found us," Jason hissed, pacing the narrow space between the bed and the TV. He ran his hands through his dark hair, pulling at the roots. "I don't know how, but they found the burner car. They know we're in Washington Beach."

 

"Who found you?" Izuku asked, stepping out of the shadows.

 

Jason flinched, having briefly forgotten the kid was there. "The Haitian Kings, glow-worm. The guys we owe fifty grand to. We just had a very unpleasant breakfast meeting in an alley behind a Café Marcel."

 

Lucia walked over to the sink, splashed cold water on her face, and leaned against the counter, staring at the floor. "Baptiste isn't giving us an extension. The botched pawn shop job in Port Gellhorn was supposed to be his payout. Because we lost the money in the swamp, he’s adding a late fee. He wants sixty grand. By midnight tonight."

 

"And if you do not pay?" Izuku asked, though he already dreaded the answer.

 

Jason let out a dark, humorless laugh. "If we don't pay? Baptiste’s boys will find us. They'll tie us to cinderblocks, take a boat out to the Vice City keys, and feed us to the bull sharks. They do it every week, kid. It's the cost of doing business."

 

Izuku’s brow furrowed. The sheer casualness with which they discussed their impending murder made his stomach churn. In his world, villains threatened death, but Pro-Heroes were always there to intervene. Here, death was just an administrative penalty for a missed payment.

 

"So we go to the police," Izuku said, reverting to his core instinct. "If they are threatening your lives, you can ask for protective custody."

 

"Kid, seriously, what part of 'the cops are worse than the gangs' do you not compute in that green head of yours?" Jason snapped, pointing an accusatory finger at Izuku. "Baptiste pays the VCPD Vice squad a hundred grand a month to look the other way. If we go to a precinct, the cops will put the cuffs on us and deliver us to Baptiste themselves for a bonus."

 

Lucia wiped her face with a cheap paper towel. "Jason’s right. The law isn't an option. We have to pay the debt. Which means we have to hit the Vice City Mambas."

 

Jason stopped pacing, turning to Lucia with wide eyes. "The Mambas? Lu, no. No way. That's suicide. They're a cartel, not some back-alley pawn shop!"

 

"They run a cash transit every Friday from their front business in Little Havana to their stash house in Downtown," Lucia said, her voice dropping into a cold, clinical tone of survival. "It's a heavily armored Granger 3600LX. They usually carry upwards of two hundred grand in raw, untraceable street cash. We hit the transport, take the bags, pay Baptiste, and use the rest to disappear to San Andreas."

 

"It's escorted, Lu! They have shooters with automatic weapons! It's just the two of us!"

 

"It's not just the two of us," Lucia said softly.

 

She turned her head, her dark eyes locking onto Izuku.

 

Izuku felt a chill run down his spine. He stepped back, shaking his head. "No. No, I am a hero. I do not steal. I do not attack people for money."

 

"You do if you want to survive," Jason chimed in, realizing what Lucia was getting at. He walked toward Izuku, puffing out his chest, trying to look intimidating. "Listen to me, anime boy. You owe us. We fished you out of the swamp. We patched you up. And right now, you are our golden goose."

 

Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone, tapping the screen a few times before shoving it into Izuku’s face.

 

On the screen was a Weazel News web page. The headline read: FIB OFFERS $100,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION ON 'SWAMP ANOMALY'. Beneath it was a blurry, thermal-imaging photo taken from a police helicopter, showing a glowing, green figure standing on a boat.

 

"The Federal Investigation Bureau is looking for you," Jason said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "They know something weird happened in the Everglades. If I make one anonymous phone call, they will swarm this motel in five minutes. They will tranq you, bag you, and you will never see the sun again."

 

Izuku stared at the phone. His heart hammered against his ribs. It was blackmail. Plain and simple.

 

"Jason, back off," Lucia said, pulling Jason away. She stepped in front of Izuku, her expression softening, though the desperation in her eyes was glaringly obvious. "Izuku, listen to me. I don't want to turn you in. I really don't. But we are dead if we don't get this money. Dead. I know you think you're a hero. So... save us."

 

Izuku looked between them. Jason was terrified, lashing out like a cornered animal. Lucia was pragmatic, viewing him as the only variable that could keep them breathing past midnight.

