what if deku could use 100 of one for all

 

The salt-heavy wind of Dagobah Municipal Beach was biting, whipping across the sand in the predawn light. It carried the scent of rusted iron, decaying seaweed, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. For ten months, this ruined coastline had been Izuku Midoriya’s personal purgatory and his forge.

 

He stood at the summit of a mountain of trash, a monument of discarded washing machines, tires, and crushed sedans. His chest heaved, lungs burning as they pulled in the frigid morning air. Every muscle in his fifteen-year-old body trembled, strung tight as piano wire, exhausted but thrumming with a bizarre, electric vitality.

 

Below him stood the towering, emaciated figure of Toshinori Yagi—known to the world as All Might, the Symbol of Peace. The man’s sunken blue eyes were wide with genuine astonishment.

 

"You actually did it," All Might breathed, looking at the pristine stretch of sand behind the trash mountains. "You didn't just clear the area I designated. You cleared the whole beach. My god, young Midoriya... you really are something else."

 

Izuku wiped a mixture of sweat and grime from his forehead, his breath hitching. He looked at his hands. They were calloused, scarred from careless slips on jagged metal, but they were strong. He wasn't the frail, fragile, quirkless boy who had clung to the Symbol of Peace’s leg ten months ago. He had become a vessel.

 

Suddenly, All Might inflated, muscle mass expanding with a concussive burst of steam. The skeletal man was replaced by the gargantuan, shadow-draped titan of heroism. "EXCELLENT WORK, YOUNG MAN!" All Might boomed, his voice echoing off the seawall. "You have proven your vessel is ready! Blood, sweat, and tears have tempered your body. Now, it is time for your reward!"

 

All Might reached up and casually plucked a single strand of golden hair from his bangs. He held it out between his massive thumb and forefinger, the morning sun catching the golden filament.

 

"Eat this."

 

Izuku stared. The majestic, life-altering moment he had spent nearly a year bleeding for had suddenly screeched to a halt. "...Huh?"

 

"To inherit my power, you must consume some of my DNA! A hair is the easiest way. Now, chew well, the entrance exam is in a few hours!" All Might laughed, a hearty, booming sound that left no room for argument.

 

Izuku swallowed hard. He took the golden strand, squeezed his eyes shut, and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed dry. It scratched the back of his throat on the way down, leaving a faint, uncomfortable tickle.

 

"Did it... work?" Izuku asked, coughing slightly.

 

"It will take a few hours for the stomach acid to digest it and for the Quirk factor to assimilate into your genetics," All Might explained, deflating back into his skeletal form with a hiss of steam. "You likely won't feel anything until the exam begins. Remember, young Midoriya, One For All is a physical enhancement quirk of unfathomable power. When you use it, squeeze your buttocks, and yell SMASH from the bottom of your heart! But be careful—your body is just barely ready to hold it. Don't overdo it, or you'll blow your limbs off."

 

Izuku paled, nodding vigorously. "Right. Don't blow my limbs off. Got it."

 

They parted ways, All Might heading toward UA to prepare for his judging duties, and Izuku walking the long way back to his apartment to shower and change into his middle school uniform.

 

It was during that three-mile walk that everything changed.

 

According to All Might, the assimilation of One For All was supposed to be a violent, abrupt thing. A sudden flood of power breaking into a system that wasn't built for it. But as Izuku walked, the sun finally cresting over the horizon and bathing the city in warm, golden light, he didn't feel a violent intrusion.

 

He felt an awakening.

 

It started in his chest, right where his heart beat. A warmth. It wasn't the burning heat of indigestion or the painful stretch of pulled muscles. It was like a dormant star had suddenly ignited within his ribs. The warmth spread outward, flowing through his veins like liquid sunlight.

 

Izuku stopped at a crosswalk, gripping the straps of his backpack. He looked down at his hands. Beneath his skin, he thought he could see the faintest, most microscopic tracing of crimson energy, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

 

What is this? Izuku thought, his analytical mind racing. All Might said it would take hours. It's only been twenty minutes.

 

But it wasn't just the speed of the assimilation that was strange. It was the absolute, pristine comfort of it. Izuku had spent his entire life feeling like a guest in his own body, constantly reminded of a missing joint in his pinky toe, constantly reminded of his genetic deficiency. He had always felt hollow.

 

Now, he felt full. The power didn't feel foreign. It felt as though it had been waiting for him his entire life, a perfectly cut puzzle piece sliding into the empty space in his soul.

 

He flexed his right hand. As he did, a tiny spark of emerald-green electricity arced between his knuckles.

 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. He looked around. The street was empty. He walked over to a thick, solid iron lamppost. He didn't want to break it, but he needed to test this. He placed his hand against the cold iron. He didn't squeeze his buttocks. He didn't yell smash. He merely thought about the power in his chest, and willed a tiny fraction of it to his palm.

 

He pushed.

 

There was no sound of exertion, no straining of his muscles. The thick iron lamppost simply folded under his palm, bending at a sharp forty-five-degree angle as if it were made of warm putty.

 

Izuku yanked his hand back, staring in sheer horror and awe at the bent metal. His hand didn't hurt. Not even a sting. His bones were perfectly fine.

 

One hundred percent, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. Not a literal voice, but an instinct. A deep, primal understanding of his own biology. His body was perfectly, flawlessly synchronized with One For All. Whether it was a dormant genetic mutation hidden beneath his quirklessness, or simply a one-in-a-billion cosmic coincidence of perfect compatibility, Izuku Midoriya did not have a limit.

 

He didn't have to train his body to handle five percent. He didn't have to break his bones to use a hundred. The dam was entirely open, and the river was entirely under his control.

 

He swallowed hard, trembling. All Might had told him this power was a torch, passed from generation to generation, growing heavier and brighter with each transfer. Izuku had expected to carry a heavy torch.

 

He hadn't expected it to weigh as little as a feather.

 

 

 

Two hours later, Izuku stood before the gargantuan, imposing gates of UA High School. The H-shaped glass building gleamed in the morning sun, a fortress of dreams for hundreds of aspiring heroes.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. His anxiety, usually a suffocating blanket, felt different today. It was still there—he was still the nervous, stuttering kid who had been bullied for a decade—but it was grounded by the quiet, thrumming hum of infinity beneath his skin.

 

"Stupid Deku. Get out of my way."

 

The harsh, gravelly voice sent a spike of old, conditioned fear up Izuku's spine. He turned to see Katsuki Bakugo marching toward him, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his red eyes glaring with their usual cocktail of superiority and rage.

 

"K-Kacchan!" Izuku squeaked, stepping aside.

 

Bakugo stopped, narrowing his eyes. He scrutinized Izuku for a long, uncomfortable moment. Normally, Izuku would be shrinking in on himself, shaking like a leaf. And while Izuku was certainly nervous, he was standing straight. The posture changes from ten months of hauling refrigerators were obvious, but it was something else in Izuku's eyes. A quietness.

 

Bakugo clicked his tongue in irritation. "Don't stand there looking like you belong here. You're quirkless. You're a pebble. Don't die in the exam, nerd."

 

Bakugo shouldered past him, stomping toward the entrance. Izuku watched him go, letting out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He took a step forward, his mind so occupied with Bakugo and the humming energy in his veins that he completely forgot to watch his footing.

 

His shoe caught the edge of the paved stone. Izuku pitched forward, his face rocketing toward the concrete.

 

Oh no! First day and I'm already falling!

 

Instinct took over. Without thinking, Izuku's hand shot out. He didn't just brace for impact; his body moved with a terrifying, instantaneous fluid grace. His index finger touched the pavement, and with a micro-fraction of One For All, he pushed.

 

He didn't launch himself into the stratosphere. He simply arrested his momentum entirely, flipping backward in a perfectly controlled, slow-motion arc, landing lightly on his feet with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.

 

"Whoa!" a cheerful voice gasped.

 

Izuku blinked, looking up. Standing a few feet away was a girl with short, bobbed brown hair and large, warm brown eyes. She was staring at him with her hands clasped together in awe.

 

"That was amazing!" she said, stepping closer. "I was just about to use my quirk to catch you, but you totally had it! You moved like a ninja!"

 

Izuku felt his face erupt into a violent shade of crimson. "I—uh—I—ninja? No, I just, I tripped, and then I didn't, and um..."

 

The girl laughed, a bright, bubbly sound. "I'm Ochaco Uraraka! Are you nervous? I'm super nervous. But let's do our best, okay?"

 

"Y-Yeah! Good luck!" Izuku managed to stammer out.

 

As Uraraka walked away, Izuku looked down at his index finger. The concrete where he had touched it possessed a tiny, spiderweb fracture. He swallowed hard. The power was so absolute, so hair-trigger responsive. He had to be incredibly careful. If he panicked and pushed too hard, he could kill someone.

 

The realization sat heavy in his stomach. The weight of the feather was suddenly suffocating.

 

 

 

The written exam passed in a blur of complex mathematics, hero law, and scenario analysis. Izuku’s mind was sharp, his pencil flying across the page.

 

Then came the orientation for the practical exam.

 

Izuku sat in the massive, stadium-seating auditorium, staring down at the stage where the Voice Hero: Present Mic was enthusiastically explaining the rules.

 

"AS I SAID IN THE PRINTOUT, THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF VILLAINS IN EVERY BATTLE CENTER!" Mic screamed into his directional speaker, the sound rattling Izuku's teeth. "YOU EARN POINTS BASED ON THEIR DIFFICULTY! ONE POINT, TWO POINTS, AND THREE POINTS! YOUR GOAL IS TO USE YOUR QUIRKS TO DISABLE THESE FAUX VILLAINS AND RACK UP A HIGH SCORE!"

 

"Excuse me, sir, but I have a question!"

 

A tall, broad-shouldered boy with glasses stood up in the rows ahead, his hand raised rigidly at a ninety-degree angle. "On the printout, there are clearly four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then UA, the most prominent academy in Japan, should be ashamed of that foolish mistake! Furthermore—" The boy turned around, his finger pointing directly at Izuku. "You, with the unkempt hair!"

