What if deku had a half frog quirk and half one for all

 

The world is not equal.

 

Izuku Midoriya learned this fundamental truth not at the age of four, but at the age of five, during a harsh, unforgiving winter.

 

In the modern era, the supernatural had become the mundane. Dreams were no longer confined to comic books and silver screens; they walked the streets in spandex and armor, wielding fire, telekinesis, and super-strength. Eighty percent of the global population possessed an uncanny ability, a genetic phenomenon dubbed a "Quirk."

 

Quirks were broadly categorized into three distinct classes: Emitters, who could project or manipulate energy and matter; Transformers, who could temporarily alter their biology; and Mutants, those whose very physiology was permanently rewritten by their genetics. Society loved Emitters. They loved the flash of explosions, the roar of hellfire, the dazzling lights of lasers and localized thunderstorms. Transformers were respected, often seen as versatile and heroic.

 

Mutants, however, occupied a strange, quiet space in the societal hierarchy. While some mutant traits were awe-inspiring—like the magnificent wings of the Pro Hero Hawks or the draconic scales of Ryukyu—others were deemed unsightly, weak, or simply "gross."

 

Izuku Midoriya fell into the latter category.

 

He still remembered the day his quirk manifested. It hadn't been an explosion of power or a sudden burst of telekinesis like his mother’s. He had been sitting in the living room, watching an old video of All Might’s debut on the computer. A fly had been buzzing around the monitor, irritatingly loud. Four-year-old Izuku had tracked it with his large, emerald eyes. Without thinking, he opened his mouth.

 

There was a wet snap.

 

Something long, pink, and incredibly fast shot from his mouth, striking the monitor with pinpoint accuracy, capturing the fly on a sticky appendage, and retracting back into his mouth before he could even register what had happened. He had sat there, blinking, a very confused, slightly disgusted expression on his face as he swallowed.

 

The visit to the quirk specialist the following day had been enlightening, if not slightly disappointing.

 

"Well, Mrs. Midoriya," the bald, eccentric doctor had said, pointing a pen at an X-ray of Izuku’s skull and legs. "Your son is definitely not quirkless. However, it seems he’s inherited a rather complex, dormant recessive gene, completely bypassing your mild telekinesis and your husband's fire-breathing."

 

"A recessive gene?" Inko Midoriya had asked, holding little Izuku’s hand.

 

"Indeed. I’ve checked his genome. It’s a mutation-type. Specifically, his physiology has taken on the characteristics of the Hylidae family. The arboreal amphibians. Simply put, your son has the traits of a Tree Frog."

 

Izuku had looked down at his hands. Over the next few months, the changes became more pronounced. The tips of his fingers and toes swelled slightly, developing microscopic, spatula-shaped setae—sticky pads that allowed him to effortlessly scale the walls of his apartment. His leg muscles grew dense, coiled like high-tension springs beneath his skin, granting him leaping power that far exceeded a normal child's. His tongue, prehensile and incredibly strong, could extend several meters. He even developed a minor form of chromatophore manipulation in his skin, allowing him to subtly shift his skin tone to blend in with green or brown backgrounds, though it was rudimentary at best.

 

He wasn't quirkless. He had a power. But as he grew older, the drawbacks became glaringly obvious.

 

Tree frogs are ectothermic. Cold-blooded.

 

When winter struck Musutafu, Japan, Izuku’s world slowed to a crawl. His body could not regulate its own temperature. If the thermometer dropped below ten degrees Celsius, his dense leg muscles would lock up. His sticky pads would dry out and lose their grip. His heart rate would drop, and a profound, inescapable lethargy would wash over him, forcing him to bundle up in layers of thermal clothing just to stay awake in class.

 

And then, there was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"A frog?" Bakugo had sneered on the playground, sparking tiny, crackling explosions in his palms. The other children gathered around, marveling at the sheer, destructive brilliance of Bakugo’s newly manifested Explosion quirk. "What the hell kind of hero is a frog gonna be? What are you gonna do, Deku? Catch villains with your gross tongue? Croak them to death?"

 

"I-I can jump really high, Kacchan!" Izuku had protested, shifting his weight on his powerful legs. "And I can climb walls! I can rescue people from high places!"

 

"You're a slimy bug-eater!" Bakugo had shoved him, sending Izuku tumbling backward. Because it was November and the air was chillingly crisp, Izuku’s reflexes were terribly slow. He couldn't right himself in time and landed hard in the dirt. "You're weak, Deku! You're just a gross mutation. You'll never be a hero like All Might. Never!"

 

That word—weak—had echoed in Izuku’s mind for the next ten years.

 

 

 

Ten Years Later.

 

The pen scratched furiously across the scorched paper of Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13.

 

Izuku sat at his desk in the back of the classroom at Aldera Junior High, his large, wide eyes focused intensely on his notes. He was muttering under his breath, a rapid-fire stream of consciousness analyzing the recent debut of the Pro Hero, Mt. Lady.

 

"...Gigantification quirk, extremely effective for localized disaster containment and grappling large-scale villain types, but her mobility in narrow urban corridors is severely restricted. She’ll need to stick to main avenues and plazas to minimize collateral damage. Furthermore, the sheer caloric intake required to maintain such a mass-shifting ability must be astronomical..."

 

"Midoriya! Are you muttering again? Cut it out, it's creepy!"

 

Izuku snapped his mouth shut, his prehensile tongue instinctively pressing against the roof of his mouth. He looked up, his cheeks flushing green with embarrassment. A few of his classmates snickered.

 

It was mid-April, and the weather in Musutafu was finally warming up. For Izuku, spring was a rebirth. As the ambient temperature rose, the sluggishness of winter melted away from his bones. Beneath his standard-issue black school uniform, he wore a specialized thermal undershirt, just in case, but today his blood was running warm. His leg muscles twitched with pent-up kinetic energy. His fingertips, left exposed by custom-tailored fingerless gloves, felt perfectly moist and tacky. He felt alive. He felt fast.

 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your futures!" their homeroom teacher announced, slapping a stack of career aptitude forms onto his podium. "I'd hand out these printouts for your future career paths, but... who am I kidding? You all want to go into the hero track, right?"

