What if deku was Wreck-It Ralph

 

 

 

 

It always started with the smallest, most delicate things.

 

A pencil. A teacup. The fragile, paper-thin screen of a smartphone. For Izuku Midoriya, the world was made of spun glass, and he was a creature born of iron and earthquake.

 

Sitting in the dim light of his bedroom, Izuku stared down at the remnants of what used to be a limited-edition All Might mechanical pencil. It was completely pulverized. Not just broken into two pieces, but shattered into a fine, glittering dust of plastic, graphite, and microscopic springs. He hadn't even been squeezing it. He had merely been trying to write down an observation in his Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13 notebook. A stray spark of kinetic energy—a rogue pulse from the marrow of his oversized bones—had rippled down his forearm, past his wrist, and into his fingertips.

 

Crack.

 

And just like that, another thing was broken.

 

Izuku let out a long, shuddering sigh, the sound escaping past his lips like steam from an overworked engine. He brushed the plastic dust off his desk into a small wastebasket already filled to the brim with shattered alarm clocks, crushed doorknobs, and splintered picture frames.

 

He raised his hands to eye level. They were, without a doubt, the source of every problem in his fifteen years of life.

 

They were massive—disproportionately large for a boy of his height and build. Where his classmates had normal, slender fingers, Izuku’s hands were practically the size of catcher’s mitts. The skin was thick, heavily calloused, and crisscrossed with jagged, pale white scars from years of his Quirk violently misfiring. The knuckles were perpetually swollen, radiating a dull, thrumming heat that felt like a revving car engine idling just beneath his skin.

 

His Quirk was officially registered in the national database as a localized kinetic-enhancement mutation.

Its street name? Wreck.

 

"Control it," Izuku whispered to himself, squeezing his eyes shut. He curled his giant fingers inward, trying to form a simple, gentle fist. Instead, the air around his knuckles warped. A terrible, grinding sound echoed in his room, like tectonic plates shifting. A concussive shockwave of blue kinetic energy popped from his palms, blowing the papers off his desk and cracking the glass of his bedroom window.

 

Izuku flinched, immediately shoving his hands beneath his armpits to smother them. He waited for his mother’s voice.

 

"Izuku? Honey? Did something fall?" Inko Midoriya’s voice drifted up through the floorboards, laced with that familiar, heartbreaking tone of exhausted panic.

 

"I'm fine, Mom! Just tripped!" Izuku called back, his throat tightening. He hated lying to her. But he hated seeing the fear in her eyes even more. When his Quirk had manifested at age four, he hadn't just broken a toy; he had accidentally leveled the entire playground’s jungle gym by clapping his hands together too hard. The falling metal had almost crushed a classmate. Since that day, society had looked at Izuku not as a child, but as an unexploded bomb.

 

Izuku reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of heavy-duty, reinforced Quirk-suppressant gloves. They were thick, dark gray, and lined with shock-absorbent gel. He squeezed his massive hands into them, strapping the thick velcro across his wrists. They made his hands look even bigger, clumsier, more monstrous. But they kept the world safe from him.

 

He grabbed his yellow backpack, slinging it over his shoulder. It was time for school. It was time to go to U.A. High School.

 

But not as a Hero. Never as a Hero.

 

 

 

The halls of U.A. High School were wide, pristine, and bustling with the future saviors of Japan. As Izuku walked down the central corridor of the General Education wing, the familiar phenomenon occurred.

 

It was like Moses parting the Red Sea.

 

Students talking by their lockers instinctively stepped back as he approached. Laughter died down, replaced by hushed, nervous whispers. Eyes constantly flicked down to the massive, gray-gloved hands swinging at his sides. Izuku kept his head down, staring intently at the scuff marks on the polished linoleum floor, trying to make himself look as small as possible. It was a difficult task when your shoulders and arms were heavily muscled just to support the sheer weight and density of your mutated hands.

 

"There he is. The wrecker."

"I heard he took down a zero-pointer in the entrance exam with one punch."

"Yeah, but did you hear what else he did? He collapsed an entire city block doing it. Trapped like four other examinees in the rubble."

"A Quirk like that… it’s a villain’s Quirk. Just pure destruction. Why did U.A. even accept him?"

 

Izuku gripped the straps of his backpack, the thick gloves squeaking under the pressure. The whispers were always the same. He had tried to get into the Hero Course. He had stood in that mock city for the entrance exam, his heart soaring with the hope that he could finally use his monstrous strength to save people. When the massive Zero-Pointer robot had threatened a girl named Uraraka, Izuku hadn't thought; he had just jumped. He had pulled back his right arm and unleashed the full, unbridled kinetic nightmare of Wreck.

 

The robot’s head hadn't just shattered; the concussive blast of his Quirk had echoed outward in a devastating shockwave. It tore up the streets, shattered the foundational pillars of the surrounding mock-buildings, and brought thousands of tons of concrete crashing down. Uraraka had been saved from the robot, but she and three others had been instantly trapped under the collapsing architecture he caused. The teachers had to step in. Recovery Girl had to be called.

 

Izuku scored the highest villain points in the history of the exam.

He scored negative fifty rescue points.

 

Failed. The word had been stamped across his file in bright, bleeding red. They had placed him in Class 1-C, General Education. A quarantine zone for those not fit to be heroes.

 

"Watch where you're stepping, Wreck-It."

 

Izuku stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't need to look up to know who that voice belonged to. The arrogance, the sharp, popping sound of miniature explosions crackling in the air—it could only be one person.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stood at the intersection of the hallway, flanked by a few students from Class 1-A. Eijiro Kirishima and Denki Kaminari stood behind him, looking a mix of curious and mildly intimidated by Izuku’s sheer size. Bakugo, however, looked entirely unimpressed. He wore his U.A. uniform with an air of absolute superiority, his crimson eyes boring holes into Izuku’s forehead.

 

Bakugo was everything society deemed a "perfect" hero. Yes, his Quirk, Explosion, was destructive. But it was precise. It was flashy. Bakugo could control the sweat on his palms to blast himself through the air, pinpoint weak spots, and fight with the calculated grace of a martial artist. Bakugo was a master of his domain. He belonged in the penthouse of heroism.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku mumbled, keeping his eyes on the floor.

 

"Don't call me that, Deku," Bakugo snarled, stepping into Izuku’s personal space. He jabbed a finger hard into Izuku’s chest. "What are you even doing in this wing? You belong down in the basement with the rest of the rejects. Don't go dirtying up the Hero Course floors."

 

"I was just... taking a shortcut to the cafeteria," Izuku said defensively, though his voice lacked any real bite.

 

"A shortcut to the cafeteria?" Bakugo scoffed, looking back at his classmates. Kirishima offered an awkward smile, clearly uncomfortable with the bullying, but didn't intervene. "Listen to me, Deku. The Sports Festival is tomorrow. I know you Gen Ed extras are allowed to participate, but let me give you some advice. Stay out of the obstacle course. Stay out of the way. If you enter, you’re just gonna do what you always do."

 

Bakugo leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a harsh, venomous whisper.

 

"You’re just gonna wreck everything. You're a walking disaster. You don't have the finesse to be a Hero, and you never will. You're a brute. You break things. It’s in your DNA. So be a good little hazard and stay in your lane, before someone actually gets hurt."

 

Izuku felt a familiar, hot flare of anger in his chest. His gloved hands twitched. A small, blue spark of kinetic energy arced across his knuckles, emitting a sound like a cracking whip.

 

Instantly, Bakugo’s palms flared with bright orange fire, ready for a fight. Kirishima stepped forward. "Whoa, hey, easy guys!"

 

Izuku looked at Bakugo’s perfectly manicured hands, glowing with controlled, beautiful, heroic fire. Then he looked at his own massive, heavily bandaged, clumsy monstrosities. The anger died inside him, replaced by a suffocating wave of resignation. Bakugo was right. The world didn't need a hero who caused collateral damage just by breathing wrong.

 

"I'm not going to enter the Hero Course events, Bakugo," Izuku lied, his voice hollow. "You don't have to worry."

 

Bakugo smirked, the explosions dying down. "Smartest thing you've ever said. Stick to breaking rocks, Deku. Leave the saving to the actual Heroes."

 

Bakugo shoved past him, his shoulder colliding with Izuku’s arm. Izuku didn't budge—he weighed nearly two hundred pounds of dense muscle and bone—but the metaphorical impact sent him reeling. As the Hero Course students walked away, bathed in the bright, natural sunlight pouring from the hallway windows, Izuku turned and headed toward the dark, windowless stairwell at the back of the school.

 

It was 3:30 PM on a Thursday. He had a mandatory appointment.

 

 

 

The basement of U.A. High was a place very few students ever saw. It was a labyrinth of maintenance tunnels, server rooms, and heavy-duty storage facilities. At the very end of corridor B-4, behind a heavy steel door that looked like a bank vault, was Room 404.

 

The door had a small, printed sign taped to it that read: Student Counseling and Quirk Rehabilitation Group. Counselor: Ryo Inui (Hound Dog).

 

Izuku pushed the heavy door open. His massive hand barely had to apply pressure; the sheer weight of his kinetic aura forced the steel door to groan on its hinges.

 

The room inside was a stark contrast to the bright, inspiring classrooms above. It had the depressing, fluorescent-lit ambiance of a community center basement. Folding chairs were arranged in a wide circle on a scuffed linoleum floor. In the center of the circle was a folding table holding a styrofoam cooler, a stack of cheap paper cups, and a plate of stale sugar cookies.