 

He could leave. He could activate One For All at five percent, smash through the motel window, and disappear into the city. They could never catch him. But if he left... they would die. The Haitian Kings would murder them.

 

A hero's job is to save lives, All Might’s voice echoed in his memory. Even the lives of those who have lost their way.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, steeling his nerves. He looked Lucia dead in the eye.

 

"I will help you," Izuku said, his voice carrying a weight that made both criminals pause. "I will help you get the money to pay your debt so that you do not die. But I have conditions."

 

"Conditions?" Jason scoffed. "Beggars can't be choosers, kid."

 

"First," Izuku stated, ignoring Jason completely and holding up a finger. "I will not use a gun. I will not hold a gun. I will not touch a gun."

 

"Fine," Lucia agreed instantly.

 

"Second," Izuku continued, holding up a second finger, his emerald eyes blazing with an unyielding intensity. "Nobody dies. We do not kill the guards. We do not kill the cartel members. We do not kill the police if they arrive. If I see either of you aiming for a lethal shot, I will stop you myself. And you know I can."

 

Jason swallowed hard, remembering the sheer concussive force that had shattered the mangrove tree. "You want us to rob a heavily armed cartel convoy with rubber bullets and harsh language? They're gonna shoot at us with real lead, kid!"

 

"Then I will make sure they miss," Izuku said firmly. "I will be your tactical coordinator. I will guide you. I will drive. But this operation will be non-lethal. Those are my terms. Accept them, or make your phone call to the FIB. I am willing to take my chances."

 

The room fell silent. Izuku stood his ground, projecting the unshakeable aura of a Pro-Hero. He was no longer the frightened, confused boy they had pulled from the swamp. He was Deku, successor of One For All.

 

Lucia stared at him for a long moment, reading the absolute resolve in his posture. She nodded slowly.

 

"Alright, Izuku," Lucia said. "No killing. We do it your way."

 

 

 

An hour later, the motel room had been transformed into a makeshift war room.

 

Jason had procured a physical map of Vice City from a local gas station, spreading it out across the sagging mattress. He had used a red marker to trace the route of the Mambas' cash transport.

 

"Okay, the Granger leaves the Little Havana lockup right here," Jason said, pointing to a spot on the western island. "It takes Escobar Boulevard north, crosses the Leaf Links bridge, and heads down Ocean Drive to their penthouse stash house. It’s a ten-mile route, mostly through heavy traffic."

 

"Escort?" Izuku asked. He had discarded his ruined hero costume, borrowing a pair of Jason’s slightly oversized jeans and a plain gray hoodie, with the hood pulled up to conceal his vibrant green hair.

 

"Two trailing cars. Usually Benefactor Schafters," Lucia replied, loading a magazine of hollow points into her 9mm, before catching Izuku's disapproving glare. She sighed, popping the magazine out and swapping it for one loaded with heavy, solid rubber riot rounds Jason had bought off a corrupt security guard. "Four guys in the transport, two in each escort. Eight shooters total."

 

Izuku leaned over the map. His mind, trained by years of obsessively analyzing Pro-Hero encounters, villain tactics, and urban warfare, began to process the data at a terrifying speed. Where Jason and Lucia saw streets, Izuku saw vectors, choke points, civilian casualty radiuses, and escape routes.

 

"Hitting them on Escobar Boulevard is too dangerous," Izuku muttered, his eyes darting across the paper. "It is a multi-lane highway. Too many civilian vehicles. If a firefight breaks out, the crossfire risk is ninety-five percent."

 

"So we hit them on the bridge?" Jason suggested.

 

"No. A bridge is a fatal funnel. If the police arrive, we are trapped on both sides with zero lateral movement options," Izuku countered immediately, tapping his chin in thought. He traced his finger down to the eastern island, specifically a dense, grid-like neighborhood slightly off the main coastal drag.

 

"Here," Izuku said, pressing his finger against an intersection in the Vice Point district. "Washington Avenue and 15th Street. It is a narrow, four-way intersection flanked by concrete parking garages and tall commercial buildings. If we intercept them here, the buildings will absorb stray gunfire, protecting the pedestrians on the next block."

 

Jason stared at the kid in disbelief. "Are you a tactician or a teenager? How do you know this?"

