What If Deku Built His Own Iron Man Suit Instead of Inheriting One For All

 

The afternoon sun filtered through the dust-motes dancing in the classroom of Aldera Junior High, casting long, apathetic shadows across the scarred wooden desks. Izuku Midoriya sat in the middle row, his head bowed, his shoulders drawn inward as if trying to collapse his own body mass into a singularity. He was trying to be invisible. It was a survival tactic he had honed over a decade of Quirkless existence.

 

At the front of the room, the homeroom teacher shuffled a stack of career aptitude papers, a bored expression plastered across his middle-aged face. "Since you're all third-years, it's time for you to think seriously about your futures," the teacher droned, his voice barely cutting through the ambient chatter of thirty teenagers. "I'll pass out these handouts for your future plans now, but..."

 

The teacher paused, a sly, knowing grin breaking his professional demeanor. He grabbed the stack of papers and tossed them carelessly over his shoulder, the sheets fluttering to the floor like dead leaves. "...you're all pretty much planning to go into the hero course, right?"

 

The classroom erupted. It was a cacophony of minor miracles and localized physics violations. A girl in the front stretched her neck like a serpent; a boy in the back caused his desk to hover a few inches off the ground; someone else shot harmless sparks from their fingertips. The room was alive with the vibrant, chaotic energy of Quirks—the genetic lottery that dictated a person's worth in modern society.

 

Izuku didn’t cheer. He didn't activate a Quirk. He merely offered a small, hesitant raise of his hand, clutching a mechanical pencil so tightly his knuckles were white.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher chuckled, waving a hand to settle the noise. "But using your powers in school is against the rules."

 

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these losers!"

 

The voice was arrogant, loud, and commanded instant silence. Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his feet resting disrespectfully on his desk. His crimson eyes swept over the classroom with undisguised contempt. "As if I had anything like their crappy Quirks. They'll be lucky to end up as sidekicks to some busted D-lister. I'm the real deal."

 

Predictably, the class rose in indignant uproar, but Bakugo merely smirked, letting off a series of small, sharp explosions in the palms of his hands. The crackle of nitroglycerin acted like a warning bell, and the complaints quickly died down into fearful muttering.

 

"Ah, Bakugo," the teacher said, glancing at a clipboard. "You're aiming for U.A. High, aren't you?"

 

A hushed, reverent murmur swept through the room. U.A. High School. The pinnacle of hero education. The alma mater of the Symbol of Peace, All Might. It was a fortress of excellence with an acceptance rate of less than two-tenths of a percent.

 

Bakugo leaped onto his desk, his fists clenched, chest puffed out in absolute supremacy. "That's exactly why you guys are just extras! I aced the mock test. I'm the only one at this school who stands a chance. I'll even surpass All Might and become the top hero out there! My name will be inscribed on the list of top earners—"

 

"Oh, right," the teacher interrupted, adjusting his glasses. "Midoriya wanted to go to U.A., too, didn't he?"

 

Time stopped.

 

The entire classroom froze. For a fraction of a second, there was total, suffocating silence. Izuku’s heart plummeted into his stomach, his breath catching in his throat. He shrunk down, instinctively raising his arms to shield his head, wishing the linoleum floor would open up and swallow him whole.

 

Then, the laughter started.

 

It wasn't just cruel; it was hysterically disbelieving. It was the laughter reserved for a dog trying to do algebra.

 

"Midoriya? No way!"

"You can't get into the hero course just by studying!"

"Quirkless Deku, at U.A.? Is he insane?"

 

"T-They got rid of that rule!" Izuku stammered, his voice cracking as he stood up, desperate to defend his fragile dream. "There's no precedent, but they allow Quirkless students to take the exam now! I could be the first! If I just try my hardest—"

 

He didn't see Bakugo move. He only felt the searing heat and the concussive shockwave of an explosion slamming into the surface of his desk. The wood splintered, and the sheer force threw Izuku backward, tumbling unceremoniously onto the hard floor. His tailbone flared with pain.

 

Bakugo stood over him, smoke rising from his right palm, his face twisted into a demonic snarl. "Listen up, Deku. You're even worse than the rest of these rejects. You're completely Quirkless. You are nothing. What the hell can you even do?"

 

Izuku scrambled backward like a frightened crab, his back hitting the wall. "No, Kacchan, wait! I'm not trying to compete with you! I swear! It's just... it's been my dream since I was little. And I won't know unless I try..."

 

"Try what?!" Bakugo roared, leaning in close enough for Izuku to smell the sweet, burnt caramel scent of his nitroglycerin sweat. "The entrance exam is practical! You think they're gonna let a fragile little doll like you fight robots? You'll die in the exam, you pathetic nerd!"

 

The teacher did nothing. The students whispered and giggled. Izuku lowered his head, staring at the scuffed tips of his red sneakers. He had no counterargument. He had no power.

 

 

 

The final bell was a mercy. As the classroom emptied, Izuku remained seated, slowly packing his yellow backpack. The adrenaline from the confrontation had faded, leaving behind a hollow, aching exhaustion. He pulled out his prized possession: a standard, thirteen-line spiral notebook. Across the cover, written in careful, bold kanji, read: Hero Analysis for the Future - Vol. 13.

 

It was his life's work. Since he was a child, he had recorded the hero debuts, the Quirk mechanics, the fighting styles, and the support gear of every hero he could find. If he couldn't have a Quirk, he would compensate with knowledge. He would know the heroes better than they knew themselves.

 

He opened it to a fresh page, intending to write down some thoughts on Mt. Lady, a new hero who had debuted that morning.

 

Before his pencil could touch the paper, a hand snatched the notebook away.

 

Izuku looked up. Bakugo stood there, flanked by two of his lackeys. He dangled the notebook between his fingers, reading the cover with a mocking sneer.

 

"Hero Analysis for the Future?" Bakugo read aloud, his voice dripping with venom. "Seriously? You're still delusional, Deku."

 

"Give it back, Kacchan," Izuku pleaded, standing up and reaching for it. "That's mine."

 

Bakugo didn't even look at him. He slammed his palms together, trapping the notebook between them. BOOM.

 

The explosive force ripped through the paper. Izuku let out a strangled gasp as the charred, smoking remains of his life's work were tossed onto a nearby desk. The edges were blackened, the spine melted.

 

"Most top-tier heroes have stories about their school days," Bakugo said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "Stories about how they were the best, right from the start. I'm going to be the only one from this garbage school to make it to U.A. So, as a favor to me, don't apply. Don't even try."

 

Bakugo picked up the ruined notebook and casually tossed it out the open window. Izuku watched it fall, his chest tight, his throat closing up.

 

Bakugo turned to leave, his lackeys snickering behind him. But at the doorway, he paused, glancing back over his shoulder. His eyes were flat, devoid of any warmth.

 

"You know, if you really want to be a hero that badly, there might be another way."

 

Izuku looked up, a foolish, desperate flicker of hope betraying him.

 

"Just pray that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life," Bakugo said coldly. "And take a swan dive off the roof of the building."

 

The words struck Izuku like a physical blow. The breath left his lungs. He stood frozen, staring at the empty doorway long after Bakugo had left. Suicide. His childhood friend had just told him to kill himself. He clenched his fists, his body trembling with a mixture of profound sorrow and a quiet, impotent rage. He couldn't even talk back. He was weak.

 

Izuku slowly walked out of the school building, his steps heavy. He found his notebook floating in a koi pond in the courtyard, a few oblivious fish nibbling at the burnt edges.

 

"That's not fish food, stupid," Izuku muttered, his voice breaking. He fished the sodden book out of the water, careful not to tear the fragile pages. He pressed it against his chest, feeling the dampness seep into his school uniform. "Stupid... you can't just tell people to kill themselves. What if I actually did it? What would you do then, Kacchan?"

 

He didn't want to go home yet. He couldn't face his mother's worried, pitying eyes. He needed a distraction. He decided to take the long way home, walking through the city, watching the skyline.

 

His route took him under a dark, concrete overpass. The shadows were deep here, providing a brief respite from the afternoon sun. He walked slowly, his head down, attempting to mentally reconstruct the damaged notes in his book. He was muttering to himself, a habit he developed to organize his chaotic thoughts.

 

He didn't notice the strange, squelching sound from the manhole behind him.

 

He didn't notice the grate lifting, or the foul, sulfurous scent of raw sewage filling the air.

 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," a gurgling, wet voice rasped from the shadows.

 

Izuku turned around. What he saw defied logic. It was a massive, towering wave of dark green, gelatinous sludge, towering ten feet high in the enclosed tunnel. Two bulbous, yellow eyes and a maw of jagged, crooked teeth floated within the fluid mass.

 

Before Izuku could scream, before he could run, the creature lunged.

 

It hit him like a freight train made of mud. Izuku was knocked off his feet, his backpack flying into the dirt. The sludge was freezing cold and smelled like rotting garbage and rust. It wrapped around his limbs, pinning his arms to his sides with the strength of steel cables.

 

Then, the villain forced himself upward. The sludge slid over Izuku's chin, prying his jaw open with hydraulic force.

 

"Don't worry," the sludge villain purred, the vibration traveling directly into Izuku's skull. "I'm just taking over your body. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then, it'll all be over."

 

Izuku thrashed. He kicked his legs, his sneakers squeaking desperately against the concrete. He reached his hands up, clawing at the sludge, trying to rip it away from his mouth. His fingernails dug into the fluid, tearing chunks away, but the slime instantly reformed, seamlessly repairing itself. It was like trying to strangle water.

 

I can't breathe, Izuku panicked, his eyes wide with absolute terror. The sludge was sliding down his throat, filling his windpipe, invading his lungs. I'm dying. I'm actually going to die here.

 

His vision began to blur. Black spots danced at the edges of his sight. His strength was fading. He thought of his mother. He thought of his ruined notebook. He thought of Bakugo's cruel words. Is this it? Is this how the Quirkless Deku dies? A statistic. A victim. A nobody.

 

Suddenly, a massive, metallic clatter echoed through the tunnel.

