What if Deku Was Stronger Than All Might

 

The golden hues of the setting sun bled across the streets of Musutafu, casting long, dramatic shadows that seemed to mock Izuku Midoriya. His lungs still burned with the aftershocks of suffocation, the phantom taste of sewer water and sludge clinging to the back of his throat. He clutched his yellow backpack straps so tightly his knuckles turned white, staring at his red sneakers as he walked.

 

He had moved without thinking. When Katsuki Bakugo was suffocating, when the pro heroes stood on the sidelines waiting for a better quirk, Izuku’s legs had moved on their own. He was quirkless. He was useless. He was Deku. And yet, for one fleeting, terrifying second, he had been a hero.

 

Then, the scolding came. The heroes had berated him for his recklessness, praising Bakugo for his "resilience." It was the same story it had always been. A quirkless boy had no place in the world of gods.

 

"I am pathetic," Izuku whispered into the twilight air, tears threatening to spill from his emerald eyes. "I should just give up. I should..."

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

Izuku shrieked, stumbling backward as a massive, hulking figure slid out from a nearby alleyway, skidding to a halt with enough kinetic force to rattle the streetlamps. The sheer mass of the man, combined with his radiant, impossible smile, was unmistakable.

 

"All... All Might?!" Izuku gasped, dropping his notebook. "But you were just swarmed by reporters! How did you get away?"

 

"HA HA HA! Escaping the press is a breeze for me!" The towering Symbol of Peace struck a dramatic pose, flexing muscles that seemed carved from granite. But then, the booming laughter cut off into a wet cough. Steam erupted from the man's pores in a blinding hiss. When the vapor cleared, the mountainous hero was gone, replaced by the emaciated, skeletal form Izuku had seen earlier on the rooftop.

 

Toshinori Yagi wiped a trail of blood from his chin, his sunken blue eyes locking onto the trembling boy before him. The playful bravado was gone, replaced by a solemn, heavy gravity that seemed to pull the very air toward him.

 

"Young man," Toshinori said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "I came to thank you. And to apologize. If you hadn't told me about your life... if you hadn't run into that fight... I would have been a worthless bystander in a crowd of spectators. You pushed me to act."

 

Izuku shook his head frantically, waving his hands. "No! It was my fault! I got in the way! I'm just a quirkless nobody..."

 

"Exactly," Toshinori interrupted, taking a step forward. "You were quirkless. You were timid. You had no power, no training, and no chance of winning. And yet, out of everyone in that crowd, out of all the pros... you were the only one who moved."

 

Izuku froze, his breath catching in his throat.

 

"Top heroes have stories about them from their school days," Toshinori continued, the evening wind ruffling his baggy clothes. "Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think."

 

Tears finally spilled over Izuku's lower lashes, tracking hot and fast down his freckled cheeks. He fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Those words. They were the words he had spent his entire life begging to hear. From his mother, from his teachers, from anyone.

 

"You can become a hero," Toshinori declared.

 

Izuku sobbed, curling into himself as a lifetime of rejection washed out of him in a tidal wave of relief.

 

Toshinori watched the boy cry, a warm smile gracing his skeletal features. "I deem you worthy of my power. My quirk is yours to inherit."

 

Izuku’s crying hitched. He looked up, a thick strand of snot hanging from his nose, his expression morphing into utter bewilderment. "Inherit? What do you mean? You can't just give someone a quirk."

 

"This one, you can," Toshinori chuckled, wiping the blood from his chin. He raised his hand, the setting sun catching the edge of his palm. "It is a sacred torch, passed down from generation to generation. It is the crystallized power of those who have come before, stockpiled and cultivated over decades. The true name of my quirk is... One For All."

 

 

 

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, Toshinori brought Izuku to Dagobah Municipal Beach.

 

Or, more accurately, Dagobah Municipal Landfill.

 

Mountains of rusted refrigerators, crushed cars, shattered televisions, and rotting tires stretched as far as the eye could see, obscuring the ocean entirely. The smell of brine mixed heavily with the scent of oxidized iron and decay.

 

"This is your training ground!" Toshinori announced in his muscular form, standing atop a washing machine. He held up a thick packet of paper. "I have designed the 'Aim to Pass: American Dream Plan!' It is a rigorous, ten-month workout regimen tailored specifically to tear down and rebuild your scrawny physique. One For All is a tremendous physical burden. If I gave it to you now, your limbs would blow right off!"

 

Izuku swallowed hard, looking at his own thin, uncalloused hands. "Blow right off..."

 

"But do not despair! We have exactly ten months until the U.A. Entrance Exam. If you follow this plan perfectly, day in and day out, by the end of it, your body will be a suitable vessel to hold a fraction of my power. Now, let's begin! Try moving that refrigerator!"

 

Izuku dropped his backpack. He walked up to a rusted, double-door refrigerator half-buried in the sand. He dug his hands into the edges, bent his knees, and braced himself for an agonizing struggle. He closed his eyes, thinking of his dream, of All Might's words, of his desire to save people.

 

He pulled.

 

With a sickening CRUNCH, the metal siding of the refrigerator gave way. But it wasn't just the metal bending—the entire refrigerator tore out of the sand, flying upward in a shower of rust and dirt, arcing over Izuku’s head and crashing twenty feet behind him.

 

Izuku blinked, looking at his hands. "Huh?"

 

Toshinori, who had been sipping from a water bottle, spat a geyser of water out over the sand, instantly deflating into his skeletal form. He hacked and coughed, pointing a shaking, bony finger at the boy. "W-What the... how did you do that?!"

 

"I... I don't know!" Izuku stammered, looking terrified. "I just pulled!"

 

Toshinori stared at the boy. Izuku was small. He had zero muscle mass. Mechanically, biophysically, it was impossible for a boy of his stature to launch a two-hundred-pound appliance twenty feet into the air without a strength-enhancing quirk. "Young Midoriya... are you sure you don't have a quirk?"

 

"I have the double-jointed pinky toe! The doctor said it was proof I was evolutionarily stunted!"

 

Toshinori frowned, approaching the boy. "Try that truck tire. The one with the rim still in it."

 

Izuku walked over to the massive tire. He gripped it. Again, he didn't feel the agonizing strain of human limitation. Instead, as his mind demanded force, his muscles seemed to instantly, miraculously comply, bypassing the natural inhibitors of the human brain. He lifted the tire above his head as if it were made of styrofoam.

 

"Incredible..." Toshinori whispered.

 

What neither of them knew—what no doctor could have possibly diagnosed—was that Izuku Midoriya was not evolutionarily stunted. He was an evolutionary anomaly. The extra joint in his toe was not a sign of a lack of quirk factor; it was a symptom of a completely different biological blueprint.

 

Quirks take up genetic space. They require the human body to allocate resources to strange organs, specialized glands, or bizarre biological physics. Izuku’s body, completely devoid of any quirk factor, had instead taken all of that genetic potential and invested it into something else: absolute, pure physiological adaptability. His muscle fibers, bone density, and cellular structure were incredibly dense, yet dormant, waiting for a catalyst. He was, quite literally, a blank canvas designed by nature to absorb and adapt.

 

"Well," Toshinori said, scratching the back of his head. "Keep going."

 

Day two. Izuku began sprinting with a ruined pickup truck tied to his waist. He didn't jog. He sprinted. The rope snapped twice because of the sheer acceleration.

 

Day three. Izuku's metabolism skyrocketed. He was eating ten times his normal amount. His muscles weren't tearing and repairing over weeks; they were micro-tearing and rebuilding in minutes. He looked in the mirror that night and saw a physique carving itself out of marble in real-time.

 

Day five. Toshinori sat on a lawn chair, completely numb to the reality he was witnessing. Izuku was currently juggling three air conditioning units while balancing on a rusted steel beam.

 

Day seven.

 

Toshinori arrived at Dagobah beach just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. He brought a new clipboard, having thrown out the ten-month plan on day three. But as he stepped onto the concrete promenade overlooking the beach, the clipboard slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the ground.

 

The beach was clean.

 

Not mostly clean. Pristine. The mountains of garbage were gone, neatly sorted into colossal, towering cubes of compacted metal and plastic near the road for recycling pickup. The white sand stretched beautifully into the sparkling blue ocean.

 

Standing at the shoreline, silhouetted against the rising sun, was Izuku Midoriya. He was shirtless, his body now defined by tightly coiled, dense, hyper-efficient musculature. It wasn't the bulky, grotesque mass of a bodybuilder, but the sleek, terrifyingly perfect anatomy of a predator. He was breathing easily, looking out at the waves.

 

Toshinori stumbled down the steps. "Seven days..." he breathed, his voice trembling. "Ten months of work... hundreds of tons of refuse... in seven days."

 

Izuku turned, beaming brightly. "All Might! Good morning! I finished up a bit early. What's next?"

 

Toshinori looked at the fifteen-year-old boy. He remembered his own master, Nana Shimura. He remembered his own grueling training. He had been a natural, yes, but this? This was unprecedented. This was terrifying.

 

"Young Midoriya," Toshinori said, his voice dropping into a solemn register. "You... you have exceeded every expectation I could have possibly conceived. Your body... I don't understand it, but it is flawless. It is a perfect vessel."

 

Izuku flushed red, rubbing the back of his neck. "I just... really wanted to do a good job."

 

Toshinori transformed, expanding into his muscular form. The golden light of dawn hit his face as he reached up and plucked a single strand of golden hair from his head. He held it out to Izuku.

 

"There is no need to wait ten months," All Might boomed softly, if such a thing were possible. "You are ready. To receive my power, you must consume some of my DNA."

 

Izuku stared at the hair. The romanticism of the moment shattered slightly. "Wait. What?"

 

"EAT THIS!" All Might thrust the hair forward.

 

Izuku gagged slightly, but took the hair. He closed his eyes, pinched his nose, and swallowed it dry. He coughed, thumping his chest. "Okay... okay, I ate it. When do I feel it?"

 

"Usually, it takes a few hours for the stomach acids to digest it and for the DNA to enter your bloodstream," All Might explained, crossing his arms. "You should probably head home and rest. We will begin quirk training tomorrow—"

 

All Might stopped.

 

Izuku’s eyes had gone wide, his pupils dilating until they nearly swallowed his irises.

 

It didn't take three hours. The moment the DNA made contact with Izuku's highly adaptive, hyper-metabolic stomach lining, it was instantly assimilated.

 

Inside Izuku’s mind, in a space between reality and consciousness, a vast, dark expanse was suddenly illuminated. Eight floating embers of light hovered in the void. They represented the past wielders of One For All. When the quirk had transferred to Toshinori, the embers had slowly merged with his spirit, a gradual blending of power.

 

But with Izuku, it was different.