 

"I take lots of notes," Izuku said vaguely, remembering his charred Hero Analysis notebooks. "Jason, what vehicle do we have?"

 

"Stole it this morning," Jason grinned, tossing a set of keys on the bed. "A Declasse Vigero ZX. American muscle. Supercharged V8, reinforced chassis. It drinks gas like a jet plane, but it hits like a freight train."

 

Izuku nodded. He didn't know the make or model, but he understood the physics of a heavy, high-horsepower vehicle. To Izuku, this wasn't just a getaway car. In a world without Quirks, tools and technology were everything. The car was his Support Item.

 

"Good. Here is the plan," Izuku said, taking the red marker from Jason. He began drawing rapid, precise lines on the map.

 

"I will drive. You two will be in the back. As the convoy approaches the intersection of Washington and 15th, they will have to slow down for the traffic lights. We will approach from the cross-street. I will not hit the armored Granger. It is too heavy; we will crush our own engine block."

 

Izuku drew an 'X' on the trailing escort cars. "I will execute a PIT maneuver—a precision immobilization technique—on the lead escort car, forcing it into the side of the armored Granger. The physics of the crash will block the narrow street, trapping the second escort car behind them."

 

Lucia leaned in, genuinely impressed. "You're gonna box them in with their own guys."

 

"Exactly," Izuku nodded. "Once they are immobilized, you two deploy. You will use tear gas—do you have tear gas?"

 

"Got three canisters of CS gas," Jason confirmed, patting a duffel bag.

 

"Throw them at the doors of the Granger. Do not fire until they exit the vehicle, and when you do, aim for their knees and weapons. Rubber bullets only. The gas will blind them, reducing their accuracy. You secure the bags, get back in the car, and we leave before the VCPD can establish a perimeter. Time from impact to extraction must be under ninety seconds."

 

Jason looked at the map, then at Izuku. The kid’s plan was meticulously detailed, calculating angles of approach and physics that Jason couldn't even fathom. It was crazy. It was suicidal.

 

And it was the best plan they had.

 

"Alright, Captain America," Jason muttered, grabbing his shotgun. "Let's go rob a cartel."

 

 

 

The Vice City heat was brutal by 2:00 PM. The air shimmering above the black asphalt of Washington Avenue looked like water.

 

Izuku sat behind the wheel of the matte-black Vigero ZX, idling in an alleyway just off 15th street. The heavy, rhythmic thumping of the supercharged V8 engine vibrated through the steering column, traveling up his arms. He adjusted his grip on the leather wheel. It felt foreign. He had his provisional driver's license in Japan, but he had never driven a high-performance muscle car, let alone on the right side of the road, in a hostile city, preparing to ambush a heavily armed gang.

 

He closed his eyes, centering his breathing. I am not a criminal. I am protecting lives. If I do not do this, Jason and Lucia will be murdered. If I fail, innocent bystanders could be caught in a cartel crossfire. I have to be perfect.

 

"Comms check," Lucia's voice crackled through the cheap Bluetooth earpiece Izuku had shoved into his ear. She and Jason were crouched in the back seat, faces covered by black bandanas, holding their non-lethal weaponry with sweating hands.

 

"I hear you," Izuku replied calmly.

 

"Target is approaching," Jason said, tracking a GPS bug he had managed to slip onto the Granger hours earlier. "Two blocks out. They're moving slow. Traffic is heavy."

 

Izuku shifted the car into drive. He didn't use One For All. He couldn't risk ripping the steering wheel off its column or crushing the gas pedal through the floorboards. He had to rely purely on his analytical mind and reflexes.

 

"One block," Jason counted down. "Get ready, kid."

 

Through the alleyway opening, Izuku saw the intersection. A massive, matte-gray Granger SUV with heavily tinted windows rolled into view, flanked closely by a sleek, black Schafter sedan. The second escort was right behind it.

 

"Hold... hold..." Izuku whispered to himself, calculating the speed of the approaching vehicles, the weight of his own car, and the exact angle of impact required to achieve maximum displacement without fatal force.

 

The Granger crossed the center line of the intersection. The first escort car moved into Izuku's line of sight.

 

"Now!"

 

Izuku slammed his foot onto the gas pedal.

 

The Vigero ZX roared like a caged beast, its rear tires spinning for a fraction of a second before finding purchase on the asphalt. The heavy muscle car launched out of the alleyway like a cannonball.