 

Izuku was the last to arrive. He quietly pulled up a reinforced steel chair—standard folding chairs crumpled like tin foil under his weight—and sat down, placing his giant hands awkwardly in his lap.

 

He looked around the circle. These were his peers. The U.A. outcasts. The ones whose Quirks were deemed too dangerous, too sinister, or too villainous for polite society to fully embrace without strict, government-mandated psychological supervision. They called it "Rehabilitation." The students called it Bad-Anon.

 

To Izuku's left sat Hitoshi Shinso, a boy with messy indigo hair and deep, exhaustion-bruised bags under his eyes. Shinso was leaning back, arms crossed, glaring at the ceiling. His Quirk, Brainwashing, made everyone treat him like a serial killer in waiting. People assumed that because he could strip away a person's free will with a single spoken response, he inevitably would.

 

Across from them sat a girl not affiliated with U.A., but remanded to the group by court order. Her name was Himiko Toga. She was small, with messy blonde buns and sharp, canine teeth. She swung her legs back and forth, humming a cheerful, unsettling tune. Her Quirk required her to ingest the blood of others to transform into them. In a society that valued clean, flashy heroics, a girl who needed to drink blood to function was treated like a rabid animal.

 

To Toga's right was Juzo Honenuki, a boy from Class 1-B whose face lacked lips, exposing his teeth in a permanent, skull-like grin. His Quirk, Softening, allowed him to turn solid ground into quicksand. While not overtly evil, his terrifying appearance and the suffocating nature of his power required him to attend these empathy and control sessions to ensure he wouldn't "develop sadistic tendencies."

 

And then there was the counselor. Pro Hero Hound Dog sat in a massive armchair at the head of the circle, looking thoroughly exhausted. He wasn't wearing his muzzle today, revealing his dog-like snout.

 

"Alright," Hound Dog rumbled, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone. "Looks like Midoriya is here. Let’s get this over with. You all know the drill. It’s Thursday. We start with the affirmation."

 

A collective, unenthusiastic groan rippled through the circle. Izuku swallowed hard, feeling the familiar knot form in his throat.

 

Hound Dog raised a paw. "Together. One, two, three."

 

Izuku closed his eyes, joining the monotonous, depressed chorus of the teenagers around him.

 

"I am dangerous, and that's okay."

"My Quirk is destructive, but I am not a monster."

"I will not let my code define my character."

"There is no one I would rather be than me."

 

Izuku mouthed the last sentence, but no sound came out. There is no one I would rather be than me. It was the biggest lie he had ever told. He would give anything—absolutely anything—to be Katsuki Bakugo. To be Shoto Todoroki. To be anyone whose power brought cheers instead of terrified screams.

 

"Good," Hound Dog grunted, scratching his neck. "Now, who wants to share first? Any incidents this week? Any urges, any loss of control? Let's get it out in the open. Toga, you’re bouncing your leg a lot. Start us off."

 

Toga smiled, her sharp fangs glinting under the fluorescent lights. "Hi everyone! I'm Himiko!"

 

"Hi, Himiko," the group mumbled in unison, except for Shinso, who just closed his eyes.

 

"So, I actually had a really hard week," Toga said, her cheerful tone completely at odds with her words. She picked at a thread on her cardigan. "I was walking home on Tuesday, and I saw a stray cat. It had been hit by a car. It was bleeding... a lot. And, you know, my Quirk... it responds to the smell. It’s not just a power, it’s a biological requirement. I felt my fangs ache. I just wanted a little taste. Just to see what the cat looked like. To become the cute little kitty."

 

Izuku watched her carefully. Society called her a blood-sucking freak. But right now, looking at her, Izuku just saw a hungry, confused teenage girl fighting her own biology.

 

"And what did you do, Himiko?" Hound Dog asked gently.

 

"I reached out for it," Toga said, her smile faltering for a fraction of a second. "But then this Pro Hero—I think it was Uwabami—saw me. She didn't see me trying to help. She just saw the weird girl with the fangs reaching for a bloody animal. She used her snakes to push me back and yelled at me. Called me a ghoul. Said if I touched it, she'd arrest me for public Quirk usage and disturbing the peace."

 

Toga’s hands balled into fists, her knuckles turning white. "I just wanted to be close to it. Blood isn't evil to me. It's... it's how I show love. It's how I understand people. But to them, I'm just a vampire. They look at me like I'm already a villain." She let out a short, breathy laugh, masking the hurt. "So, I ran away. And I drank a lot of pomegranate juice. It doesn't help."

 

"Thank you for sharing, Himiko," Hound Dog said, jotting something down on his clipboard. "It takes strength to walk away when the world misunderstands your nature. You exercised restraint. That’s a win."

 

"Doesn't feel like a win," Toga muttered, slumping back in her chair.

 

"Shinso," Hound Dog prompted, looking at the purple-haired boy. "How about you?"

 

Shinso cracked one eye open. "Hi, I'm Hitoshi. And my week was the same garbage as always."

 

"Hi, Hitoshi," the group mumbled.

 

"The Sports Festival is tomorrow," Shinso said, sitting up slightly. "I've been training for months. Studying martial arts. Building my physical strength. Because my Quirk, Brainwashing, doesn't break bricks or shoot fire. But the second I try to talk to anyone in the Gen Ed department to maybe form a team for the cavalry battle, they literally run away from me. They cover their mouths."

 

Shinso let out a bitter, hollow laugh. "My own homeroom teacher told me to 'play nice' tomorrow. Like I'm going to mind-control the whole stadium and make them jump off the bleachers. They don't want me in the Hero Course. They want me heavily monitored. Because someone who can control minds is just a dictator waiting to happen, right?"

 

Izuku felt a pang of intense empathy. Shinso had a Quirk that could stop a villain non-violently in seconds. He could end hostage situations without a single drop of blood shed. Yet, because he had to strip away a person’s autonomy to do it, he was feared.

 

"You're not a dictator, Shinso," Izuku spoke up softly, his deep voice rumbling in the quiet room. "Your Quirk is incredible. It’s... it’s clean. You don't have to break a single window to save someone."

 

Shinso looked at Izuku, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Easy for you to say, Midoriya. You've got the physical power of a tank. If you punch a villain, they stay down. If I ask a villain a question and they don't answer, I'm dead meat."

 

"Let's not play the comparison game," Hound Dog warned, tapping his pen against his clipboard. "Every Quirk has its burdens. That brings us to you, Midoriya. You’ve been very quiet today. Usually, you're muttering up a storm taking notes. But today, you're tense. Your kinetic aura is spiking. I can feel the static in the air."

 

Every eye in the circle turned to Izuku. He shifted uncomfortably, the steel chair groaning loudly in protest. He looked down at his massive, gray-gloved hands.

 

"Hi... I'm Izuku," he mumbled.

 

"Hi, Izuku," they replied.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, trying to corral his thoughts. "I had a run-in with Bakugo today."

 

Shinso rolled his eyes. "The golden boy. Let me guess, he told you to stay out of his way?"

 

"Yeah," Izuku nodded, his massive shoulders slumping. "He... he said I'm a walking disaster. And the worst part is, I know he's right. I know it."

 

"Now, Izuku," Hound Dog started, using his counselor voice.

 

"No, Mr. Inui, please," Izuku interrupted, his voice thick with raw emotion. He held up his massive hands, shaking them slightly. The friction of the heavy gloves produced a faint smell of ozone. "Look at me. Look at these. I was trying to write in my notebook today, and I obliterated my pencil. I wasn't even mad. I just lost focus for one second. I break everything I touch. I destroyed that mock city in the entrance exam. I put people in danger. I’m a liability."

 

Izuku leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He looked at the floor, his eyes burning with unshed tears.

 

"I don't want to be the wrecker," Izuku confessed, his voice breaking. It was the first time he had ever said it out loud to anyone other than his mother. "I see All Might on TV. I see him smiling, carrying people out of the fire, making them feel safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just want to save people. I want to stand in the sun, on top of a building, and have people look at me and feel relief."

 

He clenched his hands into fists. The shock-absorbent gel in his gloves whined under the immense pressure.

 

"But I can't. Because my Quirk is coded for destruction. It’s just brute, kinetic force. I don't create. I don't fix. I just smash things to pieces. And people don't look at me and feel safe. They look at me like I’m a monster that’s going to bring the roof down on their heads. They treat me like a villain, and I haven't even done anything wrong!"

 

The room fell dead silent. The raw, desperate agony in Izuku's voice hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Toga stopped swinging her legs. Shinso stared at him, the bitterness in his eyes momentarily replaced by profound understanding.

 

"I just... I want to win a medal," Izuku whispered, a single tear slipping down his scarred cheek. "I just want one gold medal. To prove to them—to prove to myself—that I can be a Hero. That I'm not just a mistake."

 

For a long moment, nobody spoke. The only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights and the faint, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.

 

Finally, Juzo Honenuki leaned forward. His skull-like face offered an expression of grim sympathy. "Midoriya... listen to yourself. A medal? You think a piece of metal is going to change how society views your Quirk?"

 

"It’s not just a piece of metal!" Izuku shot back, his head snapping up. "Tomorrow at the Sports Festival, the winner of the first-year bracket gets a gold medal presented by All Might himself! If All Might gives me that medal... if he looks at me and says 'You are a Hero'... then society has to accept it. Bakugo has to accept it. I won't be a villain in the making anymore."