 

His body recognized the stockpile of energy not as a foreign entity, but as the missing piece of his own dormant genetic code. The lock had found its master key. The eight embers didn't just merge with him; they ignited. They exploded into a raging, blinding supernova of rainbow light. The stockpiled power of eight generations of heroes, cultivated over a century, poured into a vessel that offered absolutely zero biological resistance.

 

Because there was no resistance, the energy didn't just pool. It multiplied. Exponentially.

 

In the physical world, Izuku dropped to his knees.

 

"Young Midoriya?!" All Might cried out, dropping his bulky form to rush forward.

 

KRACK-BOOM!

 

All Might was thrown backward, skidding violently across the sand as a shockwave erupted from the boy. It wasn't a quirk activation; it was sheer, raw bio-energy venting from Izuku's pores.

 

Crimson and emerald lightning began to arc wildly off Izuku's body, tearing deep gouges into the sand around him. The air grew heavy, thick with static electricity. The sky above Dagobah Beach began to darken as the atmospheric pressure plummeted, drawn into the vortex of power awakening within the boy.

 

"Ah... AHHH!" Izuku screamed, clutching his chest. He wasn't in pain. It was the absolute opposite of pain. It was sensory overload. He could feel everything.

 

He could hear the heartbeat of a seagull flying three miles away. He could feel the rotation of the Earth beneath his bare feet. He could sense the tectonic plates grinding deep beneath the ocean floor. The power coursing through his veins was a raging, roaring ocean, and his body was expanding to hold every single drop.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were glowing with a terrifying, radiant green light.

 

He slowly stood up. The lightning ceased its wild thrashing, pulling tight against his skin, humming with a suppressed frequency that vibrated the very air.

 

Toshinori pushed himself up from the sand, his blue eyes wide with an emotion he hadn't felt in decades: pure, unfiltered awe.

 

Izuku looked at his hand. He slowly clenched it into a fist. The simple friction of his fingers compressing against his palm generated a miniature sonic boom that cracked the air like a bullwhip.

 

"All Might..." Izuku whispered, his voice resonating with a strange, harmonic duality, as if multiple voices were speaking just beneath his own. "This... this power..."

 

"You... you can feel it?" Toshinori asked, terrified to step closer. "You're at one hundred percent. Your body isn't breaking. Midoriya... how do you feel?"

 

Izuku unclenched his fist. The glowing faded, receding deep into his core. He looked at the Number One Hero, tears of profound realization welling in his eyes.

 

"I feel... like I'm made of glass," Izuku whispered. "No. Not me. The world. The world feels like it's made of glass. If I breathe too hard... I'll shatter it."

 

Toshinori swallowed dryly. He realized in that terrifying, beautiful moment that One For All had not just been passed on. It had metamorphosed.

 

The Symbol of Peace had just birthed a god.

 

 

 

The remaining nine months and three weeks before the U.A. Entrance Exam were not spent training Izuku to use his power. They were spent training him to hide it.

 

Toshinori quickly realized that Izuku possessed strength that dwarfed his own Prime era by an order of magnitude. In his Prime, All Might could change the weather with a punch. Izuku, they discovered during a secret trip to a desolate mountain range, could obliterate a mountain peak just by flicking his finger at ten percent.

 

The danger was no longer villains. The danger was Izuku accidentally tripping on a sidewalk and leveling a city block in the process.

 

Under the guise of meditation and extreme martial arts discipline, Gran Torino was called in early. Together, they taught Izuku utter, total bodily control. Izuku learned to suppress his power constantly, walking around in a perpetual state of holding back 99.9% of his physical output.

 

He moved slower. He spoke softer. He cultivated an air of extreme timidity, constantly terrified of his own shadow. To his mother, he was just her sweet, anxious boy who had suddenly undergone a massive growth spurt and gotten incredibly fit. To the world, he was a quiet teenager.

 

But beneath the skin, a titan slept.

 

The morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam arrived with crisp spring air. Izuku stood before the massive, H-shaped gates of U.A. High School, wearing his black middle school uniform.

 

Breathe in. Suppress. Breathe out. Anchor yourself, Izuku chanted mentally, reciting Torino's mantras.

 

"Outta my way, Deku!"

 

Izuku blinked, turning to see Katsuki Bakugo marching toward him, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his red eyes glaring with their usual explosive fury.

 

Before Izuku received One For All, Bakugo’s presence was a source of sheer terror. Now, looking at the explosive boy, Izuku felt a strange, detached sense of fragility. He could see the pulse beating in Bakugo’s neck. He could calculate the exact tensile strength of Bakugo's bones. If Bakugo detonated his largest explosion directly into Izuku's face, Izuku wouldn't even blink. It would feel like a warm breeze.

 

"Ah! K-Kacchan! Good morning!" Izuku stuttered, intentionally stepping aside, tripping over his own feet to maintain the illusion of his clumsiness.

 

As he fell forward, a girl with a bob cut and permanent blush touched his shoulder. "Oops! Are you okay?"

 

Izuku hung suspended in mid-air, a faint pink aura surrounding him. Uraraka Ochaco smiled brightly. "It's my quirk. Sorry I used it without asking, but it'd be bad luck to fall right before the exam, right?"

 

Izuku rotated gracefully, touching his feet to the ground. "T-Thank you! Good luck to you too!"

 

As she walked away, Izuku breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't actually tripped; he had feigned it perfectly. If she hadn't caught him, he would have caught himself. But the interaction was nice. It reminded him that he was still human. He desperately needed that reminder.

 

The written exam was a joke. With One For All accelerating his neural pathways, Izuku read the entire booklet in four seconds. He spent the remaining fifty-nine minutes staring at the ceiling, doing differential equations in his head to pass the time.

 

Then came the practical exam orientation. Present Mic, the Voice Hero, stood at the podium, screaming into the microphone. Izuku winced slightly, adjusting the acoustic filtering in his own eardrums by tightening a micro-muscle near his jaw.

 

When a tall, blue-haired boy named Iida stood up to berate him for supposedly muttering (Izuku had actually just been calculating the structural integrity of the auditorium), Izuku simply bowed his head and apologized meekly. He didn't want any attention. He just wanted to pass.

 

Thirty minutes later, Izuku stood before the massive gates of Battle Center B. He wore a simple green tracksuit, adjusting his elbow pads. Around him, dozens of confident teenagers were stretching, showing off their quirks, and sizing each other up.

 

"Okay, start!" Present Mic’s voice echoed from a watchtower.

 

The other students hesitated. Izuku didn't.

 

Before the gates had even fully opened, Izuku vanished.

 

There was no dust cloud. There was no sonic boom. He had moved with such terrifying precision and fluid grace that he simply ceased to be in one place and appeared in another, slipping through the crack in the gates like a ghost.

 

Inside the simulated city, a massive One-Pointer robot rounded a corner, its optical sensors locking onto Izuku. "TARGET ACQUIRED."

 

Izuku took a deep breath. Just use base strength. No quirk activation. 0.001 percent.

 

He didn't punch. He didn't kick. He simply walked briskly past the robot, tapping the center of its chassis with his index finger as he passed.

 

Behind him, the One-Pointer crumpled inward as if hit by a wrecking ball. The armor plating shattered, the internal circuitry detonated, and the massive machine collapsed into a heap of sparking scrap metal.

 

Izuku kept walking.

 

Two-Pointer on the left. Izuku exhaled sharply through his nose. The pressurized burst of air shot forward like a bullet, cleanly piercing the robot's optical sensor and short-circuiting its brain. Down it went.

 

Three-Pointer above. It fired a net. Izuku caught the net, gave a slight tug, and ripped the three-ton robot off the roof, bringing it crashing down to the street where it exploded on impact.

 

By the time the other students finally rushed into the city, Izuku had already cleared the first three blocks.

 

In the dark, monitor-filled observation room deep within U.A., the faculty watched in silence.

 

Nezu, the principal, sat with his paws steeped, his black beady eyes fixed on the screen tracking Examinee 711.

 

Shota Aizawa, the erasure hero, leaned forward, his tired eyes narrowing. "What is his quirk? The file says he's quirkless. That is clearly a lie."

 

"Super strength?" Midnight suggested, chewing on the end of her whip. "Telekinesis? He barely touched that One-Pointer and it folded like paper."

 

Toshinori Yagi stood in the back of the room in his skeletal form, sweating profusely. He had told Nezu he found a successor, but he hadn't told anyone just how severe the situation had become. He watched the screen as Izuku moved. It was like watching a surgical scalpel cut through butter. There was no wasted movement. There was no effort.

 

"He hasn't activated a quirk yet," Aizawa noted, pulling up thermal imaging. "His core temperature hasn't spiked. There's no energy emission. Whatever he's doing... he's doing it with base physical strength."

 

The room went dead silent.

 

"Base physical strength?" Present Mic whispered over the comms. "Eraser, that Three-Pointer weighs four tons. He pulled it down with his wrist."

 

"I see it, Mic," Aizawa muttered, leaning closer to the glass. "He's not just strong. Look at his face. He's bored. No, he's... he's scared. He's terrified of hitting them too hard."

 

"Let's see how he handles the real test," Nezu said, his paw hovering over a large red button. "Release the Zero Pointer."

 

Back in the mock city, the ground began to quake.

 

Izuku stopped walking. He had accumulated 85 villain points and 40 rescue points (he had casually caught several falling students and deflected debris without anyone noticing exactly who did it). He felt the vibration through his sneaker soles before he heard the noise.

 

A shadow fell over the city blocks. Buildings crumbled like sandcastles as a colossal, olive-green behemoth rolled into the street. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, its single glowing red eye sweeping the area. The Zero Pointer.

 

Panic erupted. Students began fleeing en masse, screaming in terror.

 

Izuku turned to leave as well. There were no points for fighting it, as Present Mic had said. It was an obstacle.

 

"Ow! Help!"

 

Izuku froze. His enhanced hearing picked up the faint cry instantly over the roar of the fleeing crowd and the grinding gears of the behemoth. He turned his head, his emerald eyes locking onto a figure trapped beneath a slab of concrete.

 

It was the nice girl. Uraraka.

 

The Zero Pointer’s massive treads were rolling relentlessly toward her. She couldn't get free.

 

Time seemed to stop for Izuku. He saw the trajectory of the treads. He calculated the distance. He had exactly 1.4 seconds before she was crushed.

 

I can't just pull her out, Izuku thought, his mind racing at lightspeed. The debris is too heavy for her bone structure. If I rip her out at super-speed, the G-force will snap her neck. I have to destroy the obstacle.

 

Izuku planted his feet.

 

For the first time since the beach, he decided to intentionally access the ocean of power within him. He didn't want to use 100%. He didn't even want to use 10%. He mentally cordoned off a minuscule drop of the stockpiled energy. He aimed for roughly 1% of his absolute power, pulling it into his right arm.

 

Red energy pulsed beneath his skin, spider-webbing up his forearm.

 

Izuku bent his knees, his sneakers compressing into the asphalt, cracking the street beneath him.