 

The driver of the Schafter escort saw the black blur coming from his peripheral vision, but he didn't have time to brake.

 

Izuku didn't T-bone the car. T-boning was lethal. Instead, he clipped the steering wheel sharply to the right at the last possible microsecond, aiming the reinforced steel bumper of the Vigero directly at the rear right quarter-panel of the Schafter.

 

CRASH!

 

The impact was violently loud, a screeching cacophony of tearing metal and shattering glass. The precise strike of the PIT maneuver instantly broke the Schafter’s rear traction. The escort car spun out of control, acting as a massive, two-ton projectile. It slammed sideways into the rear axle of the armored Granger SUV.

 

The Granger, heavy with armor plating and cash, was knocked off its trajectory. It violently swerved, its front tires blowing out as it crashed headlong into a concrete light pole, bringing the massive metal structure crashing down across the hood.

 

The second Schafter escort slammed on its brakes, but it was too late. It rear-ended the first Schafter, causing a multi-car pileup that completely barricaded the narrow street.

 

Horns began to blare from civilian cars in the distance. Pedestrians on the sidewalks screamed and scattered, diving into storefronts for cover.

 

Izuku had successfully halted the convoy, taking minimal damage to his own front end.

 

"Go! Go! Go!" Izuku shouted over the ringing in his ears.

 

Jason and Lucia kicked their doors open and surged out of the back seat.

 

Things immediately went sideways.

 

The Vice City Mambas were not street thugs; they were seasoned cartel enforcers. Despite the concussive crash, the doors of the second Schafter flew open. Three men in tactical vests stepped out, raising military-grade Carbine Rifles. They didn't even check on their comrades; they just opened fire on Jason and Lucia.

 

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

 

"Shit! Automatic fire!" Jason screamed, diving behind a metal mailbox as a hail of bullets chewed the concrete to pieces around him.

 

Lucia slid across the hood of a parked car, ripping the pin from a tear gas canister and hurling it toward the Granger. The canister bounced off the asphalt and erupted, vomiting a thick, choking cloud of white smoke over the convoy.

 

"I can't get a shot! They're suppressing us!" Jason yelled, blindly firing a rubber slug from his shotgun. It bounced harmlessly off the armored door of the Granger.

 

Inside the Vigero, Izuku’s Danger Sense flared—a sharp, stinging prickle at the base of his skull. It wasn't warning him about the men shooting at Jason; it was warning him about the Granger.

 

Through the tear gas, Izuku saw the rear doors of the armored SUV kick open. A massive man wearing a heavy ballistic mask stepped out, carrying an MG-14 light machine gun. He was aiming blindly into the smoke, preparing to sweep the street and cut Jason and Lucia in half.

 

I can't let them die!

 

Izuku didn't think. He reacted.

 

He threw the Vigero's door open and rolled out onto the asphalt. He couldn't use a powerful Smash—it would kill the man or blow up the cars. But he needed a projectile.

 

His eyes locked onto a fist-sized chunk of concrete debris that had been chipped off the sidewalk during the crash.

 

Izuku scooped up the concrete chunk. He channeled exactly 2% of One For All into his right arm. Green lightning faintly crackled under the sleeve of his hoodie.

 

Shoot Style: Pebble Flick.

 

With a motion so fast it broke the sound barrier with a sharp CRACK, Izuku threw the chunk of concrete.

 

It flew like a railgun slug. It didn't hit the cartel enforcer; it hit the heavy steel receiver of the light machine gun just as the man pulled the trigger.

 

The kinetic force of the impact was immense. The machine gun shattered in the man's hands, the barrel bending backward. The kinetic shockwave traveled up the man’s arms, dislocating his right shoulder and throwing him flat on his back into the tear gas cloud, completely incapacitated.

 

"The gunner is down! Move!" Izuku shouted, ducking behind the open door of the Vigero as bullets whizzed past his head.

 

Lucia didn't hesitate. With the heavy weapon silenced, she sprinted into the tear gas, trusting her memory of the layout. She found the rear of the Granger. Two enforcers were coughing violently, blinded by the gas, trying to draw their sidearms.

 

Lucia raised her 9mm and fired twice. Pop! Pop!