 

Izuku blinked, pointing to himself.

 

"You have been muttering this entire time! It's distracting! If you are here on a pleasure trip, then you should leave immediately!"

 

Normally, Izuku would have shrunk down, apologizing profusely while the rest of the auditorium laughed at him. But as the eyes of hundreds of applicants turned toward him, including Bakugo's vicious glare from a few seats over, Izuku felt the quiet hum of One For All in his chest. It didn't make him arrogant, but it brought a strange, centering clarity.

 

"I apologize," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady, carrying easily through the silent auditorium. "I was analyzing the scoring system. I'll keep my thoughts to myself, thank you for pointing it out."

 

The tall boy with glasses blinked, momentarily thrown off by the calm, polite, and completely un-rattled response. "I—see. Very well. Just see that you maintain proper decorum!" He sat down abruptly.

 

Present Mic cleared his throat, breaking the tension. "RIGHT, WELL! THE FOURTH ROBOT IS WORTH ZERO POINTS! IT'S AN OBSTACLE! MY ADVICE? AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE! NOW, GET TO YOUR ASSIGNED BUSES! PLUS ULTRA!"

 

Izuku looked down at his card. Battle Center B. He let out a slow breath. It was time.

 

 

 

Battle Center B was a sprawling, hyper-realistic facsimile of a bustling metropolis. Towering skyscrapers of glass and steel, paved roads, traffic lights—it was a multi-million-dollar arena built solely to be destroyed.

 

Izuku stood near the back of the massive crowd of applicants congregated before the towering metal gates. He saw the tall boy with glasses doing warm-up stretches. He saw Uraraka taking deep breaths to calm her nerves.

 

Okay, Izuku thought, closing his eyes. I need to pass. To pass, I need points. These are robots. I can hit them. But I have to hold back. If I use a hundred percent, I might destroy the entire city block and hurt the other applicants. I need to use... maybe five percent? Ten?

 

He visualized the power. It was like a raging ocean inside a titanium vault. He cracked the vault door open, just a sliver.

 

Green lightning flared to life around him.

 

The applicants nearest to him gasped, stepping back as jagged arcs of emerald energy crackled over his skin, his hair spiking up as wind began to swirl around his feet. The sheer ambient pressure of the power radiating from him felt like the static before a massive thunderstorm.

 

The tall boy with glasses turned, his eyes widening. Uraraka looked over, her jaw dropping.

 

"AND BEGIN!" Present Mic’s voice boomed from the hidden speakers.

 

The applicants hesitated, confused by the lack of a countdown.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate.

 

He didn't run. He launched himself.

 

The sound was like a cannon firing. BOOM. The concrete beneath Izuku's feet shattered into dust as he vanished. He was a green streak of lightning tearing through the open gates, leaving a trail of displaced air that knocked the hats off several applicants in the front row.

 

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" Mic screamed. "THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL BATTLES! RUN, RUN, RUN!"

 

The crowd surged forward, but by the time they crossed the threshold into the fake city, the battle had already begun.

 

Izuku moved through the streets like a ghost. His sensory perception was dialed up to an unimaginable degree. The world around him seemed to move in slow motion. He saw a One-Pointer round a corner, its single red optical sensor locking onto him. It raised its metal arm to fire a rubber bullet.

 

Izuku closed the distance of fifty meters in a fraction of a second. He didn't even throw a proper punch. He simply flicked his wrist, the back of his knuckles striking the robot's armored chassis.

 

The impact sounded like a car crash. The One-Pointer caved in on itself, folding like a crushed soda can, before being violently launched backward into the concrete wall of a building, embedding itself deep into the brick.

 

One point, Izuku thought. Okay. The chassis is weak. Five percent is more than enough.

 

He pivoted on his heel, the rubber of his red shoes squealing in protest against the pavement. He leapt into the air, clearing a three-story building in a single bound, scanning the area. He saw a cluster of Two-Pointers and Three-Pointers surrounding a group of paralyzed students, including the boy with glasses.

 

Izuku descended from the sky like a meteor. He landed right in the center of the robotic pack. The shockwave of his landing cracked the asphalt and knocked the robots off balance.

 

Before the applicants could even blink, Izuku became a blur of motion.

 

Smash. Smash. Smash.

 

He moved from target to target, delivering precise, controlled strikes to the vital joints and central processors of the machines. He wasn't using the massive, wind-pressure generating swings All Might used; he was using concentrated, surgical strikes.

 

In less than five seconds, six robots lay in sparking, utterly dismantled ruins.

 

"S-Sixteen points," Izuku muttered, adjusting his grip on the power, keeping it perfectly steady. He turned and sprinted down the alleyway, vanishing from sight.

 

Iida Tenya, the boy with glasses, stood frozen, his engine-calves sputtering. He stared at the mangled heap of metal. "Who... who was that?" he whispered to himself. "He moved so fast I couldn't even track him. Is his quirk speed? Super strength? Both?"

 

Up in the observation room, tucked away in the highest tower of the UA faculty building, the silence was absolute.

 

A wall of massive monitors displayed feeds from every battle center. But in the room, almost every eye of the pro heroes was fixed on the center screen monitoring Area B.

 

Nezu, the principal of UA—a creature that was a mix of a mouse, dog, and bear—took a slow sip of his tea, his beady black eyes gleaming with intense fascination. "My, my. It seems we have a prodigy this year."

 

Standing in the shadows, pro hero Shota Aizawa—Eraserhead—stared at the screen, his dry eyes unblinking. "Who is that kid?"

 

"Let me check the registry!" Midnight, the R-Rated hero, flipped through a tablet. "Uh, Midoriya Izuku. Middle school: Aldera Junior High. Let's see... Quirk..." She paused, her eyebrows knitting together. "That can't be right."

 

"What is it, Nemuri?" Aizawa asked, his voice low and dangerous.

 

"His quirk registry says... Quirkless."

 

A murmur rippled through the room. Aizawa’s eyes narrowed into slits. He watched the screen as Midoriya Izuku casually backhanded a Three-Pointer, sending it spinning through the air like a toy.

 

"Someone didn't update their paperwork," Snipe noted, adjusting his mask. "That kid is pushing out power on par with top-ranking pros. Look at his control. He's not wasting a single movement. He's holding back so he doesn't destroy the city blocks."

 

"Holding back?" Aizawa muttered, leaning closer to the monitor. He hated hidden variables. He hated illogical power. And a kid this young wielding power that monstrous with absolutely no registered history reeked of something deeply concerning.

 

In the back of the room, standing in his deflated, skeletal form, Toshinori Yagi gripped the railing so tightly his knuckles turned white. His sunken eyes were wide, but a massive, proud smile was plastered across his face.

 

He's doing it, All Might thought, his heart swelling with a mixture of immense pride and profound terror. He didn't just inherit the power... he tamed it. Instantly.

 

All Might had struggled for months to master the output of One For All, and even then, his predecessor, Nana Shimura, had guided him through every step. But Izuku... Izuku had taken the ocean and effortlessly put it in a glass.

 

"He's at seventy-four points," Nezu observed, setting his teacup down. "He has already secured the top spot in the exam, and we are only four minutes in." Nezu reached forward toward a large red button on his console. "Let us see how our young prodigy handles a true crisis. It's time to separate the wheat from the chaff."

 

Nezu pressed the button.

 

 

 

Izuku stood in the center of a wide intersection, panting softly. His body wasn't tired, but his mind was racing, trying to process the sheer influx of sensory data. He was at eighty points. He was certain he had passed.

 

I should stop, he thought, letting the green lightning fade. I've drawn too much attention to myself. I just need to wait out the clock.

 

Suddenly, the ground began to tremble.

 

It wasn't a localized tremor. The entire fake city shook, dust falling from the rooftops, the asphalt cracking beneath Izuku's feet. A low, mechanical groan echoed through the air, so loud it rattled Izuku's teeth.

 

At the end of the main avenue, several city blocks away, the buildings exploded outward.

 

A gargantuan shadow blotted out the sun. It was a machine of impossible scale, towering over the five-story buildings like a steel god. Its massive treads crushed the streets to powder, and its singular red eye glared down at the ants below.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

"LESS THAN TWO MINUTES REMAINING!" Present Mic's voice echoed through the city.

 

Panic erupted. The applicants, who had been bravely fighting the smaller robots, took one look at the mechanical titan and broke.

 

"Run!"

"That thing is insane!"

"It's the obstacle! Get away from it!"

 

Izuku watched as the horde of teenagers sprinted past him, fleeing in terror. He took a step backward. He had eighty points. There was no tactical reason to fight the Zero Pointer. It was a waste of energy and a massive risk. He turned to join the retreat.

 

"Ow! S-Somebody, help!"

 

The voice was faint, almost drowned out by the grinding gears of the behemoth, but Izuku’s enhanced hearing caught it. He snapped his head around.

 

Near the base of the Zero Pointer's path of destruction, a massive chunk of concrete rubble had fallen. Trapped beneath it, struggling frantically, was the brown-haired girl. Uraraka.

 

The Zero Pointer raised a massive, hydraulic foot, directly over her position. It was going to crush her.

 

Izuku didn't think. The analytical part of his brain shut down. The fear vanished. There was only the girl, the machine, and the space between them.

 

He didn't crack the vault door this time. He blew it off its hinges.

 

One hundred percent.

 

The world went white.

 

Green lightning didn't just crackle around Izuku; it erupted from him in a violent, blinding aura, illuminating the shadowed street. The asphalt beneath his feet didn't just crack—it atomized, leaving a crater ten feet wide and three feet deep.

 

Izuku crouched, his muscles coiled to their absolute maximum limit, and he leaped.