 

The manhole cover flew into the air, spinning like a coin, before embedding itself deep into the concrete ceiling with a deafening crack.

 

A shadow fell over the entrance of the underpass. It was a silhouette carved from granite, impossibly broad, radiating an aura of absolute power and safety.

 

"Have no fear, you are safe," a voice boomed, deep, resonant, and overflowing with confidence.

 

The figure stepped into the light. The blond hair styled into twin 'V's. The brilliant, white, fearless smile. The blue and red suit.

 

All Might, Izuku thought, his mind struggling to process the impossible through the haze of oxygen deprivation. The Symbol of Peace. Here.

 

The Sludge Villain panicked, whipping a tendril of slime toward the number one hero.

 

All Might didn't even flinch. He planted his feet, pulled back a fist wrapped in pure, unadulterated kinetic energy, and threw a punch at the empty air.

 

"TEXAS... SMASH!"

 

The sheer air pressure generated by the punch was akin to a localized hurricane. The wind screamed through the tunnel. The concussive force hit the Sludge Villain, tearing its liquid body to microscopic pieces in an instant. Izuku felt the sludge violently ripped from his lungs. He was thrown backward, gasping, coughing violently as the wind tore through his hair.

 

As oxygen rushed back into his starving brain, Izuku's vision swam. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the towering figure of All Might standing victorious, the wind slowly dying down.

 

 

 

"Hey! Hey! Wake up! Thank goodness, you're awake!"

 

Izuku gasped, his eyes snapping open. He was lying on his back on the concrete. Hovering over him, lightly tapping his cheek, was the literal face of his religion. All Might.

 

Izuku screamed, scrambling backward so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.

 

"Excellent!" All Might laughed, a booming sound that seemed to vibrate in Izuku's chest. "I'm glad you're okay! Apologies for getting you caught up in my villain hunt. Usually, I don't make mistakes like this, but I was fired up in a new city!"

 

All Might posed, flexing his massive biceps. "Anyway, you were a big help! I've captured the villain!" He held up two large, plastic soda bottles, inside of which the Sludge Villain was contained, angrily swirling against the plastic.

 

Izuku couldn't breathe, but this time it wasn't because of sludge. It was pure, unadulterated awe. All Might. The number one hero. The man who saves everyone with a smile. He's real. He's right here.

 

"I-I have to get an autograph!" Izuku stammered, frantically searching the ground for his notebook. He found it, still damp, and flipped it open to a blank page. But there, spanning across two entire pages, was a massive, looping signature.

 

"He already signed it!" Izuku shrieked, bowing repeatedly at a ninety-degree angle. "Thank you! Thank you so much! It'll be an heirloom! A family treasure!"

 

"Well, I must be off!" All Might said, giving a thumbs-up. He secured the bottles to the belt of his cargo pants. "I have to take this guy to the police! See you on the flip side!"

 

All Might crouched, the muscles in his legs bunching like coiled steel cables.

 

Wait, Izuku thought, panic setting in. He's leaving? Already? But I haven't... I have to ask him. The question. The only question that matters.

 

"Wait!" Izuku reached out.

 

All Might leapt. The ground shattered beneath him, and he shot into the sky like a ballistic missile. The wind force blew Izuku's notebook out of his hand, but Izuku wasn't looking at it.

 

He was thousands of feet in the air, his arms desperately wrapped around All Might's muscular thigh. The wind roared in his ears, tearing at his cheeks, threatening to rip him away and send him plummeting to his death.

 

"Hey, hey, hey!" All Might yelled, looking down in shock. "What are you doing? Let go! Your fanaticism is too much!"

 

"If I let go now, I'll die!" Izuku screamed, his eyes squeezed shut against the ferocious wind pressure.

 

"Oh, right!" All Might realized. "Hold on tight! I'll find a place to land!"

 

A minute later, they crashed down onto the roof of a tall office building. Izuku collapsed onto the hard gravel, shaking violently, gasping for air. His legs felt like jelly.

 

"Good grief," All Might sighed, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "That was reckless, young man. If you knock on the door downstairs, someone will let you out. Now, I really must be going—"

 

"Wait!" Izuku pleaded, pushing himself to his knees. "Please! Just one question!"

 

All Might stopped. He didn't turn around, but he paused.

 

Izuku stared at the broad, invincible back of the hero. This was it. The moment of truth. He had spent his entire life being told he was worthless, broken, a genetic dead-end. Bakugo, his teachers, the doctors, even his own mother had looked at him with pity. But if the Symbol of Peace—the man who made the impossible possible—told him he could do it, then it would be true.

 

"Even if I don't have a Quirk..." Izuku began, his voice trembling, tears welling in his eyes. "Can I still become a hero? Can someone without a Quirk be like you?"

 

The silence stretched on the rooftop. The wind whipped past them, carrying the distant sounds of city traffic.

 

Izuku closed his eyes, pouring every ounce of his soul into his words. "Because I don't have a Quirk, I've always been picked on. I don't know why, but... I think saving people is the coolest thing in the world. I want to save people with a fearless smile. I want to be the greatest hero, just like you!"

 

When Izuku opened his eyes, ready to receive the blessing of his god, he gasped.

 

All Might was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man in clothes that were several sizes too big for him. His eyes were sunken, shadowed pools, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Blood trickled from his mouth.

 

"W-Who are you?!" Izuku screamed, looking around in a panic. "Where's All Might? Are you a fake? An imposter?!"

 

"I am All Might," the gaunt man sighed, sitting down on the edge of the roof with a groan. He wiped the blood from his chin. "You know how guys at the pool suck in their guts to look macho? It's kind of like that."

 

Izuku's worldview fractured. "No... that can't be... All Might is fearless. He saves everyone with a smile..."

 

"A fearless smile, huh?" The skeletal All Might looked down at his incredibly thin, scarred hands. "Now that you've seen me like this, young man, I ask that you don't post about this online. Let me show you why I'm in a hurry."

 

All Might lifted his baggy white t-shirt. Izuku recoiled in horror. The entire left side of All Might's torso was a mangled, purple mass of scar tissue, spiraling out from a central, crater-like wound. It looked as though a chunk of his stomach had been carved out by a cannonball.

 

"I got this in a big fight five years ago," All Might explained, his voice devoid of its usual booming bravado. It sounded tired. So incredibly tired. "My respiratory system was nearly destroyed, and my stomach was completely removed. I've had repeated surgeries, but the damage is permanent. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day. The rest of the time, I look like this."

 

Izuku was paralyzed. The invincible god bled. He suffered.

 

"I smile," All Might said, looking out over the city, "to hide the fear inside. To trick the darkness. The world needs a Symbol of Peace. I can't let them see my weakness. Pros are always risking their lives. Some villains just can't be beaten without power."

 

All Might stood up, walking toward the rooftop access door. He didn't look back at Izuku. His next words were not spoken out of malice, but out of a harsh, unflinching pragmatism.

 

"So, can you be a hero without a Quirk? No. I don't think you can."

 

The words struck Izuku's chest like an executioner's blade. The finality of it was absolute.

 

"If you want to help people, become a police officer," All Might suggested gently, his hand on the doorknob. "They get mocked because they get the villains delivered to their doorstep, but it's a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you have to consider what's realistic."

 

The heavy metal door slammed shut. The echo rang across the empty rooftop.

 

Izuku was alone.

 

He stood there for a long time. The afternoon gave way to the early evening, the sky painting itself in bruised shades of purple and orange. Izuku didn't cry. The tears wouldn't come. Instead, there was just a vast, expanding void inside his chest.

 

All Might was right.

 

Bakugo was right.

 

The doctors were right.

 

He was Quirkless. He was just a fragile, powerless boy in a world of gods and monsters. If he fought a villain, he wouldn't save anyone. He would just become another casualty for a real hero to clean up.

 

Izuku slowly turned, opened the heavy metal door, and began the long walk down the stairs. Each step felt like walking through molasses. His mind was blank, completely shattered. The dream that had sustained him for fourteen years was dead, killed by the very man who had inspired it.

 

 

 

He didn't know how long he had been walking. He found himself wandering through a commercial district, his feet carrying him on autopilot. The streets were getting crowded. He vaguely heard the sound of sirens, the smell of smoke in the air, but it didn't register. What did it matter?

 

He turned a corner and found himself at the edge of a massive crowd. A police barricade had been set up. People were whispering, pointing, holding up their phones.

 

"It's a villain attack!"

"The pros are having a hard time!"

"Did you see that explosion? The villain has a hostage!"

 

Izuku looked up through dull, lifeless eyes. He pushed through the crowd, acting purely on muscle memory. He was a hero fanboy; he always watched villain fights. It was a habit he couldn't break, even now.

 

He reached the front of the barricade. The alleyway was a warzone. Fires raged across the storefronts, shattering glass and melting streetlamps. In the center of the inferno stood a massive, towering creature made of dark green sludge.

 

Izuku's breath hitched. The Sludge Villain? But... All Might had him in those bottles. Unless... when I grabbed his leg... did they fall out?

 

A wave of nausea hit Izuku so hard he almost collapsed. This is my fault. I caused this.

 

He looked at the Pro Heroes on the scene. Death Arms was holding up a collapsing sign. Kamui Woods was retreating, his wooden body unable to get near the intense flames. Mt. Lady was stuck in the street, unable to fit down the narrow alleyway. Backdraft was focusing entirely on the fires, unable to spare water for an attack.

 

"We can't do anything!" Death Arms grunted, shielding his face from the heat. "None of our Quirks are suited for this! We have to wait for someone with a fire-resistant Quirk, or for All Might!"

 

"He's got a kid in there!" Kamui Woods yelled. "The kid is using his Quirk, causing these explosions! It's making it impossible to get close!"

 

Izuku's eyes snapped to the center of the sludge. Through the thick, murky slime, he saw a face. Blond, spiky hair. Crimson eyes, wide with a terror Izuku had never seen before.

 

It was Bakugo.