 

He didn't just jump. He launched.

 

The sonic boom of his liftoff shattered every window within a two-block radius. The asphalt cratered, a ten-foot depression appearing where he had just stood. He crossed the distance from the ground to the Zero Pointer's face—a height of roughly three hundred feet—in less than a tenth of a second.

 

Izuku floated suspended in the air, directly in front of the robot's massive red eye. He pulled his right arm back.

 

SMASH.

 

He threw the punch straight up, aiming the vector of kinetic force toward the sky to avoid collateral damage on the ground.

 

His fist didn't touch the robot's metal chassis. It didn't need to.

 

The compressed air pressure radiating from his knuckles slammed into the Zero Pointer with the force of a tactical nuclear warhead. The colossal machine did not break. It was violently, brutally atomized. The three-foot-thick armor plating, the dense internal mechanics, the massive treads—all of it disintegrated into a spray of fine shrapnel and dust, propelled upward into the stratosphere.

 

But the punch didn't stop there.

 

The invisible column of kinetic force tore upward, a physical pillar of wind rushing toward the heavens.

 

Above U.A. High School, the sky had been overcast, thick with heavy gray rain clouds.

 

As Izuku’s punch connected with the atmosphere, the sky tore open. A massive, perfect circle, spanning miles across, was violently carved into the cloud cover. The shockwave rippled outward, parting the clouds and revealing the brilliant, blinding blue sky above. The sheer atmospheric displacement caused a sudden, rushing wind to sweep across the entire city of Musutafu, a rogue hurricane born from a single, fifteen-year-old fist.

 

Down below, the remaining students were thrown off their feet by the downdraft, shielding their eyes from the sudden blinding sunlight. Uraraka stared upward from beneath the rubble, her jaw unhinged.

 

High above, Izuku hung in the air. The red glow faded from his arm. He looked at his hand. It was perfectly fine. Not a single broken bone. No purple bruising. He felt a mild tingle, like he had just stretched a tight muscle.

 

Oh, Izuku thought, panicked. I used too much.

 

He let gravity take him, reorienting his body to land safely. He plummeted the three hundred feet, bending his knees at the last possible microsecond to absorb the kinetic energy of his own fall, touching down onto the pavement with the lightness of a feather. There wasn't even a tap of sound as his sneakers hit the ground.

 

He jogged over to Uraraka, effortlessly lifting the four-ton slab of concrete off her leg with one hand. "Are you okay? Do you need Recovery Girl?"

 

Uraraka didn't answer. She was staring at him, her eyes wide with a primal, incomprehensible shock, her mouth opening and closing without sound.

 

Izuku looked around. Every single student in the testing ground was frozen, staring at him.

 

In the observation room, the silence was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against the eardrums of every pro hero in the room.

 

On the monitors, the mock city was bathed in sunlight. Where the Zero Pointer had been, there was nothing but empty space.

 

Shota Aizawa’s coffee mug slipped from his fingers. It shattered against the tile floor, the hot brown liquid splashing against his boots. He didn't blink. He didn't move. He just stared at the screen, his mind entirely incapable of processing the physics of what he had just witnessed.

 

"He... he changed the weather," Midnight whispered, her voice trembling, stripping away all of her usual bravado. "With a single punch. A wind pressure punch."

 

Nezu’s fur was standing entirely on end, puffing him up to twice his normal size. The genius animal's brain was running trillions of calculations, trying to understand the energy output required to atomize steel and part a continent of clouds simultaneously.

 

"Toshinori," Nezu said softly, his voice devoid of its usual cheer. "What... what did you do?"

 

Toshinori Yagi stood in the back, his hands gripping the metal railing so tightly the steel was bending under his bony fingers. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

 

He remembered his own prime. He remembered his legendary 'United States of Smash'.

 

What the boy had just done—that casual, holding-back upward strike—was stronger. It was fundamentally, terrifyingly stronger than the greatest feat All Might had ever accomplished in his entire life. And the boy hadn't even broken a sweat.

 

Toshinori looked at the monitor, at Izuku Midoriya, who was awkwardly bowing to Uraraka and apologizing for causing a scene.

 

I didn't pass on a quirk, Toshinori realized, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. I passed on a curse of absolute power. I have birthed a god... and now he has to live among mortals.

 

The buzzer rang, echoing through the desolate, sun-drenched mock city.

 

"E-Exam... over," Present Mic stammered over the loudspeaker, his voice cracking.

 

Izuku Midoriya sighed, slumping his shoulders. I hope they don't dock points for showing off, he thought nervously. I just want to be a hero.

 

The alarm clock did not ring. It did not have the chance.

 

Three seconds before the digital mechanism could complete the electrical circuit to trigger the morning chime, Izuku Midoriya’s eyes snapped open. His enhanced auditory perception had picked up the faint, high-frequency hum of the capacitor charging inside the plastic casing.

 

With a movement so deliberate it bordered on agonizing, Izuku reached out from beneath his All Might themed comforter. He did not slap the snooze button. He lightly rested his index finger against the plastic button and visualized the exact amount of force required to depress a standard spring-loaded mechanism. Two point five Newtons, he reminded himself. No more. No less.

 

He pressed. The button clicked safely. He exhaled a breath he didn't realize he was holding, the faint expulsion of air ruffling the curtains across the bedroom.

 

"Okay," Izuku whispered to the empty room, his voice barely a murmur to avoid vibrating the drywall. "Day one of U.A. High School. Just... be normal. Be completely, utterly normal."

 

Getting out of bed was an exercise in extreme bio-mechanic suppression. Before he inherited One For All, moving was a subconscious action. Now, every single motion required a conscious, terrifying layer of mathematical calculation. He had to suppress the explosive twitch-muscle fibers in his calves just to stand up without launching himself through the ceiling. Walking across the hardwood floor required him to distribute his weight perfectly, absorbing the kinetic shock of his own footsteps so he wouldn't crack the floorboards and send the entire apartment building plummeting into the foundation.

 

He walked to the bathroom. He picked up his toothbrush. He had gone through twelve toothbrushes in the last month. Pinch gently. Like holding a butterfly with a broken wing, he thought, applying a microscopic dab of toothpaste.

 

As he brushed, he looked at his reflection. At first glance, he still looked like plain, freckled Izuku. His messy green curls were the same, his wide emerald eyes were the same. But beneath the middle-school t-shirt, his physique was terrifyingly dense. It wasn't the bulky, swollen muscle of a bodybuilder; it was a compressed, ultra-efficient musculature forged by the sheer metabolic pressure of housing a god's power. His skin, once soft and prone to bruising, now possessed the tensile strength of graphene.

 

He washed his face, feeling the cold water. He focused on that sensation. Cold water. The smell of his mom's cooking down the hall. Breakfast.

 

"Izuku! Breakfast is ready! Don't be late for your first day!" Inko Midoriya called out, her voice filled with typical motherly warmth.

 

Izuku’s heart swelled with affection, but immediately, he commanded his heart rate to slow down. An elevated heart rate meant increased blood flow, which meant an increase in internal pressure.

 

He walked into the kitchen, wearing his brand new U.A. uniform. The gray blazer felt restrictive, but he liked that. The restriction was a physical barrier, a reminder to keep himself contained.

 

"Oh, look at you," Inko cooed, her eyes tearing up as she placed a plate of eggs and rice on the table. "My little boy, a high schooler at U.A. I still can't believe it. You've been working so hard out at that beach, getting so big and strong!"

 

Izuku smiled, a genuine, albeit nervous, smile. He sat down—slowly, ensuring the wooden chair could bear his mass—and picked up his chopsticks. "Thanks, Mom. I'll do my best today. I just hope I don't mess up."

 

"You won't," she assured him, kissing the top of his head. "You're going to be a wonderful hero."

 

If I don't accidentally sink Japan first, Izuku thought grimly, swallowing a mouthful of rice.

 

 

 

The morning commute was a sensory minefield. The train station was packed with rush-hour commuters. To normal people, it was just crowded. To Izuku, it was an ocean of fragile glass sculptures bumping into him. Every time someone brushed against his shoulder, he had to actively relax his muscles to absolute zero tension; otherwise, the person bumping into him would shatter their collarbone against his shoulder blade.

 

He stood perfectly still in the center of the train car, holding the overhead handle with the lightest possible grip, closing his eyes to filter out the cacophony of a thousand beating hearts, scraping shoes, and breathing lungs within a mile radius.

 

When he finally stepped off the train and walked up the hill toward the towering H-shaped U.A. gates, a cold sweat had already formed on his brow. The psychological toll of absolute restraint was far more exhausting than any physical labor he had ever endured.

 

He navigated the labyrinthine hallways of the massive school, reading the signs until he found a door that looked like it belonged to a bank vault. Painted in massive red letters was '1-A'.

 

"The door is huge," Izuku muttered. "Is it for students with gigantification quirks? Or mutant types?"

 

He reached for the handle. He paused. He engaged his 'Torino Protocol', the mental checklist Gran Torino had drilled into him. Breathe in. Suppress. Find the center of mass. Turn the knob.

 

He slid the massive door open, stepping into the classroom.

 

Instantly, the ambient noise in the room died down. It wasn't a sudden silence, but a rapid tapering off as eyes turned toward the doorway.

 

Standing near the teacher's podium was Tenya Iida, the tall, blue-haired boy from the exam, currently chopping his arm through the air while reprimanding someone. Sitting at a desk, with his feet propped disrespectfully on the table, was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Bakugo looked up. His ruby-red eyes locked onto Izuku.

 

For a fraction of a second, the classroom felt like a vacuum. The air pressure literally dropped as Bakugo stopped breathing. His jaw tightened, the muscles in his neck cording.

 

Izuku remembered this look. It was the look Bakugo always gave him right before an explosion, right before the insults and the violence. Instinctively, Izuku slouched, shrinking his shoulders, looking down at his bright red sneakers. He raised his hands defensively, his voice pitching up an octave into a nervous stutter.

 

"A-Ah! H-Hi Kacchan! Good morning! S-Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt..."

 

The juxtaposition was jarring. Here stood a boy whose shoulders were broad enough to stretch the fabric of his blazer to its limits, whose posture (when unslouched) screamed apex predator, cowering like a frightened mouse before a boy he could objectively disintegrate with a sneeze.

 

The other students watched the interaction with confusion.

 

Iida marched forward, his robotic gait eating up the distance. "You're him! The boy from the entrance exam!"

 

Izuku flinched, waving his hands frantically. "I-I'm Izuku Midoriya! Nice to meet you!"

 

"I am Tenya Iida from Somei Private Academy!" Iida bowed deeply, at a perfect ninety-degree angle. "I must apologize! I completely misjudged you during the orientation! You realized the true purpose of the practical exam, didn't you? The rescue points! You sacrificed your own chance at villain points to save a fellow student, executing a maneuver of such incomprehensible power..." Iida shuddered slightly. "I have never witnessed anything like it."