 

The classroom erupted into cheers. Students showed off their quirks—elongated fingers, minor water manipulation, floating objects.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful quirks," the teacher said, waving his hands to settle them down. "But remember, using your quirks in school is against the rules!"

 

"Hey, teach!" a loud, arrogant voice cut through the noise. Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his feet kicked up onto his desk. "Don't lump me in with these background characters. They'll be lucky to end up as sidekicks to some busted D-lister. Me? I'm aiming for the top."

 

The class immediately turned on him, shouting in protest, but Bakugo simply grinned, letting a volley of sharp, concussive pops ring out from his palms. The miniature explosions smelled of burning caramel and nitroglycerin. Izuku flinched, instinctively pressing himself back into his chair.

 

"I've got the best quirk in this school," Bakugo boasted, standing up. "I'm the only one here who has a shot at U.A. High School. I'm gonna surpass All Might and become the number one hero in the world. And it starts with me acing the U.A. exams!"

 

"Oh, yeah, Midoriya," the teacher muttered, glancing at his clipboard. "Didn't you want to go to U.A. too?"

 

The classroom fell dead silent. Then, it exploded into raucous laughter.

 

"Midoriya? No way!"

"A frog mutant at U.A.? What's he gonna do, stick to a window?"

"You need raw power to pass that exam, Deku!"

 

Izuku shrank further into his seat. "T-There's no rule against mutants without strength-enhancement quirks!" he stammered, though his voice was barely a squeak. "I-I mean, I can jump fast! My mobility is—"

 

SMASH.

 

Bakugo's hand slammed down onto Izuku's desk, an explosion detonating right on the wood. The force threw Izuku backward, his chair tipping over. He landed on his back, gasping as the smoke cleared. Bakugo stood over him, eyes blazing with crimson fury.

 

"Listen up, you slimy freak," Bakugo snarled. "You're a weak-ass mutant. You've got a quirk that makes you a glorified house gecko. You're sluggish for half the year, and the other half you're just a gross bug-catcher. You really think you can stand in the same arena as me?"

 

"I-I'm not trying to compete with you, Kacchan!" Izuku said, scrambling backward, his hands up in defense. His sticky pads gripped the linoleum floor, anchoring him. "I just... I've wanted to be a hero since I was little. It's just my goal! I have to try!"

 

"Try? What can a frog do?" Bakugo snatched Izuku's notebook from the desk. He read the cover. "Hero Analysis for the Future? You're pathetic."

 

Bakugo pressed his palms together, sandwiching the notebook. A bright flash of heat and fire erupted. Izuku screamed as his hard work was charred and blackened. Bakugo then carelessly tossed the smoking ruin out the open window beside the desk.

 

"If you really want to be a hero so badly, Deku," Bakugo said, a cruel, mocking smile stretching across his face. "Why don't you hope you get a flashy emitter quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof?"

 

Izuku froze. The cruelty of the words hit him like a physical blow. He stared at Bakugo, his wide eyes trembling. Bakugo just scoffed, turning on his heel and walking out of the classroom as the bell rang, his two lackeys following closely behind.

 

Izuku stood there in the empty classroom, his fists clenched so tightly his sticky pads were leaving indentations on his palms. Take a swan dive. The words echoed in his head.

 

He walked to the window and looked down. Three stories below, his ruined notebook had landed in a small koi pond. The fish were nibbling at it, likely confusing it for food.

 

With a deep sigh, Izuku didn't bother taking the stairs. He climbed onto the windowsill. His leg muscles, thick and highly developed beneath his trousers, coiled tight. With a muted thwip, he launched himself out the window. He sailed through the air, dropping three stories in a graceful arc. Just before hitting the ground, he extended his hands and feet, his sticky pads catching the brick wall of the school building. He absorbed the momentum perfectly, sticking to the wall like an insect, before dropping the remaining two feet to the ground.

 

He walked over to the koi pond. Without leaning down, he opened his mouth.

 

Snap.

 

His long, pink tongue shot out, wrapping around the soggy, burnt notebook and retracting in a fraction of a second. He grabbed the book from his own tongue, wiping the saliva and pond water off on his pants. It was a gross habit, one his mother constantly scolded him for, but it was efficient.

 

"Stupid Kacchan," Izuku muttered, staring at the ruined cover. "If I really jumped, you'd be arrested for instigating suicide. Think before you speak, you idiot."

 

He squeezed the water from the pages. He was a frog. He wasn't weak. He knew he wasn't. But society... society demanded power. It demanded overwhelming, destructive force to combat the villains that plagued the streets. What could sticky fingers and a long tongue do against a villain made of steel, or fire, or pure energy?

 

As Izuku walked home, taking a shortcut under a dark overpass, his thoughts spiraled. Maybe Bakugo was right. Maybe a mutant like him, a boy who had to wear heating pads under his clothes from November to March just to stay awake, didn't have what it took to be the Symbol of Peace.

 

He was so lost in his self-pity that he didn't notice the strange, gurgling sound echoing from the storm drain beneath the bridge.

 

Gloop. Squelch.

 

Izuku paused. His large eyes blinked, adjusting to the dim light of the tunnel. He turned around.

 

Rising from the manhole cover was a towering mass of dark, putrid sludge. It smelled of raw sewage and rotting garbage. Two massive, bulbous eyes floated within the viscous liquid, accompanied by a jagged, manic smile made of floating, yellowed teeth.

 

"Well, well," the Sludge Villain gurgled, its voice wet and heavy. "A medium-sized invisibility cloak. You'll do nicely."

 

Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in Izuku’s chest. He didn't freeze—his warm blood prevented that today—but his mind raced. Villain. Fluid body type. No solid mass. Grappling is impossible. Blunt force trauma will be ineffective.

 

"Don't worry, kid," the villain sneered, lunging forward with a massive wave of slime. "It'll only hurt for about 45 seconds. Then, it'll all be over!"

 

Izuku acted on instinct. His leg muscles flared. He didn't run backward; he leaped up.

 

With a powerful push, Izuku shot three meters straight into the air, his hands slapping against the curved concrete ceiling of the underpass. His microscopic setae flared, gripping the porous stone with ironclad strength. He hung upside down, his heart hammering against his ribs, staring down at the villain who had just smashed into the ground where Izuku had been standing a millisecond prior.