 

Bakugo was suffocating, just like Izuku had been. He was blasting explosions from his palms in a blind panic, but they only ignited the surrounding buildings, making the situation worse.

 

Izuku stood frozen. His mind raced. The pros can't help. All Might is out of time; he can't fight anymore today. Bakugo is going to die. He's going to die, and it's my fault.

 

Bakugo's eyes met Izuku's through the crowd. In that split second, the arrogant, cruel facade was gone. It was just a fourteen-year-old boy, begging for his life.

 

Izuku didn't think. His legs moved before his brain could process the command. He ducked under the police tape and sprinted into the inferno.

 

"Hey, kid! Stop! Are you crazy?!" Death Arms roared, reaching for him, but Izuku slipped past.

 

The heat was suffocating, blistering his skin. Izuku ripped off his yellow backpack and threw it like a discus. The heavy bag flew through the air and struck the Sludge Villain right in the eye.

 

The villain roared in pain, its grip loosening just a fraction of an inch. Bakugo gasped, pulling his mouth free.

 

"Deku?!" Bakugo coughed, coughing up slime. "What the hell are you doing?!"

 

"My legs just moved!" Izuku screamed, tears finally spilling down his cheeks, evaporating in the intense heat. "You looked like you needed saving, Kacchan!"

 

Izuku lunged forward, his hands sinking into the sludge. He pulled, he clawed, he planted his feet and yanked with every ounce of his pathetic, Quirkless strength.

 

I can do this! Izuku thought wildly. In the comics, this is when it happens! This is when the adrenaline kicks in! I'll save him!

 

The Sludge Villain recovered from the eye-strike, glaring down at Izuku. "You again! I'll crush you like a bug!"

 

The villain formed a massive, solid tendril of sludge, hardened like a tree trunk. It didn't monologue. It didn't wait for Izuku to discover a latent power.

 

It simply swung.

 

The impact was devastating. Izuku was struck squarely in the ribs. He heard a sickening crack before the force of the blow lifted him entirely off his feet. He flew backward through the air, completely helpless, and slammed violently against a brick wall.

 

He crumpled to the ground, the world spinning in a kaleidoscope of pain. He couldn't breathe. His chest felt like it was on fire. He tried to move, but his body refused to obey.

 

He was useless.

 

He had rushed in with no plan, no power, and no gear. All he had achieved was getting himself brutally injured. He hadn't saved Bakugo. He hadn't bought time. He was just a liability.

 

Through his blurred vision, he saw the Sludge Villain raise a tendril to deliver the killing blow to both of them.

 

Suddenly, a massive shockwave parted the flames.

 

"I REALLY AM PATHETIC!"

 

All Might burst through the smoke, blood literally spraying from his mouth as he forced his broken, emaciated body back into its muscular form. He didn't smile. He looked furious, desperate, and deeply ashamed.

 

He grabbed Bakugo's wrist, clamped his other hand around Izuku's collar, and pulled them back. With a primal roar, All Might threw a devastating downward punch.

 

"DETROIT... SMASH!"

 

The force of the blow didn't just scatter the sludge; it created a localized updraft that summoned rain clouds, extinguishing the fires instantly. The villain was utterly destroyed.

 

The crowd erupted into deafening cheers. The Pro Heroes rushed in.

 

Izuku lay on the wet pavement, gasping for air, clutching his broken ribs. He looked up, expecting to see All Might smiling down at him.

 

Instead, All Might was already surrounded by reporters, turning his face away to hide the blood leaking from his mouth. He didn't look at Izuku.

 

Footsteps approached. Death Arms and Kamui Woods stood over Izuku, their expressions thunderous.

 

"What the hell is wrong with you, kid?!" Death Arms bellowed, grabbing Izuku by the shoulder and hauling him into a sitting position. Izuku cried out in pain as his ribs shifted. "Are you suicidal?! You had no Quirk, no plan, and no protection! You completely got in the way! If All Might hadn't arrived exactly when he did, the villain would have killed you, and then he would have killed the hostage!"

 

"You're not a hero," Kamui Woods added, his voice cold and reprimanding. "You're a reckless civilian who wanted to play dress-up. Never do something that stupid again. Leave the hero work to the professionals."

 

A few yards away, Pro Heroes were praising Bakugo.

"What an amazing Quirk!"

"You held out for so long! You've got the makings of a top pro!"

 

Izuku lowered his head, the rain mixing with his tears. He wasn't praised for his bravery. He wasn't recognized as a hero. He was a nuisance. A Quirkless idiot who had almost gotten himself and the boy he tried to save killed.

 

Reality had finally crushed the fantasy.

 

 

 

The walk home was agonizing. The adrenaline had worn off, leaving behind a sharp, stabbing pain in his side with every breath. The paramedics at the scene had taped his ribs, confirming he had two fractured ribs and severe bruising. They had scolded him just as harshly as the heroes had.

 

The sun had set completely. The streetlights flickered to life, casting long, lonely shadows on the pavement.

 

Izuku limped forward, his mind incredibly clear. The despair had burned away, leaving behind a cold, hard logic.

 

I can't punch a sludge monster with my bare hands, Izuku thought, his intellect taking over to shield him from the emotional trauma. The human body is fragile. A Quirkless human body is fundamentally incapable of withstanding supernatural forces.

 

He stopped under a streetlamp. He pulled his ruined, waterlogged notebook from his backpack. The edges were burnt crisp, the pages soaked and warped. He slowly flipped through the ruined pages.

 

He looked at his entry for Kamui Woods. Quirk: Arbor. Creates wood from his body.

He flipped the page. Death Arms. Quirk: Unnamed strength enhancer. Muscle density increases.

He flipped to a page near the end. Snipe. Quirk: Homing. Can lock onto targets within a certain radius.

 

Izuku stared at Snipe's page. His eyes traced the meticulous sketch he had drawn of the hero. Snipe's Quirk allowed him to lock onto targets, yes. But his Quirk didn't shoot bullets.

 

Snipe uses custom-made revolvers, Izuku muttered, his mind working faster now, ignoring the pain in his chest. If he didn't have guns, his Quirk would be useless. The guns do the damage. The Quirk just aims them.

 

He turned the page again. Eraserhead, the underground hero. Quirk: Erasure. Cancels other Quirks. Eraserhead couldn't fight mutants. So how did he capture them? Izuku looked at the sketch. He uses a capture weapon. A scarf made of carbon-fiber and a specialized steel wire alloy.

 

Izuku's breath hitched. He closed the book, staring at the burnt cover.

 

Quirks... they're just biological hardware, Izuku realized, the thought hitting him like a lightning bolt. Bakugo creates nitroglycerin from his sweat glands. Kamui generates wood from his cells. It's biology. It's mechanics.

 

He looked at his hands. Small, scarred, completely normal hands.

 

If I don't have biological hardware... why can't I build external hardware?

 

The thought was revolutionary. It felt like a taboo, a heresy against a society that worshipped genetics. But the logic was flawless. The Pro Heroes relied heavily on Support Gear to augment their Quirks, cover their weaknesses, and survive hits they otherwise couldn't.

 

If someone’s body can't produce explosions, a chemical launcher could. If a body doesn't have super strength, hydraulic pistons and pneumatic actuators could replicate it. If I can't be invincible on the outside... I can put a shell over the outside that is.

 

Izuku started walking again, his pace quickening despite the pain. The dull, lifeless look in his eyes was gone. In its place was a manic, burning intensity. The analytical mind that had spent a decade obsessing over the physics of Quirks was suddenly realigning, pivoting toward a new, terrifyingly ambitious goal.

 

He thought of Detnerat. He thought of Hatsume Industries. He thought of the Support Companies that built the armor for heroes like Crust and Ingenium.

 

I know the theories. I know how heroes move, how they fight, how much force is required to break concrete, how much heat is needed to melt steel. I have the data. I've been collecting the data my entire life.

 

He broke into a jog, wincing as his ribs flared, but he didn't care. He had to get home. He had to write this down before the spark faded.

 

 

 

"Izuku! Oh my god, what happened to you?!"

 

Inko Midoriya dropped the plate she was holding, the porcelain shattering against the kitchen floor as Izuku walked through the front door. He was covered in soot, smelling of sewage and smoke, clutching his side.

 

"I'm fine, Mom," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady. "There was a villain attack. I got too close. The paramedics taped my ribs. I just need to rest."

 

"A villain attack?! Izuku, I told you to stay away from those things! You could have been killed!" Inko rushed over, her hands hovering over him, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "I'm taking you to the hospital right now!"

 

"Mom, please. They already took x-rays at the scene. It's just two fractured ribs. I need to be in my room."

 

He gently brushed past her, leaving his ruined shoes at the entrance. He walked down the hall and opened his bedroom door.

 

His room was a shrine to All Might. Posters, action figures, bedsheets, alarm clocks. Everywhere he looked, the Symbol of Peace was smiling at him.

 

Izuku stared at the room. It felt different now. It didn't feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a child's fantasy. It felt like a lie.

 

He walked over to his desk. Above it hung a rare, limited-edition poster of All Might's silver age debut. Izuku reached up and, with a slow, deliberate motion, peeled the tape off the wall. He rolled the poster up and placed it gently in his closet.

 

He wasn't angry at All Might. He understood why the hero had said what he said. The man was dying, holding the world together with a smile and duct tape. But Izuku could no longer worship him. He couldn't wait for a savior to validate his existence. He had to save himself.

 

He sat down at his desk. He opened his bottom drawer, the one where he kept his old school supplies. He pulled out a fresh, unblemished spiral notebook, a ruler, a protractor, and a set of mechanical pencils.

 

He placed the burnt Hero Analysis for the Future - Vol. 13 on the corner of his desk. A reminder of his failure. A reminder of what happens when flesh meets power.

 

Izuku took his pencil. He opened the new notebook to the very first page. He didn't write Hero Analysis.

 

His hand moved with a precision and a purpose he had never felt before. He drew a rough outline of a human body. Over the limbs, he began to sketch mechanical braces. He drew a crude schematic of a hydraulic piston over the biceps. He calculated the tensile strength of steel cables required to mimic human tendons.