 

"N-No! You've got it all wrong!" Izuku squeaked, stepping back. "I was just panicking! I didn't know what I was doing!"

 

"Oh! It's the curly-haired boy!"

 

Izuku turned to see Uraraka Ochaco bounding up behind him, her face flushed with excitement. "You passed! I knew you would! That punch was amazing! Like, WHOOSH, and then BOOM, and the sky just... opened up! It was like something out of a comic book!"

 

"A-Ah, Uraraka-san! T-Thank you! You passed too!" Izuku stammered, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato.

 

While they spoke, Bakugo remained frozen at his desk. His brain was caught in a terrifying, recursive loop. Deku. Quirkless Deku. The pebble in my path. The insect. He blew away a continent of clouds. He changed the weather. He broke the Zero Pointer without touching it. It's a trick. It has to be a trick. A hidden quirk? A super-support item? No. That was raw power. Deku has power. Deku is stronger than me.

 

Bakugo’s hands began to sweat nitroglycerin, popping with microscopic detonations, but he couldn't bring himself to yell. For the first time in his life, a primal, evolutionary fear had clamped down on his vocal cords. The aura Izuku projected, even while slouching and stuttering, was like standing next to a dormant volcano.

 

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

 

The voice was tired, dry, and came from the floor.

 

The students jumped, looking down to see a giant, yellow sleeping bag lying on the floor in the hallway. A scruffy man with unkempt black hair and bloodshot eyes unzipped the cocoon like a caterpillar emerging from a very depressing metamorphosis. He stood up, holding a juice pouch.

 

"It took you eight seconds to quiet down. Time is limited. You kids are not rational enough."

 

Shota Aizawa, the Erasure Hero, stepped into the classroom. His cold, dark eyes swept over the students, lingering on Izuku for a fraction of a second longer than the rest.

 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Nice to meet you." He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white uniforms. "Put these on and head out to the P.E. grounds."

 

 

 

The boys' locker room was mostly quiet as everyone changed out of their formal uniforms and into the U.A. gym clothes.

 

Izuku went to the farthest corner of the room, turning his back to the others. He unbuttoned his shirt with excruciating care. He wanted to change as fast as possible to avoid being seen. He slipped his shirt off.

 

"Whoa. Dude."

 

Izuku froze, his shirt tangled around his wrists. He glanced over his shoulder.

 

Eijiro Kirishima, a boy with spiky red hair, was staring at Izuku’s back. Denki Kaminari, a blonde boy, had dropped his pants in shock.

 

"Midoriya, right?" Kirishima walked over, his eyes wide. "What the heck kind of workout routine do you do? You look like you're carved out of steel!"

 

Izuku frantically pulled his P.E. shirt over his head, blushing furiously. "N-Nothing special! Just... running! And picking up trash!"

 

"Trash?" Kaminari snorted. "Bro, do you pick up dump trucks? Your back muscles look like a demon's face."

 

"It's just genetics!" Izuku squeaked, shoving his legs into his sweatpants. "Excuse me!" He practically fled the locker room, desperate to escape the attention.

 

Bakugo watched him go. Bakugo was in peak physical condition, possessing the musculature required to withstand point-blank explosions every day. But looking at Deku's back, Bakugo had felt physically inadequate. It made him sick to his stomach. I'll expose him, Bakugo thought, grinding his teeth. Today. I'll prove it's a fluke.

 

 

 

The dirt field was vast, baking under the mid-morning sun. Class 1-A stood in a loose gaggle, looking at Aizawa, who was holding a digital pitching device.

 

"A quirk apprehension test?" the class echoed in unison.

 

"What about the entrance ceremony? Or guidance sessions?" Uraraka asked, tilting her head.

 

"No time for that," Aizawa said flatly. "U.A. is known for its unrestricted school traditions. That goes for how the teachers run their classes, too. You kids have been doing these standardized tests since junior high, right? Physical fitness tests where you weren't allowed to use your quirks."

 

Aizawa held up a smartphone, displaying a list of fitness records. "The country still uses averages taken from results devoid of quirks. It's irrational. The Ministry of Education is procrastinating."

 

Aizawa turned his gaze toward the explosive blonde. "Bakugo. You finished first in the practical exam."

 

Izuku flinched, expecting Bakugo to gloat. But Bakugo remained uncharacteristically silent, his eyes locked on the dirt.

 

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

 

"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugo muttered, his voice lacking its usual bite.

 

"Try doing it with your quirk," Aizawa instructed, tossing the boy a baseball. "Step into the circle. Do whatever you want, just don't leave the ring."

 

Bakugo stepped into the white chalk circle. He stared at the ball in his hand. He looked up, his red eyes darting toward Izuku, who was hiding near the back of the group, looking like a nervous wreck. The sight infuriated Bakugo. The rage broke through his paralysis. He was Katsuki Bakugo. He was the best.

 

"DIE!" Bakugo roared, violently swinging his arm. A massive explosion erupted from his palm, the concussive force propelling the ball into the sky like a rocket, leaving a trail of black smoke.

 

The class cheered, shielding their eyes from the blast.

 

Aizawa looked at his phone. The device beeped. He turned the screen to the class. "Know your own maximum first. That is the most rational way to form the foundation of a hero."

 

705.2 meters.

 

"Seven hundred meters?!" Kaminari gasped. "That's insane!"

 

"This looks like fun!" Mina Ashido cheered, pumping her fists.

 

"Fun?" Aizawa’s voice dropped ten degrees, a dark aura radiating from him. "You have three years to become heroes. Will you have an attitude like that the whole time? Alright. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential and will be punished with expulsion."

 

The class erupted in outrage, shouting about unfairness.

 

Izuku didn't shout. He didn't complain. Instead, a deep, icy dread settled into his stomach. Expulsion. If he got expelled on the first day, he would let All Might down. He would lose his chance.

 

But there was a much darker problem.

 

If I use One For All, even one percent, I'll destroy the testing equipment. If I break the equipment, I get no score. If I get no score, I come in last. But if I don't use it... I have to rely on my base strength. Can I suppress my base strength enough to not break the equipment, but still get a good score? Izuku's mind spiraled, calculations running at lightspeed.

 

"Welcome to U.A.'s hero course," Aizawa smiled, a cruel, terrifying grin.

 

 

 

Test 1: 50-Meter Dash.

 

Izuku stood at the starting line next to Bakugo. The robotic camera track was set up to record their times.

 

Bakugo was breathing heavily, sparks popping in his palms. "I don't know what kind of trick you pulled at the exam, Deku," Bakugo hissed, not looking at him. "But you're a quirkless loser. I'm going to crush you."

 

Izuku stared straight ahead. Don't use OFA. Just run naturally. But not my real natural. Fake natural. Like a normal human.

 

"On your marks," the robotic voice chimed. "Get set."

 

BANG.

 

Bakugo fired his explosions, blasting himself forward like a human missile, skipping across the dirt.

 

Izuku moved. He tried to mimic the biomechanics of a normal teenage athlete. He pushed off the starting block, consciously forcing his legs to move at what felt to him like an agonizing, slow-motion crawl. It felt like running through neck-deep molasses. He had to stop himself from naturally digging his toes in, knowing that if he flexed his calves fully, he would tear the track to pieces and break the sound barrier.

 

He jogged, letting Bakugo cross the finish line first.

 

4.13 seconds, the robot announced for Bakugo.

 

4.18 seconds, it announced for Izuku.

 

Bakugo spun around, panting. "Four point one eight?! Without a speed quirk?!"

 

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, laughing nervously. "A-Ah, I've been doing a lot of cardio! T-Treadmills and stuff!"

 

Aizawa, standing at the finish line, narrowed his eyes. He had seen Izuku run. It was the most unnatural, stilted, intentionally handicapped gait he had ever witnessed. He was actively fighting his own momentum, Aizawa noted internally. He could have crossed the finish line before the sound of the gun reached our ears. Why is he holding back?

 

Test 2: Grip Strength.

 

The class gathered around digital hand dynamometers.

 

Mezo Shoji, a tall boy with multiple arms, squeezed his. "540 kilograms," someone read over his shoulder. "Whoa! Are you a gorilla?"

 

Izuku held the small plastic and metal device in his palm. Okay. Grip strength. The average adult male is around 50kg. A pro hero maybe 100kg. Shoji is 540kg.

 

Izuku gently closed his fingers around the handles. He applied the absolute minimum amount of pressure required to move the spring.

 

CRACK.

 

The digital screen shattered instantly, the metal handles warping and fusing together under the minuscule friction of Izuku’s grip. The machine sparked and died.

 

"Uh-oh," Izuku squeaked.

 

Aizawa walked over, plucking the destroyed device from Izuku’s hand. He inspected the crushed metal. It looked like it had been put in an industrial hydraulic press. "Equipment malfunction," Aizawa lied smoothly, his stoic face betraying none of the alarm bells ringing in his head. "Take a zero for this one, Midoriya. Move on to the next test."

 

Izuku’s heart plummeted. A zero. He was going to fail.

 

Test 3: Standing Long Jump.

 

Izuku watched as his classmates leaped across the sandbox. Aoyama fired his navel laser, Bakugo exploded across, and Asui leaped entirely over it like a frog.

 

It was Izuku’s turn.

 

I need a score. I can't hold back too much, but I can't jump into orbit.

 

Izuku stepped up to the line. He didn't bend his knees. He didn't swing his arms. He simply pushed off his toes with the force of a gentle hop.

 

To the rest of the class, Izuku Midoriya simply defied gravity. He didn't seem to jump; he merely ascended in a parabolic arc, traveling the entire length of the sandbox and landing softly on the grass on the other side.

 

Cleared.

 

"He didn't even bend his knees!" Mineta screamed, pointing a trembling finger. "Is his quirk anti-gravity?! Wait, Uraraka has anti-gravity! Are they related?!"

 

Test 4: Repeated Side Steps.

 

Izuku stood between the two lines. Mineta bounded back and forth using his sticky purple spheres.

 

Izuku tried to sidestep. But the lateral friction required to stop his own mass and change direction was too much for the dirt track. Every time he planted his foot, he gouged a massive trench into the earth, sending a shower of soil over his classmates.

 

"Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" Izuku apologized profusely, meticulously stepping side to side, treating the ground like it was made of thin ice.

 

Aizawa watched, his irritation giving way to deep, professional fascination.

 

This kid... it's not that he doesn't know how to use his quirk, Aizawa realized, observing Izuku's panicked face as he tried to pat down a crater he had accidentally kicked up. It's that his quirk is always on. No, that's not right either. His physical body is fundamentally incompatible with the physics of this environment. He is trying to fit a supernova into a lightbulb.

 

 

 

Test 5: The Softball Throw.

 

This was it. The equalizer. Uraraka had just scored an 'Infinity' by making the ball weightless.