 

"You're chasing a ghost, man," Shinso said softly, rubbing the back of his neck. "You can't game jump."

 

Izuku frowned. "Game jump? What does that mean?"

 

"It means you can't jump out of the lane society put you in," Shinso explained, his voice laced with the weary cynicism of someone who had already given up. "Look at us. We are the 'Villainous Quirk' support group. We are the hazard signs. The warning labels. You can't just slap a gold medal on a stick of dynamite and call it a teddy bear. People will always see the dynamite."

 

"Shinso is right, Izuku," Toga chimed in, her voice surprisingly gentle. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. "The Heroes... they have their own little club. They get the sunshine, and the merchandise, and the cheers. We get the basement and the therapy. If you go out there tomorrow and try to play their game, you're just going to get hurt. Or worse, you're going to lose control and hurt somebody else, and then they'll really lock you up."

 

"You guys are telling me to give up?" Izuku asked, his voice trembling, an edge of betrayal seeping into his tone. "You're supposed to be my support group."

 

"We are supporting you," Hound Dog interjected, leaning forward. His dog-like eyes were full of pity, which Izuku hated more than anger. "Izuku, part of rehabilitation is acceptance. You have a catastrophic-level mutation Quirk. Your kinetic output is in the top 1% of the nation, but your control is in the bottom 5%. The Hero Course requires precision. It requires the ability to mitigate collateral damage."

 

Hound Dog pointed a clawed finger at Izuku's heavy hands.

 

"Those hands were not made for delicate rescue work. They were made for demolition. That is a fact of your biology. Society's label of 'villainous' is cruel, yes. But the danger you pose is real. If you try to force yourself into a traditional Hero role, the pressure will break you. Acceptance is the only way to find peace, Midoriya. You are a wrecker. You need to find a way to live with that."

 

Izuku stared at the counselor. He looked at Toga, who gave him a sad smile. He looked at Shinso, who averted his gaze.

 

They had all surrendered. They had accepted the labels slapped onto their foreheads by a society that preferred clean, pretty Quirks. They were content to sit in this basement, drinking cheap juice and eating stale cookies, apologizing for the way they were born.

 

Something inside Izuku snapped.

 

It wasn't a bone or a pencil this time. It was a chain.

 

Izuku stood up abruptly. The sudden movement sent a violent surge of kinetic energy down his legs. The shockwave hit the floor.

 

CRUNCH.

 

The linoleum floor beneath his boots instantly cracked, a spiderweb of fissures spreading outward in a five-foot radius. The reinforced steel chair he had been sitting on crumpled inward, the metal twisting like taffy from the residual force of his aura.

 

Toga gasped, pulling her legs up onto her chair. Shinso jumped back, his eyes wide. Hound Dog was on his feet in an instant, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

 

"Midoriya! Control!" Hound Dog barked, dropping into a defensive stance.

 

Izuku looked down at the shattered floor. He had done it again. He had broken something just by standing up. The guilt flared instantly, hot and suffocating, but right behind it came something else. A stubborn, fiery defiance.

 

He didn't apologize.

 

"I'm not accepting it," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady, echoing off the concrete walls of the basement. He looked up, meeting Hound Dog’s eyes directly. "I refuse."

 

"Izuku, sit down and breathe," Hound Dog commanded, though he didn't advance. He knew better than to provoke a walking kinetic bomb.

 

"I'm not a monster," Izuku continued, his massive fists clenching at his sides. The shock-absorbent gloves groaned, small arcs of blue electricity—pure kinetic discharge—flickering around his knuckles. "I know I break things. I know I'm clumsy and dangerous. But I also know my own heart. I know why I want to be a Hero."

 

He looked at Shinso, then at Toga.

 

"If we just sit here and accept that we’re bad, then that’s all we’ll ever be. The world won't change its mind unless we force it to."

 

Izuku turned and walked heavily toward the steel door. Every step he took vibrated through the floorboards. He reached out with one massive, gray-gloved hand and grabbed the handle.

 

"Where are you going, Midoriya? The session isn't over," Hound Dog warned.

 

"I'm going home to rest," Izuku said without looking back. He pushed the heavy vault door open with terrifying ease. "Tomorrow is the Sports Festival. The General Education students are allowed to enter the obstacle course. I'm going to run in it."

 

"You're making a mistake, man," Shinso called out, his voice tight. "You're going to make them hate you more. They don't want a wrecker up there."

 

Izuku paused in the doorway. He looked at his massive, scarred hand, resting against the cold steel of the door. He thought of Bakugo’s sneer. He thought of the terrified faces of the examinees in the rubble. He thought of All Might’s shining, golden smile.

 

"I don't care if they hate me right now," Izuku said softly. "Tomorrow, I'm going to win that medal. I'm going to prove that these hands can hold something precious without breaking it."

 

Without another word, Izuku stepped out into the dark, empty corridor and let the heavy steel door slam shut behind him. The booming sound echoed through the basement like a thunderclap, leaving the Villain Support Group in stunned silence.

 

 

 

The walk home was a blur of neon signs, crowded crosswalks, and the distant wail of police sirens. Musutafu City was always alive, always churning with heroes and villains, a never-ending video game of good versus evil.

 

Izuku walked through the streets like a ghost haunting a machine. He kept his head down, his heavy hands stuffed into the oversized pockets of his jacket. The evening air was cool, biting through the fabric of his uniform, but he hardly felt it. His blood was running too hot. His mind was racing a mile a minute.

 

The Sports Festival. It was the biggest televised event in Japan, replacing the Olympics. Every Pro Hero agency in the country would be watching. If a General Education student performed well enough, it was possible—however rare—to be transferred into the Hero Course.

 

But Izuku knew the reality. The obstacle course wasn't designed for someone like him. It was a race. It required speed, agility, and the ability to navigate complex terrain. Izuku was not fast. He was not agile. He was a human wrecking ball. His only method of traversal was to smash through whatever was in front of him.

 

He stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Across the street, a massive electronic billboard illuminated the night sky. On the screen was a brilliant, high-definition advertisement for the Sports Festival.

 

There, standing larger than life, was All Might.

 

The Number One Hero stood tall, his blonde hair sweeping upward in two iconic peaks, his muscular physique clad in his classic red, white, and blue, Golden Age costume. In his massive hand, he held a gleaming, pristine gold medal, adorned with the U.A. crest.

 

"Young listeners!" All Might’s booming, recorded voice echoed from the speakers attached to the billboard. "Tomorrow, the youth of U.A. will show you the future! Who will rise to the top? Who will prove they have the heart of a true Hero? Tune in, and watch the birth of the next generation of peace! PLUS ULTRA!"

 

Izuku stared at the screen, his breath catching in his throat.

 

All Might’s hands were huge, just like Izuku’s. They were massive, powerful instruments capable of leveling city blocks with a single Detroit Smash. But society didn't fear All Might’s hands. Because All Might used that unfathomable power with a smile. He used it to catch falling bridges, to punch away storms, to cradle injured civilians.

 

"I can do that," Izuku whispered to himself, his breath pluming in the cool night air. "I have the power. I just need to show them I have the heart."

 

The crosswalk light dinged, turning green, but Izuku didn't move. He stood on the edge of the curb, staring up at the golden medal on the screen. It was so bright, so perfect. It was the ultimate validation. A physical, undeniable proof of heroism.

 

If he had that medal, nobody could ever call him a villain again. Not Bakugo. Not Hound Dog. Not the whispering students in the hallways. He would wear it around his neck, and it would be a shield against every cruel word, every terrified glance.

 

He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. The heavy, shock-absorbent glove felt suffocating. He grabbed the velcro strap with his teeth and pulled it open, sliding the heavy gray material off.

 

He held his bare hand up to the light of the billboard.

 

It was ugly. The skin was mottled with pale pink and white scars, crisscrossing over his knuckles and traveling up his thick wrist. The veins pulsed a faint, eerie blue, thrumming with raw kinetic energy. It was a hand designed by nature to shatter, to crush, to obliterate.

 

Izuku slowly closed his giant fingers, forming a tight, solid fist. A blue spark popped in the air, but he suppressed the urge to release it. He forced the energy back down into his bones, gritting his teeth against the uncomfortable pressure building in his marrow.

 

"Tomorrow," Izuku vowed to the empty street, his voice resolute. "I don't care what the obstacle is. I don't care who gets in my way. I am going to game jump. I am going to win that medal. Even if I have to wreck the whole stadium to do it."

 

He slipped his glove back on, strapped it tight, and turned toward his apartment building.

 

He had to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, the wrecker was going to try and save himself. And God help anyone who stood between him and that gold medal.

 

High above him, the digital projection of All Might continued to smile, the golden medal shining like a beacon in the dark, uncaring city. The game was about to begin.

 

 

 

 

The roar of the crowd was a physical entity. It vibrated through the concrete floors of the U.A. stadium, traveling up the soles of Izuku Midoriya’s red boots and rattling his bones. It was the sound of a hundred thousand people screaming for blood, for triumph, for heroes.

 

Inside the Class 1-C waiting room, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. The General Education students sat in small, nervous clusters, adjusting their standard-issue U.A. P.E. uniforms. They were the underdogs, the extras, the fodder meant to make the Hero Course students look better.

 

Izuku sat entirely alone on a bench in the far corner.