 

He paused, staring at the chest of the sketched armor. It needed a power source. Something localized, something dense enough to power servo-motors without weighing the user down with massive battery packs.

 

High-density localized battery, he wrote in the margins. Requires immense research. Look into compressed energy storage. Arc-welding principles?

 

Izuku looked out his window. The moon was high over the city of Musutafu. Somewhere out there, Bakugo was celebrating his Quirk. Somewhere out there, All Might was resting his broken body.

 

"You can't be a hero without a Quirk," Izuku whispered to the empty room. He looked back down at the blueprint, his eyes reflecting the harsh light of his desk lamp.

 

"Fine. I won't use a Quirk."

 

At the top of the page, in bold, undeniable letters, Izuku Midoriya wrote the title of his new life's work.

 

PROJECT: DEKU - Mark I Schematic.

 

He flipped to the next page and began to map out the metallurgical requirements of scrap iron. He had exactly ten months until the U.A. Entrance Exam. He had a lot of work to do.

 

 

The ocean breeze that swept into Musutafu normally carried the crisp, refreshing scent of salt and seafoam. But if you walked far enough down the coastline, past the pristine tourist beaches and the bustling commercial ports, the smell changed. The salt gave way to the sharp, metallic tang of rust, the sour odor of decaying rubber, and the stagnant stench of forgotten things.

 

This was Dagobah Municipal Beach Park.

 

For the better part of a decade, illegal dumping had transformed the once-beautiful coastline into a labyrinthine graveyard of industrial waste, discarded appliances, and rusted automobiles. Piles of trash towered three stories high, casting long, jagged shadows across the sand. The city had written it off. The locals ignored it. Pro Heroes certainly didn't patrol here; there was no glory in fighting petty criminals among piles of used tires.

 

To the rest of the world, it was an eyesore. A monument to society's wastefulness.

 

To fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya, standing at the precipice of a massive dune of discarded electronics, it was the greatest goldmine on planet Earth.

 

It was Saturday morning, exactly one week after the Sludge Villain incident. Izuku wore a pair of heavy-duty canvas overalls, thick rubber boots, and a pair of thick leather work gloves he had bought with his modest allowance. A protective particulate mask hung around his neck.

 

He didn't look out at the ocean. His eyes, burning with a frantic, obsessive light, scanned the mountains of junk.

 

"Okay," Izuku muttered to himself, pulling out a small, grease-stained notebook that had replaced his ruined hero analysis journal. "I need high-tensile steel for the frame. Aluminum alloys will be too weak for the stress of pneumatic actuation, and titanium is too rare to find here. I need car suspensions—specifically the shock absorbers and hydraulic pistons. I need copper wiring, as much of it as I can strip. And batteries... I need every single car battery, lithium-ion cell, and microwave transformer I can get my hands on."

 

He stepped forward, his boots sinking into the sand.

 

In another universe, a boy might have looked at this beach and seen a physical obstacle. A place to haul trash, build muscle, and prove himself worthy of a god-like Quirk.

 

But Izuku didn't want a Quirk anymore. He was here to build a god of his own.

 

He started digging.

 

His first discovery was a rusted 1990s sedan buried half-deep in the sand. Izuku spent four hours that first day just trying to pry the hood open. When it finally snapped back with a horrific screech of oxidized metal, he went to work. With a cheap hacksaw and a set of socket wrenches, he dismantled the engine block, salvaging the alternator, the thickest cables, and the heavy-duty shocks.

 

Hauling a fifty-pound alternator across the unstable sand was grueling. By the time Izuku returned to his apartment that evening, his muscles were screaming, his hands were blistered beneath his gloves, and he was covered in a layer of black grease that took three showers to scrub off.

 

"Izuku, honey?" Inko Midoriya called through the bathroom door, her voice laced with the perpetual worry that had defined her life since her son was diagnosed as Quirkless. "Where were you all day? You missed lunch."

 

"Just out for a walk, Mom!" Izuku called back, watching the dark, greasy water swirl down the drain. "I'm exploring some new hobbies!"

 

It wasn't a complete lie.

 

That night, his bedroom transformed. The posters of All Might were already gone, rolled up and stuffed in the back of his closet. The action figures were boxed away. In their place, Izuku's room became a laboratory.

 

He laid out tarps over his carpet. He dragged the heavy alternator, wires, and a small mountain of salvaged circuit boards onto his desk. He booted up his computer, opening dozens of tabs.

 

Principles of Pneumatic Amplification.

Exoskeleton Load-Bearing Algorithms.

High-Voltage DC-to-AC Inverters.

Basic Metallurgy and Arc Welding for Beginners.

 

Izuku didn't sleep that night. He consumed information with the ravenous hunger of a starving animal. He had spent his entire life analyzing the impossible physics of Quirks. He knew exactly how much force a hero like Death Arms needed to stop a falling steel girder. He knew the kinetic math. Now, he just had to translate biological muscle into mechanical force.

 

He learned that the human arm operates on a lever system, powered by the contraction of muscles. To replicate that, he would need an external frame (the bone) and pneumatic or hydraulic actuators (the muscle). If he could build a jointed metal sleeve for his arm and attach a high-pressure pneumatic cylinder across the elbow joint, he could punch with the force of a small car crash.

 

The theory was sound. The execution, however, was a nightmare.

 

 

 

Month One was a lesson in abject failure.

 

Izuku quickly realized that reading about mechanical engineering and actually doing it were two entirely different realities. He didn't have access to a CNC machine, a 3D printer, or a high-end fabrication lab. He had a rusty hacksaw, a cheap power drill, and whatever he could drag out of Dagobah Beach.

 

He built his first prototype actuator arm out of aluminum crutches and a pneumatic piston salvaged from the trunk of a hatchback. He wired it to a standard 12-volt car battery.

 

He strapped his right arm into the crude contraption, tightened the leather belts around his bicep and forearm, and took a deep breath.

 

"Activating bicep curl," Izuku whispered, flicking a switch.

 

The machine hissed. The piston engaged. And then, with a violent, ear-splitting CRUNCH, the aluminum frame twisted, snapping backward. The actuator tore itself free from its mountings, the metal shearing cleanly off. The contraption violently jerked Izuku's arm backward.

 

He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood to keep from screaming. He frantically unbuckled the straps, his arm throbbing with a deep, bruised ache.

 

He stared at the twisted pile of metal on his floor.

 

"Aluminum is too soft," he panted, writing furiously in his notebook with his left hand while his right hand shook. "The torque generated by the piston exceeded the structural integrity of the frame. Also, the response time of the pneumatic valve was too slow. It was a jerky, uncontrollable movement. If I'd attached that to a heavier load, it would have shattered my humerus."

 

He didn't cry. He didn't feel despair. For the first time in his life, failure didn't mean he was inherently broken. It just meant his math was wrong. Math could be fixed.

 

He returned to the beach the next day. He needed steel.

 

Over the next two months, Izuku's body began to change. He wasn't training to be a hero; he was just doing the brutal, blue-collar labor of a scavenger. He spent hours every day dragging hundreds of pounds of scrap metal across the sand. He used a sledgehammer to break apart rusted washing machines to get to the steel drums inside. He hauled cast-iron pipes, heavy lead batteries, and discarded construction materials.

 

His shoulders broadened. The baby fat on his cheeks melted away, replaced by a sharp, determined jawline. His arms and back became defined by lean, dense muscle. His hands, once soft, were now covered in thick calluses and minor burn scars from a cheap, secondhand arc welder he had bought from a pawn shop.

 

Because his apartment was too small (and to avoid burning the building down), Izuku had established a secret workshop. He found an old, overturned shipping container deep within the labyrinth of Dagobah Beach. It was rusted, but watertight. He spent a week clearing the trash out of it, patching the holes, and dragging in a generator he had painstakingly repaired.

 

This shipping container became his cave.

 

By Month Four, the skeleton of the Mark I was taking shape.

 

It hung from chains bolted to the ceiling of the shipping container. It looked like an instrument of medieval torture. The frame was constructed entirely of heavy, salvaged steel rebar and reinforced pipes. It was bulky, unrefined, and incredibly heavy.

 

Izuku had successfully mapped the joints. The knees and elbows utilized massive, double-action pneumatic cylinders salvaged from heavy construction equipment. To control them, he had coded a rudimentary operating system on a ruggedized laptop, hooking it into a series of Arduino microcontrollers. The suit was rigged with pressure sensors inside the gloves and boots. When Izuku flexed his arm, the sensors read the muscle movement and triggered the pneumatic valves in microseconds, allowing the suit's joints to move in tandem with his own.

 

But there was a massive, insurmountable problem.

 

Power.

 

Izuku sat on an overturned milk crate in his shipping container, wiping sweat and grease from his forehead with a dirty rag. He stared at the steel exoskeleton.

 

"The pneumatics require an air compressor," Izuku muttered, tapping his pencil against his notebook. "The compressor requires electricity. The microcontrollers require electricity. To generate the force necessary to rival a strength-enhancing Quirk, the pneumatic pumps need to operate at an insane PSI. I've tried hooking it up to deep-cycle marine batteries."

 

He kicked a massive, heavy battery case sitting in the corner.

 

"They weigh sixty pounds each," he groaned. "To power the suit for more than five minutes, I'd need to strap six of them to my back. The suit would weigh over five hundred pounds. The actuators would expend all their energy just trying to move the suit's own weight, leaving nothing for combat or jumping. It's a closed loop of failure."

 

He needed a power source that was small, light, and capable of discharging massive amounts of energy instantaneously.

 

In his research, Izuku had read about experimental super-capacitors and advanced energy-density theories from I-Island, the Mecca of scientific research. But that tech was heavily guarded and cost millions of dollars. He had eighty-five dollars and a pile of garbage.

 

"If I can't store the energy," Izuku thought, his eyes narrowing, "can I generate it on the fly? No, combustion engines are too hot and require exhaust. What about kinetic energy? What if..."