 

Izuku stood in the chalk circle, gripping a fresh baseball. He was currently in fourth place overall due to the zero on the grip test. If he didn't secure a high score here, the final endurance tests might not be enough to save him from last place.

 

I have to do it, Izuku realized, his emerald eyes hardening. I have to throw it far. But if I just use my base strength, I might accidentally throw it into a populated area and hurt someone. I have to throw it up. Into space. I need to use One For All. Just a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

 

Izuku breathed in. He widened his stance. The timid, nervous boy vanished. His posture corrected itself. His spine straightened. The immense, crushing gravity of his presence returned in full force.

 

The temperature in the immediate vicinity spiked. A faint, nearly invisible aura of emerald energy began to bleed off Izuku's skin, accompanied by the smell of ozone.

 

Class 1-A went silent. Even Bakugo took a step back, his instincts screaming at him to run.

 

Izuku pulled his right arm back. The muscles in his forearm coiled, locking into place. He envisioned the power, channeling 1% of the stockpile into his shoulder, bicep, and wrist.

 

He threw.

 

The motion was perfect. The mechanics were flawless. But as his arm whipped forward... the power abruptly vanished. The emerald aura snuffed out like a blown candle.

 

Izuku’s arm continued its arc, releasing the ball with purely his base, suppressed physical strength.

 

FWOOSH.

 

The ball still broke the sound barrier, generating a sharp CRACK that made several students cover their ears. The ball vanished into the sky.

 

Aizawa held up the phone. 3,214 meters.

 

Izuku blinked, staring at his hand. The stockpiled power... he had felt it disappear just as he threw. He turned his head.

 

Standing a few yards away, Shota Aizawa’s capture scarf was levitating wildly around his neck. His hair defied gravity, floating upward, and his eyes glowed a menacing, blood-red.

 

"I erased your quirk," Aizawa said, his voice cold, though internally, he was reeling. I erased his quirk. The activation factor is gone. I shut it down completely. And he still threw it over three kilometers. What is he?!

 

"Erased my quirk?" Izuku gasped, realizing who he was looking at. "Those goggles... you're the Erasure Hero: Eraserhead!"

 

"Eraserhead?" several students murmured. "Never heard of him."

 

Aizawa ignored them, marching forward until he was inches away from Izuku. He glared down at the boy, keeping his quirk active.

 

"I saw the entrance exam footage," Aizawa said softly, so only Izuku could hear. "You obliterated a towering robot and cleared the cloud cover of a city with a single punch. And yet, throughout this entire test, you've been holding back. You've been tiptoeing around like you're afraid to break the world."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. "I... I am."

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "A hero who is too afraid to use his power is a liability. You think holding back makes you noble? It makes you dangerous. If a villain attacks, and you hesitate because you're scared of collateral damage, people die. Power without control is useless, but power deliberately shackled by fear is cowardice."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. Cowardice. The word stung worse than a slap. He had spent his whole life being brave while powerless, and now that he had power, he was acting like a coward.

 

"I erased whatever activation quirk you have," Aizawa continued, dropping his voice lower. "And you still threw it three kilometers. Your base physiology is mutated beyond normal human limits. But I know you have more. Whatever you used to destroy the Zero Pointer—you were about to use it. Why didn't you?"

 

"Because... if I use it..." Izuku stammered, looking at his hand. "I might kill someone."

 

Aizawa stared into Izuku's eyes. He didn't see the arrogance of a boy with a god-tier quirk. He saw the genuine, paralyzing terror of a child holding a nuclear launch code.

 

Aizawa blinked. His hair fell flat, his eyes returning to normal. "I've returned your quirk. You get two throws. Do it properly this time. Prove to me that you can use your power without destroying the ring you stand in."

 

Aizawa stepped back, wrapping his scarf back around his neck.

 

Izuku stood alone in the circle. He looked at the second ball in his hand.

 

He's right. If I can't control it now, in a controlled environment, how can I ever be the Symbol of Peace? How can I be the Symbol of Hope? Gran Torino told me I am a vessel. A vessel must control what it contains.

 

Izuku closed his eyes.

 

He didn't slouch. He stood tall. He took a deep breath, drawing the air deep into his lungs.

 

"Hey," Kirishima whispered to Kaminari. "Is the ground shaking?"

 

It wasn't an earthquake. It was a localized vibrational frequency. The pebbles around Izuku’s feet began to levitate, vibrating violently in the air.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were glowing. A brilliant, blinding, toxic green light poured from his irises. Crimson veins of power spider-webbed across his skin, illuminating his veins like molten lava.

 

He wasn't holding back the aesthetic of the power anymore. He allowed One For All to flow, limiting it to exactly 1%.

 

"Aizawa-sensei," Izuku said, his voice echoing with that terrifying, harmonic duality. "I won't destroy the ring."

 

Izuku stepped back into a pitcher's stance. He raised his front leg.

 

When he planted his foot, he commanded the kinetic force to focus entirely upward and outward, neutralizing the downward thrust. The dirt beneath his shoe didn't even shift.

 

He whipped his arm forward.

 

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

 

It was not a sonic boom. It was a concussive shockwave of atmospheric displacement. A ring of white, condensed air exploded outward from Izuku's hand, generating a localized hurricane that sent the entire class tumbling backward into the dirt. Aizawa had to plant his feet and cross his arms to avoid being blown away, his eyes wide in shock.

 

A beam of pure, displaced air shot diagonally into the heavens. The ball itself wasn't visible. It had ignited from atmospheric friction instantly, turning into a streak of plasma that vanished into the upper atmosphere in less than a second.

 

Silence descended on the field, save for the ringing in everyone’s ears.

 

Izuku stood perfectly still in the circle. The chalk line was completely undisturbed. His arm wasn't broken. His breathing was even. The glowing faded, returning him to a normal-looking teenager.

 

He turned around, looking at Aizawa with a fierce, determined gaze. "Sensei. I controlled it."

 

Aizawa’s hand was shaking slightly as he held up his smartphone. The device was emitting a strange, high-pitched error noise.

 

He turned the screen around for the class to see. The digital numbers were rapidly cycling, unable to lock onto a final distance.

 

Finally, the screen flashed red, displaying a single word.

 

IMMEASURABLE / SIGNAL LOST.

 

Uraraka gaped. "Immeasurable? But... my ball had anti-gravity! It floated away! How did he..."

 

"Escape velocity," Yaoyorozu Momo whispered, her hands flying to her mouth in horror. "He threw the ball with enough kinetic force to break Earth's gravitational pull. He threw it into space."

 

The class stared at Izuku. They didn't see a classmate anymore. They saw an anomaly. An entity.

 

"Deku..."

 

The voice was guttural, trembling with a primal, unhinged fury.

 

Izuku turned to see Bakugo picking himself up from the dirt. Bakugo's face was contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated madness. His pride, his worldview, his entire sense of reality had just been shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

 

The quirkless loser. The pebble. He hadn't just surpassed Bakugo. He had rendered Bakugo mathematically insignificant.

 

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, DEKU?!" Bakugo roared, explosions igniting in both palms as he launched himself forward, ignoring every rule, every instinct. He didn't care about the teacher. He didn't care about U.A. He just needed to destroy the illusion. "TELL ME HOW YOU DID IT! TELL ME!"

 

Bakugo closed the distance in a heartbeat, his right hand crackling with a massive, lethal explosion aimed directly at Izuku’s face.

 

Aizawa moved to intercept, his scarf lashing out. "Foolish—!"

 

But Aizawa was too slow.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't dodge. He simply turned his body to face Bakugo, letting the explosive palm strike him squarely in the chest.

 

KABOOM!

 

Flames and black smoke engulfed Izuku. The blast was powerful enough to shatter concrete.

 

The smoke cleared immediately, blown away by a gentle, natural breeze.

 

Izuku stood perfectly unharmed. His U.A. gym uniform, explicitly woven from high-end, fire-resistant carbon fibers by the support course, was barely singed. Izuku himself hadn't even been moved an inch.

 

Bakugo hung in the air for a fraction of a second, his hand pressed against Izuku's chest. Bakugo’s eyes were wide, staring at his own palm, then up at Izuku's face.

 

Izuku looked down at Bakugo. There was no anger in Izuku's eyes. There was only a profound, heartbreaking pity.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said softly, his voice devoid of the stutter. "Please don't."

 

Izuku raised his hand and flicked his index finger against Bakugo's forehead.

 

It wasn't a quirk-enhanced flick. It was a fraction of his base strength.

 

THWACK.

 

Bakugo was launched backward as if hit by a speeding truck. He flew through the air, skipping across the dirt track three times before tumbling to a halt fifty feet away, groaning in dazed agony, a massive red welt instantly forming on his forehead.

 

Aizawa’s capture scarf, which had just arrived to wrap around Bakugo, fluttered uselessly in the wind.

 

Class 1-A was paralyzed.

 

"I-I'm so sorry!" Izuku immediately reverted back to his panicked, anxious self, waving his hands frantically as he rushed over to the downed blonde. "I barely tapped him! I swear I barely tapped him! Kacchan, are you okay? Should I get Recovery Girl?!"

 

Aizawa stared at the scene. He looked down at his phone, then at Bakugo, then at Izuku.

 

He took a point-blank, lethal explosion without blinking. He swatted away the top scorer of the entrance exam like a gnat. And he's apologizing for it.

 

Aizawa sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had taught many prodigies. He had dealt with powerful quirks. But this was something entirely outside the realm of human heroics.

 

"Enough," Aizawa ordered, his voice cutting through the tension like a knife. "Bakugo, go to the infirmary and get an ice pack. Midoriya, step back. We are finishing the tests."

 

 

 

The rest of the day passed in a blur of surreal horror for Class 1-A.

 

Izuku broke every single physical record in U.A. history. He finished the long-distance run in seconds without breaking a sweat. He cleared the seated toe-touch by bending so far forward he nearly snapped the machine in half by accident.

 

When the final scores were tallied, Aizawa projected them holographically.

 

1. Izuku Midoriya.

2. Yaoyorozu Momo.

3. Shoto Todoroki.

4. Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion," Aizawa said with a creepy smile. "It was a rational deception to draw out your upper limits."

 

The class sighed in relief, though many cast nervous glances at the green-haired boy standing quietly in the back.

 

As the bell rang for lunch, the students filtered out into the halls, heading for the cafeteria.

 

Izuku walked alone. He could hear them. With his enhanced hearing, he couldn't not hear them.

 

"Did you see that?" Kaminari whispered to Sero. "He flicked Bakugo. Literally flicked him. The dude is a monster."

 

"It's a little scary," Ashido murmured. "He acts so jumpy, but then he just... defies physics."

 

"We must respect his capabilities!" Iida’s voice boomed down the hall. "But I admit, his presence is quite intimidating!"

 

Izuku kept his head down, clutching his lunch tray. The cafeteria was massive, filled with hundreds of students from the hero, general, support, and business tracks.