 

The sonic boom shattered every glass window within a three-block radius. The applicants who were fleeing were thrown to the ground by the sheer concussive force of the wind generated by his departure. Iida Tenya shielded his eyes, looking back in horror and awe as a streak of emerald light defied gravity, shooting up the side of the Zero Pointer like a localized meteor strike.

 

Izuku ascended hundreds of feet into the air in a fraction of a second. The wind roared in his ears, ripping at his clothes, tearing tears from his eyes. He looked down at the massive, steel face of the Zero Pointer.

 

He pulled his right arm back.

 

He felt the power surging, pooling in his fist, a terrifying, divine force that felt like holding a dying star. He knew what All Might had told him. He knew the risk. But as he looked at the machine, and the girl below, there was no doubt in his mind.

 

"DETROIT..." Izuku roared, his voice tearing from his throat, echoing across the entire arena.

 

He threw the punch.

 

"...SMASH!"

 

His fist connected with the thick, reinforced steel plating of the Zero Pointer's face.

 

For a microsecond, there was no sound. Physics seemed to stall.

 

Then, the shockwave hit.

 

It wasn't an explosion of fire. It was an explosion of pure, unadulterated kinetic energy. The force of the punch didn't just dent the metal; it ripped the head of the Zero Pointer clean off its shoulders. The shockwave rippled outward, a massive ring of distorted air that blew away the clouds above the arena, revealing the clear blue sky.

 

The sheer wind pressure from the blow drove the towering machine's massive body backward, lifting its millions of tons of steel off the ground and slamming it onto its back in the ruined cityscape below.

 

The resulting crash shook the earth so violently that alarms began to blare in the UA faculty room.

 

Izuku hung in the air at the apex of his jump, breathing heavily. He looked at his right arm.

 

The sleeve of his uniform was completely incinerated, reduced to ash by the friction and the pressure. But his arm... his arm was perfect. The skin was flushed, steaming in the cool morning air, but the bones were intact. No purple bruising. No shattered joints. It was as if he had just thrown a punch at a punching bag.

 

Gravity reclaimed him. Izuku began to fall.

 

He looked down at the rapidly approaching earth. He had jumped hundreds of feet. Falling from this height would kill him if he didn't brace properly.

 

He willed the power back into his legs. As the ground rushed up to meet him, he shifted his body, bringing his feet down. He didn't use a hundred percent this time; he used exactly enough to counter his downward momentum.

 

He hit the ground. A second, smaller shockwave rippled out, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.

 

Silence descended upon Battle Center B. The grinding gears of the Zero Pointer were dead. The sirens had stopped. The only sound was the settling of dust and the soft, rhythmic breathing of Izuku Midoriya.

 

As the dust cleared, the remaining applicants slowly pushed themselves off the ground. They stared in absolute, paralyzing disbelief.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the street, completely unharmed, steam rising from his shoulders. He walked over to the massive slab of concrete pinning Uraraka. He gripped the edge of it with one hand, effortlessly lifting the five-ton boulder and tossing it aside as if it were made of styrofoam.

 

He offered Uraraka his hand. "Are you okay?" he asked softly.

 

Uraraka stared at him, her eyes wide, trembling. She looked from him, up to the headless corpse of the mechanical titan, and back to him. She didn't take his hand. She was too terrified.

 

"T-TIME'S UP!" Present Mic's voice cracked over the speakers, devoid of its usual bombastic energy. The pro hero sounded genuinely shaken.

 

Izuku slowly lowered his hand. He looked around. Dozens of applicants were staring at him. Not with awe. With fear. They were looking at him the same way people looked at a natural disaster.

 

The green lightning faded. The hum of infinity in his chest settled back into a quiet purr.

 

Izuku swallowed hard, the reality of his situation crashing down upon him. He had the power of a god, and he was fifteen years old.

 

 

 

In the observation room, the silence was suffocating.

 

None of the pro heroes spoke. Nezu had stopped drinking his tea. Midnight’s tablet had slipped from her hands, clattering onto the floor.

 

Aizawa stared at the screen, his breathing shallow. He had seen strong quirks. He had seen All Might in his prime. But the sheer, explosive violence of that strike, combined with the fact that the boy had landed flawlessly, without a scratch... it defied logic. It defied the fundamental laws of quirk biology. Power of that magnitude required years of physical conditioning, and even then, there was recoil. There was always recoil.

 

"He... he destroyed the Zero Pointer with one strike," Snipe whispered, his voice trembling. "Just... pure wind pressure."

 

"Find out everything about him," Aizawa ordered, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife. He turned to Nezu, his eyes glowing a faint, menacing red. "I don't care if his file says quirkless. I don't care if he comes from nowhere. Power like that doesn't just exist without a reason. If that kid turns down the wrong path, there isn't a hero in this country who could stop him."

 

All Might stood in the back, silent. A cold sweat broke out on his neck. Aizawa was right. Izuku had mastered One For All instantly. He had bypassed the struggle, the slow climb, the limits that kept a hero grounded in their humanity.

 

What have I done? All Might thought, a knot of dread forming in his stomach. I gave him the power to save the world, but I didn't give him the time to learn how to live in it.

 

 

 

A week later, Izuku sat in his bedroom, staring blankly at the wall. His desk was littered with hero notebooks, now seemingly obsolete. He didn't need to analyze quirks anymore. He simply outclassed them all.

 

"Izuku! It's here!"

 

His mother, Inko, practically broke the door down, sliding into the room on her knees, clutching a thick envelope sealed with the UA crest. She was weeping, trembling with a mixture of pride and terror over the sudden, inexplicable manifestation of her son's "late-bloomer" quirk.

 

Izuku took the envelope. He waited for his mother to leave the room before tearing it open.

 

A small metal disc fell onto his desk. A holographic projection snapped to life.

 

It wasn't standard. It wasn't a cheerful recording of Present Mic or a formal greeting from Nezu.

 

It was All Might. But he wasn't in his muscle form. He was in his true, skeletal form, wearing an oversized yellow suit, sitting in a dimly lit office. He looked incredibly tired.

 

"Young Midoriya," the hologram spoke, his voice low and serious. "I apologize for the unorthodox message. But given the circumstances, I had to speak to you directly."

 

Izuku leaned forward, his heart pounding.

 

"You passed the written exam with flying colors. And in the practical, you scored eighty villain points. But you also scored sixty rescue points for saving young Uraraka. A total of one hundred and forty points. The highest score in the history of UA High School."

 

All Might paused, coughing into a handkerchief. He looked directly into the camera, his blue eyes piercing.

 

"You are accepted into Class 1-A. But Izuku... I need you to listen to me carefully. I am incredibly proud of you. But I am also deeply afraid for you."

 

Izuku frowned, confusion washing over him.

 

"One For All was meant to be a burden you slowly learned to carry. By the time I mastered it, I was an adult. I had mentors. I had time to fail, to struggle, to understand the value of weakness. You... you have bypassed all of that. Your body has accepted the power completely."

 

All Might leaned closer to the camera.

 

"You are fifteen years old, and you are already the Symbol of Peace in power. You are a god among mortals. But a hero is not defined by their power, Izuku. They are defined by their heart, their restraint, and their connection to the people they protect."

 

The holographic image flickered slightly.

 

"The world will not give you time to grow up. The villains will not treat you like a child. And the public... when they see what you can do, they will either worship you or they will fear you. You will be alienated. You will be isolated. You will be standing on a summit entirely alone."

 

All Might gave a sad, weary smile.

 

"Welcome to your Hero Academia, Izuku Midoriya. I pray you are strong enough to survive the peace you are about to create."

 

The hologram fizzled and died, leaving Izuku in the quiet darkness of his bedroom.

 

He looked down at his right hand. He slowly clenched it into a fist. The green lightning sparked, casting a long, monstrous shadow against the wall behind him.

 

He had his dream. He was going to UA. He had the power to save everyone.

 

But as the heavy silence of his room pressed in on him, Izuku realized the terrifying truth. The fight wouldn't be against villains. The villains were already vastly outmatched.

 

The fight would be holding himself back, every single day, so he didn't break the world in half.

 

The alarm clock on Izuku Midoriya’s nightstand began to beep at exactly 5:30 AM.

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. He was already awake. He had been awake for three hours, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythmic thump of his own heart.

 

He rolled over, extending his hand to silence the alarm. It was a simple, mundane motion—something he had done thousands of times in his fifteen years of life. He pressed his index finger down on the plastic button.

 

CRACK.

 

The alarm didn't just silence; the entire digital clock imploded. The plastic casing shattered into dozens of sharp fragments, the internal wiring snapping, the LCD screen instantly turning into black dust. The force of his casual tap drove the ruined machinery straight down, punching a perfectly square hole through the thick, pressed wood of his nightstand.

 

Izuku froze, his hand hovering over the jagged hole. The room was dead silent, save for the faint sound of a loose screw hitting the floorboards.

 

He slowly pulled his hand back, his breathing turning shallow. He looked at his finger. There was not a single scratch on his skin.

 

He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his hands, taking a long, shuddering breath. "Control," he whispered to the empty room. "You have to maintain control."

 

Since the entrance exam a week ago, Izuku had discovered a terrifying truth. One For All wasn't a switch he could just turn off. It was a torrential river of absolute power, and his body was the dam. The dam held perfectly—he wasn’t leaking power, he wasn't glowing green, and he wasn't destroying things just by existing. But the water was always right there, pressed right up against the floodgates.

 

The amount of force required to walk, to speak, to hold a pencil... it was microscopic. He had to consciously throttle his own strength down to zero-point-zero-zero-one percent just to exist as a human being.

 

It was exhausting.

 

He pushed the blankets off himself. He did it carefully, gripping the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, terrified that if he pulled too hard, he would rip the sheets to shreds. He stood up, placing his feet flat on the floor. He visualized his weight, deliberately keeping his knees soft, refusing to push off the floorboards too quickly lest he accidentally launch himself through the ceiling.

 

Breakfast was a torturous affair. His mother, Inko, had made him a celebratory meal for his first day at UA High School. Eggs, rice, miso soup, and grilled fish.