 

His eyes widened. He grabbed his notebook, flipping to a blank page, his pencil flying across the paper.

 

"What if I don't use a standard battery? What if I build a highly unstable, high-density induction coil? If I strip the magnetrons out of every microwave on this beach... extract the neodymium magnets from computer hard drives... and wind them with hundreds of yards of copper wire..."

 

He was designing a localized, highly volatile electromagnetic generator. It wasn't an Arc Reactor—he was a teenager, not a billionaire genius who discovered a new element. He was designing something far more dangerous. He was essentially building a controlled electrical bomb that would continuously rapidly charge and discharge into a series of capacitors.

 

He called it the High-Density Kinetic Core.

 

Months Five and Six were a blur of electrocutions, blown fuses, and near-death experiences.

 

Izuku scoured the beach for every microwave he could find. He dismantled them, extracting the dangerous magnetrons, careful not to crack the beryllium oxide ceramics inside. He stripped miles of copper wire from abandoned buildings and ruined vehicles.

 

In the center of his shipping container, a strange, cylindrical device began to take shape. It was about the size of a large coffee can, encased in heavy lead and thick heat-resistant ceramics salvaged from a kiln. Inside, a complex array of copper coils and powerful magnets were aligned with millimeter precision.

 

It was 2:00 AM on a Tuesday in Month Seven when he finally tested it.

 

Izuku stood behind a makeshift blast shield (a rusted car door), wearing thick rubber gloves and safety goggles. He attached the final jumper cables to the core.

 

"Test number forty-two," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling slightly. He reached out and flipped the heavy breaker switch.

 

For a second, nothing happened.

 

Then, a low, ominous hum began to vibrate through the metal floor of the shipping container. It sounded like an angry swarm of mechanical bees. The copper coils inside the cylinder began to spin, driven by a small starter motor.

 

Suddenly, a bright, violent light erupted from the core. It wasn't the clean, ethereal blue of sci-fi movies. It was a harsh, angry, sparking orange. It looked like captured lightning. The heat radiating from it was intense, warming the cold, damp air of the shipping container.

 

Izuku looked at the voltmeter attached to the core.

 

The needle pinned itself violently to the right, burying itself in the red zone.

 

"Three hundred volts... five hundred... a thousand... it's stabilizing at twelve hundred volts," Izuku breathed, his eyes wide with awe, the orange light reflecting in his irises. "The capacitor bank is charging in seconds. The energy density... it's incredible. It's working. It's actually working."

 

He had built a heart. It was unstable, it ran incredibly hot, and if the casing breached, it would probably electrocute him and blow the shipping container to kingdom come, but it worked.

 

With the power problem solved, Month Eight and Nine were dedicated to armor.

 

An exoskeleton alone was just a skeleton; he needed armor plating to protect his fragile human body from the forces he was about to unleash.

 

Izuku became a master of the arc welder. He scavenged sheets of steel from car doors, the husks of refrigerators, and heavy industrial vats. He couldn't forge the metal into sleek, aerodynamic shapes. Instead, he cut them into brutal, angular plates, welding them together in a patchwork of jagged lines.

 

The chest plate was massive, designed to house the heavy Kinetic Core and protect it from impacts. The shoulders were broad, layered with shock-absorbing rubber tires beneath the steel to cushion his collarbones. The gauntlets were thick and heavy, designed to deliver blunt-force trauma capable of denting solid concrete.

 

He painted it, not out of vanity, but to prevent the sea air from rusting the exposed welds. He didn't have access to automotive paint, so he used what he could find: a base layer of dark, industrial grey, accented with patches of rusty red and forest green spray paint.

 

It was ugly. It was terrifying. It looked like a walking tank constructed by a madman in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

 

It was the Mark I.

 

 

 

There was exactly one week left until the U.A. Entrance Exam.

 

The night air was freezing, the ocean waves crashing aggressively against the shore of Dagobah Beach. The moon was a thin crescent, offering very little light.

 

Izuku stood in the center of a cleared patch of sand, a hundred yards from his shipping container.

 

He was not wearing his school uniform. He was strapped into the Mark I.

 

The process of putting it on took twenty minutes. It required a series of winches he had set up in his lab to lower the torso piece over his head, followed by manually buckling the heavy leather and nylon straps that secured his arms and legs into the exoskeleton.

 

Standing in the suit was a bizarre sensation. The armor weighed roughly two hundred and fifty pounds. Without power, Izuku was effectively a statue, crushed beneath the weight of the steel.

 

"Alright," Izuku's voice echoed hollowly from within the heavy bucket-helmet. He had welded a thick, slotted visor out of a welding mask, offering narrow but protected vision. "Commencing first full-system integration test."

 

He reached his left hand over to his chest and twisted a heavy dial attached to the Kinetic Core.

 

THRRR-VMMMM.

 

The deep, resonant hum of the core roared to life. A glowing, angry orange light spilled from the vents of his chest plate, casting long, eerie shadows across the sand.

 

Instantly, the suit came alive.

 

The air compressor on his back spooled up with a loud, mechanical whine. The pressure gauges on his forearms ticked upward. Suddenly, the two hundred and fifty pounds of steel didn't feel heavy anymore.

 

Izuku took a step forward.

 

The pneumatic cylinder on his right leg fired with a sharp TSSST of compressed air. The heavy steel boot slammed into the sand, kicking up a spray of dirt. He took another step. Then another.

 

He was walking. The microcontrollers were flawlessly translating his muscle movements to the actuators. He felt incredibly light, yet overwhelmingly dense.

 

"Mobility is at eighty percent," Izuku noted, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Range of motion is restricted by the shoulder plates, but acceptable. Now... let's test the output."

 

He turned his attention to a rusted, half-crushed Toyota Hilux pickup truck sitting a few yards away. The engine block was gone, but the frame and cab were still intact. It weighed at least two thousand pounds.

 

A Quirkless human couldn't budge it.

 

Izuku walked over to the truck. He planted his massive steel boots firmly in the sand, the servos whining as they locked into place. He crouched, reaching his armored gauntlets under the rusted front bumper.

 

"Diverting maximum pressure to the lumbar and bicep actuators," Izuku muttered.

 

He took a deep breath. And he stood up.

 

TSSST-WHINEEEEE-CLANG.

 

The pneumatics screamed. The steel cables serving as the suit's artificial tendons pulled taut with terrifying tension. For a horrifying second, Izuku felt the weight of the truck pressing down on his spine, and he feared the suit would buckle, crushing him.

 

But the steel frame held. The actuators pushed.

 

With a deafening groan of protesting metal, the front of the pickup truck lifted off the ground.

 

Izuku roared, not in pain, but in pure, unadulterated triumph. He pushed his arms upward, locking his elbows. The entire truck was hoisted into the air, tilted backward at a forty-five-degree angle.

 

He was doing it. He, Izuku Midoriya, the Quirkless Deku, was lifting a car. He was as strong as Death Arms. He was as strong as a Pro Hero.

 

"HA!" Izuku laughed, the sound echoing metallically inside his helmet. "It works! The math works! The physics are sound!"

 

He released his grip. The truck slammed back into the sand with a massive crash, sending a shockwave through the beach.

 

Izuku looked at his armored hands. The metal was scraped, but intact. The feeling of power intoxicating. For fourteen years, he had been at the mercy of the world. Now, he was the one making the world move.

 

"Okay. Strength test passed," Izuku said, breathing heavily. He checked a small LCD screen mounted on his left forearm. "Core temperature is holding at a safe level. Battery capacity at eighty-five percent. Let's try the thrusters."

 

This was the most dangerous part of the design. Izuku knew that super-strength was useless if he couldn't close the distance or maneuver. He couldn't build repulsor technology like something out of a comic book—he didn't have the physics for that.

 

Instead, he had built a highly pressurized, directional air-cannon system.

 

Mounted on the back of the calves and the lower back were thick steel nozzles connected to a secondary, high-pressure air tank. By instantaneously releasing the air through a narrow aperture, the suit could generate a massive, localized burst of kinetic thrust. It was essentially a controlled explosion of compressed air.

 

"Calibrating jump trajectory," Izuku said, looking down the length of the beach.

 

He crouched low, like a runner on starting blocks. He locked the knee actuators.

 

"Thrusters at maximum capacity. Firing in three... two... one!"

 

He slammed the trigger mechanism inside his glove.

 

BOOM.

 

The sound was like a cannon firing. The ground beneath Izuku's boots literally exploded, turning sand into glass from the sheer friction and pressure.

 

Izuku didn't jump. He was launched.

 

The G-force hit him like a physical blow, snapping his head back against the padding of his helmet. His stomach dropped into his boots. He shot upward and forward, soaring over the mountains of trash.

 

Ten feet. Twenty feet. Fifty feet in the air.

 

He was flying. The wind roared past the heavy steel plates. For three glorious seconds, hanging at the apex of his arc beneath the crescent moon, Izuku felt completely, utterly free. He was higher than All Might had ever taken him. He was flying on his own wings, forged from iron and scrap.

 

Then, gravity remembered him.

 

"Trajectory is good!" Izuku yelled in panic. "Initiating landing sequence!"

 

He began to fall rapidly. The beach rushed up to meet him. He aimed his feet down, preparing to fire a counter-burst from the thrusters to slow his descent.

 

He squeezed the trigger.

 

Hiss... sputter.

 

Nothing happened.

 

The LCD screen on his arm flashed red. PRESSURE VALVE JAMMED. TANK DEPRESSURIZED.

 

"Oh, crap."

 

The Mark I hit the sand at thirty miles per hour.

 

It wasn't a graceful superhero landing. It was a catastrophic, high-velocity car crash.

 

The heavy steel boots impacted first. The shock-absorbers in the knees immediately blew out, showering sparks and hydraulic fluid into the air. The suit pitched forward violently.

 

Izuku slammed face-first into the beach. The sheer kinetic energy of the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound suit, combined with his momentum, sent him tumbling. He rolled uncontrollably, tearing through a pile of rusted metal folding chairs, before violently colliding with the side of a discarded refrigerator.