 

"Whoa!" The Sludge Villain looked up, its eyes swiveling. "A frog mutant? Tricky little bugger, aren't ya? But you can't stay up there forever!"

 

The villain whipped a thick tendril of sludge upward. Izuku scrambled across the ceiling like a frightened spider, moving with frantic, jerky agility. The sludge struck the concrete, splattering everywhere. Some of it clipped Izuku's shoulder, and the sheer force of the impact nearly dislodged him.

 

I can't fight this! Izuku thought, his breath hitching. My tongue will just pass right through him! I don't have any weapons!

 

"Get down here!" the villain roared, sending three more tendrils lashing up at the ceiling.

 

Izuku leaped from the ceiling to the side wall, bouncing off it to avoid a strike, but he miscalculated. His foot landed in a patch of wet sludge that had splattered onto the wall. The slime coated his sticky pads, rendering them completely useless. His grip failed.

 

Izuku fell, plummeting directly into the waiting mass of the villain.

 

"Gotcha!"

 

The sludge enveloped him instantly. It rushed up his nose, into his mouth, forcing its way down his throat. The smell was agonizing, like inhaling a swamp. Izuku thrashed violently, his powerful legs kicking against the fluid, but it was like trying to punch the ocean. He was drowning on dry land.

 

I'm going to die, Izuku realized, his vision blurring at the edges. I'm dying, and I never even got to try.

 

Suddenly, a massive shockwave rattled the very foundations of the tunnel.

 

A colossal figure stood at the entrance of the overpass, backlit by the afternoon sun. The silhouette was impossibly broad, radiating a sheer, overwhelming presence that made the air itself feel heavy.

 

"IT IS FINE NOW, YOUNG MAN," a booming, resonant voice echoed, vibrating through the sludge and into Izuku’s bones. "FOR I AM HERE!"

 

All Might? Izuku thought, his mind struggling against the hypoxia.

 

The Sludge Villain shrieked, launching a massive wave of slime at the Number One Hero. All Might didn't flinch. He simply pulled back his right arm, the muscles bulging with terrifying, impossible power.

 

"TEXAS... SMASH!"

 

All Might threw a punch. He didn't even make contact with the villain. The sheer wind pressure generated by the kinetic force of his fist created a localized hurricane within the tunnel. The wind hit the Sludge Villain like a freight train, ripping its fluid body apart on a molecular level. The sludge exploded outward, scattering across the walls and ceiling.

 

Izuku was freed. He gasped for air, falling toward the concrete, but a massive, warm hand caught him before he hit the ground.

 

Then, everything went black.

 

 

 

"HEY! WAKE UP!"

 

Izuku groaned. Someone was lightly tapping his cheek. He blinked his large eyes open, the bright afternoon sun blinding him momentarily. As his vision cleared, he found himself staring into the impossibly chiseled, grinning face of the world's greatest hero.

 

"EXCELLENT! YOU ARE ALIVE!" All Might boomed, stepping back and striking a heroic pose. "APOLOGIES FOR GETTING YOU CAUGHT UP IN MY VILLAIN HUNT. I USUALLY DON'T MAKE MISTAKES LIKE THAT, BUT I WAS NAVIGATING A NEW CITY TODAY! AHAHAHA!"

 

Izuku scrambled backward, his heart leaping into his throat. All Might! In the flesh! He's huge! He looks exactly like he does on TV!

 

"ANYWAY, I HAVE SECURED THE VILLAIN!" All Might held up two large, plastic soda bottles. Inside, the Sludge Villain was compressed and unconscious. "AND NOW, I MUST BE OFF TO DELIVER THIS FELLOW TO THE POLICE!"

 

"W-Wait!" Izuku stammered, scrambling to his feet. "Already? But I... I have so many questions! And an autograph! Please, my notebook!"

 

Izuku frantically searched for his burnt notebook. He found it lying on the ground. He opened it, and his jaw dropped. Spanning two entire pages was All Might's massive, bold signature.

 

"I ALREADY SIGNED IT!" All Might gave a thumbs-up. "WELL, IT'S BEEN A PLEASURE! STAY OUT OF TROUBLE, YOUNG MAN!"

 

All Might bent his knees. The concrete beneath his boots cracked under the immense pressure.

 

No! Izuku thought. I need to ask him! I need to know if someone like me... if a mutant...

 

As All Might leaped into the sky with a sonic boom, Izuku acted without thinking. His frog-like instincts overrode his common sense. His powerful leg muscles fired, launching him into the air directly after the ascending hero.

 

Izuku slammed into All Might’s leg mid-flight. His hands and feet clamped down. His micro-setae gripped the fabric of All Might’s pants and the dense muscle beneath it with a suction force that could hold a small car.

 

"HEY, HEY, HEY!" All Might shouted, looking down in shock as they soared hundreds of feet above the city. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? LET GO! YOUR FANATICISM IS A BIT MUCH!"

 

"If I let go now, I'll die!" Izuku screamed, the wind tearing at his face. His cheeks were flapping wildly.

 

"OH. RIGHT." All Might grimaced. "FINE! CLOSE YOUR EYES AND HOLD YOUR BREATH!"

 

All Might adjusted his trajectory, scanning the city below for a safe place to land. He spotted a tall, deserted office building and descended rapidly, landing on the roof with a heavy thud that rattled Izuku's teeth.

 

Izuku immediately detached himself, collapsing onto the rooftop, gasping for air and shaking violently.

 

"GOOD GRIEF," All Might sighed, dusting off his pants. "THAT WAS INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS, YOUNG MAN. YOU HAVE QUITE THE GRIP, I'LL GIVE YOU THAT. SOME SORT OF ADHESIVE QUIRK? NO MATTER. I MUST GO. THE AUTHORITIES ARE WAITING."

 

"Wait!" Izuku cried out, climbing to his feet. "Please! Just one question!"

 

All Might paused, his back turned to Izuku.

 

"I... I have a mutation quirk," Izuku said, his voice trembling. He looked down at his slightly green-tinted hands, the swollen fingertips. "I'm a tree frog. I can jump, and I can climb, and I have a long tongue. But I don't have super strength. I don't have explosions or fire. When it gets cold, I can barely move. People tell me I'm weak. They tell me my quirk is gross, or meant for sidekicks. But... I want to save people with a fearless smile, just like you."