 

Izuku found a small, empty table in the far corner, near a large window. He sat down, meticulously placing his tray on the table so as not to crack the plastic.

 

He picked up his chopsticks.

 

"Excuse me? Is this seat taken?"

 

Izuku looked up. Uraraka Ochaco stood there, holding her tray, offering a bright, tentative smile. Standing behind her was Iida, looking rigid but determined.

 

"N-No! It's completely free!" Izuku stammered, his heart skipping a beat.

 

Uraraka sat down across from him, while Iida took the seat next to her.

 

"You're amazing, Midoriya-kun!" Uraraka beamed. "During the test, I was so scared, but you just completely dominated! What is your quirk called anyway? Super strength?"

 

"Super everything, it seems," Iida added, pushing his glasses up his nose.

 

Izuku looked at the two of them. They were nervous, yes. They were intimidated. But they were here. They were treating him like a classmate. Like a person.

 

"It's... complicated," Izuku smiled, a genuine, soft smile that reached his emerald eyes. "But I just want to use it to help people. That's all."

 

Across the cafeteria, rumors were already spreading like wildfire. Upperclassmen were looking over, pointing at the boy sitting in the corner. The legend of the Entrance Exam had already morphed into the myth of the physical tests.

 

They weren't calling him Izuku Midoriya.

 

They were whispering about the boy who shattered the sky. The unbeatable force. The Green Titan.

 

Izuku took a bite of his rice, completely unaware that in a dark, dusty bar miles away, a villain with hands covering his face was already watching a leaked video of the entrance exam, scratching his neck in furious, bleeding agitation.

 

The god had revealed himself. And the world was preparing to test him.

 

The afternoon sun filtered through the massive windows of U.A. High School, casting long, geometric shadows across the hallway. For Class 1-A, the day had already been a grueling psychological marathon. The morning’s quirk apprehension test had fundamentally shifted the social dynamic of the class. The students no longer looked at Izuku Midoriya as the timid, stuttering boy who tripped on his own feet. They looked at him with a mixture of reverence, awe, and a healthy dose of primal fear.

 

Izuku sat at his desk, meticulously transcribing notes on modern hero law from Ectoplasm’s lecture. He held his mechanical pencil with the gentlest, most mathematically precise grip imaginable. The lead was 0.5 millimeters thick. If he applied more than a few grams of excess pressure, the graphite would shatter. If he applied a few ounces of excess pressure, the plastic barrel of the pencil would explode into shrapnel.

 

Control, Izuku chanted in his mind. Breathe in. Maintain the baseline. Breathe out. Anchor the vessel.

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

The classroom door was suddenly flung open with enough force to rattle the hinges. Standing in the doorway, clad in his Silver Age costume, was the Symbol of Peace himself.

 

"Coming through the door like a hero!" All Might boomed, marching into the room with his signature, blinding smile.

 

The class erupted into instantaneous cheers.

 

"It's All Might!" Kaminari yelled, leaping out of his seat.

"Wow, he really is a teacher!" Kirishima grinned, pumping his fist. "That's a Silver Age costume, isn't it? Its design is so retro!"

 

Izuku looked up from his notebook. His highly tuned optical receptors caught the faint, microscopic beads of sweat forming on All Might's forehead, and the slight, nearly imperceptible tremor in his left thigh. He’s holding his muscle form, but it’s straining him, Izuku noted with a pang of guilt. He gave all his power to me. I took away his time.

 

"Hero Basic Training!" All Might announced, flexing his biceps and pointing toward the class. "The class that will put you through all sorts of special training to mold you into true heroes! No time to dally! Today's activity is... Battle Training!"

 

Bakugo, who had been brooding in absolute silence since the physical fitness test, suddenly perked up. A dark, vicious gleam ignited in his ruby eyes. Battle, Bakugo thought, his teeth grinding together. A real fight. Not throwing a stupid ball or running a track. Combat.

 

"And to go with your first battle..." All Might pressed a button on a remote control. The wall behind the blackboard hummed, sliding open to reveal rows of numbered, metallic briefcases. "...Costumes! Based on your quirk registrations and the requests you sent in before school started!"

 

The class cheered again, the tension of the morning melting away into pure adolescent excitement.

 

"Get changed and gather at Ground Beta!" All Might commanded, striking another pose. "The garb you wear into the battlefield is a vital piece of your heroic identity. Today, you are no longer just students. You are heroes!"

 

 

 

Ten minutes later, the dark tunnel leading out to Ground Beta echoed with the heavy footsteps of twenty students clad in their customized armor, spandex, and tactical gear. The blinding afternoon light welcomed them as they stepped out into a massive, hyper-realistic faux city. Towering concrete skyscrapers, winding asphalt roads, and intricate alleyways stretched out for miles.

 

All Might stood in the center of the street, his hands firmly planted on his hips, nodding approvingly as his students emerged. "They say the clothes make the man, young men and women! Be fully aware! From now on, you are heroes! That’s great, everyone! You all look so cool!"

 

Izuku was the last to emerge from the tunnel.

 

His footsteps were completely silent, an automatic habit he had developed to avoid cracking the pavement. He stepped into the light, clad in his costume.

 

It was a full-body jumpsuit, colored a deep, forest green. A red belt wrapped around his waist, matching his heavy-duty red boots and the thick elbow and knee pads he wore. Around his neck hung a metal respirator shaped somewhat like a smile, and a cowl equipped with long, rabbit-like ears rested on his back.

 

It was the costume his mother had made for him.

 

Originally, it was just thick fabric. But after the entrance exam, when U.A.'s Support Department had reviewed Izuku's unfathomable physical metrics, they had taken Inko Midoriya's design and quietly, frantically rebuilt it.

 

The green fabric was no longer cotton. It was an experimental weave of carbon-nanotubes, synthetic spider-silk, and a kinetic-absorption polymer. The boots were reinforced with titanium-tungsten alloy soles designed to withstand multi-ton impacts without shattering. The Support Course had essentially built a containment suit masquerading as a homemade costume.

 

"Oh! Midoriya!" Uraraka jogged over. She was wearing a sleek, form-fitting pink and black space suit, her helmet clutched under her arm. "Your costume is so cool! It looks really durable!"

 

"T-Thank you, Uraraka-san," Izuku blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. His hyper-awareness kicked in, registering the proximity of her heartbeat, the rustle of her synthetic suit, the exact weight of the helmet in her hands. "Yours is... very functional! It makes sense for your quirk, with the pressure points and nausea mitigation!"

 

Uraraka beamed, though she tugged slightly at the tight fabric around her waist. "Yeah, though I should have been more specific in my request. It’s a bit... skintight. It’s embarrassing."

 

"The hero course is the best," Mineta whispered nearby, giving a thumbs up.

 

"Now that you're all here, it's time for combat training!" All Might called out.

 

"Sensei!" Iida stepped forward, raising his hand, fully clad in his bulky, white mechanical knight armor. "This is a battle center from the entrance exam. Will we be conducting urban cityscape battles again?"

 

"No! We're moving ahead two steps!" All Might held up two massive fingers. "Most of the time, fighting villains takes place outside, but if you look at the total numbers, atrocious villains appear indoors at a much higher rate! Imprisonment, house arrest, backroom deals! In this quirk-filled society, truly intelligent villains hide in the shadows!"

 

All Might pulled out a small script from his pocket, glancing at it quickly before continuing. "For this class, you'll be split into villains and heroes and fight two-on-two indoor battles!"

 

"Without basic training?" Asui Tsuyu asked, tapping her chin.

 

"This is the basic training! Only this time, there's no robot you can just beat up!" All Might explained. "The situation is that the villains have hidden a nuclear weapon somewhere in their hideout. The heroes must foil their plans. To win, the heroes have to either catch the villains or recover the nuclear weapon before time runs out. The villains win if they capture the heroes or protect the weapon until the timer ends."

 

All Might held up a yellow box filled with lettered spheres. "Teams and opponents will be determined by drawing lots!"

 

As the students lined up to draw their letters, Izuku felt a heavy, oppressive gaze boring into the back of his neck. He didn't need his enhanced senses to know who it was.

 

Bakugo was staring at him.

 

Ever since the softball throw, Bakugo’s entire paradigm had been violently upended. He had spent his entire life believing he was the pinnacle of human evolution, the absolute strongest, the boy destined to surpass All Might. And Deku—the weak, quirkless, useless Deku—had casually swatted him away like a gnat.

 

It’s a trick, Bakugo’s mind repeated, a desperate, frantic mantra. It’s a support item. It’s a mental quirk. He’s messing with my head. He’s hiding something. I’ll make him bleed. I’ll blow his facade to pieces, and everyone will see he’s just a useless Deku.

 

"Team A!" All Might announced. "Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka!"

 

Izuku smiled, turning to the brunette. "Looks like we're a team!"

 

"Yay! The team of destiny!" Uraraka cheered.

 

"And Team D!" All Might read the next balls. "Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida!"

 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat.

 

"And the first matchup will be..." All Might plunged his hands into two separate boxes, pulling out a white ball and a black ball. "These guys!"

 

Hero Team A vs. Villain Team D.

 

The silence that fell over the class was absolute.

 

Izuku slowly turned his head. Across the group, Katsuki Bakugo stood perfectly still. The explosive boy was wearing a sleeveless black tank top with an orange cross, heavy combat boots, and massive, grenade-shaped gauntlets on his forearms. A slow, terrifying, unhinged smile began to stretch across Bakugo's face, revealing his teeth.

 

"Finally," Bakugo whispered, the word carrying over the quiet courtyard.

 

All Might looked at the matchup, a cold bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. He had intended this exercise to be a learning experience. But looking at Bakugo's murderous expression, and knowing the unfathomable, god-like power resting within Izuku's vessel, All Might felt a surge of genuine dread.

 

If Young Midoriya loses control of his suppression for even a microsecond, All Might thought, he won't just kill Young Bakugo. He'll vaporize the entire city block.

 

"Villain team, go in first and set up! In five minutes, the hero team will break in, and the battle will start!" All Might instructed, his booming voice lacking its usual jovial edge. "Everyone else, head to the monitor room!"

 

 

 

Inside the dim, concrete corridors of the five-story building, Iida paced nervously around the massive paper-mache missile sitting in the center of the fifth-floor room.

 

"Even if this is training, it pains me to become a villain," Iida muttered, adjusting his glasses beneath his helmet. He turned to Bakugo, who was standing by the door, staring blankly down the dark hallway. "So, our strategy! We should fortify our position here. If Midoriya is as strong as he demonstrated during the fitness tests, confronting him directly would be highly irrational! We must use the terrain to our advantage!"

 

Bakugo didn't answer. He was rhythmically tapping his metal gauntlet against the doorframe. Clink. Clink. Clink.

 

"Bakugo-kun?" Iida prompted. "Are you listening?"