 

His eyes were fixed on the television monitor mounted on the wall, which was broadcasting live footage of the stadium. His right leg bounced up and down with nervous, uncontrollable energy, the heavy thud of his boot vibrating the bench. He was wearing his reinforced Quirk-suppressant gloves, the thick, gray, shock-absorbent material pulled tight across his massive hands.

 

"Stop that, Midoriya. You're going to crack the floor tiles."

 

Izuku snapped out of his trance, his leg freezing. He looked up to see Hitoshi Shinso leaning against the lockers, his indigo hair casting a shadow over his deeply bruised eyes. Shinso looked completely detached, but the tight grip he had on his own arms betrayed his anxiety.

 

"Sorry," Izuku muttered, looking down at his boots.

 

"You're wound up tighter than a spring," Shinso noted, pushing off the lockers and walking over. He looked down at Izuku’s oversized, heavily armored hands. "You really going to go through with this? You’re actually going to run the obstacle course?"

 

"I have to," Izuku said, his voice low but granite-hard.

 

"The whole point of this festival is to show off to the Pro Agencies," Shinso sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "To show them we have control. That we have potential. If you go out there and start blasting craters into the track, you’re just going to prove Hound Dog right. You’re going to prove Bakugo right."

 

Izuku’s head snapped up, his green eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce intensity. "I'm going to win, Shinso."

 

Shinso blinked, slightly taken aback by the raw, desperate hunger in Izuku’s face.

 

"I'm going to win the gold medal," Izuku continued, his massive hands curling into fists, the thick gel of the gloves groaning under the pressure. "When I cross that finish line first, when All Might hangs that medal around my neck, it won't matter what I broke to get there. They’ll have to call me a hero. The medal proves it."

 

Shinso stared at him for a long, heavy moment. He shook his head slowly. "You're delusional, man. Heroism isn't a shiny piece of metal. But fine. Break a leg out there. Preferably not someone else's."

 

Before Izuku could respond, the overhead speakers crackled to life with the deafening voice of Present Mic.

 

"ALRIGHT, LISTENERS! THE WAIT IS OVER! IT’S TIME FOR THE FIRST-YEARS TO MAKE THEIR ENTRANCE! LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE MIRACLE ROOKIES, CLASS 1-A!"

 

The roar from the crowd outside doubled in volume, shaking dust from the ceiling tiles. Izuku stood up. His massive frame blocked out the light from the overhead fluorescents. It was time.

 

The march out into the stadium was blinding. As Izuku stepped out of the dark tunnel and onto the pristine green grass of the arena, the afternoon sun hit him like a physical blow. The stadium was a colossal colosseum of steel and glass, packed to the brim with screaming fans, pro heroes, and media drones buzzing through the air like angry hornets.

 

Izuku kept his head down, taking his place among the sea of blue P.E. uniforms. He could see Bakugo a few yards ahead, standing with perfect, arrogant posture, practically radiating explosive confidence.

 

Up on the central stage, the R-Rated Hero: Midnight cracked her whip, bringing the stadium to a momentary, breathless silence.

 

"Silence, little mice!" Midnight purred into her microphone. "Before we begin the preliminary obstacle race, it’s time for the ceremonial pledge! And representing the first-years is Katsuki Bakugo from Class 1-A!"

 

Izuku watched as Bakugo swaggered up the steps to the microphone. The blonde boy stared out at the tens of thousands of people, his face a mask of supreme boredom.

 

"I pledge," Bakugo said, leaning into the mic, "that I'll be number one."

 

The stadium erupted in a cacophony of boos and cheers. The students of Class 1-A yelled in embarrassment and anger, but Izuku didn't care about Bakugo's arrogance. His eyes had drifted away from the speaker and landed on something else.

 

Off to the side of the stage, resting on a pedestal of pure, polished marble, illuminated by a dedicated spotlight, was the grand prize.

 

The All Might Gold Medal.

 

It was beautiful. It was larger than a standard medal, cast in pure, gleaming gold, with the iconic 'U.A.' crest stamped into the center, surrounded by a wreath of laurel leaves. It was attached to a thick, crimson ribbon. To Izuku, it wasn't just a prize. It was salvation. It was a physical manifestation of everything he was denied. It was the cure for the word Villain.

 

"Now, for the first event!" Midnight announced, the screen behind her flashing like a slot machine before landing on bold, red text: OBSTACLE RACE. "All eleven classes will participate in a four-kilometer race around the perimeter of the stadium! You can do whatever you want, as long as you remain on the course! Now, take your places at the starting gate!"

 

The massive throng of students began to shuffle toward a colossal archway leading out of the stadium. The gateway was wide, but not nearly wide enough for over two hundred students to pass through simultaneously. It was a bottleneck. A trap designed to weed out the weak immediately.

 

Izuku found himself pushed to the back of the pack. His massive hands felt heavy, cumbersome, and useless in the pressing crowd. He looked up at the three green lights above the gate.

 

If I get stuck here, Izuku thought, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, I'll never catch up. Bakugo and the others will leave me behind. I'll lose the medal.

 

BEEP. The first light turned red.

BEEP. The second light turned red.

BEEEEEEP!

 

"GO!" Midnight screamed.

 

The crowd surged forward, a tidal wave of desperate teenagers. Almost instantly, a blast of freezing cold air swept through the tunnel. Shoto Todoroki, the prodigy of Class 1-A, had frozen the ground, trapping dozens of students in solid ice.

 

Izuku felt the ice grip his boots, locking him in place. People were screaming, pushing, trying to activate their Quirks in the cramped, freezing space. Izuku looked ahead. He could see the backs of the Hero Course students already breaking free, sprinting away down the track. They were leaving him behind. They were staying in their lane.

 

Stay out of the obstacle course. Stay out of the way. You're just gonna wreck everything. Bakugo's cruel voice echoed in his mind.

 

Izuku looked at the walls of the stadium. They were thick, reinforced concrete, designed to withstand minor Quirk impacts. The designated track went straight.

 

I can't go straight, Izuku realized, a terrifying, desperate clarity washing over him. I have to game jump.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He reached down and gripped the thick velcro straps of his Quirk-suppressant gloves with his teeth. With a sharp jerk, he ripped them open. He pulled his hands free, tossing the heavy gray gloves onto the ice.

 

His scarred, massive hands were bare. The air around his knuckles immediately began to warp, a faint, humming vibration emanating from his bones.

 

"Sorry," Izuku whispered to the students trapped around him.

 

He planted his feet, ignoring the ice, and twisted his torso. He pulled his right arm back, his bicep bulging, the veins in his forearm glowing with a blinding, ethereal blue light. He didn't aim for the tunnel exit. He aimed for the solid, reinforced concrete wall of the stadium to his right.

 

WRECK.

 

Izuku threw the punch.

 

The impact sounded like a bomb going off. The concussive shockwave of pure kinetic energy blasted outward from his fist, hitting the concrete wall. The reinforced steel rebar inside snapped like dry twigs. The wall didn't just break; it completely disintegrated. A massive, gaping hole, twenty feet wide, was blown right out of the side of the stadium.

 

The shockwave threw the surrounding students off their feet, shattering the ice that trapped them. Sirens blared as Izuku stepped through the smoking, jagged crater he had just created, completely bypassing the bottleneck tunnel.

 

Up in the announcer's booth, Present Mic dropped his headset. "WHOA! WHAT WAS THAT?! A MASSIVE EXPLOSION AT THE STARTING GATE! BUT IT WASN'T BAKUGO! IT LOOKS LIKE A STUDENT JUST... PUNCHED A HOLE THROUGH THE STADIUM! ERASERHEAD, IS THAT ALLOWED?!"

 

Aizawa Shouta leaned into his microphone, his eyes narrowing as he watched the monitor. "Technically, yes. Midnight said they could do whatever they wanted as long as they stayed on the course. But that level of property damage is... excessive. That's Midoriya from General Ed. His Quirk is a highly unstable kinetic mutation."

 

Izuku burst out of the stadium and onto the outer track, completely covered in concrete dust. He was already in the top twenty. He began to run. He was heavy, but his strides were long, powered by the sheer density of his leg muscles.

 

Ahead of him, the first major obstacle loomed.

 

The Robo Inferno.

 

Massive, multi-story Zero-Pointer robots from the entrance exam blocked the path. The Hero Course students had stopped, staring up at the mechanical titans. Todoroki was already moving to freeze one, while Bakugo was blasting himself into the air to fly over them.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He locked his eyes on the gleaming image of the gold medal burning in his mind.

 

"Out of my way!" Izuku roared.

 

He didn't leap over the robot. He didn't aim for a weak spot. He lowered his shoulder, his entire body glowing with a violent, crackling blue aura, and charged directly at the nearest Zero-Pointer's massive metal tread.

 

He slammed his oversized fists into the reinforced titanium armor.

 

CRAAACK-BOOOM!

 

The kinetic discharge was catastrophic. The robot's leg didn't just dent; it shattered inward, the sheer force of Izuku's Quirk bypassing the armor and liquidating the internal circuitry. The shockwave traveled up the robot's chassis. The massive machine groaned, entirely destabilized, and began to topple forward.

 

"Look out!" a student screamed.

 

The Zero-Pointer crashed onto the track, sending tons of shrapnel, twisted metal, and shattered asphalt flying in every direction. Other students had to abandon the race to dive for cover, shielding their heads from the lethal rain of debris Izuku had just created.