 

"Eat up, Izuku!" Inko smiled, though there was a tight, nervous edge to her eyes. She placed the bowl of rice in front of him. She had seen the news. She had seen the blurry, terrifying footage of her son decapitating a building-sized robot with a single punch.

 

"Thanks, Mom," Izuku said, his voice quiet.

 

He picked up his chopsticks. He held them with a grip so delicate it felt like he was holding two strands of fragile glass. He picked up a piece of fish. As he brought it to his mouth, his thumb twitched.

 

Snap.

 

The wooden chopsticks broke cleanly in half, the splinters flying across the table.

 

Inko flinched, dropping her own chopsticks.

 

"I-I'm sorry!" Izuku gasped, his face flushing crimson. "I'm so sorry, I just... my hand slipped."

 

"It's okay! It's fine, sweetie, we have plenty!" Inko hurried to the drawer, pulling out a fresh pair, her hands trembling slightly. "It's just your quirk, right? You're a late bloomer. It's... it's taking time to adjust to your new body. That's totally normal!"

 

Izuku took the new chopsticks, swallowing the lump in his throat. It's not normal, he thought. None of this is normal. His mother was looking at him the same way the other applicants had looked at him. With love, yes, but underlined with a primal, instinctual caution. You don't pet a lion the same way you pet a housecat, no matter how much you love it.

 

The walk to the train station was an exercise in pure paranoia.

 

The world felt different to Izuku now. It felt profoundly, terrifyingly fragile. The pavement beneath his shoes felt like thin ice. The brick walls of the buildings he passed felt like they were made of damp cardboard. If he tripped, if he sneezed, if he swung his arms too fast, he could cause a catastrophic accident. He walked stiffly, his arms pinned to his sides, his eyes constantly scanning the crowds, calculating the exact distance between himself and every pedestrian.

 

By the time he stepped onto the crowded commuter train, he was sweating bullets. He found a spot near the doors but refused to grab the overhead handles. He knew that if the train lurched and he instinctively tightened his grip to catch his balance, he would rip the steel bar entirely out of the ceiling. Instead, he stood perfectly still, using his god-like core strength and equilibrium to remain completely immovable as the train rattled along the tracks.

 

He felt entirely, utterly detached from the rest of humanity.

 

 

 

Standing before the towering doors of Class 1-A, Izuku took a deep breath.

 

This is it, he told himself. Your dream. You are going to be a hero. You just have to be careful. Don't show off. Be normal.

 

He reached out and slid the massive door open.

 

The classroom was already bustling with activity. Izuku immediately spotted the tall boy with glasses from the entrance exam, marching up to a student with spiky blonde hair who had his feet propped up on the desk.

 

"Remove your feet from that desk immediately!" the boy with glasses chopped his hand through the air. "It is a sign of disrespect to your classmates and the great alumni of this institution!"

 

"Huh?" Katsuki Bakugo sneered, his red eyes narrowing. "Which middle school did you go to, you extra?"

 

"I attended Somei Private Academy! My name is Iida Tenya!"

 

Izuku stood in the doorway, suddenly feeling very small despite the infinity humming in his chest. Kacchan is here... of course he is. And the scary guy with the glasses.

 

Iida turned his head, his glasses flashing as they caught the light. He spotted Izuku. Instantly, Iida’s rigid posture shifted into one of profound, almost reverent attention. He abandoned Bakugo and marched straight toward the doorway.

 

"It's you," Iida said, stopping a respectful three feet away. He bowed deeply, a perfect ninety-degree angle. "I apologize for my behavior at the orientation! I am Iida Tenya. You perceived the true nature of the practical exam, didn't you? You saw that the Zero Pointer was a test of our heroic spirit, and you acted without hesitation. I must admit, I misjudged you entirely. You are vastly superior to me!"

 

The entire classroom fell silent. Bakugo, who had been glaring out the window, snapped his head toward the door.

 

When Bakugo saw Izuku standing there, his brain short-circuited.

 

For ten years, Katsuki Bakugo’s entire worldview had been built on a single, unshakeable foundation: he was the best, and Izuku Midoriya was a quirkless, worthless pebble beneath his boot. He had heard rumors from the teachers at Aldera Junior High that Izuku had somehow passed the UA exam, but Bakugo had rationalized it. He probably scored a few pity points on a written test. He's just in the general studies course.

 

But here Izuku was. Wearing the grey Class 1-A uniform.

 

Bakugo's jaw clenched so hard his teeth groaned. His palms began to sweat, popping with microscopic, furious sparks. Deku. What the hell is he doing here?

 

"Oh! It's the ninja boy!"

 

A bright voice broke the tension. Ochaco Uraraka bounced up behind Izuku, her face breaking into a massive, relieved smile. "You made it! I'm so glad! After what you did at the exam, I would have been shocked if you weren't here. You were unbelievable!"

 

Izuku’s face flushed red. He waved his hands frantically. "N-No, it wasn't a big deal! I just... I just punched it!"

 

"You punched its head off!" Uraraka laughed, though her eyes darted to his right arm, clearly remembering the absolute devastation she had witnessed. A flicker of intimidation crossed her features, and she subconsciously took a half-step back. "I was going to ask Present Mic to give you some of my points, but he said you didn't need them."

 

"If you're here to socialize, then get out."

 

The voice was rough, exhausted, and came from the floor.

 

Izuku, Uraraka, and Iida looked down to see a large, yellow sleeping bag lying on the hallway floor. Like a bizarre caterpillar, a man unzipped the front, revealing a pale face, deep eye bags, and a mess of unkempt black hair. He pulled out a juice pouch, took a sip, and stood up.

 

"This is the hero course," Shota Aizawa said, his deadpan gaze sweeping over the students. He stopped, his eyes locking onto Izuku for a fraction of a second longer than the rest. Izuku felt a cold chill run down his spine. The man's eyes were like a predator analyzing a particularly dangerous threat.

 

"It took you eight seconds to quiet down," Aizawa sighed, stepping into the classroom. "Time is a limited resource. You kids lack rationality. I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Nice to meet you."

 

He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a blue gym uniform.

 

"Put these on and head out to the training grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

The sun was blinding as the twenty students of Class 1-A gathered on the massive dirt field of the P.E. grounds.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?!" the class echoed in shock.

 

"What about the entrance ceremony? The orientation?" Uraraka asked, clutching her gym shirt nervously.

 

"If you want to be pro heroes, you don't have time for leisurely events," Aizawa said, turning his back to them. "UA's selling point is how unrestricted its traditions are. That also applies to how the teachers run their classes. You've been doing these tests since junior high, right? Pitching, running, jumping. But you were never allowed to use your quirks. The country is still hiding behind standardized records. It's irrational."

 

Aizawa turned, his gaze snapping to Bakugo. "Bakugo. You finished first in the entrance exam. What was your best result for the softball throw in junior high?"

 

Bakugo scowled, still throwing venomous side-glances at Izuku. "Sixty-seven meters."

 

"Try doing it with your quirk." Aizawa tossed a baseball to him. "You can do whatever you want as long as you stay in the circle. Hurry up. Give it all you've got."

 

Bakugo stepped into the white chalk circle. He stretched his arms, a feral grin stretching across his face. He wanted to show off. He wanted to remind the pebble in the background who the apex predator of this class was.

 

He wound up, his quirk igniting in his palms. "DIIIIIE!" he roared, hurling the ball while simultaneously unleashing a massive explosion.

 

The ball rocketed into the sky, leaving a trail of smoke.

 

"Know your own maximum first," Aizawa said, holding up a digital device as the ball finally landed. "That is the most rational way to form the foundation of a hero."

 

The screen beeped. 705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted.

"Seven hundred meters?! Seriously?!"

"That looks like so much fun!"

"We can use our quirks as much as we want! As expected of the hero course!"

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, his aura darkening instantly. The air grew heavy, suffocatingly tense. "Fun, you say? You have three years to become heroes. Are you going to have an attitude like that the whole time?"

 

He smiled, a terrifying, manic expression. "Alright. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential, and will be punished with expulsion."

 

The class gasped.

"Expulsion?!"

"You can't do that! It's the first day!" Uraraka protested. "That's completely unfair!"

 

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, villain attacks... the world is full of unfairness," Aizawa drawled. "Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you were planning to go hang out at McDonald's after school, too bad. For the next three years, UA will throw hardship after hardship at you. Go beyond. Plus Ultra. Overcome it with all you've got."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. Expulsion. He couldn't be expelled. Not after All Might had given him this power.

 

But as he looked at Aizawa, he realized something. Aizawa wasn't looking at the class. Aizawa was looking at him. The threat wasn't for the class. It was a targeted ultimatum. Aizawa wanted to see the monstrous power from the entrance exam, and he wanted to see if Izuku had any control over it.

 

I can't hold back too much, Izuku realized, panic setting in. If I come in last, I'm out. But if I use too much... I'll destroy the school.

 

"Test one: 50-meter dash," Aizawa announced.

 

Izuku was paired against Bakugo.

 

They stood at the starting line. A robotic camera on a track prepared to time them.

 

"Don't think you can hide, Deku," Bakugo hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of rage and denial. "I don't know what kind of cheap trick you pulled at the exam, but I'm going to expose you. You're a quirkless nobody."

 

Izuku didn't look at him. He stared down the fifty-meter track. It looked incredibly short.

 

If I use one hundred percent... the sonic boom will rupture everyone's eardrums, and I'll atomize the camera at the finish line, Izuku calculated rapidly. I need to be fast, but not destructive. I need to push off the ground with barely a fraction of my strength.

 

"On your marks..." the robot announced. "Get set..."

 

BANG.

 

Bakugo threw his hands back. "Explosive Speed!" he yelled, propelling himself forward with continuous blasts.

 

Izuku took a single step.

 

He didn't activate the green lightning. He just engaged the raw, physical enhancement of his muscles. He pushed off his back foot with what felt like a gentle hop.