 

The impact was brutal.

 

Inside the suit, Izuku's right arm was violently jerked against the heavy steel of the gauntlet as the actuator sheared off its mounting. He heard a sickening snap echo through the padding.

 

The suit groaned to a halt. The Kinetic Core flickered, then powered down.

 

Total silence descended on the beach, save for the sound of the ocean and the hiss of leaking pneumatic fluid.

 

Izuku lay on his back, staring up at the stars through the narrow slit of his visor. The heavy steel pressed down on his chest. His right arm was on fire, a sharp, piercing agony radiating from his forearm.

 

He tried to move it. Pain spiked behind his eyes, blinding and nauseating.

 

"Ah... ahh..." Izuku gasped, his breath ragged.

 

His arm was broken. Definitely broken. The shock-dampening system had failed on impact, transferring the kinetic energy directly into his fragile bones.

 

He was bruised, battered, trapped in a dead steel shell, and bleeding from a cut on his forehead where he had slammed against the helmet.

 

And then, softly at first, a sound echoed from inside the helmet.

 

A chuckle.

 

The chuckle grew louder, bubbling up from Izuku's chest, ignoring the pain of his ribs. It escalated into a full-blown, hysterical laugh.

 

He laughed until tears streamed down his face, cutting tracks through the grease and soot on his cheeks. He laughed because it hurt. He laughed because he had failed the landing.

 

But mostly, he laughed because for three seconds, he had conquered gravity. For three seconds, he was the strongest thing on this beach.

 

"It works," Izuku whispered into the darkness, a manic, bloody grin spreading across his face. "The Mark I works. I just need better shock absorbers. And a parachute. Note to self... definitely build a parachute."

 

He spent the next two hours manually disengaging the emergency release latches with his left hand, dragging his broken body out of the dead suit. He dragged himself back to his apartment, lied to his mother about falling out of a tree, and got a cast put on his arm at the local clinic the next morning.

 

He didn't care. The broken bone wasn't a tragedy; it was just data. Data for the Mark II.

 

 

 

Ten Months Later. The Morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam.

 

The sprawling campus of U.A. High School was an architectural marvel, gleaming with glass and steel in the morning sun. Thousands of middle school students milled about the front gates, a sea of black uniforms, nervous chatter, and manifesting Quirks.

 

They were all here to prove their worth. They were all here to show the world that their genetics made them special.

 

Izuku Midoriya stood at the edge of the crowd.

 

He looked different. The timid, shrinking posture of the boy from Aldera Junior High was completely gone. He stood tall, his shoulders squared. He wasn't wearing his school uniform. He wore dark cargo pants, heavy steel-toed boots, and a thick, dark green mechanic's jacket. His right arm was fully healed, the muscles beneath the jacket dense and coiled.

 

But what drew the stares of the students around him wasn't his posture.

 

It was what he was dragging behind him.

 

Izuku gripped the handle of a massive, heavily reinforced titanium-alloy suitcase. It rolled on heavy-duty casters, emitting a low, heavy rumble against the pavement. The suitcase was easily four feet tall, bolted shut with heavy industrial clasps, and painted in a dark, matte forest green with black accents.

 

It weighed nearly three hundred pounds.

 

"Hey, look at that guy," a student whispered, pointing at the case. "What is that, support gear?"

 

"You can't bring that much support gear to the hero exam, can you?" another muttered.

 

"Maybe his Quirk is inside it?"

 

Izuku ignored them. His heart rate was steady. His mind was clear.

 

He remembered the rules perfectly. U.A. allowed the use of support gear in the practical exam, provided the gear was submitted for safety approval or was essential for the user's Quirk. Izuku had submitted an incredibly dense, fifty-page technical schematic of his gear to the U.A. board three weeks ago under the 'Quirkless Exception Clause'. Principal Nezu himself had stamped the approval.

 

"Out of my way, extras!"

 

The familiar, aggressive snarl cut through the crowd.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stomped toward the gates, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his crimson eyes glaring daggers at anyone who dared look at him. He looked exactly the same, exuding a volatile aura of absolute confidence and superiority.

 

Bakugo stopped. He saw Izuku standing in his path.

 

For a moment, Bakugo looked confused. He hadn't seen Izuku in ten months. After the Sludge Villain incident, Izuku had practically vanished, disappearing immediately after school every day, withdrawing from the social hierarchy entirely.

 

Bakugo's eyes drifted from Izuku's hardened face down to the massive metal suitcase.

 

"Deku?" Bakugo scoffed, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to take a hike. You actually came to take the exam? And what the hell is in the oversized luggage? Did you bring your toys?"

 

In the past, Izuku would have flinched. He would have stammered, raised his hands in defense, and apologized for existing.

 

Today, Izuku just looked at him.

 

His green eyes were calm, analytical, and completely devoid of fear. He looked at Bakugo not as a tormentor, or as an untouchable god, but as an obstacle. Just another problem that could be solved with the right amount of force and engineering.

 

"I'm taking the exam, Bakugo," Izuku said, his voice even and steady, lacking the usual honorific 'Kacchan'.

 

Bakugo's eye twitched at the disrespect. Small explosions cracked in his palms. "You Quirkless piece of garbage. I'm going to rip you apart the second we get inside."

 

"You can try," Izuku replied calmly. He gripped the handle of the suitcase tighter. Deep within the heavy metal chassis of the case, the faint, high-pitched spooling of a localized Kinetic Core began to hum.

 

"But I wouldn't underestimate my toys."

 

Izuku turned his back on his childhood bully, dragging the heavy metal case forward, and walked through the gates of U.A. High School.

 

The era of Quirks was about to meet the industrial revolution.

 

 

The auditorium of U.A. High School was a cavernous, state-of-the-art amphitheater, bathed in the dim, electric blue glow of LED strip lighting. Thousands of examinees sat in tiered rows, their nervous energy coalescing into a palpable, suffocating hum. They were the elite of the nation’s middle schools, genetic prodigies waiting to be unleashed.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat near the middle of the room, completely still.

 

To his right, Katsuki Bakugo slouched in his seat, arms crossed, exuding an aura of suppressed, explosive violence. Bakugo hadn't said a word to him since the gates, but the occasional sideways glare promised murder.

 

Izuku didn't care. His attention was focused entirely on the massive, titanium-alloy suitcase resting heavily between his feet. He had his left hand resting flat against its cold metal surface, feeling the faint, rhythmic vibration of the High-Density Kinetic Core on standby mode. It felt like a heartbeat.

 

"WELCOME TO MY LIVE SHOW, EVERYBODY!"

 

The Voice Hero, Present Mic, exploded onto the stage, throwing his arms wide. The sheer decibel level of his Quirk shook the dust from the rafters. "EVERYBODY SAY HEYYY!"

 

Silence. A cricket could have chirped and been heard in the back row.

 

"Tough crowd! That's fine, examinees! I'm here to present the guidelines for your practical exam! ARE YOU READY?!"

 

Present Mic clicked a remote, and a massive holographic screen flared to life behind him, displaying a map of the various testing zones. He began to explain the rules: a ten-minute urban battle simulation against three different types of robotic villains, each worth a different point value.

 

Izuku’s mind was already running simulations. Ten minutes. That’s the critical threshold.

 

He opened his small, grease-stained notebook, scanning his final calculations. The Mark I armor—specifically this reinforced, briefcase-deployable version he had spent the last week agonizing over—was heavy. It weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. The Kinetic Core, built from scavenged magnetrons and wound copper, could generate a massive output, but its thermal regulation was terrible. If he ran the suit at maximum output, he had exactly six minutes before the capacitor banks drained and the core overheated, triggering a forced shutdown to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

 

I can't fight for ten minutes straight, Izuku thought, chewing on the end of his pencil. I have to be surgical. I need to prioritize three-pointers, eliminate them efficiently with minimum pneumatic expenditure, and conserve the thrusters for evasive maneuvers only. I need fifty points to guarantee a passing grade. If I average...

 

"Excuse me! I have a question!"

 

A tall, broad-shouldered student with severe glasses stood up several rows ahead, his hand rigidly pointing toward the ceiling. A spotlight snapped onto him.

 

"On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the most prominent school in Japan, should be ashamed of this foolish mistake!" The student turned on his heel, his finger snapping to point directly at Izuku. "And you, behind me!"

 

Izuku blinked, looking up from his notebook.

 

"You've been muttering to yourself this entire time! It's distracting!" The tall student gestured sharply at the massive suitcase between Izuku's legs. "Furthermore, what is that absurd piece of luggage? This is a practical exam for prospective heroes, not a vacation! If you require that much external baggage to take this test, you are clearly not prepared for the rigors of U.A.! Leave immediately!"

 

A ripple of snickers echoed through the auditorium. Bakugo grinned maliciously.

 

Izuku looked at the boy. He recognized him from his hero journals—Tenya Iida, brother of the Turbo Hero: Ingenium. A legacy student. Someone who had been born with a silver spoon and an engine in his calves.

 

Izuku didn't shrink under the spotlight. He didn't stutter. He simply stood up, resting his hand on the handle of his suitcase.

 

"My name is Izuku Midoriya," he said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet auditorium. "As per section four, paragraph twelve of the U.A. Examination Guidelines, prospective students are permitted to utilize support gear, provided it has been cleared by the U.A. Support Department prior to the exam. This 'luggage' is my approved gear."

 

Izuku stared directly into Iida's eyes. "A mechanic doesn't apologize for his toolbox. If my muttering distracted you, I apologize. But if you're intimidated by a suitcase, you might want to rethink your own preparedness."

 

The auditorium gasped. Iida looked momentarily stunned, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, before he bowed stiffly. "I... see! If it has been approved by the faculty, I withdraw my complaint! My apologies!" He quickly sat down.

 

On stage, Present Mic grinned. "Alright, alright, let's keep it moving! Examinee 7111 is correct! The fourth villain is worth zero points! It's an obstacle! My advice? Run away from it! Now, let's get you all to your assigned battle centers! PLUS ULTRA!"