 

Izuku didn't look back. He didn't see the terrified faces of the Gen Ed students dodging his shrapnel. He just climbed over the smoking, ruined chassis of the robot, using his massive hands to rip away steel plating like it was wet cardboard to make a path.

 

He was a wrecker. And right now, wrecking was winning.

 

"THIS KID IS A MONSTER!" Present Mic yelled, his voice echoing across the stadium. "HE’S NOT JUST CLEARING THE OBSTACLES, HE’S OBLITERATING THEM! U.A.'S REPAIR BUDGET IS GOING TO BE IN THE RED FOR A DECADE!"

 

Izuku hit the second obstacle: The Fall. A vast canyon filled with precarious tightropes stretching across the abyss. Students were carefully crawling across the ropes, using their Quirks to balance.

 

Izuku skidded to a halt at the edge. His massive hands couldn't grip the thin wires. His weight would snap them instantly. He looked down into the canyon, then looked at the massive stone pillars holding the ropes.

 

Game jump.

 

Izuku leaped toward the nearest stone pillar. As he collided with it in mid-air, he drove his fists into the stone. The blue shockwave fractured the pillar at its base. He rode the collapsing pillar down, using his momentum to leap to the next one, punching it, breaking it, forcing it to fall in the direction he wanted.

 

He was literally destroying the foundation of the obstacle to create a crude, collapsing bridge for himself. The tightropes snapped, sending several students dangling helplessly. Izuku ignored their cries of panic. He leaped from falling rock to falling rock, a juggernaut of pure kinetic violence, until he crashed into the far side of the canyon, leaving a ruined, impassable gorge behind him.

 

His lungs burned. His massive knuckles were bleeding, the skin torn from the sheer friction of his own power, but he didn't feel the pain. The adrenaline and the obsession with the gold medal had blinded him to everything else.

 

He burst into the final stretch: The Minefield.

 

A vast expanse of dirt laced with pressure-sensitive, pink landmines. At the very front of the pack, Katsuki Bakugo and Shoto Todoroki were neck-and-neck, fighting each other as much as they were running. They were careful, stepping around the mines, using their Quirks to maintain their lead.

 

Izuku saw them. He was in third place. The finish line—the stadium entrance—was just a few hundred yards away.

 

"DEKU?!" Bakugo roared, catching sight of Izuku in his peripheral vision. The explosive boy's eyes widened in absolute shock and fury. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

 

Izuku didn't answer. He couldn't win a footrace against them. If he tried to tiptoe through the minefield, he would lose.

 

Izuku raised his massive, bleeding hands high above his head. He let out a primal, guttural scream, funneling every ounce of kinetic energy his mutated bones could generate into his fists. The blue aura around him flared so brightly it was blinding, humming with a terrifying, high-pitched frequency.

 

He slammed both fists directly into the dirt at the edge of the minefield.

 

The impact didn't just trigger the mines near him. The massive, subterranean shockwave ripped through the earth like a localized earthquake. It triggered a chain reaction.

 

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

 

Hundreds of pink landmines detonated simultaneously. The ground erupted in a colossal cloud of pink smoke, dirt, and concussive force. The sheer force of the synchronized explosions blew Bakugo and Todoroki right off their feet, throwing them through the air, their perfect form shattered by the chaotic blast.

 

Izuku used the shockwave to propel himself forward. He grabbed a massive, flat piece of metal from a destroyed robot he had dragged with him, threw it on the ground, and rode the expanding wave of explosions like a makeshift surfboard.

 

He blasted past Bakugo, who was tumbling through the air, screaming in unadulterated rage. He blasted past Todoroki, who was scrambling to build an ice wall to protect himself from the debris.

 

Izuku saw the stadium tunnel ahead. It was the designated finish line.

 

But the tunnel was too slow.

 

Izuku leaped off his makeshift board, soaring through the air above the pink smoke. He aimed not for the tunnel, but for the very top of the stadium wall overlooking the center stage.

 

He curled into a ball, a meteor of flesh and blue kinetic energy.

 

"HE’S COMING IN HOT!" Present Mic shrieked.

 

Izuku crashed through the glass and steel barricade of the VIP stands, completely destroying a row of empty seats. He tumbled down the concrete bleachers, shattering them with every impact of his massive body, until he crashed violently onto the manicured grass of the center stage, directly in front of Midnight's podium.

 

The stadium was dead silent. The smoke from the minefield drifted lazily into the sky.

 

Izuku lay on the grass for a second, gasping for air. His uniform was torn to shreds. His arms were bruised purple and black from the recoil of his own Quirk. He slowly pushed himself up on his oversized, bleeding hands.

 

He looked to his left.

 

There it was. The pedestal. The All Might Gold Medal.

 

It was untouched, bathed in the spotlight, gleaming with the promise of validation.

 

Midnight stood frozen, her whip slack in her hand, staring at the crater Izuku had left in the bleachers. The Pro Heroes in the stands were on their feet, their expressions a mix of shock and alarm at the sheer, reckless devastation the boy had caused.

 

Izuku didn't wait for Present Mic to announce him as the winner. He didn't wait for the other students to arrive. The hunger, the desperate, hollow ache in his chest took complete control.

 

He staggered to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his muscles, and limped toward the pedestal.

 

"Midoriya!" Midnight snapped, suddenly recovering her senses. She raised her hand. "Stop right there! The race isn't officially—"

 

Izuku ignored her. He reached out with his massive, scarred right hand. He didn't have the fine motor control to unhook the clasp of the display case. Instead, he simply crushed the thick glass dome covering the medal. The glass shattered into a thousand glittering pieces, cutting his knuckles, but he didn't care.

 

He pinched the golden medal between his massive, calloused thumb and forefinger. He pulled it from the velvet cushion, holding it up to the light.

 

It was heavy. It was real.

 

"I did it," Izuku whispered, a trembling, exhausted smile breaking across his dirt-streaked face. He looked out at the silent stadium. "I won. I'm a hero."

 

But no one was cheering.

 

The silence in the stadium wasn't awe. It was horror.

 

Suddenly, a low, mechanical grinding sound echoed from beneath the grass of the center stage. The earth directly beneath Midnight's podium began to bulge and crack.

 

Up in the booth, Aizawa slammed his hands on the console. "Power Loader! What is happening with the arena’s subterranean systems?"

 

"I don't know!" the support course teacher's voice crackled frantically over the radio. "That kid's shockwaves! He didn't just blow up the obstacles, he fractured the bedrock! He completely shattered the central conduit for the automated security and maintenance drones! The mainframe is glitching!"

 

Before anyone could react, the ground beneath the pedestal exploded.

 

A massive, terrifying machine erupted from the earth. It wasn't a standard Zero-Pointer. It was a Cyber-Scarab—a prototype subterranean maintenance drone designed to rapidly repair the arena between matches. It was the size of a small tank, equipped with six bladed legs, welding torches, and heavy-duty pincers.

 

But it wasn't repairing anything. Izuku’s chaotic kinetic shockwaves had scrambled its core programming. It was glitching violently, its optical sensors flashing from a docile green to a hostile, blinding red.

 

The Cy-Drone let out a screeching, digital roar. It thrashed its bladed legs, slicing Midnight's podium in half. The Pro Hero barely managed to leap out of the way, tearing her costume.

 

Izuku stumbled backward, clutching the gold medal to his chest. "W-What is that?"

 

The Cy-Drone’s red optical sensors locked onto Izuku. More specifically, they locked onto the highly reflective, gleaming gold medal in his hand, interpreting the bright reflection as a critical heat-source error.

 

The machine lunged. Its massive, steel pincer snapped forward with lightning speed, clamping down—not on Izuku, but on the thick crimson ribbon of the medal.

 

"No!" Izuku screamed, his grip tightening. "Mine!"

 

The drone jerked its head back, trying to rip the medal away. Izuku was yanked forward, his boots digging trenches into the grass. He refused to let go. He had destroyed the track, he had defied Bakugo, he had broken his own body for this medal. He was not going to let a glitched-out bug take it from him.

 

"Let... go!" Izuku roared.

 

Desperation overrode reason. Izuku didn't think about the fact that they were in the center of a crowded stadium. He didn't think about the fact that Midnight was just a few feet away, or that Todoroki and Bakugo were just emerging from the tunnel.

 

He only saw the threat to his validation.

 

Izuku pulled his left fist back. The blue kinetic aura flared to life, more volatile and unstable than ever before. He didn't aim for the drone's armor; he aimed directly for the glowing, exposed power core in its open maw.

 

"Midoriya, NO!" Aizawa’s voice boomed over the stadium speakers, laced with absolute terror. "DO NOT STRIKE THAT CORE!"

 

Izuku threw the punch.

 

His massive fist collided with the Cy-Drone's hyper-dense energy core. The combination of Izuku's cataclysmic kinetic output and the drone's unstable, ruptured nuclear battery created a reaction that defied physics.

 

Time seemed to slow down.

 

The blue aura around Izuku's fist turned a blinding, violent white. The drone's chassis expanded, the metal warping outward like a balloon. The screeching of the machine reached a pitch that shattered the glass in the announcer's booth.

 

And then, the world exploded.

 

The blast was biblical. It wasn't a fire explosion; it was a shockwave of pure, condensed force. A dome of white energy expanded outward from the center stage, instantly vaporizing the grass, ripping the heavy concrete slabs of the arena floor out of the earth, and hurling them into the air like playing cards.