 

The dirt beneath his shoe exploded backward in a geyser of dust, pelting the students standing behind the starting line.

 

Izuku didn't run. He didn't have time to take a second step. The singular push launched his body forward like a bullet fired from a railgun. The wind tore past him, whipping his hair back. He crossed the finish line before Bakugo was even five meters down the track.

 

He skidded to a halt, digging his heels into the dirt, leaving two long trenches in the field, a cloud of dust billowing around him.

 

The robot beeped. "1.14 seconds."

 

The class went dead silent.

 

Bakugo, propelled by his explosions, crossed the finish line three seconds later. "4.13 seconds."

 

Bakugo landed, panting, a smug grin on his face. He turned around to gloat.

 

And saw Izuku already standing there, brushing dust off his shoulder.

 

Bakugo’s brain stalled. He looked at the robot's screen. 1.14 seconds.

 

"W-What?" a boy with yellow hair and a black lightning bolt streak stuttered. "Did he teleport?"

 

"No," Iida said, his voice grave. "He just moved faster than the human eye can track. And he didn't even look like he was trying."

 

Izuku kept his head down, walking back to the group. He felt the weight of their stares. It was worse than being bullied. It was the absolute, alienating silence of a room full of people realizing they were trapped in a cage with something they couldn't comprehend.

 

 

 

Test Two: Grip Strength.

 

Izuku stood in the back of the group, holding the digital dynamometer. A tall boy with multiple arms, Shoji, squeezed his, generating an impressive 540 kilograms. The class cheered.

 

Izuku looked at the metal and plastic device in his hand.

 

If I squeeze normally, it will shatter. If I hold back too much, I'll get a zero.

 

He gripped the handle. He closed his eyes, visualizing an egg. He pretended he was holding a very fragile egg, and he only wanted to crack the shell, not crush the yolk.

 

He squeezed.

 

He barely flexed the tendons in his forearm, but the internal gears of the dynamometer instantly shrieked in protest. The digital numbers on the screen didn't just climb; they blurred.

 

999.9 kg.

 

And then, with a sharp CRACK, the device exploded in his hand, plastic shrapnel flying into the dirt, sparks raining from the ruined battery casing.

 

Izuku flinched, dropping the crushed ruin of the machine. "I-I'm sorry!" he stammered, looking at Aizawa. "It broke!"

 

The class recoiled.

 

"He broke it..." a girl with pink skin whispered.

 

"Is his quirk some kind of super-strength?" a boy with red, spiky hair asked, his eyes wide. "That's insane. He's like All Might."

 

Aizawa stared at the broken machine, writing something down on his clipboard. His expression was unreadable, but inside, his mind was racing. No physical recoil. No muscle tearing. He destroyed military-grade testing equipment by accident. He is a walking weapon of mass destruction.

 

 

 

Test Three: Standing Long Jump.

Izuku tried to do a light hop. He cleared the sandbox entirely, soaring over the heads of his classmates and landing softly in the grass thirty meters away.

 

Test Four: Repeated Side Steps.

Izuku moved side to side. He tried to go slow, but the sheer kinetic energy of his movements cracked the concrete tiles beneath his feet, creating a loud, rhythmic sonic thumping that made the class cover their ears.

 

Through it all, Bakugo Katsuki was unraveling.

 

With every test, with every impossible feat, the meticulously constructed reality of Bakugo's superiority fractured further. He's cheating, Bakugo told himself frantically, his breathing growing shallow, his heart pounding in his ears. He has to be cheating. It's a trick. Shitty Deku doesn't have a quirk. He's weak. He's always been weak! He cried when I pushed him in the river! He's a pebble!

 

But the numbers didn't lie.

 

Finally, they reached the fifth test: The Softball Throw.

 

Uraraka went first, using her Zero Gravity to float the ball into space. The machine read Infinity.

 

"Infinity?!" the class gasped.

 

Izuku stepped up to the circle. He held the softball in his hand. The leather was soft, the red stitching coarse against his callouses.

 

He looked at Aizawa. Aizawa was glaring at him, his capture weapon unwinding slightly around his neck.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice flat, carrying across the silent field. "You've been holding back this entire time."

 

Izuku stiffened.

 

"You're terrified of your own power," Aizawa continued, stepping closer. "You're trying to do the bare minimum to pass without breaking the equipment. But this is the final test of raw power. If you do not show me the absolute limit of what you are capable of, I will expel you right here and now."

 

The class murmured.

 

"Sensei, that's not fair! He's been destroying the tests!" Iida protested.

 

"Silence," Aizawa snapped, his eyes flashing red, his hair defying gravity as his Erasure quirk activated. He stared directly at Izuku. "You have immense power, kid. But if you're too scared to use it, you're a liability on the battlefield. A hero who can't control his own output is just a villain waiting for an accident. Show me you have control. Show me your one hundred percent. Now."

 

Izuku swallowed hard, the dry click echoing in his ears.

 

Aizawa was right. He was terrified. He was terrified of hurting his classmates. But he also understood what Aizawa was demanding. Aizawa wanted to see if Izuku could unleash the beast and aim it safely.

 

If I don't do this, my dream ends here.

 

Izuku turned his gaze to the open, cloudless sky. Up there, there was nothing to destroy. No buildings. No people. Just empty space.

 

He tightened his grip on the softball.

 

He stopped holding back.

 

He didn't crack the vault door. He threw it wide open.

 

The reaction was instantaneous and violent. A shockwave of pure ambient pressure exploded outward from Izuku's body, kicking up a massive storm of dust and debris. Green lightning erupted from his skin, not in thin arcs, but in thick, blinding cables of emerald energy. The sheer static electricity in the air made the hair of every student in Class 1-A stand on end.

 

"What the hell is that?!" a boy with tape-dispenser elbows shouted, shielding his eyes from the blinding light.

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes against the wind, his capture scarf whipping violently. Good god. The ambient pressure alone is suffocating.

 

Izuku planted his left foot. The ground beneath him spider-webbed with deep fissures.

 

He drew his right arm back, the muscles bulging, glowing with a terrifying, incandescent heat. He looked up at the sky, locked his wrist, and threw.

 

"SMASH!"

 

The sound wasn't a crack or a boom. It was the sound of reality tearing.

 

The softball vanished from Izuku's hand, leaving a trail of superheated, glowing air in its wake. The shockwave from the throw hit the class a split second later, a concussive blast of wind that threw several students, including Uraraka and Mineta, flat onto their backs. Aizawa had to dig his heels into the dirt to avoid being pushed backward.

 

High above, a massive ring of white clouds materialized out of nowhere, parted violently by the sheer atmospheric displacement of the ball breaking the sound barrier dozens of times over.

 

Silence rushed back into the courtyard, broken only by the crackle of residual green lightning fading from Izuku's skin.

 

He lowered his arm. The sleeve of his gym uniform was completely shredded, fluttering in the wind, but his arm was perfectly fine. Not a bruise. Not a broken bone.

 

Aizawa stood frozen. He slowly looked down at his digital device. The screen was glitching, the numbers rapidly cycling until it hit an error threshold, finally displaying a single symbol.

 

∞ (Infinity).

 

Aizawa turned the screen toward the class.

 

The students were utterly paralyzed. They didn't cheer. They didn't gasp. They just stared, their faces pale, their minds incapable of fully comprehending the apocalyptic scale of violence they had just witnessed from a fifteen-year-old boy.

 

"A-Are you kidding me?" the red-haired boy whispered, his voice trembling. "That wasn't a quirk. That was a missile."

 

Izuku turned around, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Was... was that okay, Sensei?"

 

Before Aizawa could respond, a guttural, inhuman scream ripped through the air.

 

"DEEEEEKUUUUU!"

 

Izuku turned his head just in time to see Katsuki Bakugo hurtling toward him.

 

Bakugo had completely lost his mind. His eyes were bloodshot, completely feral, devoid of any rationality. The foundations of his world had finally collapsed, and his only instinct was to violently destroy the anomaly that had broken it. He propelled himself forward with massive explosions from both hands, moving faster than he ever had before.

 

"TELL ME HOW YOU DID IT!" Bakugo roared, his right hand sparking with a lethal, point-blank explosion aimed directly at Izuku's face. "TELL ME WHAT YOU DID, YOU BASTARD!"

 

"Bakugo, stop!" Aizawa barked, his eyes flashing red, his hand darting for his capture weapon. But he was too far away. Bakugo was too fast.

 

But to Izuku, Bakugo wasn't fast at all.

 

As Bakugo closed the final three feet, screaming in rage, time seemed to slow down for Izuku. The humming infinity in his chest pulsed. He didn't feel fear. He didn't feel anger. He just felt an overwhelming, crushing sense of responsibility.

 

He's going to hurt himself, Izuku thought, his mind perfectly clear.

 

In a movement so fast it didn't even register as a blur to the watching class, Izuku shifted his weight.

 

He sidestepped the explosive right hook by a millimeter.

 

Bakugo's eyes widened in shock as his fist hit empty air. He tried to pivot, to unleash a second blast with his left hand, but before the sparks could even ignite his sweat, Izuku moved.

 

Izuku didn't throw a punch. He didn't use a martial arts throw. He simply raised his right hand and extended his index finger.

 

He placed the tip of his finger against the center of Bakugo's collarbone.

 

And he pushed downward.

 

He used exactly zero-point-one percent of One For All.

 

Bakugo’s forward momentum was instantly, violently arrested. It was as if he had run full speed into a titanium mountain. The force of Izuku's single finger drove Bakugo straight down into the dirt.

 

SLAM.

 

A small crater formed beneath Bakugo's back, a cloud of dust kicking up around them.

 

The entire courtyard froze.

 

Bakugo lay on his back in the dirt, the wind knocked completely out of his lungs. He couldn't move. He tried to lift his shoulders, to activate his quirk, but the pressure of Izuku's single index finger on his chest was absolute. It was an immovable, divine weight. It didn't hurt—Izuku was being incredibly careful not to break Bakugo's collarbone—but it was physically impossible to overcome.