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, bowing deeply.

 

"Even if I'm just a mutant with no raw power... can I become a hero like you?!"

 

The silence that followed was agonizing. The wind howled across the rooftop. Izuku held his breath, waiting for the words of encouragement, waiting for the Symbol of Peace to tell him that his dreams were valid.

 

"PRO HEROES ARE ALWAYS RISKING THEIR LIVES," All Might's voice was serious, devoid of its usual booming cheer.

 

Izuku looked up.

 

"SOME VILLAINS CANNOT BE BEATEN WITH AGILITY OR STEALTH ALONE," All Might continued, looking over his shoulder. "SOCIETY RELIES ON HEROES TO BE THE SHIELD THAT WITHSTANDS THE UNSTOPPABLE FORCE. YOUR QUIRK HAS UTILITY, YES. YOU COULD BE AN EXCELLENT RESCUE WORKER, A POLICE OFFICER, OR A COAST GUARD. THOSE ARE NOBLE PROFESSIONS. BUT... A TOP HERO? THE SYMBOL OF PEACE?"

 

All Might fully turned around, his shadowed eyes looking directly into Izuku's soul.

 

"WITHOUT THE NECESSARY COMBAT POWER TO DEFEND YOURSELF AND OTHERS AGAINST DEADLY FORCE... I CANNOT, IN GOOD CONSCIENCE, TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN BECOME A HERO LIKE ME. IT IS GOOD TO DREAM, YOUNG MAN. BUT YOU MUST BE REALISTIC ABOUT YOUR BIOLOGY."

 

The words felt like a physical knife twisting in Izuku's gut.

 

He was realistic about his biology. He knew he was cold-blooded. He knew he was weak. But hearing it from All Might... it shattered something fundamental inside his chest.

 

"NOW, I REALLY MUST BE GOING. PLEASE USE THE STAIRS TO GET DOWN."

 

With that, All Might bent his knees and launched himself back into the sky, disappearing into the clouds in a blink of an eye.

 

Izuku stood alone on the rooftop for a long time. The warm spring sun suddenly felt very cold.

 

 

 

He didn't take the stairs.

 

Izuku walked to the edge of the roof and peered down. It was a fifteen-story drop. Slowly, mechanically, he stepped over the ledge. He pressed his palms and the soles of his shoes against the glass and steel of the building. His sticky pads engaged.

 

He crawled down the side of the skyscraper in absolute silence, blending perfectly with his environment. His skin subtly shifted its hue to match the reflective blue-grey of the glass, a rudimentary camouflage that made him look like nothing more than a shadow moving down the wall.

 

Be realistic, All Might had said.

 

Izuku reached the ground and detached himself, landing in a quiet alleyway. He slouched, his wide shoulders slumping, his head down. He began the long walk home, not even bothering to look where he was going. He just let his feet carry him.

 

He found himself wandering through the Tatooin Shopping District. He wasn't paying attention to the crowds or the noise until a massive explosion rocked the street, followed by the shattering of glass and the screams of civilians.

 

Izuku snapped out of his daze. He looked up.

 

A block away, smoke was billowing into the sky. Fires raged across the storefronts. A crowd had gathered, held back by a perimeter of pro heroes. Izuku saw Kamui Woods, Death Arms, and Backdraft, all standing around, looking helpless.

 

Izuku's legs moved on their own. He pushed through the crowd to the front of the police tape.

 

What he saw made his blood run cold.

 

It was the Sludge Villain.

 

How? Izuku thought, his eyes widening in horror. All Might had him! Did he drop the bottles? Was it when I grabbed his leg?

 

Guilt, thick and suffocating, washed over him. This is my fault. The villain escaped because I was selfish.

 

The Sludge Villain was massive now, having absorbed half the street's debris. And trapped within its fluid, putrid center was a hostage. The hostage was thrashing violently, unleashing massive, fiery explosions that only fueled the surrounding fires and kept the pro heroes at bay.

 

Death Arms tried to rush in, but a blast of heat forced him back. Kamui Woods couldn't get close; his wooden limbs would ignite. Mount Lady was stuck in a narrow alley, unable to use her gigantification without crushing the nearby buildings.

 

"We just have to wait for someone with a suitable quirk!" Death Arms shouted over the roar of the flames. "Hold the line! Keep the civilians back!"

 

Izuku watched in despair. The heroes were waiting. They were giving up.

 

Then, the smoke cleared for a fraction of a second. Izuku saw the hostage's face.

 

It was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

His crimson eyes were wide with terror. He was suffocating. He was drowning in the sludge, just like Izuku had been under the bridge. He looked over at the crowd, and for a split second, his eyes met Izuku's. It wasn't a look of arrogance or anger. It was a silent plea for help.

 

Before Izuku’s brain could process what was happening, his body reacted.

 

His biology, the very mutant traits he had cursed for a decade, screamed into action. His heavy, coiled leg muscles contracted with explosive force.

 

THWACK.

 

The concrete beneath Izuku's feet shattered as he launched himself forward. He moved so fast he was a green blur, bypassing the pro heroes in an instant.

 

"Hey! Kid! Stop!" Death Arms roared, reaching out, but he grasped only empty air.

 

Izuku flew through the air, crossing the distance in a single, massive leap. He landed directly on the Sludge Villain's mass, his sticky pads instantly adhering to the viscous fluid, though he knew the grip wouldn't last long against the shifting slime.

 

"You!" the Sludge Villain gurgled, recognizing the green hair and wide eyes. "The frog boy! Back for more?"

 

"Deku?!" Bakugo gasped, his mouth momentarily free from the slime. "What the hell are you doing?!"

 

"I don't know!" Izuku screamed, his hands plunging into the sludge, trying desperately to grab Bakugo’s uniform. "My legs just moved on their own!"

 

Izuku pulled with all his might, but his arms weren't strong enough. He didn't have super strength. The sludge was too thick, and Bakugo was stuck fast.

 

"Get off me, you little freak!" the villain roared, raising a massive tendril of slime to swat Izuku away.

 

Izuku looked around frantically. He couldn't free Bakugo by force. He had to be tactical. He had to use what he had.