 

"Does that nerd have a quirk?" Bakugo asked softly, his voice devoid of anger, which somehow made it vastly more terrifying.

 

Iida blinked, taken aback. "A quirk? Well, of course! You saw him! He exhibits physical phenomena that far exceed natural human capability! The shockwaves, the speed... it's a profound enhancement quirk."

 

"He was quirkless," Bakugo muttered, his eyes narrowing into crimson slits. "For fifteen years, he was a quirkless nobody. He couldn't even throw a rock across a stream. And now you're telling me he can jump into orbit? It's a lie."

 

"People can be late bloomers—"

 

"NOT THIS LATE!" Bakugo suddenly roared, his patience snapping. He slammed his fist into the wall, a small explosion cracking the plaster. "He's been lying to me! Laughing at me behind my back for years! I'm going to rip the truth out of him!"

 

Without another word, Bakugo turned and marched down the hallway, leaving the payload behind.

 

"Bakugo! Where are you going?!" Iida shouted. "Our objective is to guard the weapon!"

 

"Shut up and play house with the fake nuke," Bakugo snarled over his shoulder. "I'm going to exterminate a bug."

 

 

 

Outside the building, Izuku and Uraraka were huddled over a blueprint of the facility.

 

"It's a lot of ground to cover," Uraraka pointed at the schematic. "Since we don't know where the weapon is, we'll have to check floor by floor. Kacchan is probably going to come straight for us, though."

 

Izuku sighed, running a gloved hand through his green hair. "He is. Kacchan doesn't care about the objective right now. He only cares about proving a point. He wants to beat me."

 

Uraraka looked at Izuku with concern. She remembered the sheer terror of the Zero Pointer, and the casual, physics-breaking display during the fitness test. "Midoriya-kun... are you going to use your super strength?"

 

Izuku looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. Even now, through the thick, shock-absorbing material of his gloves, he could feel the ambient atmospheric pressure. He could feel the microscopic dust motes landing on his knuckles.

 

"I can't," Izuku said softly, his voice tinged with a deep, isolating sadness.

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"My quirk..." Izuku struggled to find the words. He couldn't tell her about One For All. But he had to explain why the Green Titan was about to run away from an explosive teenager. "It's... too strong, Uraraka-san. My body mutated when my quirk came in. If I actually hit Kacchan, even if I pull my punch as much as humanly possible... he will die. The building will collapse. The shockwave might even hurt the people in the observation room."

 

Uraraka stared at him, her brown eyes wide. "Wait. You mean during the fitness test... you were holding back?"

 

"I was using exactly one percent of my power," Izuku whispered. "And even then, I couldn't control the environmental fallout. I can't throw a punch inside this building. I can't even stomp my foot too hard."

 

Uraraka felt a chill run down her spine. The boy standing in front of her, who blushed when she talked to him and muttered nervously, was casually admitting that he possessed the power to level the facility with a sneeze.

 

"So... what's the plan?" she asked, suddenly feeling very small.

 

"The plan is for you to find the weapon," Izuku said, looking up at the building. His enhanced vision could literally see through the concrete walls in places where the structural integrity was thin, sensing the thermal signatures of the two boys inside. "Iida is on the fifth floor. Kacchan is on the second floor, moving down to ambush us. I will draw Kacchan's attention. I won't fight him. I'll just keep him occupied. You float up, bypass them, and secure the weapon."

 

"You're just going to let him attack you?" Uraraka asked, worried.

 

Izuku offered a small, reassuring smile. "Don't worry about me. I'm... very durable."

 

"START!" All Might’s voice echoed through their earpieces.

 

Izuku and Uraraka slipped through a window on the ground floor, stepping into the dim, dusty hallway. The silence was heavy.

 

Izuku immediately tuned his hearing. He filtered out Uraraka's heartbeat, filtered out his own breathing, and focused on the building above. He heard Iida pacing on the fifth floor. He heard Bakugo's heavy combat boots stalking down the stairwell to their right. He heard the faint, popping sound of nitroglycerin sweating from Bakugo's palms.

 

He's coming around the corner in three seconds, Izuku calculated. He's aiming for a blind-side blast.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku said calmly. "Go down that hall to the left. Take the fire escape stairs."

 

"But—"

 

"Now."

 

Uraraka nodded, trusting him, and sprinted down the left corridor.

 

Two seconds later, Bakugo rounded the corner.

 

He didn't announce himself. He didn't scream. He simply launched himself forward with a massive explosion from his right hand, propelling his body at blinding speed. His left hand was outstretched, crackling with a lethal payload aimed directly at Izuku's face.

 

120 miles per hour, Izuku's brain automatically calculated Bakugo's velocity. To me, it looks like he's moving through molasses.

 

Izuku didn't brace himself. He simply tilted his head two inches to the left.

 

Bakugo's explosive palm sailed past Izuku's ear. The blast detonated against the concrete wall behind Izuku, shattering the plaster and sending a shockwave of heat through the corridor.

 

Bakugo’s eyes widened in shock. He had moved faster than ever before, using the element of surprise. But Deku had casually sidestepped it, as if dodging a slowly drifting balloon.

 

Bakugo used his momentum to spin, swinging a vicious roundhouse kick aimed at Izuku's ribs.

 

Izuku took a half-step back. The kick swept through empty air, missing Izuku's stomach by a fraction of a millimeter.

 

"Damn you!" Bakugo roared, his frustration boiling over. He unleashed a flurry of rapid-fire explosions, a blistering barrage of right and left hooks, each enhanced by concussive blasts.

 

In the observation room, the students watched the monitors in stunned silence.

 

"Bakugo is insane!" Kirishima gasped. "He's not even holding back! Those blasts could kill a guy!"

 

"But look at Midoriya!" Ashido pointed at the screen.

 

On the monitor, it looked like a choreographed dance. Bakugo was a whirlwind of fire, smoke, and fury, tearing up the floorboards and shattering the walls with his missed strikes. Izuku, however, was moving with an eerie, terrifying grace. He wasn't running away. He was staying perfectly within Bakugo's striking range, but every time Bakugo threw a punch, a blast, or a kick, Izuku was simply... not there.

 

Izuku would shift his weight, duck his head, or pivot his waist. The movements were so minimal, so incredibly efficient, that he barely seemed to be moving at all.

 

"He's reading his movements completely," Aizawa noted, standing in the back of the room, his eyes narrowed. "No. It's more than that. Midoriya's reaction time isn't human. He's processing Bakugo's attacks before Bakugo even finishes the neurological impulse to throw them."

 

All Might gripped the microphone. He was sweating profusely. Young Midoriya is doing exactly what Torino taught him. He's treating Bakugo like a fragile glass doll. He refuses to strike back because he knows the recoil would shatter the boy.

 

Back in the hallway, Bakugo was panting heavily, sweat pouring down his face. The smoke cleared, revealing Izuku standing just three feet away, not a single hair out of place, not a drop of sweat on his brow.

 

"Why won't you fight back?!" Bakugo screamed, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and profound, soul-crushing despair. "Use your damn quirk! Show me the trick! Punch me!"

 

Izuku looked at him, his emerald eyes pools of deep sorrow. "I can't, Kacchan."

 

"Stop looking down on me!" Bakugo ignited both hands, launching himself into the air, aiming to bring a double overhand explosion down on Izuku's skull.

 

Izuku sighed. He raised his right hand. He didn't form a fist. He simply flattened his palm and pushed it gently upward against the air itself.

 

The micro-burst of wind pressure generated by Izuku's gentle push hit Bakugo mid-air like a solid wall of invisible concrete.

 

Bakugo’s momentum was instantly halted. The wind pressure caught his chest, flipping him backward. He crashed onto his back, skidding across the floor.

 

"He didn't even touch him!" Sero yelled in the observation room. "He just pushed the air!"

 

Bakugo coughed, his lungs struggling to find oxygen. He pushed himself up onto his knees, trembling. His pride, the core of his identity, was being systematically dismantled. Deku wasn't even trying. Deku was treating a fight with the great Katsuki Bakugo like a mild inconvenience.

 

"I'll kill you..." Bakugo whispered, blood trickling from a bitten lip. He slowly stood up, raising his right arm. He grasped the metal pin attached to his massive grenade gauntlet.

 

Izuku's eyes widened. He could smell the concentrated, highly volatile nitroglycerin stored within the gauntlet's chamber.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice dropping its timid facade, shifting into a tone of absolute, commanding authority. "Take your hand off the pin. That much thermal expansion in a confined space will melt the support pillars. You'll bring the building down."

 

"If I bring the building down, you'll have to use your quirk to survive!" Bakugo laughed, a hysterical, broken sound. "You've been hiding this from me! You think you're better than me?! I'll blow you to ashes!"

 

In the observation room, All Might grabbed the microphone, his voice booming with genuine panic. "Young Bakugo, stop! Are you trying to kill him?! If you pull that pin, I will stop the match!"

 

"If he's really better than me, he won't die!" Bakugo roared back, tears of absolute fury and humiliation welling in his eyes.

 

He pulled the pin.

 

The click of the release mechanism echoed through the hallway.

 

Time slowed to an absolute crawl for Izuku.

 

He saw the spark ignite inside the chamber of the gauntlet. He saw the chemical reaction begin as the highly concentrated, hyper-pressurized sweat vaporized and expanded.

 

If I dodge this, Izuku calculated in a microsecond, the blast wave will travel down the hall, blow out the exterior wall, and potentially collapse the ceiling. Uraraka is on the third floor directly above us. If the ceiling collapses, she falls.

 

If I punch the blast to neutralize it, my wind pressure will shatter the entire building instantly.

 

I have one option. I have to absorb it.

 

As the searing white-hot flames erupted from the gauntlet, howling down the corridor like a demon unleashed from hell, Izuku Midoriya did not retreat.

 

He stepped forward.

 

He walked directly into the center of the inferno.

 

The heat was blinding. The concussive roar deafened the microphones in the observation room, causing static to erupt from the speakers. The camera feeds in the hallway went entirely white as the flames swallowed everything in their path. The structural concrete of the walls began to melt and slag, glowing cherry-red.

 

"MIDORIYA!" All Might screamed, dropping the microphone. Several students shrieked in horror. Kirishima and Iida (watching from the fifth floor) braced themselves against the massive tremor that shook the foundation of the fake city.

 

Bakugo stood at the end of the hallway, his arm smoking, the recoil having nearly dislocated his shoulder. The corridor was a blackened, melted ruin, filled with choking gray smoke.

 

Bakugo’s breath hitched. A dark, horrifying thought crossed his mind. Did I... did I actually kill him?

 

He hadn't wanted to be a murderer. He just wanted to prove he was superior.

 

"Deku..." Bakugo whispered, his hand shaking.

 

From the heart of the smoke, a heavy, rhythmic sound echoed.

 

Step. Step. Step.