 

Izuku was caught at ground zero. The force of the blast ripped the gold medal from his grasp, tearing the skin from his palms. He was thrown backward like a ragdoll, flying fifty feet through the air before crashing brutally into the stadium wall, cratering the concrete.

 

The shockwave hit the stands. The safety glass shattered inward. Spectators screamed, covering their heads as dust, dirt, and shrapnel rained down on them.

 

Bakugo, who had just stepped onto the field, was hit by the peripheral wall of wind, sent tumbling backward into the tunnel, his ears bleeding from the acoustic shock.

 

For a solid minute, the stadium was consumed by a deafening roar and a blinding cloud of gray dust.

 

When the dust finally began to settle, the silence that followed was heavy, ringing, and entirely devoid of cheers.

 

Izuku groaned, his vision swimming. His entire body felt like it had been run over by a bullet train. His ears were ringing so loudly he couldn't hear his own ragged breathing. He slowly rolled over, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. Blood dripped from his forehead, landing on the shattered concrete.

 

He blinked, trying to clear the gray haze from his eyes.

 

The center of the U.A. stadium was gone. It was just a massive, smoking, twenty-foot-deep crater. The Cy-Drone was nowhere to be seen—the explosion had either vaporized it or blown it back down into the subterranean tunnels.

 

And the medal was gone.

 

"The medal..." Izuku croaked, spitting blood onto the ground. He began to crawl forward, his massive hands blindly sifting through the burning rubble. "Where is it? My medal... I won..."

 

Suddenly, a heavy, dark gray fabric wrapped tightly around his wrists, pulling his arms behind his back with terrifying, unbreakable force.

 

Izuku gasped, trying to pull away, but the capture weapon only tightened, digging painfully into his bruised skin. He was hauled to his feet by an invisible force.

 

He looked up.

 

Standing on the edge of the crater, staring down at him, were the Pro Heroes.

 

Eraserhead stood at the forefront, his eyes glowing a furious, bloodshot red, his hair floating wildly around his face. His capture scarf was wrapped securely around Izuku, binding the boy's massive, dangerous hands.

 

Beside him stood Cementoss, who was rapidly generating concrete walls to stabilize the collapsing sections of the stadium bleachers. Midnight was kneeling on the ground nearby, clutching her bleeding arm, being tended to by Recovery Girl.

 

Behind Eraserhead, the students of Class 1-A and the Gen Ed classes were emerging from the dust, coughing and terrified. Izuku saw Shinso staring at him, his face pale with horror. He saw Bakugo, clutching his bleeding ears, glaring at Izuku with a look of absolute, unadulterated disgust.

 

"Eraserhead..." Izuku mumbled, his head spinning. "I... I crossed the finish line first... I won..."

 

"Look around you, Midoriya," Aizawa said. His voice wasn't angry. It was cold. It was the voice of a judge delivering a death sentence.

 

Izuku forced his heavy head to turn.

 

He saw the paramedics rushing into the stands, loading screaming civilians onto stretchers. He saw Gen Ed students limping, bleeding from the shrapnel he had kicked up when he destroyed the robots. He saw the ruined, burning wreckage of the stadium that would take millions of yen to fix.

 

He hadn't saved anyone. He hadn't inspired anyone. He had just wrecked everything.

 

"You didn't win," Aizawa said softly, his red eyes burning into Izuku's soul. "You unleashed a disaster. You let your obsession blind you to the collateral damage. A hero's primary objective is the safety of the public. You actively endangered thousands of people today just to satisfy your own ego."

 

"No!" Izuku shouted, tears finally spilling from his eyes, cutting tracks through the soot on his face. "No, I just wanted to show you! I just wanted the medal so you'd see I wasn't a villain!"

 

A heavy, suffocating presence suddenly fell over the crater. The air grew thick, and the ambient temperature seemed to rise.

 

Izuku looked past Aizawa.

 

Standing there, his golden hair covered in gray dust, the eternal smile completely wiped from his gaunt, shadowed face, was All Might.

 

The Number One Hero looked down at Izuku. There was no anger in his blue eyes. There was only profound, crushing disappointment.

 

"Young man," All Might rumbled, his voice lacking its usual boisterous warmth. "A true hero does not need a piece of metal to prove his worth. He proves it with his actions. Today, your actions were those of a reckless menace."

 

Izuku felt his heart stop. The words hit him harder than any physical blow. A reckless menace. All Might, his idol, the man he had patterned his entire life around, was looking at him the same way Bakugo did. The same way society did.

 

"Take him to the holding room, Eraserhead," All Might said, turning his back on Izuku. "Cancel the rest of the festival. We have casualties to attend to."

 

"Wait! Please!" Izuku sobbed, struggling against the capture tape. His massive hands flexed, desperately trying to summon his kinetic aura, but Aizawa’s Quirk erased it completely. "Please, All Might! Let me fix it! I can be good! I promise I can be good!"

 

"You're done, Midoriya," Aizawa said, yanking the scarf, forcing Izuku to stumble forward. "You're expelled. As of this moment, you are no longer a student of U.A. High School."

 

The word echoed in Izuku’s mind, drowning out the sirens and the cries of the injured.

 

Expelled.

 

He was marched out of the stadium. He walked past the terrified, angry faces of his peers. He walked past Bakugo, who didn't even bother to hurl an insult, merely turning his head away in disgust. He walked past the massive, glittering billboard outside the stadium that still bore his face, labeled as the Number One Threat of the day.

 

They locked him in a sterile, concrete holding room deep within the bowels of the school while they called his mother. They took his reinforced boots. They took his U.A. blazer.

 

Izuku sat on a cold steel bench, his massive hands resting heavily on his knees. The blood on his knuckles had dried to a dark, rust-colored brown. The tears had stopped falling, leaving a hollow, agonizing void in his chest.

 

He had tried to game jump. He had tried to be a hero. And he had proven them all right. He was nothing but a wrecker.

 

But as he sat in the suffocating silence, the image of the golden medal flashed in his mind. The Cy-Drone had taken it. The glitching, violent bug had stolen his validation.

 

A dark, dangerous thought began to take root in the void of his shattered heart.

 

If they wouldn't give him the medal, he would take it back himself. He would track down that machine, rip the medal from its mechanical guts, and force them to look at it. He would force them to accept him.

 

Because if he wasn't a U.A. student, and he wasn't a hero, he had nothing left to lose.

 

Izuku looked at his massive, scarred hands. He curled them into fists. The kinetic energy, previously suppressed by Aizawa, sparked to life, glowing a faint, angry blue in the dim light of the holding cell.

 

It was time to jump into the underworld.

 

 

 

 

The holding cell deep beneath U.A. High School was a cube of featureless gray concrete, measuring exactly ten feet by ten feet. There were no windows, no clocks, and no posters of smiling Heroes. Just a single, caged bulb humming in the center of the ceiling, casting harsh, unforgiving light on the boy who sat trembling on the bolted-down steel bench.

 

Izuku Midoriya stared at his hands.

 

Without the heavy, shock-absorbent gloves to compress them, his massive, scarred hands rested on his knees like two foreign, dangerous beasts. The skin across his knuckles was split and bleeding from where he had shattered the Cy-Drone's chassis. The familiar, deep-tissue ache of his kinetic Quirk hummed in his marrow, a dull vibration that made his fingertips twitch.

 

“You’re expelled.”

 

Aizawa’s voice played on an endless, torturous loop in his mind.

 

“You actively endangered thousands of people today just to satisfy your own ego.”

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head until his messy green curls brushed his knees. He grabbed fistfuls of his torn, dirt-stained P.E. pants, his massive fingers nearly tearing the fabric to shreds. He couldn't breathe. The air in the room felt thick as mud, suffocating him with the weight of what he had done.

 

He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. He just wanted the medal. He just wanted to prove that his hands could hold a symbol of hope without turning it to ash.

 

A heavy, metallic knock echoed through the heavy steel door of the cell.

 

"Midoriya," a gruff voice called from the other side. It was a police officer. "Your mother has been contacted. She's on her way to the campus now. Principal Nezu and Detective Tsukauchi will be conducting your formal discharge and statement in twenty minutes."

 

Izuku’s heart plummeted into his stomach. A fresh wave of nausea washed over him, cold and paralyzing.

 

Mom.

 

He pictured Inko Midoriya’s face. He imagined the devastated, heartbroken look in her eyes when she saw the news broadcast. She had spent the last eleven years of her life apologizing for him. Apologizing to the parents of children he had accidentally terrified. Apologizing to landlords for shattered drywall and broken doorframes. Apologizing to a society that looked at her sweet, gentle son and saw a walking natural disaster.

 

And now, she was coming here to collect him. Her expelled, disgraced son who had nearly leveled the U.A. Sports Festival.

 

"I can't," Izuku whispered, the sound raw and broken. "I can't look at her. Not like this."

 

He looked up at the ceiling. The gold medal. If he just had the medal, he could explain it. He could show her that he really had won the race. That he had crossed the finish line first. That the explosion wasn't entirely his fault—it was the glitching robot! If he had the medal, maybe they would reconsider. Maybe All Might would see that Izuku was a victim of circumstance.

 

It was a delusional, frantic line of logic, born of absolute desperation and a fractured teenage psyche. But to Izuku, backed into the darkest corner of his life, it was the only lifeline left.

 

He had to get his medal back.