 

He saw it. Above them, a massive steel billboard, weakened by Bakugo's explosions, was groaning. A secondary blast from Bakugo's palms finally severed its supports. The billboard, weighing several tons, was plummeting straight down toward a group of civilians who had strayed too close to the fireline.

 

I can't save Kacchan right now, Izuku realized with lightning-fast clarity. But I can save them.

 

Izuku let go of Bakugo. His leg muscles flared again. He leaped backward off the sludge, launching himself horizontally toward the falling billboard.

 

In mid-air, he opened his mouth.

 

Snap.

 

His tongue, thick, muscular, and incredibly resilient, shot out over ten meters. It wrapped tightly around the steel frame of a streetlamp adjacent to the falling billboard. Izuku used his momentum and his tongue like a bungee cord, swinging himself in a massive, pendulum arc.

 

He slammed feet-first into the falling billboard. The sheer kinetic force of his powerful frog legs altered its trajectory just enough. The steel structure crashed into the street, missing the screaming civilians by mere inches.

 

"He deflected it!" Kamui Woods yelled in shock.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He detached his tongue from the streetlamp, using his sticky pads to catch himself on the wall of a burning building. He crawled rapidly along the brickwork, avoiding the flames, positioning himself right above the Sludge Villain.

 

I need to distract it, Izuku thought. I need to give the heroes an opening.

 

He ripped his heavy yellow backpack off his shoulders. He reached inside and pulled out his pencil case.

 

"Eat this!" Izuku yelled, throwing the pencil case with perfect accuracy. The pens and pencils shot out, embedding themselves right into the Sludge Villain's massive, bulbous eye.

 

"AGGHHH!" The villain shrieked in pain, its grip on Bakugo loosening slightly. The slime thrashed wildly, sending waves of sludge in all directions.

 

"Now! Grab him!" Izuku yelled to the pro heroes.

 

But they were still hesitating, intimidated by the rampant explosions Bakugo was unconsciously letting off in his panic.

 

Izuku gritted his teeth. He couldn't sit back. He leaped from the wall, diving straight back toward the villain, extending his tongue to try and wrap it around Bakugo's wrist.

 

But the villain recovered faster than he anticipated. A massive, hardened whip of sludge lashed out, striking Izuku mid-air. The force knocked the breath out of his lungs. He was sent flying backward, hurtling toward a brick wall.

 

I'm going to break my back, Izuku thought, bracing for impact.

 

Suddenly, the brick wall behind him seemed to distort.

 

A figure stepped out of the solid brick wall, as if phasing through water. Two strong hands reached out and caught Izuku in mid-air, absorbing the kinetic energy and setting him down gently on the pavement.

 

Izuku coughed, looking up at his savior.

 

It was a young man, tall and muscular, wearing a sleek, white and red hero costume with a cape. He had blonde hair styled up, and blue eyes that radiated absolute, unwavering confidence.

 

"That was a pretty nasty hit, little frog," the blonde hero smiled brightly. "But that was some incredible rescue work over there! You've got great instincts!"

 

"Who... who are you?" Izuku gasped.

 

"Me? I'm Lemillion!" the young man declared, striking a pose. "Well, officially I'm still a third-year student at U.A., but I'm on patrol! I saw the smoke and came as fast as I could."

 

Mirio Togata looked toward the raging Sludge Villain. He noted the pro heroes standing back, and he noted the fiery blonde kid suffocating inside.

 

"Looks like the pros are having trouble with the fluid dynamics and the explosive hazard," Mirio analyzed rapidly, his cheerful demeanor instantly shifting to sharp tactical focus. He looked down at Izuku. "Hey, green kid. What's your quirk?"

 

"T-Tree Frog," Izuku stammered, overwhelmed by the sudden presence of a U.A. student. "I can jump high, climb walls, and I have a prehensile tongue. But I don't have any power to fight that thing."

 

"You don't need power to save someone," Mirio said, his smile returning, blindingly bright. "You just need to be in the right place at the right time. I'm going to get the explosive kid out. But I need you to clear the hazard zone. Can you use that tongue of yours to pull those trapped civilians behind the fireline?"

 

Izuku looked at the civilians huddled near the deflected billboard. The flames were creeping closer to them.

 

He looked back at Mirio, his heart pounding. For the first time today, someone wasn't telling him what he couldn't do. Someone was asking for his help.

 

"Yes!" Izuku nodded fiercely.

 

"Great! Let's go!"

 

Mirio sprinted forward, charging directly at the Sludge Villain.

 

"You're dead, kid!" the villain roared, sending a massive wave of slime to crush Mirio.

 

Izuku watched in awe. As the slime hit Mirio, it passed completely through him. Mirio's quirk, Permeation, rendered him entirely intangible. He effortlessly bypassed the villain's defenses, diving straight into the center of the sludge.

 

Meanwhile, Izuku went to work. His leg muscles fired. He leaped across the street, bounding over a wall of fire. He landed near the trapped civilians.

 

"Hold on!" Izuku yelled. He opened his mouth. Snap. His tongue shot out, wrapping securely around the waist of a frightened businessman. Izuku planted his feet, gripping the concrete with his sticky pads to anchor himself, and hauled backward. The businessman was yanked out of the fire zone to safety.

 

Snap. Snap. Snap.

 

Working with frightening efficiency, Izuku used his tongue to pull three more people to safety, his powerful leg muscles absorbing the heavy recoil of pulling human weight.

 

Back in the center of the fray, Mirio had reached Bakugo. The sludge was trying to drown him, but Mirio grabbed Bakugo's collar. Mirio deactivated his permeation on his hands, gripping Bakugo tight, while keeping the rest of his body intangible.

 

With a powerful heave, Mirio tore Bakugo out of the sludge.

 

"Gotcha!" Mirio laughed.

 

"Let go of me!" Bakugo coughed, enraged and humiliated, instinctively firing a blast from his palms. The explosion washed right through Mirio's intangible face, doing absolutely zero damage.

 

The Sludge Villain, furious at losing its hostage, reared up, towering three stories high.

 

"I'll crush you all!" it bellowed.

 

Mirio, holding Bakugo, was wide open for a physical counterattack since he couldn't phase while holding someone else. Izuku saw this.

 

Without hesitation, Izuku leaped. He launched himself over the flames, extending his tongue to its absolute maximum limit. The pink appendage whipped around Mirio's waist just as a massive scythe of hardened sludge swung down toward them.