 

Bakugo froze. His heart stopped.

 

The smoke parted, swirled away by the sheer atmospheric displacement of a body moving through it.

 

Izuku Midoriya emerged from the epicenter of the blast.

 

He wasn't dodging. He wasn't running. He was just walking.

 

His green costume was slightly singed at the edges, small wisps of smoke rising from the carbon-nanotube fabric. But Izuku himself? He was entirely, flawlessly untouched. There wasn't a single burn mark on his skin. Not a single blister on his face. His emerald eyes glowed with a terrifying, ethereal light through the darkness of the ruined hall.

 

To Bakugo, in that moment, Izuku did not look like a childhood friend. He did not look like a rival. He looked like an apex predator, a god of destruction stepping out of a myth.

 

"Impossible..." Bakugo choked out, taking a step backward, his legs giving out beneath him. "That was... my max firepower. It melts steel..."

 

Izuku closed the distance in a single, silent stride. He stood towering over the trembling Bakugo.

 

"I told you not to pull the pin, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, his voice echoing with that haunting, dual resonance. "You could have hurt someone."

 

"Shut up..." Bakugo sobbed, blindly throwing a desperate, uncoordinated punch at Izuku's stomach.

 

Izuku didn't block it. He let Bakugo's fist strike his abdomen.

 

CRACK.

 

Bakugo howled in agony, falling to his knees and clutching his right hand. Striking Izuku’s core was like punching a mountain made of solid titanium. Bakugo’s knuckles shattered on impact.

 

Izuku looked down at the broken, weeping boy. The anger Izuku felt wasn't explosive. It was a cold, heavy disappointment. He realized, finally, that this rivalry was a delusion. It was a one-sided obsession born of a fragile ego.

 

"You want to see what a punch looks like, Kacchan?" Izuku asked, his voice deadening.

 

Bakugo looked up, his red eyes wide with absolute, primal terror. "No... wait..."

 

Izuku raised his right index finger and thumb. He brought them together.

 

I will use zero point zero zero zero one percent, Izuku calculated. Just enough kinetic force to induce unconsciousness via rapid acceleration, but not enough to cause internal hemorrhaging.

 

Izuku flicked his finger against the center of Bakugo’s chest.

 

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

 

The sound was not an explosion. It was the physical breaking of the sound barrier inside an enclosed space.

 

When Izuku’s finger made contact with Bakugo’s sternum, the kinetic energy transferred entirely into the blonde boy's body.

 

Bakugo was instantly launched backward, faster than the human eye could track. He became a human bullet.

 

He flew backward through the air, completely unconscious before his brain could even register the pain. He slammed into the concrete wall behind him. The wall exploded outward in a shower of dust and rebar.

 

But his momentum didn't stop.

 

Bakugo’s body tore through the first wall, then flew across the empty classroom, and slammed into the next structural wall. CRASH. That wall shattered too.

 

CRASH. A third wall.

CRASH. A fourth wall.

CRASH. A fifth wall.

 

Bakugo tore straight through the entire width of the U.A. building, a horizontal path of destruction carved through solid concrete and steel. He finally lost momentum, tumbling out of the side of the building and landing in a crumpled, unconscious heap on the artificial street outside.

 

Inside the building, a perfect, circular tunnel had been punched through five layers of walls.

 

But the physical impact was only half the attack.

 

The wind pressure generated by Izuku’s flick created a hyper-pressurized gale-force wind that rocketed down the newly made tunnel, swirling upward through the ventilation shafts and stairwells.

 

On the fifth floor, Iida and Uraraka were locked in a standoff. Uraraka had found the room, but Iida was playing his role as a villain perfectly, keeping her at bay.

 

"You cannot defeat my evil machinations, hero!" Iida declared loudly.

 

Suddenly, the floor vibrated. A horrific screech of tearing concrete echoed from below.

 

Before either of them could react, the stairwell door was blown clean off its hinges. A hurricane-force wind, the residual shockwave of Izuku's flick from three floors down, blasted into the room.

 

Uraraka screamed, grabbing onto a pillar to avoid being blown away.

 

Iida, wearing heavy armor, was lifted entirely off his feet. "What in the name of—!" he shouted, before being thrown violently against the back wall, his armor clattering loudly.

 

The wind howled through the room, lifting the massive paper-mache nuclear weapon off its pedestal. It tumbled through the air.

 

Uraraka, fighting against the gale, reached out a hand. Her fingertips brushed the side of the weapon.

 

"R-Retrieve!" she yelled over the wind.

 

The wind died down as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the fifth floor in a state of absolute ruin. Papers were scattered everywhere, windows were shattered, and Iida groaned from the floor.

 

Uraraka lay panting on the ground, her hand resting on the weapon.

 

In the observation room, it was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. The students were staring at the monitors in a state of catatonic shock. They had just watched Bakugo use a lethal, building-destroying attack, only for Midoriya to walk through it and defeat him with a literal flick of his finger that destroyed half the architecture.

 

All Might swallowed a massive lump in his throat. His hands were trembling.

 

He flicked him. A finger flick. All Might closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the sheer, unfathomable scale of the boy's power. I gave the power of the gods to a boy with a heart of gold. Thank God his heart is pure. If it wasn't... he could subjugate the planet in a day.

 

All Might raised the microphone to his mouth. "H-Hero team... WINSSSSS!"

 

 

 

The infirmary was stark white and smelled sharply of antiseptic.

 

Recovery Girl hummed quietly as she adjusted the IV drip next to the bed. "A shattered metacarpal in the right hand. Three cracked ribs. A minor concussion. And a massive bruise on the sternum in the exact shape of a fingerprint." She sighed, looking down at the blonde boy in the bed. "He's lucky the boy who hit him has the control of a neurosurgeon. One fraction of a millimeter more force, and this boy’s heart would have exploded."

 

On the bed, Katsuki Bakugo lay perfectly still. He was awake. He had been awake for ten minutes. He hadn't said a word.

 

His right arm was encased in a cast. His chest was wrapped tightly in bandages. His head throbbed with a dull, persistent agony.

 

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the complete, total annihilation of his ego.

 

He stared blankly at the ceiling tiles. He counted the little dots on the white acoustic squares.

 

One. Two. Three.

 

His mind flashed back to the hallway. He remembered the heat of his explosion. He remembered the absolute certainty that he had won. And then, he remembered the smoke parting.

 

He remembered the look in Deku’s eyes.

 

It wasn't a look of triumph. It wasn't the look of a rival who had finally settled the score.

 

It was pity.

 

He wasn't fighting me, Bakugo realized, a single, hot tear slipping from the corner of his eye and rolling into his spiky blonde hair. He was tolerating me. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum at a brick wall.

 

For years, Bakugo had built his entire identity on the belief that he was a mountain peak, and Deku was the dirt beneath his boots. He had bullied him, belittled him, told him to take a swan dive off the roof.

 

And all this time, Deku hadn't been dirt. Deku had been the sky itself, vast, untouchable, and utterly out of reach.

 

"Are you awake, sonny?" Recovery Girl asked gently, noticing his open eyes.

 

Bakugo didn't answer. He didn't have the energy to yell. He didn't have the fire in his stomach anymore. The fire had been snuffed out by a hurricane.

 

The door to the infirmary slowly opened.

 

Izuku Midoriya stood in the doorway. He had changed back into his school uniform. He looked exhausted, his shoulders slumped, his hands nervously wringing in front of him.

 

Recovery Girl frowned. "Now, listen here, young man. You shouldn't be—"

 

"Leave us alone," Bakugo rasped, his voice sounding like cracked glass.

 

Recovery Girl paused, looking between the two boys. She sighed, nodding slowly. "Five minutes. No shouting. He needs rest." She walked out, closing the door softly behind her.

 

The silence in the room was suffocating.

 

Izuku stood by the door, refusing to step closer. He looked at Bakugo's cast. He looked at the bandages. A deep pang of guilt hit him.

 

"I'm sorry, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, his voice trembling slightly. "I tried to pull back. I miscalculated the kinetic transfer by a fraction. I didn't want to break your ribs."

 

Bakugo closed his eyes. Hearing Deku apologize for not holding back enough was the ultimate humiliation.

 

"Shut up," Bakugo whispered. "Just... shut up."

 

Izuku fell silent.

 

"How long?" Bakugo asked, staring at the ceiling. "How long did you have it? The quirk."

 

Izuku hesitated. "A while. But it mutated recently. It became... what it is now."

 

"You lied to me."

 

"I didn't lie," Izuku said, taking a step forward. "I was quirkless, Kacchan. But circumstances changed. I was given a chance, and I took it. But the power... it's too much. I didn't want to humiliate you today. I just wanted you to stop trying to kill me so Uraraka could win the exercise."

 

"I thought I was the best," Bakugo's voice cracked. The dam finally broke. Tears began to stream down his face, soaking into his bandages. He didn't bother wiping them away. He couldn't. "I swore I would surpass All Might. I swore I would be the Number One Hero. And then you... you just..."

 

"Kacchan..."

 

"Don't pity me!" Bakugo suddenly gasped, a pathetic, wet sound. "Don't you dare pity me, Deku! You won! You proved it! I'm an ant. You're a god. Is that what you want to hear?!"

 

Izuku looked at his childhood friend. The bully who had tormented him for a decade was reduced to a weeping, broken mess in a hospital bed. A part of Izuku, the dark, repressed part that had endured years of abuse, might have felt a spark of vindictive joy.

 

But Izuku felt nothing of the sort. He only felt isolated. The gap between them was no longer social; it was evolutionary.

 

"I don't want to be a god," Izuku said, his voice resolute, dropping the stutter completely. "I want to be a hero who saves people with a smile. The power I have... it isolates me, Kacchan. Everyone looks at me like I'm a monster or a miracle. You're the only one who just looked at me as Deku."

 

Bakugo sniffled, turning his head away, staring at the blank white wall.

 

"I'm not going to look down on you, Kacchan," Izuku continued softly, turning to leave. "But I'm not going to hide anymore, either. I have to master this power. I have to protect people. If you want to hate me, hate me. If you want to surpass me... you can try. But I'm not going to slow down."

 

Izuku opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, closing it with a gentle, perfectly controlled click.

 

Bakugo lay alone in the quiet room. He raised his uninjured left hand, staring at his palm.

 

For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo realized that the world was infinitely larger than himself. He had been a big fish in a microscopic pond. And now, he had been thrown into the ocean, and forced to look a leviathan in the eye.

 

The rivalry was dead.

 

There was no surpassing Deku. There was only surviving him.

 

Bakugo lowered his hand, his eyes hardening with a new, somber reality. He would never be the strongest. But as he stared at the ceiling, a tiny, stubborn ember ignited in the ashes of his pride.

 

If I can't be stronger than him, Bakugo thought, his jaw clenching. Then I'll just have to be the hero who isn't afraid to stand next to him.