 

The heavy rubber riot rounds struck the men squarely in the kneecaps. They screamed, collapsing to the ground, dropping their weapons.

 

Jason rushed in behind her, grabbing a heavy crowbar from his duffel bag. He jammed it into the damaged locking mechanism of the Granger's cash lockbox and leaned his entire body weight onto it. With a metallic screech, the lock gave way.

 

"Got it! I got the bags!" Jason yelled, hauling two heavy, canvas duffel bags out of the back.

 

Suddenly, a new sound pierced the chaos of the gunfire.

 

WEE-WOO-WEE-WOO!

 

"Cops! VCPD!" Lucia screamed, grabbing Jason by the shoulder. "We have twenty seconds!"

 

Four Vice City Police cruisers careened around the corner of 15th street, their tires smoking, sirens wailing, lightbars flashing violently. Officers were already leaning out of the windows, drawing their service weapons.

 

"Get in the car!" Izuku roared, sliding back into the driver's seat and shifting the Vigero into reverse.

 

Jason and Lucia threw the cash bags into the back and dove in after them, slamming the doors just as a police bullet shattered the Vigero's rear windshield, showering them in safety glass.

 

"Drive, kid! Drive!" Jason screamed, curling into a ball on the floorboards.

 

Izuku didn't panic. He inhaled sharply, processing the geometry of the escape.

 

The street ahead was blocked by the crashed convoy. The street behind was rapidly filling with police cruisers.

 

Lateral movement.

 

Izuku slammed the gas, but kept the clutch engaged. He spun the steering wheel entirely to the left. He dumped the clutch.

 

The Vigero’s rear tires screamed in agony, generating a massive cloud of white tire smoke. The heavy muscle car performed a flawless, stationary 180-degree J-turn, whipping around to face the alleyway they had originally emerged from.

 

He hit the gas, shooting the car into the narrow alley just as a police cruiser attempted to ram them, missing their rear bumper by inches and crashing into a dumpster instead.

 

"We're boxed in! The alley exits onto Ocean Drive, it'll be crawling with cops!" Lucia yelled over the roaring engine.

 

"Put your seatbelts on!" Izuku commanded, his voice unnaturally calm.

 

They burst out of the alley onto Ocean Drive. The vibrant, sun-drenched boulevard was in utter pandemonium. Tourists were screaming, cars were stopped dead in the lanes, and in the rearview mirror, Izuku saw three VCPD cruisers in hot pursuit, their sirens deafening.

 

Above them, the rhythmic chopping of helicopter blades shook the air. A police Maverick chopper was descending from the clouds, a sniper leaning out of the side door.

 

This is a high-speed pursuit in a densely populated civilian area, Izuku analyzed rapidly. The police are acting with extreme aggression. They are disregarding public safety to secure an arrest. I have to disable their pursuit capabilities without causing fatal crashes.

 

"They're on our six! They're gonna PIT us!" Jason yelled, looking back through the shattered window.

 

The lead police cruiser accelerated, pulling alongside the rear quarter-panel of the Vigero, attempting to execute the exact maneuver Izuku had used on the cartel.

 

Izuku didn't speed up to avoid it. He did the exact opposite. He slammed on the brakes.

 

The sudden deceleration caught the police officer entirely off guard. The cruiser shot past them.

 

As the cruiser passed, Izuku tapped the gas and swerved left, nudging his heavy reinforced bumper against the rear tire of the police car. It was a surgical tap, applying just enough kinetic force to disrupt the cruiser's traction.

 

The cop car spun out harmlessly, sliding across the pavement and plowing into a row of bright yellow sand-barrels designed to absorb impact. The airbags deployed. The officers were safe, but the car was totaled.

 

"One down!" Lucia yelled, gripping the grab handle above the door so tightly her knuckles were white. "But the chopper is still tracking us!"

 

"We need a roof overhead!" Izuku yelled back. He checked his mirrors. Two more cruisers were gaining fast.

 

Up ahead, Ocean Drive curved sharply to the right. To the left was the entrance to a massive, multi-story underground parking garage for the Vice Point Mall.

 

"I'm taking the garage!" Izuku announced.

 

"You can't make that turn at this speed! We'll flip!" Jason screamed.

 

Izuku knew the physics were against him. A normal driver couldn't make a ninety-degree turn into a narrow garage entrance at eighty miles an hour.