 

 

 

Ground Beta was a sprawling, hyper-realistic replica of a modern metropolis, surrounded by towering concrete walls. The scale of it was staggering.

 

Izuku stood near the front of the massive crowd of teenagers gathered before the colossal steel gates. He was hauling the three-hundred-pound suitcase, sweat already beginning to bead on his forehead.

 

He glanced around. The other students were stretching, hyping themselves up, showing off minor displays of their Quirks. Not far away, he saw a girl with a round face and short brown hair floating a pebble with her fingers. He had seen her at the entrance—she had looked nervous then, but now she looked determined.

 

"Right, let's start!"

 

Present Mic's voice echoed from a massive speaker tower. The students jumped.

 

"What's wrong? There are no countdowns in real battles! Run, run, run! The die has been cast!"

 

The massive gates began to grind open.

 

The crowd surged forward like a tidal wave. For a moment, Izuku was jostled, pushed aside by the sheer volume of bodies rushing into the city.

 

"Get out of the way, Deku!" Bakugo roared, blasting past him with a series of concussive explosions from his palms, rocketing into the city.

 

Izuku didn't run. He couldn't.

 

He stood his ground, dragged his suitcase to the center of the street, and kicked the heavy release latch on the side.

 

CLACK-HISSSS.

 

Pressurized steam vented from the seams of the suitcase. The crowd of students who hadn't sprinted ahead turned back, startled by the noise.

 

Izuku stepped onto the base plate of the case. He reached down and pulled the central lever.

 

The suitcase didn't just open; it violently unpacked itself.

 

Heavy, overlapping plates of dark green and gunmetal-grey steel deployed upward, clamping around Izuku’s boots with a heavy, magnetic CLANK. The mechanics were brutal and unrefined—gears ground, pneumatic pistons hissed, and industrial servos whined as the armor climbed his legs, locking around his knees and thighs.

 

"Whoa... what is that?!" a student yelled, stopping in his tracks.

 

The torso piece ratcheted up, wrapping around Izuku's chest and back. He thrust his arms outward, and the gauntlets snapped into place, thick steel cables pulling taut across his forearms. Finally, the heavy bucket-helmet slammed shut over his head, sealing with a pressurized hiss.

 

Inside the helmet, absolute darkness lasted for a fraction of a second. Then, the localized Kinetic Core in his chest flared to life.

 

The suit vibrated with immense, contained power. Izuku's HUD—a retrofitted laptop screen installed inside the visor—booted up, bathing his face in a harsh green light. Lines of code scrolled down the sides of his vision.

 

SYSTEM BOOT. PNEUMATICS: ONLINE. CORE TEMPERATURE: 400°C. BATTERY CAPACITORS: 100%.

 

"A.E.G.I.S. operating system online," Izuku muttered to himself, referencing the crude targeting software he had coded. "Show me the targets."

 

Through the external microphones, he heard the sounds of explosions and crushing metal echoing from deep within the city. The exam had already started.

 

"Thrusters at thirty percent," Izuku commanded, clicking his heels together to open the localized valves. "Let's go to work."

 

He squeezed the triggers in his palms.

 

BOOM.

 

A shockwave of compressed air shattered the pavement beneath him. The Mark I armor launched forward like a three-hundred-pound cannonball. The students still lingering at the gate were blown backward by the sheer wind pressure, screaming in shock as the heavy steel monstrosity rocketed over their heads and into the artificial city.

 

Izuku hit the ground fifty yards down the street. The shock absorbers in his knees screamed, whining under the immense weight, but they held. He didn't break stride. His hydraulic servos pumped furiously, propelling him forward at thirty miles per hour, his steel boots leaving cracked craters in the asphalt with every step.

 

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

 

The HUD highlighted a target. Emerging from an alleyway to his left was a Two-Pointer: a scorpion-like robot with a heavy tail and machine-gun mounts.

 

"Target acquired," Izuku breathed, his eyes tracking the mechanical joints.

 

The robot locked onto him, its red optical sensor flashing. It raised its tail to strike.

 

Izuku didn't slow down. "Diverting power to right gauntlet pneumatics."

 

He closed the distance in a fraction of a second. The robot thrust its tail forward. Izuku simply raised his left arm, letting the heavy steel plating absorb the blow. The impact rang like a massive bell inside his helmet, jarring his teeth, but the armor didn't dent.

 

He pulled his right arm back. The dual-action pneumatic cylinder mounted on his elbow hissed, building immense pressure.

 

"Smash," Izuku whispered.

 

He threw the punch. The pneumatic valve released. The steel fist shot forward faster than the human eye could track.

 

It struck the Two-Pointer squarely in its central chassis. The kinetic force was devastating. The two-inch-thick armor plating of the robot crumpled like aluminum foil. The sheer concussive force blew out the robot’s internal wiring, sending a shower of sparks into the air as the machine was thrown backward, crashing through the window of a faux storefront.

 

Two points.

 

Izuku didn't pause to admire his work. The HUD was already pinging again.

 

WARNING: CORE TEMPERATURE RISING. 450°C. BATTERY CAPACITORS: 94%.

 

"Too fast," Izuku noted, sweating inside the stifling helmet. "The punch drained too much from the capacitors. I need to be more efficient."

 

He jetted down the street, utilizing short bursts of compressed air to propel himself in a brutal, heavy parkour. He found a cluster of three One-Pointers cornering a student with a tail.

 

Izuku leaped into the air, landing directly on top of the first robot. The sheer two-hundred-and-eighty-pound weight of the Mark I crushed the machine’s optical sensors beneath his steel boots. He grabbed the second robot by its gun-barrel, the hydraulic servos in his shoulders whining as he physically lifted the machine off the ground and swung it like a baseball bat into the third robot, shattering them both into a pile of twisted metal.

 

Five points.

 

"Whoa! Thanks, man!" the tailed student yelled, looking up in awe at the patchwork metal knight.

 

Izuku gave a quick, mechanical nod before blasting his thrusters again, rocketing down a side street.

 

The next five minutes were a masterclass in brutal efficiency. Izuku didn't fight like a teenager; he fought like a machine. He used the suit's tactical readout to identify the weakest points in the robots' armor—the exposed wiring behind the knees, the cooling vents on the Three-Pointers' backs, the hydraulic lines on the Two-Pointers' tails.

 

He didn't always punch. Punching took energy. Sometimes he simply grabbed a robot's exposed wire and let the suit's raw mechanical torque rip it out. Sometimes he used the environment, kicking a crumbling brick wall down onto a cluster of machines.

 

Thirty-two points. Forty-one points. Forty-eight points.

 

But the suit was failing.

 

Inside the helmet, it was a sauna. The Kinetic Core on his chest was running at a terrifying 700°C. The heat bled through the ceramic shielding, blistering the skin on Izuku's chest through his undershirt. Sweat poured into his eyes, stinging them, but he couldn't wipe it away.

 

BATTERY CAPACITORS: 28%. WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.

 

Izuku limped out of a destroyed building, having just crushed a Three-Pointer's logic board with his heel. The pneumatic cylinder on his left leg was venting hydraulic fluid, creating a loud, rhythmic hiss-clank every time he stepped. His right shoulder servo was jammed, forcing him to move his arm with his own physical strength against the dead weight of the steel.

 

"Fifty-five points," Izuku gasped, his chest heaving as he fought for oxygen in the stuffy helmet. "That's enough. Based on historical data, fifty points is the cutoff for U.A. acceptance. I just need to survive the remaining three minutes."

 

He leaned heavily against a lamppost, the metal groaning under his weight. He watched other students run past. Bakugo rocketed over a building, screaming at the top of his lungs, leaving a trail of explosions in his wake.

 

He's amazing, Izuku thought, a brief flash of old awe surfacing before it was suppressed by cold logic. But he's burning stamina. I'm burning battery. We both have limits.

 

Suddenly, the ground shook.

 

It wasn't a small tremor. It was a violent, earth-shattering quake that rattled the windows of every building on the street. The lamppost Izuku was leaning against swayed dangerously.

 

A shadow fell over the city.

 

Izuku looked up. At the end of the main avenue, the buildings were being pushed aside like cardboard boxes. A colossal, tread-driven machine breached the intersection. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, an absolute monolith of gunmetal grey armor, bristling with spikes and glowing red optical sensors.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

"Less than two minutes left!" Present Mic’s voice boomed over the speakers.

 

Panic erupted. The students who had been bravely fighting a moment ago turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, their faces pale with terror.

 

"Run!"

"That thing is massive! We're not supposed to fight it!"

"Get out of the way!"

 

Izuku stared at the mechanical titan. The logical part of his brain—the A.E.G.I.S. protocol he had drilled into himself—screamed at him to run. He had fifty-five points. His battery was at 22%. His suit was heavily damaged. Engaging a target of that mass was mathematical suicide.

 

He turned his heavy body, preparing to fire his thrusters and escape with the others.

 

"Ow... it hurts..."

 

The faint, desperate cry cut through the sound of crushing concrete.

 

Izuku froze. The suit’s external audio receptors picked up the frequency, amplifying it over the chaos.

 

He turned his heavy helmet back toward the Zero Pointer.

 

Fifty yards away, sitting in the shadow of the colossal machine's crushing treads, was the girl with the round face. Uraraka. A massive chunk of concrete had fallen from a building, pinning her leg to the street. She was trying to push it off, but she was exhausted, her hands slipping on the debris.

 

The Zero Pointer raised its massive foot, directly over her.

 

Izuku looked at the fleeing students. None of them had noticed her. Even if they had, none of them were stopping.

 

BATTERY CAPACITORS: 18%. CORE CRITICAL.

 

I don't have the power to stop that foot, Izuku calculated, his mind racing at lightspeed. Even if I divert all remaining power to the upper pneumatics, the suit's frame will buckle under a million tons of force. I'd be crushed along with her.

 

He couldn't lift the rubble in time. He couldn't push her out of the way before the tread came down.

 

There was only one option. He couldn't fight the robot's hardware.

 

He had to kill its software.