 

Izuku slid off the steel bench. He placed his bare feet on the cold concrete floor. They had taken his heavy boots, leaving him in just his socks. He walked to the center of the room and looked down.

 

When the Cy-Drone had exploded, the concussive force had blown a massive crater into the arena floor. The maintenance tunnels beneath U.A. were a vast, subterranean network. The glitching machine had likely fallen back down into those tunnels, taking his gold medal with it.

 

Izuku crouched down. He pressed his right hand flat against the floor of the holding cell.

 

"I'm sorry," he whispered to the empty room. "I know I'm proving you right. But I have to fix this."

 

He closed his eyes and summoned the power he had spent his entire life trying to suppress. The air in the tiny cell immediately grew heavy. A low, grinding sound—like tectonic plates shifting against one another—reverberated from Izuku's shoulder down to his wrist. His veins pulsed with a terrifying, ethereal blue light.

 

WRECK.

 

He didn't pull his arm back to punch. He simply pushed a concentrated pulse of pure, unadulterated kinetic energy directly from his palm into the concrete.

 

The floor didn't explode outward; it shattered downward. A perfectly circular section of the reinforced concrete, four feet in diameter, instantly pulverized into dust and gravel, dropping away into the pitch-black abyss below.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He slipped through the hole, plunging into the darkness.

 

He fell for nearly twenty feet, landing heavily on his feet in the subterranean maintenance shaft. The dense musculature of his legs absorbed the impact, though his knees groaned in protest. He stood up in the gloom, coughing as the concrete dust from his makeshift exit settled around him.

 

He was in a massive, cylindrical service tunnel. Thick bundles of fiber-optic cables and heavy water mains ran along the curved walls. Emergency red lighting bathed the tunnel in a sinister, bloody glow.

 

Izuku looked at the ground. It was easy to see which way the machine had gone. The thick, reinforced steel plating of the tunnel floor was violently gouged, deep trenches ripped into the metal by the frantic, thrashing bladed legs of the glitching Cy-Drone.

 

Izuku began to walk.

 

He was doing it. He was officially game jumping. He was leaving the brightly lit, highly supervised, structured world of U.A. High School, and stepping off the board entirely. He was venturing into the blind spots of the city, chasing a ghost.

 

 

 

He walked for hours.

 

The maintenance tunnels of U.A. eventually gave way to the older, crumbling infrastructure of Musutafu’s municipal sewer system. The air grew damp, thick with the stench of stagnant water, rust, and rot. The red emergency lights faded, replaced by the occasional flickering, yellowed bulb of an old service station.

 

Izuku was exhausted. The adrenaline from the Sports Festival had long since crashed, leaving behind a profound, full-body agony. His knuckles throbbed with every heartbeat. His torn U.A. P.E. shirt was smeared with blood, dirt, and sweat. He shivered in the damp cold, wrapping his massive arms around his torso, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop.

 

The gouges left by the Cy-Drone were unrelenting, carving a path deeper and deeper into the belly of the city.

 

Eventually, the narrow sewer pipe opened up into a massive, cavernous space. Izuku stepped out onto a rusted catwalk and gasped.

 

It was an abandoned subterranean subway station, a relic from an era before Quirks had forced the city to overhaul its infrastructure. But it wasn't empty.

 

The station was a sprawling, chaotic shantytown. Tents made of scavenged tarps and corrugated metal crowded the cracked platforms. Makeshift braziers burned with green and blue chemical fires, casting eerie, dancing shadows on the vaulted ceilings. The air was thick with the smell of cheap tobacco, roasting meat, and ozone.

 

People moved through the shadows. These weren't the eccentric, colorful citizens of the surface world. These were the outcasts. The ones whose Quirks mutated their bodies so severely they couldn't find jobs. The ones whose powers were deemed too unstable, too frightening, or too inconvenient for polite society.

 

Izuku shrank back against the tunnel wall. He had attended Bad-Anon. He had sat in circles with Shinso and Toga and talked about the stigma of "villainous" Quirks. But looking at the inhabitants of this underground purgatory, he realized he had been playing dress-up.

 

This was the real underworld.

 

"Hey. You lost, kid?"

 

Izuku flinched, spinning around.

 

Standing behind him, blocking the entrance to the catwalk, were three men. They didn't look like the flamboyant villains on the news. They looked like desperate predators.

 

The speaker was a tall, emaciated man whose jaw unhinged to reveal three rows of needle-like teeth. To his left was a hulking brute with scales covering his arms, holding a heavy rusted pipe. To his right was a woman whose fingers ended in dripping, venomous stingers.

 

They looked at Izuku. They looked at his pristine, albeit torn, U.A. P.E. pants. They looked at his bare, bloodied feet.

 

"Looks like a stray dog from the Hero school," the woman hissed, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Got lost in the pipes. Probably got a nice, shiny smartphone on him. Maybe a wallet."

 

"I... I don't have anything," Izuku stammered, taking a step back. His massive back hit the cold iron railing of the catwalk. "Please, I'm just looking for something that came through here. A big machine. It was glitching..."

 

"We don't care about no machine," the scaled brute grunted, tapping the iron pipe against his palm. "Hand over the pants. That U.A. fabric goes for a good price down here. And whatever else you got in your pockets. Do it quiet, or I break your kneecaps."

 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. He looked at their eyes. There was no hesitation there. There was no morality to appeal to. They were going to hurt him, simply because he was there and he looked vulnerable.

 

For the first time in his life, Izuku felt true, unadulterated fear of another person. Not the nervous intimidation he felt around Bakugo, but the primal terror of prey backed into a corner.

 

"I said, strip," the leader snarled, his jaw unhinging further, a low hiss escaping his throat. He lunged forward, grabbing the collar of Izuku’s torn shirt.

 

Panic seized Izuku’s mind.

 

Before he could process the thought, instinct took over. His Quirk, always waiting just beneath the surface like a coiled spring, snapped.

 

Izuku brought his massive right hand up. He didn't punch the man. He simply grabbed the man’s wrist.

 

Izuku’s hand was so large his fingers completely enveloped the thug's forearm. The air around Izuku’s knuckles warped with violent, blue kinetic energy. The heat radiating from his skin instantly singed the man's sleeve.

 

"Ah!" the leader yelped, trying to pull away. But Izuku’s grip was like a titanium vice.

 

"Let me go," Izuku said. His voice was trembling, but it was incredibly deep, vibrating with the latent kinetic force thrumming in his chest.

 

The brute with the pipe roared, swinging the heavy iron weapon directly at Izuku’s head.

 

Izuku let go of the leader, ducked the swing, and caught the iron pipe with his left hand. The impact sent a shockwave down Izuku's arm, but his dense bones barely felt it. He squeezed his fingers.

 

CRUNCH.

 

The thick iron pipe crumpled in Izuku's grasp like a piece of aluminum foil. He twisted his wrist, ripping the weapon out of the brute's hands, and tossed the mangled scrap metal over the railing into the dark waters below.

 

The three thugs froze. They stared at Izuku’s hands.

 

In the dim, flickering light of the underground station, Izuku’s hands looked monstrous. The thick, crisscrossing white scars, the swollen knuckles, the faint blue light pulsing in his veins. They realized, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that they hadn't cornered a stray puppy. They had cornered a tank.

 

"I said," Izuku repeated, his voice dropping an octave, the blue energy flaring brighter, "I don't have anything. Let me pass."

 

The woman with the stingers took a step back, her eyes wide. "F-Freak," she spat, turning and sprinting down the catwalk, disappearing into the shadows of the shantytown.

 

The other two didn't hesitate. They scrambled backward, nearly tripping over themselves, and ran in the opposite direction.

 

Izuku stood alone on the catwalk, his chest heaving, his massive hands trembling violently. The blue kinetic light faded, leaving him in the gloom.

 

He stared at his hands. He hated them. He hated the scars, he hated the clumsiness, he hated the destruction they caused. But right now, as he stood in the freezing, merciless belly of the city, they were the only things keeping him alive.

 

Hound Dog was right, Izuku thought bitterly, wrapping his arms around himself. I'm a brute. I fit right in down here.

 

He swallowed the lump in his throat, forced himself to look away from the people huddled around the chemical fires below, and continued following the gouged tracks into the darkness.

 

 

 

The trail led him deeper still, past the abandoned subway lines and into a section of the city’s foundations that didn't appear on any municipal map. The air grew incredibly dry, and the smell of rot was replaced by the stark, sterile scent of bleach and concrete dust.

 

Izuku rounded a corner in a massive drainage pipe and stopped dead.

 

The gouged tracks left by the Cy-Drone ended abruptly.

 

Izuku frowned, walking forward. The trail didn't just fade out; it ran straight into a solid, perfectly smooth wall of gray stone. It was a dead end. But that was impossible. The tracks clearly showed the heavy, thrashing machine moving forward with immense momentum.

 

He reached out, pressing his massive hand against the stone wall. It was cold. It was seamless. There were no cracks, no mortar, no indication that it had ever been anything other than a solid block of rock.

 

"This doesn't make sense," Izuku muttered, running his thumb over the stone. "Unless..."

 

He remembered his notebooks. He remembered analyzing the Quirks of notorious villains. There were Quirks that could manipulate the environment. Earth-benders, cement-manipulators...

 

Someone had closed the path behind the drone. Someone had rebuilt the wall perfectly to hide whatever lay beyond it.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He pressed his palms flat against the stone.