 

Izuku pulled backward with all his might, his leg muscles screaming in protest. The force yanked Mirio and Bakugo out of the way just as the sludge scythe cleaved the concrete where they had been standing a millisecond prior.

 

The three of them tumbled into a heap behind the police line, safe.

 

"Whoa! Nice assist, frogger!" Mirio grinned, giving Izuku a thumbs-up from the ground.

 

Izuku was panting heavily, his tongue retracting, his mouth dry. He looked at Bakugo, who was coughing up slime and glaring daggers at him.

 

Before anyone could say anything else, the temperature in the street seemed to drop. A massive shadow fell over the raging inferno.

 

Izuku looked up.

 

Standing atop a nearby roof, silhouetted against the smoke, was All Might.

 

The Number One Hero looked down at the street. He had seen it all. He had seen the pro heroes cowering. He had seen himself, pathetic and deflated, hiding in the crowd, watching a middle schooler with a "weak" mutant quirk leap into certain death to save a boy who hated him. He had seen the U.A. student coordinate a flawless rescue with a complete stranger.

 

Pathetic, All Might thought to himself, blood boiling in his chest. I lectured that boy on reality, while he was the only one acting like a true hero!

 

All Might leaped from the roof. He landed in the center of the street with a seismic impact that extinguished half the fires instantly.

 

"I REALLY AM PATHETIC," All Might boomed, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. "I TOLD YOU WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION, YET I DID NOT LIVE UP TO MY OWN IDEALS! PROS ARE ALWAYS RISKING THEIR LIVES!"

 

The Sludge Villain recoiled in terror.

 

All Might grabbed the villain's main tendril. He pulled back his fist, the muscles bulging, radiating an aura of sheer, golden power.

 

"DETROIT... SMASH!"

 

The punch connected with the air itself. The resulting shockwave was catastrophic. The localized tornado ripped through the street, completely obliterating the Sludge Villain, splattering it across the walls in a fine, harmless mist. The sheer air pressure blew out the remaining fires and sent the clouds above scattering, creating a massive clearing in the sky where it began to rain.

 

Izuku shielded his eyes, gripping the pavement with his sticky pads so he wouldn't be blown away. When he looked up, All Might was standing victorious, steam rising from his massive frame.

 

The street fell silent. Then, the crowd erupted into deafening cheers.

 

 

 

The aftermath was a blur for Izuku.

 

He found himself sitting on the curb of an adjacent alleyway. The pro heroes had immediately rushed to Bakugo, praising him for his incredibly powerful quirk and his resilience in holding out against the villain for so long.

 

Izuku, on the other hand, got an earful.

 

"What were you thinking, kid?!" Death Arms scolded him, pointing a massive finger in Izuku's face. "You have a minor mutation quirk! You could have been killed! Don't go playing hero and getting in the way of the professionals!"

 

Kamui Woods nodded sternly. "Your interference could have escalated the situation. Leave the hero work to us next time."

 

Izuku just stared at his hands, his wide eyes downcast. Right. Even when I help, I'm just in the way. I'm just a frog.

 

"Hey, back off, you guys!"

 

A cheerful voice cut through the scolding. Mirio Togata walked over, his cape billowing slightly. The pro heroes immediately straightened up, recognizing the prestigious U.A. uniform and the aura of a top-tier student.

 

"This kid was the only one who actually did anything before All Might showed up," Mirio said, his tone polite but firm. "He assessed the hazard, utilized his mobility to save four civilians from a falling debris strike, and provided crucial tactical support to get the hostage out. If it wasn't for his assist, I might have taken a nasty hit pulling the explosive kid out. He acted like a true hero."

 

Death Arms grumbled something under his breath and walked away to help clean up the street.

 

Mirio sat down on the curb next to Izuku. "Don't listen to them. Pros get a little sensitive when kids show them up. You did great today. What's your name?"

 

"I-Izuku Midoriya," he replied, still a bit starstruck.

 

"Well, Midoriya, I'm Mirio Togata. You've got fantastic reflexes. Have you ever thought about applying to U.A.?"

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. He looked down at his green-tinted, sticky fingers. "I... I want to. But I don't have a combat quirk. I can't fight robots or big villains. My quirk is just... Tree Frog. I'm cold-blooded. In the winter, I'm practically useless."

 

Mirio tilted his head, his blue eyes studying Izuku intently. "Quirks are just tools, Midoriya. It's how you use them that matters. You used a pencil case to blind a monster today. I'd say that's pretty combat-effective."

 

Before Izuku could respond, a massive shadow fell over the entrance of the alleyway.

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

All Might stepped into the alley, his massive frame blocking out the streetlights. Mirio immediately stood up, his eyes wide with awe. Izuku scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs.

 

"A-All Might!" Izuku gasped. "You... you got away from the press?"

 

"HAHAHA! A HERO ALWAYS FINDS A WAY TO SLIP PAST THE PAPARAZZI!" All Might boomed, placing his hands on his hips. He looked at the two boys in the alley. The powerful, confident blonde third-year, and the trembling, green-haired mutant.

 

"YOUNG TOGATA," All Might addressed Mirio first. "YOUR TIMING AND PERMEATION USAGE WERE FLAWLESS. SIR NIGHTEYE HAS TAUGHT YOU WELL."

 

"Thank you, All Might, sir!" Mirio bowed deeply.

 

"AND YOU, YOUNG MIDORIYA."

 

All Might turned his piercing blue eyes to Izuku. The smile faded from the Number One Hero's face, replaced by an expression of deep, solemn respect.

 

"I CAME TO THANK YOU. AND TO APOLOGIZE."

 

Izuku blinked. "Apologize? But... you saved me. Twice today."

 

"IF I HAD NOT BEEN SO ARROGANT ON THAT ROOFTOP, I WOULD HAVE SECURED THE BOTTLES PROPERLY. MY LECTURE TO YOU CAUSED ME TO LOSE FOCUS. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY... I TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULD NOT BE A HERO."

 

All Might took a step forward.

 

"YET, WHEN THE PROS STOOD FROZEN IN FEAR, IT WAS YOU—A QUIRKLESS BOY... AH, EXCUSE ME, A MUTANT BOY WITH NO COMBAT POWER—WHO LEAPED INTO DANGER TO SAVE A LIFE. YOU MOVED BEFORE YOU HAD TIME TO THINK. ISN'T THAT RIGHT?"