 

"I am a hero," Izuku whispered into the darkness of his helmet.

 

He reached down to his waist and flipped the red safety toggle he had installed specifically for catastrophic emergencies.

 

"OVERRIDE. DIVERT ALL LIFE SUPPORT AND PNEUMATIC POWER TO THRUSTERS AND KINETIC CORE."

 

The HUD flashed a blinding, frantic red.

 

WARNING. CATASTROPHIC OVERLOAD IMMINENT. CORE MELTDOWN IN 30 SECONDS.

 

Izuku ignored the warning. The internal cooling fans shut off. The temperature inside the suit instantly spiked, searing the skin on his arms and back. The hydraulic servos in his legs locked up, dead and heavy.

 

All of the remaining electricity, every single volt left in the capacitors, was shunted into the air compressor and the massive, unstable induction coil on his chest.

 

"HANG ON!" Izuku roared over the external speakers.

 

He aimed his boots at the ground and squeezed the trigger.

 

The resulting blast was not a jump. It was a localized detonation. The shockwave shattered the windows of every building within a two-block radius. The asphalt turned to dust.

 

The Mark I armor didn't fly; it was fired like a ballistic missile straight up into the air, riding a pillar of compressed air.

 

Izuku was subjected to horrifying G-forces. Blood ran from his nose, painting the inside of his visor. The wind screamed past him as he rocketed upward, ascending the towering height of the Zero Pointer.

 

Twenty seconds.

 

He cleared the robot's waist. He cleared its massive chest.

 

He reached the neck.

 

"Thrusters cut!" Izuku yelled.

 

The air stopped. Izuku was entirely at the mercy of gravity. He slammed into the sheer vertical face of the robot's neck armor. The impact bruised his ribs, but he reached out with his heavy steel gauntlets and grabbed the edges of a massive ventilation grate.

 

He was hanging hundreds of feet in the air, dangling from a killer robot.

 

"Open... up!" Izuku screamed, his muscles burning as he fought against the dead weight of his own suit. He planted his boots against the robot's armor and pulled with all his organic strength.

 

With a screech of tearing metal, the ventilation grate popped off, falling into the abyss below.

 

Izuku hauled his heavy, metal-encased body into the maintenance shaft of the Zero Pointer. It was dark, cramped, and filled with massive, pulsing power cables thick as tree trunks.

 

Ten seconds.

 

Izuku looked down at his chest plate. The Kinetic Core was glowing a blinding, furious white. It was vibrating so hard the bolts holding it to the armor were beginning to strip.

 

An EMP requires a massive, instantaneous discharge of electromagnetic energy, Izuku's frantic mind recalled. The core is basically a giant magnetron. If I expose the coil and short it out against the robot's main power artery, the resulting feedback loop should fry every circuit board in a hundred-yard radius.

 

Including his own.

 

He reached up with his left hand, clamped his heavy fingers around the reinforced steel casing of his own chest plate, and ripped it open.

 

The heat hit his face like a physical blow. The exposed Kinetic Core was a miniature sun, sparking violently.

 

"I just hope this works," Izuku choked out.

 

He grabbed the massive, pulsing blue power cable of the Zero Pointer. With his other hand, he grabbed the exposed copper wiring of his overheating Kinetic Core.

 

Five seconds.

 

He slammed them together.

 

For a microsecond, there was no sound.

 

Then, an orb of pure, blinding white electromagnetic energy erupted from the connection point. It expanded outward in a silent, rippling shockwave.

 

It washed over the internal circuitry of the Zero Pointer. It washed over Izuku.

 

Inside his helmet, the HUD died instantly. The suit went completely pitch black. The hum of his pneumatics ceased. He was suddenly trapped in a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound steel coffin.

 

Outside, the effect was apocalyptic.

 

The colossal Zero Pointer, mid-step to crush Uraraka, suddenly froze. Its glowing red eyes flickered and died. A massive, groaning sound echoed across the city as the millions of tons of steel lost all electronic support.

 

Internal explosions rocked the chassis. The machine swayed, then began to tip backward, away from Uraraka, falling like a felled redwood.

 

It crashed into the cityscape with a world-ending boom, kicking up a mushroom cloud of dust and debris that washed over the entire street.

 

The silence that followed was absolute.

 

"T-TIME'S UP!" Present Mic's voice finally stuttered over the speakers, sounding legitimately shocked.

 

Down on the street, Uraraka coughed, waving the dust away from her face. She looked up at the fallen titan, her eyes wide with disbelief.

 

High above, inside the maintenance shaft of the dead machine, Izuku lay on his back in total darkness.

 

The suit was dead. The A.E.G.I.S. system was fried. The Kinetic Core was a melted slab of slag on his chest. He was covered in sweat, blood, and grease. His muscles ached with a profound, terrifying exhaustion.

 

He couldn't move. Without power, the suit was a prison. He was utterly helpless.

 

But behind the heavy, slotted visor, beneath the dirt and the blood, Izuku Midoriya was smiling.

 

He had saved her. He had defeated the leviathan. He had proven, once and for all, that he didn't need a Quirk to be a hero. He just needed a brain, some scrap metal, and a whole lot of guts.

 

"A little help?" Izuku croaked into the dark, knowing his radio was dead. "Anyone?"

 

It took the U.A. rescue robots twenty minutes to cut through the Zero Pointer's armor and pry the maintenance hatch open. It took another ten minutes with heavy hydraulic jaws to pry the melted Mark I armor off Izuku's body.

 

When they finally pulled him out, he collapsed onto the stretcher, completely limp.

 

Recovery Girl, the youth-restoring heroine, stood over him, shaking her head.

 

"You foolish boy," she scolded, though her eyes held a glimmer of profound respect. "Your body is bruised to the bone, you've got mild heatstroke, and you've completely fried your multi-million yen support gear. Was it worth it?"

 

Izuku looked up at her, his vision swimming, the blue sky of U.A. framing her face.

 

"It only cost... eighty-five dollars..." Izuku mumbled, before passing out completely.

 

 

 

Two Weeks Later.

 

The Midoriya household was tense.

 

Inko Midoriya paced the living room, wringing her hands, her eyes darting constantly toward the mailbox slot on the front door. Izuku sat at the dining room table, staring blankly at a disassembled toaster.

 

He hadn't built anything in two weeks.

 

The Mark I was gone, confiscated by U.A. for safety analysis and disposal. He was back to being a normal, Quirkless boy. The adrenaline of the exam had faded, replaced by an agonizing, gnawing anxiety.

 

He had calculated his score a hundred times. Fifty-five villain points. That should be enough. But what if he lost points for property damage? What if the EMP had violated some obscure rule about destroying the Zero Pointer? What if the faculty deemed his suit too dangerous and disqualified him?

 

Click. Clatter.

 

Inko gasped. She rushed to the door and picked up a heavy, thick envelope bearing the wax seal of U.A. High School.

 

"Izuku!" she squeaked, her hands trembling so hard she almost dropped it. "It's here!"

 

Izuku stood up so fast his chair fell backward. He took the envelope, his heart hammering against his ribs. He walked into his bedroom, the room that was no longer an All Might shrine, but a workshop of grease and blueprints.

 

He sat at his desk, took a deep breath, and tore the seal.

 

Instead of a letter, a small metal disc fell onto the desk.

 

Whirrrr.

 

A holographic projection sprang to life. Izuku expected Present Mic, or perhaps All Might, whose face plastered every U.A. brochure.

 

Instead, a small, impeccably dressed creature that looked like a cross between a mouse, a dog, and a bear appeared on the screen.

 

"Greetings, Midoriya Izuku!" the creature chirped cheerfully. "I am Nezu, the Principal of U.A. High School! I apologize for the delay in your results, but your performance required... special deliberation by the faculty board."

 

Izuku's breath hitched. Deliberation. That's bad. That means they debated failing me.

 

"You scored an impressive fifty-five villain points," Nezu continued, clasping his paws behind his back. "A score worthy of acceptance. However, the hero course is not solely about destroying villains. It is about saving people."

 

The hologram shifted. It showed footage from a hidden camera on the street. It showed Uraraka trapped. It showed the other students running away. And then, it showed a heavy, terrifying metal knight rocketing into the sky.

 

"The panel was divided," Nezu said softly. "Some believed your technology was too unstable, too dangerous for a school environment. You completely destroyed a multi-billion-yen arena asset, after all! But I saw something different. I saw a boy who, despite having no inherent power, utilized his intellect to sacrifice his only weapon to save a fellow examinee."

 

The screen displayed a new score.

 

VILLAIN POINTS: 55

RESCUE POINTS: 60

TOTAL SCORE: 115. RANK: 1ST.

 

Izuku stared at the numbers. First place. He had beaten Bakugo. He had beaten everyone.

 

"You pass with flying colors, Midoriya," Nezu smiled, his black eyes glinting with a sharp, dangerous intelligence. "Welcome to U.A. High School."

 

The hologram began to fade, but before it disappeared completely, Nezu leaned forward, his expression turning deadly serious.

 

"However. Let me offer you a piece of advice, young engineer. A hero relies on his gear. But gear is just metal and code. It breaks. It jams. It runs out of power. If your suit fails, you fall. You are entering a class of genetic titans with nothing but your mind and your wrenches. Prove to us that you belong here. Do not let me down."

 

The projection snapped off, leaving Izuku alone in the quiet of his room.

 

He didn't cry. He didn't cheer.

 

He looked at the small pile of scrap metal on his desk. He thought about the heat of the core, the failure of the shock absorbers, the terrible battery life.

 

Nezu was right. The Mark I was a prototype. A blunt instrument. It wasn't enough to survive the Pro Hero world.

 

Izuku opened his notebook to a fresh page. He picked up his pencil.

 

Mark II, he wrote at the top of the page. Objective: Weight reduction. Titanium-gold alloy plating. Stable arc-reactor power source. Micro-repulsor kinetic thrusters.

 

He smiled, his eyes burning with the fire of a thousand forges.

 

He was in. Now, it was time to build a real hero.