 

"Excuse me," he whispered.

 

He unleashed a focused pulse of kinetic energy.

 

WRECK.

 

The stone wall shattered inward, not with an explosion, but with the sound of a thousand glass panes breaking at once. The rock pulverized, leaving a jagged, dusty hole large enough for Izuku to step through.

 

He stepped through the rubble, brushing the dust from his eyes, and found himself standing on the edge of a nightmare.

 

If U.A. High School was a pristine, structured video game designed for heroes, the place Izuku had just entered was a corrupted, glitching save-file designed by a madman.

 

It was a labyrinth.

 

He was standing on a balcony overlooking a staggering, impossible subterranean complex. The architecture was a bizarre, nauseating mashup of traditional, elegant Japanese yakuza estates and sterile, fluorescent-lit hospital wards. But nothing was structurally sound.

 

Hallways twisted at gravity-defying angles, spiraling upward and intersecting with ceilings. Staircases led to nowhere. Massive, fleshy-looking pillars of stone and steel seemed to throb, as if the very building had been torn apart at the molecular level and stitched back together by someone completely insane. The lighting was a sickening mix of sickly yellow sodium bulbs and blinding white surgical lights.

 

It was a dark, twisted parallel to a candy-coated wonderland. A maze of perpetual, controlled chaos.

 

Where am I? Izuku thought, his breath fogging in the strangely cold air. This isn't a hideout. This is a fortress.

 

He crept down a flight of stairs that seemed to warp slightly under his feet, flattening himself against the wall. The silence in the complex was absolute, heavy, and terrifying. Every surface was immaculately clean. There wasn't a speck of dust, a stray wire, or a single footprint. It was too clean. It felt like a tomb.

 

He sneaked through a twisted corridor lined with sliding shoji screens that opened into solid concrete walls. He navigated by following the faint, lingering sound of clicking metal and the sporadic, erratic hum of the Cy-Drone's failing nuclear battery.

 

As he approached a large set of double doors, he heard voices.

 

Izuku froze. He pressed his back against the wall, holding his breath.

 

"The intrusion is unacceptable, Mimic," a chillingly calm voice echoed from the room beyond. The voice was smooth, cultured, but entirely devoid of warmth. It sounded like a scalpel scraping against bone. "How did a U.A. security drone breach the outer perimeter?"

 

"I don't know, Overhaul!" a raspy, panicked voice—Mimic—replied. "The thing was completely erratic! It didn't follow the tunnels, it just chewed through the bedrock! It was completely fried, sparking everywhere. Chrono disabled it in the scrap room."

 

"A glitch," the cold voice, Overhaul, mused. "A chaotic, uncontrollable anomaly. Disgusting. The surface world relies on these diseased, unreliable machines. It brought filth into our sanctum."

 

Izuku slowly, carefully peeked around the doorframe.

 

The room was a massive, cavernous courtyard, seemingly ripped straight from a traditional estate but buried hundreds of feet underground. In the center of the courtyard stood three men.

 

Two of them wore tailored black suits, but their faces were hidden behind terrifying, beak-like plague masks.

 

The third man—the one called Overhaul—stood with his back to Izuku. He wore a dark green bomber jacket with a thick purple fur collar. He, too, wore a plague mask, though his was sleeker, accented with gold. He wore pristine white surgical gloves.

 

Kneeling on the floor in front of Overhaul was a fourth man. A low-level thug, trembling violently, sweating profusely.

 

"I'm sorry, boss!" the kneeling man sobbed. "I was on perimeter watch! I didn't see the bug coming! I swear, I didn't mean to let it through!"

 

"You were tasked with maintaining the quarantine of our borders," Overhaul said quietly, slowly pulling off his right surgical glove. "Your incompetence allowed a foreign contaminant into our home. You have a sickness in your work ethic. Sickness must be cured."

 

"Please! No!" the thug screamed, trying to scramble backward.

 

Overhaul reached out and placed his bare hand on the man's shoulder.

 

Izuku's eyes widened. He expected a blast of fire, or a shockwave, or a sudden display of brute force. He expected a villain's attack.

 

What happened next shattered Izuku's entire understanding of the world.

 

With a sickening squelch, the kneeling man simply ceased to exist as a human being. He exploded into a geyser of blood, bone fragments, and viscera. The sheer, instantaneous violence of the Quirk was incomprehensible. It wasn't destruction; it was complete, molecular deconstruction.

 

Izuku clapped his massive hands over his mouth, biting down hard on his own glove to physically stop the scream tearing up his throat. His eyes bulged in absolute horror, tears instantly springing to his vision.

 

The blood rained down on the pristine floor. Overhaul stood amidst the gore, untouched, his expression hidden behind the plague mask.

 

"Clean this up," Overhaul said to Chrono, his voice perfectly even, casually slipping his white glove back onto his hand. "And reinforce the eastern walls. The Shie Hassaikai will not be disturbed by the surface world's garbage."

 

Overhaul turned and walked through a doorway on the far side of the courtyard, disappearing into the labyrinth. Chrono and Mimic quickly followed, leaving the gruesome remains of their comrade on the floor.

 

Izuku collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the floor, his whole body shaking with violent, uncontrollable tremors.

 

He couldn't breathe. The coppery smell of blood drifted out into the hallway, turning his stomach. He dry-heaved, burying his face in his knees.

 

A villain.

 

Izuku had spent years being called a villain. He had looked at his massive, destructive hands and believed he was dangerous. He had thought Bakugo's explosions were cruel. He had thought the mock villains in the training exercises were scary.

 

He was an idiot. He was a naive, stupid child playing a game he didn't understand.

 

What he had just witnessed was true evil. It was cold, calculated, and entirely remorseless. This wasn't a game of heroes and villains. This was a slaughterhouse.

 

I have to leave, Izuku thought, sheer panic flooding his system. I have to run. I have to get out of here right now. If they find me, he'll touch me. He'll turn me into... into nothing.

 

He scrambled to his feet, desperate to run back the way he came.

 

But as he turned, his foot caught on something. He stumbled, catching himself against the wall. He looked down into a side chamber he hadn't noticed in his panic.

 

It was a scrap room. Filled with broken stone, twisted rebar, and discarded technology.

 

And resting in the center of the pile, its red optical sensors dark and its bladed legs severed cleanly by Overhaul's Quirk, was the Cy-Drone.

 

Izuku froze. The terror warring in his chest suddenly clashed with the obsessive, desperate hunger that had brought him down here in the first place.

 

The machine was dead. The threat was neutralized. His medal was in that room.

 

If he ran now, he would be going back to the surface as an expelled, disgraced wrecker. He would face his mother with nothing but empty hands and a ruined future. But if he just grabbed the medal, if he just took it and ran, the nightmare would be worth it.

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the trembling in his limbs. He took a slow, agonizing breath, forcing his terror down into the darkest pit of his stomach.

 

He crept into the scrap room. The silence was deafening. He tiptoed toward the ruined chassis of the Cy-Drone, terrified that any sound he made would echo through the labyrinth and bring the plague-masked men back.

 

He reached the machine. He knelt beside the massive, open maw where the glitching battery had been.

 

He reached his massive hand inside, feeling around the twisted, scorched metal of the drone's internal casing. He felt for the smooth velvet of the ribbon, or the cold, perfect circle of the gold medal.

 

His fingers found nothing but ash and grease.

 

Izuku frowned. He leaned in closer, ignoring the smell of burnt wiring. He used his thick fingers to pry open a bent metal panel. He searched the entire front cavity of the machine.

 

Empty.

 

"No," Izuku whispered, panic rising in his chest again. "No, no, no, no. It has to be here. It grabbed it."

 

He frantically ripped off a side panel, his kinetic energy flaring slightly, bending the steel with a muted groan. He searched the secondary compartments. He searched beneath the severed legs.

 

The gold medal was gone.

 

Someone had taken it. Either the Yakuza men had looted the machine before leaving it here, or...

 

Clatter.

 

Izuku froze.

 

The sound came from the shadows in the far corner of the scrap room. It was tiny. Like a pebble being kicked across the stone floor.

 

Izuku slowly, agonizingly, turned his head. His massive hands balled into fists, the blue energy instantly pooling in his knuckles, ready to fight for his life against whatever monster lurked in the dark.

 

He peered into the gloom, past a pile of broken concrete pillars.

 

A pair of wide, terrified red eyes stared back at him.

 

It wasn't a plague-masked killer. It wasn't a monstrous guard.

 

Huddled in the corner, clutching her knees to her chest, was a little girl. She couldn't have been older than six. She had messy, pale blueish-white hair, and a small, distinct horn protruding from the right side of her forehead. She was wearing a dirty, ragged hospital gown, and her small arms and legs were covered in bandages.

 

She was trembling just as violently as Izuku was.

 

Izuku blinked, the kinetic energy in his hands fading slightly in pure confusion. What was a little girl doing in a yakuza torture compound?

 

Then, Izuku's eyes drifted down.

 

The girl’s small, bandaged hands were clutched tightly against her chest. And peeking out from between her fingers, gleaming softly in the dim light of the scrap room, was a thick crimson ribbon attached to a massive, perfectly pristine circle of gold.

 

She had his medal.

 

Izuku stared at her. She stared at him, her red eyes locked onto his massive, scarred hands with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror.

 

They were two strays, trapped in the belly of the underworld, with a piece of fake gold between them.

 

The game had just gotten infinitely more complicated.