 

But Izuku Midoriya was not a normal driver.

 

He approached the turn, keeping his foot pinned to the floor. The entrance was rapidly approaching.

 

One For All: Full Cowl - One Percent.

 

It was a microscopic amount of power, just enough to enhance his physical reaction time and strength beyond human limits, without risking destroying the car.

 

At the last possible fraction of a second, Izuku stomped on the brake pedal, yanked the emergency brake, and spun the steering wheel with superhuman speed and precision.

 

The heavy Vigero broke traction instantly. It slid sideways, defying the laws of friction, drifting perfectly across three lanes of traffic. Izuku feathered the gas pedal with millimeter precision, balancing the massive horsepower of the V8 engine to control the drift.

 

The car slid backward, perfectly threading the needle between two concrete pillars, and plunged into the dark, descending ramp of the underground parking garage.

 

The pursuing police cruisers couldn't react in time. They blew past the entrance, tires squealing in vain as they continued down Ocean Drive. Above, the police helicopter lost visual contact beneath the concrete roof of the mall.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He navigated the spiraling ramps of the underground garage, descending four levels deep into the subterranean darkness, before finally pulling the car into a dark, secluded corner behind a massive concrete support pillar.

 

He cut the engine. He turned off the headlights.

 

Silence descended over the car, save for the ticking of the overheated engine block and the ragged, hyperventilating breaths of Jason and Lucia in the back seat.

 

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

 

Jason slowly uncurled from the floorboards. He reached out with a trembling hand and pushed the passenger door open, stumbling out onto the concrete floor of the garage. He ripped his bandana off and vomited into a nearby drain.

 

Lucia leaned back against the leather seat, staring at the ceiling of the car. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like a bird trapped in her ribcage. She looked at the two massive duffel bags sitting on the floor—sixty thousand dollars. Enough to save their lives.

 

She slowly turned her head and looked at the driver's seat.

 

Izuku was slumped over the steering wheel, his forehead resting against his arms. His body was trembling slightly. The sheer adrenaline crash, combined with the moral weight of what he had just done, was threatening to overwhelm him.

 

He had just actively participated in an armed robbery. He had attacked people. He had fled from the police. He was a criminal.

 

"Izuku," Lucia said softly.

 

Izuku didn't look up. "Are there any casualties?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Did anyone die?"

 

"No," Lucia said, her voice filled with a strange, profound reverence. "No, kid. Nobody died. The cartel guys are bruised and gassed. The cops crashed into sand barrels. The pedestrians are fine."

 

She unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed into the front passenger seat, looking at the boy in the gray hoodie.

 

She had lived in Vice City her entire life. She had met wheelmen, assassins, cartel bosses, and corrupt FIB agents. She had never, in her entire existence, met someone who possessed such terrifying capability, yet used it with such surgical, obsessive care to protect the lives of everyone around them—even the enemies.

 

"You didn't just drive, Izuku," Lucia said, reaching out and gently placing a hand on his trembling shoulder. "You orchestrated a warzone, and you made sure everyone walked away from it. You saved our lives. And you saved theirs."

 

Izuku slowly lifted his head, turning to look at her. His green eyes were shining with unshed tears of stress and guilt, but also a deep, ingrained relief that his principles had held firm.

 

Jason walked back over to the car, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at the shattered back window, the dented bumper, and then at Izuku. The hostility, the skepticism, the arrogance—it was all gone. It was replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated respect.

 

"I don't know what kind of hero school you go to in Japan, kid," Jason said, his voice raspy. "But remind me to never, ever piss off your teachers."

 

Izuku managed a weak, exhausted smile. "They are very strict."

 

Lucia patted his shoulder, offering him a genuine, warm smile—a rarity in Vice City. "Come on, Hero. Let's get out of here. We have a debt to pay."

 

Izuku nodded. He still felt the crushing guilt of being a getaway driver, but as he looked at Jason and Lucia, realizing they would live to see another day, he knew he had made the right choice. The world of Vice City was dark, corrupt, and utterly broken.

 

But for the first time since he had arrived, Izuku realized that he could still be a hero here. It wouldn't be flashy. He wouldn't get a medal, or applause, or a license.

 

But he could still save people in the shadows.