 

Bakugo stared up at the sky, his crimson eyes wide, his pupils dilated in pure, unadulterated shock. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. The pebble hadn't just surpassed him; the pebble had become a god, and had casually pinned him to the earth with a single digit.

 

Izuku was leaning over him, his face pale, his green eyes filled with absolute, terrified panic.

 

"I-I'm so sorry, Kacchan!" Izuku babbled frantically, completely ignoring the fact that he was currently dominating the most aggressive student in the class. "Please don't move! I don't want to hurt you! I'm holding back as much as I can, but if you struggle I might accidentally crush your chest! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

 

The contrast was deeply, profoundly disturbing to everyone watching.

 

Here was a boy with enough power to split the heavens, profusely apologizing and begging for forgiveness while effortlessly neutralizing a murderous attack with one finger.

 

Aizawa let his capture weapon fall back to his shoulders. His Erasure quirk deactivated, his eyes returning to normal. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck.

 

He didn't even fight back, Aizawa realized, a chill running down his spine. He just... dismantled him. With a touch. He treats Bakugo the same way a human treats a fragile, angry kitten.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice surprisingly soft. "Let him go."

 

Izuku flinched, immediately yanking his finger away and taking three large steps back, bowing his head repeatedly. "I'm sorry, Aizawa-sensei! I didn't mean to fight! He just surprised me!"

 

Bakugo didn't get up. He just lay in the dirt crater, staring blankly at the clouds. His hands weren't sparking anymore. The fight had been entirely, utterly beaten out of him in less than a second.

 

Iida and a few other students rushed forward, helping Bakugo to his feet. Bakugo didn't shrug them off. He didn't yell. He looked completely catatonic, his eyes hollow. He allowed himself to be led back to the group, not sparing a single glance at Izuku.

 

Aizawa cleared his throat, the sound bringing the terrified class back to reality.

 

"The test is over," Aizawa announced, projecting the final rankings onto a holographic screen from his device.

 

Izuku was at the top. Number one. He had dominated every single metric.

 

"By the way, I lied about the expulsion," Aizawa added smoothly, though his eyes never left Izuku. "It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your quirks."

 

The class groaned in relief, but the energy was entirely dead. There was no cheerful banter, no laughter.

 

"Go to the locker rooms, get changed, and go back to class," Aizawa ordered.

 

As the students turned to leave, nobody walked near Izuku. The invisible barrier that had been forming all morning had fully solidified. They gave him a wide berth, stealing nervous, fearful glances at him. Even Uraraka, who had been so friendly earlier, walked close to Iida, her eyes darting away when Izuku looked in her direction.

 

Izuku stood alone in the courtyard, watching his classmates retreat.

 

The wind blew across the dirt field, rustling the shredded sleeve of his gym uniform.

 

He had done it. He had proven his worth. He was at the top of the class, safe from expulsion, holding the power of his idol.

 

But as he looked at his hand, the hand that had just humiliated his oldest childhood friend and terrified everyone he wanted to save, a profound, crushing loneliness settled into his chest.

 

All Might’s warning echoed in his ears. You will be standing on a summit entirely alone.

 

Izuku clenched his fist. He was the strongest person in the world. And he had never felt more isolated. He turned and began the long, quiet walk back to the locker room, surrounded by a world made of cardboard, knowing he could never truly touch it without breaking it.

 

The morning after the Quirk Apprehension Test, the atmosphere in Class 1-A was thick enough to choke on.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat at his desk near the back of the room, his eyes glued to the grain of the wood. He could feel the stares. They weren't the mocking, pitying glances he had endured in junior high. These were heavy, suffocating weights pressing against the back of his neck. They were glances stolen out of the corners of eyes, followed by hushed whispers that abruptly ceased the moment he shifted in his seat.

 

He was radioactive.

 

To his right, a few desks ahead, sat Katsuki Bakugo. Normally, by this time of the morning, Bakugo would have yelled at three different people, threatened to blow up someone’s desk, and kicked his feet up on his chair.

 

Today, Bakugo was entirely still.

 

He sat rigidly, his arms crossed tight over his chest, staring blankly at the chalkboard. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of a sleepless night. He hadn't said a single word since he walked through the door. When Eijiro Kirishima, the red-haired boy, had tried to cheerfully greet him, Bakugo had simply looked through him as if he weren't there.

 

Izuku swallowed the lump in his throat. He looked down at his own hands, resting flat on his thighs. He had spent the entire morning meticulously managing his strength. Turning the doorknob. Pouring milk into his cereal. Zipping his backpack. Every action required a hyper-fixated, agonizing level of focus to ensure he didn't accidentally rip the world apart.

 

He felt like a ghost haunting his own life. He was here, he was tangible, but he couldn't interact with anything without fear of breaking it.

 

"I AM..."

 

The booming voice shattered the tense silence of the room. The massive door to the classroom was thrown open with dramatic flair.

 

"...WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"

 

Toshinori Yagi, in his hyper-muscular All Might persona, stood in the doorway, hands planted on his hips, a gleaming smile plastered across his face. He was wearing his Silver Age hero costume, the red, white, and blue spandex shining brilliantly in the morning light.

 

The class, momentarily forgetting their anxiety, erupted.

"It's All Might!"

"Wow, he really is a teacher!"

"That's a costume from the Silver Age, isn't it? So cool!"

 

All Might marched to the podium, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. "Foundational Hero Studies!" he announced, flexing his massive biceps. "For this class, we'll be building up your hero foundation through various trials! Let's get right into it! Today, it's..."

 

He whipped out a placard with bold English letters.

 

"BATTLE TRAINING!"

 

Izuku’s heart skipped a beat. Battle training. Against each other.

 

"And to go with that..." All Might pointed to the wall, where rows of numbered compartments slid out from the paneling. "The costumes made based on your quirk registrations and requests you sent in before school started! Get changed and gather at Ground Beta!"

 

 

 

The tunnel leading out to Ground Beta was dark, echoing with the sounds of heavy boots, shifting armor, and the chatter of excited teenagers.

 

Izuku walked near the back of the pack. He looked down at his costume. His mother had made it for him—a dark green full-body jumpsuit with white accents, a red utility belt, and knee pads. The hood had long, rabbit-like ears, a clear homage to All Might’s hair tufts, and a metal respirator mask that mimicked his idol's smile.

 

It was a little dorky, perhaps, but it was filled with his mother's love. Yet, as he walked, he couldn't help but feel a profound sense of irony. The costume was designed to look approachable, to look like a friendly hero. But underneath the fabric hummed an apocalyptic force that was anything but friendly.

 

"Wow, Deku! Your costume looks practical!"

 

Izuku blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. Ochaco Uraraka had fallen into step beside him. She was wearing a skin-tight pink and black suit with bulky, rounded bracers on her wrists and boots. She looked nervous, rubbing the back of her neck, but she was smiling.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku said, slightly surprised she was initiating a conversation. "Your costume looks great. The helmet is... very sci-fi."

 

Uraraka flushed, tugging at the collar of her suit. "Yeah, I should have specified what I wanted better. It's a little tight. I'm kind of embarrassed." She paused, her eyes darting to his right arm—the arm that had obliterated the Zero Pointer. "Um... are you feeling okay? You know, about the battle training?"

 

Izuku gave a small, weary smile. "I'm okay. I just... I have to be careful."

 

Uraraka nodded slowly. "Right. Because if you punch someone like you punched that robot..." She shivered, though she tried to hide it with a laugh. "Well, I just hope I'm on your team!"

 

They stepped out of the tunnel and into the blinding sunlight of Ground Beta.

 

It was a massive, sprawling fake city, similar to the one used in the entrance exam, but even more densely packed with high-rise buildings and narrow alleyways.

 

All Might stood in the center of the street, watching his students emerge. His smile was as wide as ever, but as his eyes landed on Izuku, the smile tightened just a fraction. He had seen the reports from Aizawa's Quirk Apprehension Test. He knew Izuku had thrown a baseball into orbit without breaking a sweat, and had pinned the explosive Bakugo to the earth with a single finger.

 

He is a walking deity, All Might thought, a cold sweat pricking his neck. I must ensure this training goes smoothly. If he loses control in a combat scenario...

 

"They say the clothes make the man, young men and ladies!" All Might boomed, clapping his massive hands together. "Be fully aware... from now on, you are heroes! Now, shall we begin the Battle Trial?"

 

Iida, looking like a robotic knight in his sleek, white engine-armor, raised his hand. "Sensei! This is a battle center from the entrance exam. Will we be conducting urban battles again?"

 

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

 

All Might explained the rules. The class would be split into teams of two. One team would act as Villains, guarding a fake nuclear weapon hidden somewhere in a multi-story building. The other team would act as Heroes, tasked with either capturing the Villains or touching the weapon within a fifteen-minute time limit.

 

"We will draw lots to determine the teams!" All Might announced, bringing out a yellow box.

 

Izuku reached in when it was his turn, pulling out a wooden ball painted with the letter 'A'.

 

He looked around. "Team A?"

 

"Oh! We're a team, Deku!" Uraraka beamed, holding up a matching ball.

 

Izuku let out a small sigh of relief. At least he was paired with someone he was somewhat comfortable with. He wouldn't have to worry about accidentally intimidating a complete stranger.

 

"Excellent! Now, let us draw the first match!" All Might reached into two separate boxes, pulling out two balls. He held them up high.

 

"The first match will be... Team A as the Heroes, versus Team D as the Villains!"

 

The blood drained from Izuku's face.

 

Team D.

 

He slowly turned his head. Across the crowd of students, standing completely still, was Katsuki Bakugo. Next to him stood Iida Tenya.