 

Izuku’s eyes welled up with tears. He nodded slowly. "My legs... they just moved."

 

"THAT IS THE ESSENCE OF A TRUE HERO." All Might’s voice softened. "TOP HEROES HAVE STORIES ABOUT THEM FROM THEIR SCHOOL DAYS. MOST OF THEIR STORIES HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON: THEIR BODIES MOVED BEFORE THEY HAD A CHANCE TO THINK."

 

Izuku fell to his knees, his hands covering his face. The tears flowed freely now, hot and heavy. A decade of being called weak, of being bullied for his frog-like traits, of feeling inferior, all washed away in an instant. The Symbol of Peace was validating his existence.

 

"YOU CAN BECOME A HERO, YOUNG MIDORIYA."

 

Mirio looked at Izuku with a warm smile, then looked up at All Might. "He really is something special, All Might."

 

"HE IS." All Might nodded. Then, he let out a heavy, rattling cough.

 

Suddenly, a cloud of thick, white steam erupted from All Might’s body. The booming presence vanished. The massive muscles deflated like a popped balloon.

 

Izuku wiped his eyes, looking up through the steam. He screamed.

 

Standing before them was not the towering colossus of justice. It was a skeletal, emaciated man with sunken eyes, wearing baggy clothes that hung off his gaunt frame. Blood dripped steadily from his chin.

 

"A-All Might?!" Izuku shrieked, his sticky pads adhering to the brick wall behind him in pure panic. "You... you shrank! Are you a fake? An imposter?!"

 

Mirio's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. He took a step back. "Sir... what happened to you?"

 

The skeletal man wiped the blood from his mouth with a bony hand. He sighed, a tired, raspy sound that carried the weight of the world.

 

"No, I am the real All Might," the man wheezed, sitting down heavily against the brick wall of the alleyway. "And I have brought you both here because... well, because I am out of time. And I have a secret to share with you both. A secret that concerns the future of the entire world."

 

Izuku and Mirio stood side-by-side in the dim alley, staring in stunned silence as the greatest hero in history began to unravel the myth of his invincible power.

 

The damp, shadowed alleyway in the Tatooin Shopping District felt entirely disconnected from the roaring crowds and flashing lights of the main street just a few dozen yards away. Here, hidden behind dumpsters and chain-link fences, the very foundation of superhuman society was being dismantled before Izuku Midoriya’s wide, emerald eyes.

 

The steam dissipating from the skeletal man's body smelled faintly of copper and ozone. Izuku pressed his back against the cold brick wall, his sticky, spatulate fingertips adhering slightly in his panic. Beside him, Mirio Togata, the formidable third-year student who had just phased through a solid wall and wrestled a slime monster, stood frozen, his usually cheerful face slack with disbelief.

 

"A-All Might?" Izuku squeaked again, his prehensile tongue instinctively pressing flat against the roof of his mouth. "But... how? You're... you're so small. And... and you're bleeding!"

 

The gaunt man let out a wet, rattling cough, wiping a fresh trail of blood from his sharp chin. He wore a baggy white t-shirt that hung off his bony shoulders like a sail on a mast without wind. His eyes were sunken deep into their sockets, casting dark shadows that made his piercing blue irises look like dying stars.

 

"This is my true form, young Midoriya," Toshinori Yagi said, his voice stripped of the booming, omnipresent echo that the world knew. It was a quiet, tired sound. "I know it’s a shock. You’re likely experiencing the same cognitive dissonance as discovering a hero of myth is nothing but a fragile, broken man."

 

"I... I don't understand," Mirio breathed, stepping forward, his hands raised as if he wanted to help the man but didn't know how. "You were just out there. You changed the weather with a single punch. How can you be... this?"

 

Toshinori sighed heavily, leaning his back against the brickwork and sliding down until he was sitting on the dirty pavement. He looked at the two boys for a long, silent moment. Then, with a trembling hand, he reached for the hem of his oversized t-shirt and slowly pulled it up.

 

Izuku gasped, his hands flying to his mouth. Mirio flinched, his blue eyes widening in horror.

 

Covering the entire left side of Toshinori’s chest and abdomen was a massive, jagged starburst of a scar. The skin was mottled with deep purple and sickly red tissue, completely collapsed inward as if a massive chunk of his internal anatomy simply didn't exist anymore. It looked less like a surgical wound and more like a crater left by a bomb.

 

"Five years ago," Toshinori said softly, his gaze locked on the concrete. "An enemy hit me. It was a fight that never made the news. I made sure of that. My respiratory system was nearly destroyed. I lost my entire stomach. All the surgeries, all the best medical quirks in the world... they barely kept me alive. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day. The rest of the time, I look like this."

 

Izuku’s analytical mind, usually so sharp and organized, spun wildly out of control. Five years ago? That was when he disappeared for a few months! The forums said he was on a secret overseas mission. But... an enemy? Who could possibly do that to All Might? Toxic Chainsaw? No, the timeline doesn't match up, and his quirk isn't destructive enough to cause a localized implosion of tissue like that...

 

"You cannot tell anyone," Toshinori continued, dropping his shirt. "The Symbol of Peace cannot be a mortal with a time limit. The villains of this world are held back by the illusion of my invincibility. If they knew I was this fragile, society would descend into chaos. I am a pillar, but the concrete is cracking, and the steel rebar is rusted through."

 

"Why are you telling us this?" Mirio asked, his voice thick with emotion. He knelt down so he was eye-level with his idol. "Sir, you should be resting. You shouldn't have pushed yourself today just to save us."

 

"I told you because I am looking for a successor," Toshinori said, his gaze shifting to Mirio, and then, slowly, to Izuku.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped. The alleyway seemed to spin.

 

"My quirk," Toshinori began, his voice taking on a reverent, almost mythical tone. "The media calls it super strength. Some think it’s an enhancement quirk, or a biological stockpiler. But the truth is something far more profound. My quirk is a sacred torch, passed down through generations."

 

Izuku swallowed hard. "Passed down? But... quirks are genetic. They’re biological mutations. You can't just pass them down like an inheritance."