 

Bakugo slowly turned his head to meet Izuku's gaze. The hollow, catatonic look from yesterday was gone. In its place was a terrifying, hyper-focused intensity. It wasn't the wild, rabid anger of a bully anymore. It was the cold, calculating rage of an apex predator that had been deeply wounded and was now singularly obsessed with proving it was still at the top of the food chain.

 

Bakugo didn't scream. He didn't pop explosions in his palms. He just stared at Izuku, his red eyes burning with a silent, lethal promise.

 

All Might looked between the two boys, misinterpreting the absolute gravity of the situation. Ah, a fated rivalry! Young Bakugo is eager to test his mettle against young Midoriya's newfound power. This will be an excellent learning opportunity for both of them!

 

"Villain team, go in first and set up!" All Might instructed. "Hero team, you infiltrate in five minutes! Everyone else, head to the monitor room with me!"

 

 

 

Inside the dimly lit, five-story concrete building, Iida was pacing back and forth in front of the papier-mâché nuclear weapon.

 

"So, even if this is training, it pains me to become a villain," Iida muttered, adjusting his glasses. He slammed a fist into his palm. "But our duty is to protect this weapon! Bakugo, my plan is to block the stairwell and use my mobility to—"

 

"Shut up."

 

Iida paused, looking at his teammate.

 

Bakugo was standing by the window, peering through a crack in the blinds down at the street below. He was wearing his hero costume—a black tank top, heavy combat pants, and massive, grenade-shaped gauntlets on his forearms.

 

"Bakugo, we need to coordinate," Iida insisted. "Midoriya is terrifyingly powerful. Did you not see what he did yesterday? If we face him directly, we will lose. Our best option is evasion and stalling."

 

"I said shut up, Four-Eyes," Bakugo growled, his voice dangerously low.

 

He wasn't listening to Iida. His mind was replaying the humiliation of the previous day on an endless loop. The way Izuku's single finger had felt like an anvil on his chest. The way Izuku had looked down at him—not with arrogance, but with pity. With fear that he might accidentally break Bakugo.

 

He's been laughing at me, Bakugo thought, his hands trembling as he clenched them into fists, a few sparks igniting the sweat on his palms. For a decade. He let me beat him up. He let me look down on him. All while he was hiding this... this goddamn monster inside him. He thinks he's better than me. He thinks I'm fragile.

 

Bakugo turned away from the window, his eyes narrowing into slits. "You guard the nuke. I'm going down."

 

"Bakugo! That is incredibly reckless! Have you forgotten the objective?"

 

Bakugo ignored him, stalking out into the dark hallway, his heavy boots echoing off the concrete walls. I don't care about the objective. I don't care about the grade. I'm going to rip that smug, fake mask off his face and prove that I'm the strongest.

 

Down on the street, Izuku and Uraraka stood before the entrance of the building.

 

Izuku held a blueprint of the building in his hands, tracing the structural supports with his finger.

 

"Okay," Izuku muttered, his mind working in overdrive. "The building is five stories. Reinforced concrete, but the internal walls are drywall and cheap stud framing. If I use anything over three percent of One For All, I run the risk of compromising the load-bearing pillars. If the building collapses, we fail, and we could kill Kacchan and Iida."

 

Uraraka stared at him, bewildered. "You're... you're already calculating the structural integrity of the building so you don't accidentally bring it down?"

 

Izuku looked up, realizing he was muttering out loud. "Oh! Um, yeah. I have to. My quirk is... it's hard to pull my punches."

 

He rolled up the blueprint and looked at Uraraka seriously. "Uraraka. Kacchan is going to come straight for me. He won't care about the weapon. He won't care about you. He is singularly focused on fighting me."

 

"Because of yesterday?" she asked softly.

 

Izuku nodded. "Yes. So, here is the plan. We walk in. When he ambushes us, I will hold his attention. He won't let me leave. While he's focused on me, you need to slip away, find the stairs, and locate Iida and the weapon. Can you do that?"

 

Uraraka nodded determinedly, tapping her cheeks to hype herself up. "Got it! Leave the infiltrating to me!"

 

"HERO TEAM, YOU MAY NOW INFILTRATE!" All Might's voice blared from the speakers scattered across the training ground.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He visualized the vault in his chest. He didn't even open the door. He just let the ambient heat of the power warm his blood, bringing his physical capabilities to the absolute peak of standard human biology, with a fraction of a percent of enhancement.

 

He pushed the door open.

 

The ground floor was dark, filled with shipping crates and concrete pillars. The only light came from the narrow windows, casting long, menacing shadows across the floor.

 

Izuku and Uraraka moved quietly down the central corridor, their footsteps muffled.

 

He's close, Izuku thought, his enhanced senses picking up the faint smell of nitroglycerin in the stale air.

 

As they approached an intersection, a shadow detached itself from the ceiling above them.

 

Izuku didn't even need to look up. He felt the shift in air pressure. He heard the faint crackle of sparks.

 

"Uraraka, get back!" Izuku ordered, his voice remarkably calm.

 

He didn't grab her. He just planted his foot and swept his arm backward, generating a gust of wind just strong enough to push Uraraka sliding on her heels five feet down the hallway.

 

A split second later, Bakugo plummeted from the ceiling, swinging his right arm in a vicious arc.

 

BOOM!

 

A massive explosion engulfed the intersection, shattering the nearby windows and filling the corridor with blinding fire and thick, black smoke.

 

Up in the monitor room, the class gasped.

"A surprise attack from above?!" Mineta shrieked. "That's cheating!"

"A sneak attack is a valid strategy in real combat," Aizawa's voice would have said, but All Might gripped the microphone, leaning closer to the screens.

 

The smoke in the corridor slowly began to clear.

 

Bakugo landed in a crouch, a feral grin stretching across his face. "Dodged it, huh? You really are a sneaky bastard, Deku."

 

The smoke parted entirely.

 

Izuku hadn't dodged.

 

He was standing in the exact same spot he had been when Bakugo jumped. The front of his green mask was slightly singed, but he was completely untouched. He had merely swiped his hand in front of his face, using a fraction of wind pressure to part the explosion around him like a rock splitting a stream.

 

Bakugo's grin vanished, replaced by a twitch of pure, unadulterated fury.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku said, his eyes never leaving Bakugo. "Go. Now."

 

Uraraka didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her feet and sprinted down the adjoining hallway, disappearing into the shadows toward the stairwell.

 

Bakugo didn't even glance at her. His red eyes were locked onto Izuku, practically glowing in the dim light.

 

"You think you can just stand there and take my hits?" Bakugo hissed, slowly standing up, raising his gauntlets. "You think you can look down on me, you quirkless piece of trash?!"

 

"I'm not looking down on you, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice steady, devoid of his usual stutter. "I'm looking at you. And I'm telling you, this is a waste of time. Iida is alone. You abandoned the objective."

 

"I AM THE OBJECTIVE!" Bakugo roared, propelling himself forward with a blast from his left hand.

 

He closed the distance in a millisecond, throwing a devastating right hook aimed squarely at Izuku's jaw, a massive explosion prepped to detonate on impact.

 

Izuku sighed.

 

He didn't activate the green lightning. He just tilted his head.

 

Bakugo's fist sailed past his ear, the explosion detonating uselessly against the concrete wall behind Izuku, blowing a massive crater into the plaster.

 

Before Bakugo could retract his arm, Izuku reached up and gently tapped the underside of Bakugo's elbow with two fingers.

 

It wasn't a strike. It was a nudge. But with the microscopic weight of One For All behind it, the tap disrupted Bakugo's center of gravity entirely. Bakugo spun like a top, completely losing his balance, and crashed hard onto his side on the concrete floor.

 

"Dammit!" Bakugo scrambled to his feet, launching a flurry of explosive kicks and punches.

 

It was a masterclass in brutality. Bakugo was a combat genius. His movements were fluid, unpredictable, using his explosions to change direction in mid-air, creating a suffocating barrage of fire, smoke, and kinetic force.

 

To the students in the monitor room, Bakugo looked like a demon, a blur of fire and rage.

 

But to Izuku, Bakugo was moving in slow motion.

 

Izuku didn't fight back. He didn't throw a single punch. He simply existed in the spaces between Bakugo's strikes. He swayed backward as a flaming kick sailed past his nose. He ducked under a double-palm blast. He sidestepped a sweeping hook.

 

He was treating Katsuki Bakugo—the prodigy of Aldera Junior High, the boy who had terrorized him for a decade—like a mildly aggressive toddler.

 

"Fight back!" Bakugo screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. Tears of pure frustration pricked the corners of his eyes. Every time he missed, the psychological damage compounded. "Hit me, you bastard! USE YOUR DAMN QUIRK!"

 

"If I hit you, Kacchan, the trial ends," Izuku said calmly, side-stepping another explosion. "And I want Uraraka to get the experience of securing the weapon."

 

The sheer, unintentional arrogance of the statement struck Bakugo like a physical blow. Izuku wasn't fighting him. Izuku was babysitting him while his teammate did the actual classwork.

 

Bakugo stopped. He stood in the middle of the ruined, scorched hallway, his chest heaving, his breath coming in ragged, hysterical gasps. He looked at his hands. They were shaking violently.

 

He looked up at Izuku. Izuku wasn't even sweating. He was standing perfectly straight, his hands resting easily at his sides, watching Bakugo with a look of profound, melancholic pity.

 

Something inside Katsuki Bakugo finally, irrevocably snapped.

 

"You think..." Bakugo whispered, his voice trembling so violently it sounded like it was coming apart. "You think you don't even need to try. You think I'm that far beneath you."

 

He slowly raised his right arm, pointing the massive, grenade-shaped gauntlet directly at Izuku. He reached over with his left hand and gripped the metal pin attached to the firing mechanism.

 

Up in the monitor room, All Might leaned forward, his eyes widening in horror as he recognized the design of the support gear.

 

Those gauntlets... they store his nitroglycerin sweat. If he pulls that pin...

 

"Young Bakugo, stop!" All Might grabbed the microphone, his voice booming over the speakers. "Are you trying to kill him?! If you fire that indoors, you'll collapse the hallway!"

 

"He won't die if he dodges!" Bakugo screamed back at the ceiling, completely unhinged.

 

He looked back at Izuku, a manic, broken smile tearing across his face.

 

"Let's see you dodge this, Deku."

 

He pulled the pin.

 

The firing mechanism clicked. The safety valve released. All the concentrated nitroglycerin sweat Bakugo had stored up over the last ten minutes of frantic combat was funneled into the ignition chamber.

 

The resulting explosion wasn't a blast. It was a pillar of absolute annihilation.

 

A blinding, roaring tornado of fire and concussive force erupted from the gauntlet. It filled the entire hallway, incinerating the floorboards, melting the drywall, and vaporizing the windows. The sheer heat of it turned the air into a shimmering mirage. It roared down the corridor like a dragon's breath, entirely consuming the space where Izuku Midoriya stood.

 

In the monitor room, the screens whited out. The students screamed.

 

"MIDORIYA!" Kirishima yelled, slamming his hands against the glass.

 

All Might froze, his heart stopping in his chest. I was too late. I should have stopped the match.

 

Inside the building, the recoil of the blast sent Bakugo skidding backward, his boots carving deep trenches into the concrete. His right arm was completely numb, the metal of his gauntlet smoking and glowing red-hot.

 

The roar of the explosion faded, leaving only the sound of crackling flames and crumbling debris. The hallway was a blackened, hollowed-out tunnel of destruction.

 

Bakugo stood panting, staring into the thick, swirling black smoke.

 

I won, his broken mind rationalized. He had to dodge. He had to run away. He couldn't just take that. I made him run.

 

The smoke began to shift.

 

Footsteps echoed from the inferno.

 

Clack. Clack. Clack.

 

Slow, deliberate, and entirely unbothered.

 

Bakugo's breath hitched. His red eyes widened to the size of saucers.

 

The smoke parted.

 

Izuku Midoriya walked out of the fire.

 

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

 

He hadn't activated his quirk to move out of the way. Instead, he had raised his left hand, his palm facing outward.

 

A sphere of perfectly clear, undisturbed air surrounded him. It wasn't a forcefield made of light or energy; it was a localized area of absolute, crushing wind pressure generated by a constant, microscopic output of One For All from his palm. The blast of Bakugo's gauntlet had simply hit the wall of air and broken around him like water around a stone.

 

Izuku's costume wasn't singed. Not a single hair on his head was out of place. He lowered his hand, the wind pressure dissipating, allowing the residual smoke to finally wash over him.

 

He stopped ten feet away from Bakugo.

 

"That was incredibly dangerous, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice echoing in the ruined hallway. It wasn't the voice of a scared teenager anymore. It sounded ancient. It sounded like the tired admonishment of a god speaking to a foolish mortal. "If I had dodged that, the blast would have carried through the exterior wall and potentially injured the students outside. If I hadn't shielded myself, the building's structural integrity would have been compromised, and the ceiling would have collapsed on both of us."

 

Bakugo couldn't speak. His jaw was slack. His arms hung limply at his sides. The sight of Izuku walking through a lethal, building-leveling explosion with less effort than it takes to hold an umbrella in the rain completely shattered whatever fragile remnants of his ego still existed.

 

"You aren't fighting me," Izuku continued, taking a slow step forward. "You're fighting a phantom. You're fighting the quirkless kid you used to push around. But that kid is gone. And if you keep fighting like this... completely ignoring your surroundings, your teammates, and the consequences of your actions... you will never be a hero. You'll just be a weapon."

 

Izuku didn't wait for a response. He didn't need to. The fight was over in every conceivable metric.

 

He raised his hand to his earpiece. "Uraraka. Status."

 

Static crackled in his ear, followed by Uraraka's breathless voice. "I'm on the fifth floor! Iida is monologue-ing about being a villain. He cleared the room of debris so I can't use my quirk on anything to float the weapon!"

 

"Understood," Izuku said. "Brace yourself. I'm going to alter the terrain."

 

Up in the monitor room, All Might finally found his voice. "Young Midoriya! What are you doing?! The structural integrity is already—"

 

Izuku didn't listen. He looked up at the ceiling.

 

He didn't pull his arm back. He didn't use a hundred percent. He visualized the vault, opened it just a crack, and channeled exactly five percent of One For All into his right index finger.

 

He flicked the ceiling.

 

CRACK-BOOM.

 

The air pressure from the single flick generated a localized, vertical hurricane. The concussive blast hit the ceiling and didn't just break the concrete; it cored it.

 

A perfectly circular hole, ten feet in diameter, was instantly punched through the ceiling. But it didn't stop there. The kinetic force traveled vertically, punching through the floor of the third story, the fourth story, and finally blowing a massive hole through the floor of the fifth-story weapon room, right beneath Iida's feet.

 

On the fifth floor, Iida yelped as the floor vanished beneath him, the sheer wind pressure knocking him off his feet and sending him tumbling into the corner of the room.

 

Uraraka, who had braced herself against the doorframe, saw her opening. She launched herself forward, leaping over the chasm, and slapped her hands onto the papier-mâché missile.

 

"R-Retrieved!" she yelled, hugging the bomb.

 

Down on the first floor, Izuku lowered his hand. He looked at Bakugo.

 

Bakugo was on his knees. He hadn't been knocked down by the wind. His legs had simply given out. He was staring at the massive, perfectly uniform hole that pierced all the way to the roof, revealing a small patch of blue sky.

 

Izuku had just bypassed a five-story building with a flick of his finger.

 

"THE HERO TEAM... WINS!" All Might's voice blared over the speakers, shaking slightly.

 

The buzzer sounded. The trial was over.

 

Izuku stood in the silence of the ruined hallway. He looked down at Bakugo. He wanted to reach out. He wanted to offer a hand, to ask if he was okay, to try and mend the decade of broken history between them.

 

But as Izuku looked at Bakugo's face, he stopped.

 

Bakugo wasn't angry. He wasn't glaring. He was crying.

 

Silent, thick tears were spilling from his wide, hollow eyes, tracking through the soot on his cheeks. He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving, staring at the floorboards. The absolute, unbridgeable chasm between them had finally broken him.

 

Izuku slowly pulled his hand back. He realized, with a sinking heart, that offering his hand right now wouldn't be an act of kindness. It would be an act of supreme cruelty. It would be the god reaching down to pity the ant.

 

Izuku turned around and walked out of the building alone.

 

 

 

The monitor room was dead silent when Izuku and Uraraka returned. Iida followed shortly after, looking bewildered and humbled. Bakugo had to be escorted to the nurse's office by a recovery bot, completely unresponsive.

 

The students of Class 1-A parted like the Red Sea as Izuku walked into the room. Nobody congratulated him. Nobody cheered. They looked at him with the kind of awe reserved for natural disasters.

 

All Might stood at the front of the room, looking visibly aged. He cleared his throat.

 

"W-Well! Let us review the match!" All Might forced a smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Who can tell me who the MVP of this match was?"

 

Momo Yaoyorozu, a tall girl with a black ponytail, raised her hand slowly. "It was Midoriya, Sensei."

 

"And why is that, Young Yaoyorozu?" All Might asked.

 

Momo stepped forward, her dark eyes fixed on the frozen camera feed of Izuku walking through the inferno.

 

"Because he displayed absolute, flawless control," Momo said, her voice quiet but firm. "Bakugo acted out of pure emotion, ignoring the objective and risking catastrophic collateral damage. Iida adapted to his role, but failed to anticipate an attack that defied structural logic. Uraraka completed the objective, but only because Midoriya created the opening."

 

She turned to look at Izuku. "Midoriya understood the exact parameters of the environment. He calculated the structural limits of the building. He neutralized a lethal threat without inflicting a single injury upon his opponent, and he secured the objective with surgical precision. From a tactical standpoint, he was perfect."

 

She paused, looking down. "But... from a psychological standpoint, it was cruel."

 

The class shifted uncomfortably.

 

"Cruel?" All Might asked softly.

 

"Yes," Momo said. "A hero's strength is supposed to inspire. But Midoriya's strength... it is so absolute, so entirely beyond the realm of human capability, that it doesn't inspire. It induces despair. He didn't just defeat Bakugo. He made Bakugo realize that his entire life's effort was meaningless. That is a terrifying power to wield."

 

Silence fell over the room. Momo had articulated exactly what everyone was feeling.

 

All Might looked at Izuku. Izuku was staring at the floor, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.

 

She's right, All Might thought, a profound sorrow washing over him.

 

When All Might debuted, he was older. He had built a persona of laughter and joy to cushion the terrifying impact of his strength. The public saw him as a savior because he acted like a goofy, lovable uncle. He made himself approachable to bridge the gap between god and man.

 

But Izuku didn't have that persona. Izuku was a quiet, nervous, traumatized fifteen-year-old boy who just happened to hold the power of a nuclear arsenal in his fingertips. To his peers, he wasn't a symbol of peace. He was an anomaly. An immovable object that reminded them all of their own utter insignificance.

 

"T-Thank you for that insightful analysis, Young Yaoyorozu," All Might said, his booming voice subdued. "Let us... let us move on to the next match."

 

For the rest of the day, Izuku stood in the back of the room, watching his classmates fight. He watched them struggle. He watched them sweat, bleed, and push themselves to their absolute limits to overcome obstacles. He watched them cheer for each other, bond over their shared struggles, and form the foundations of lifelong friendships.

 

He couldn't participate in that.

 

He couldn't struggle. He couldn't push himself. He could only hold back.

 

As the sun began to set, casting long, golden shadows across the UA campus, Izuku walked to the train station alone.

 

He didn't look up at the sky. He didn't smile. He just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, meticulously calculating the microscopic amount of force required to walk, trapping himself inside his own body, forever separated from the fragile, cardboard world he had sworn to protect.