 

"Normally, no," Toshinori chuckled softly. "But my quirk is a unique anomaly. It is the crystallization of power, cultivated by one person, and then handed to another. The next person cultivates it further, adds their own strength to it, and passes it on again. It is a crystalline network of raw, stockpiled energy and the combined will of those who came before me. It is called... One For All."

 

One For All. The words rang in Izuku’s ears. It wasn't an emitter quirk. It wasn't a mutant trait. It was a legacy.

 

"I am the eighth holder of this power," Toshinori explained. "I was quirkless before I received it. Just a boy with a dream to become a pillar that people could rely on."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. "You... you didn't have a quirk?"

 

"Nothing but the fire in my heart," Toshinori smiled, a genuine, warm expression that momentarily erased the gauntness of his face. "And today, young Midoriya, I saw that same fire in you. When the professionals hesitated, you, a young man who has been told his entire life that his biology makes him weak, leaped into the flames to save a classmate who had wronged you. You possessed the essence of a hero before you ever had the power."

 

Toshinori slowly pushed himself up, standing to his full, albeit hunched, height. He looked at Izuku.

 

"Izuku Midoriya. I want you to inherit my power."

 

The alley was dead silent. The distant wail of a police siren felt like it belonged to another universe. Izuku pointed a trembling, sticky finger at his own chest.

 

"M-Me? But... All Might, I'm a mutant! I'm a tree frog!" Izuku stammered, his mind short-circuiting. "My biology is entirely different! I'm cold-blooded! My muscles are built for leaping and clinging, not raw strength! If I took a power like that... wouldn't it destroy me? And... and what about him?!"

 

Izuku pointed frantically at Mirio, who was kneeling silently.

 

"He's incredible! He's strong, he's brave, he has a heroic quirk, and he's practically a pro already! He should be the one!"

 

"That is precisely what I have been trying to tell him."

 

The new voice was like cracked ice—sharp, cold, and utterly devoid of warmth.

 

All three of them jumped. From the deeper shadows of the alleyway, a tall, impossibly lean man stepped into the dim light. He wore a sharply tailored grey suit with a yellow polka-dot tie. His hair was slicked back, with streaks of severe green, and his eyes, framed by sharp, rectangular glasses, glared with an intensity that made Izuku’s cold blood run even colder.

 

"Sir Nighteye," Mirio breathed, standing up quickly and bowing his head.

 

"Mirio," Nighteye said curtly, his gaze sweeping over the young man before locking onto Toshinori. "I tracked your movements, Toshinori. You were reckless today. Transforming to change the weather, exhausting your limit, and now exposing your true form in a filthy alleyway to a middle schooler. Have you lost your mind?"

 

Toshinori stiffened, his skeletal frame seeming to shrink slightly under Nighteye's oppressive glare. "Mirai. I didn't expect you here."

 

"Obviously," Nighteye snapped, adjusting his glasses. He stepped forward, placing a firm, almost possessive hand on Mirio’s shoulder. "We had an agreement, Toshinori. We spent months searching for the perfect vessel for One For All. I found him. Mirio Togata. His quirk, Permeation, combined with the raw physical stockpiling of One For All, would create an invincible hero. A Symbol of Peace that could never be struck down like you were. He is the logical, absolute choice."

 

Nighteye then turned his glacial stare toward Izuku. Izuku physically recoiled, his frog-like instincts screaming at him that he was in the presence of an apex predator.

 

"And yet," Nighteye sneered softly, "I find you offering the greatest power in the world to a random, weeping child with a minor amphibian mutation. A tree frog? Have you gone mad? Do you know what He will do to a boy like this?"

 

"Do not speak of Him," Toshinori warned, a sudden, dangerous edge returning to his raspy voice. "Mirai, I know what we discussed. Togata is an exceptional young man. He is a phenomenal hero candidate. But today... today I saw something else. I saw the spirit of self-sacrifice that One For All was created to champion."

 

"Spirit does not stop a fist that can shatter mountains!" Nighteye raised his voice, his composure cracking slightly. "Look at him, Toshinori! He is a mutant with an ectothermic physiology! If he inherits the stockpile, his body won't be able to handle the thermal energy output. He'll either burn up from the inside or freeze when winter hits because his metabolism can't support the raw caloric burn of the quirk! You are handing this boy a death sentence!"

 

Izuku shrank back against the wall. Nighteye’s words were brutal, but his analytical mind couldn't deny the logic. He's right. My body is designed to conserve energy, not explode with it. If I get cold, I shut down. If I take on a stockpile of pure power... my nervous system might fry.

 

Mirio stepped between Nighteye and Toshinori, his hands raised in a placating gesture. "Sir Nighteye, please. All Might... he just got caught up in the moment. Midoriya did do something incredibly brave today. But... if the power is that dangerous, maybe we should think this through."

 

"There is no time to think it through," Nighteye snapped. "Every day the Symbol of Peace weakens, society edges closer to the brink. Togata is ready now. His body is trained. His quirk is mastered. Give him the power, Toshinori."

 

Toshinori looked at Mirio. The blonde boy looked back, his eyes filled with a quiet, resolute readiness. Mirio didn't crave the power for fame or glory; he simply wanted to save a million people. He was the perfect choice.

 

Then, Toshinori looked back at Izuku. Izuku, who was pressing himself into the brickwork, his wide, green eyes filled with tears of inadequacy. The boy who had charged a monster with nothing but a pencil case and a desperate leap.

 

"I..." Toshinori hesitated. For the first time in his life, the Symbol of Peace didn't know what to do. Logic screamed for Mirio. His soul screamed for Izuku.

 

Before another word could be spoken, the ground beneath their feet heaved.

 

It wasn't a minor tremor. It was a violent, catastrophic buckling of the earth that threw Izuku off his feet. He hit the pavement hard, but his sticky pads instinctively clamped down, keeping him anchored. Mirio stumbled, catching himself with a hand against the wall. Nighteye widened his stance, his eyes darting around.

 

A deafening roar echoed through the city, shaking the glass in the nearby windows until it shattered, showering the alley in crystalline rain.

 

"What the hell was that?!" Mirio shouted over the secondary rumbling.

 

"An attack," Nighteye said, his voice dropping an octave. "Towards the bay."

 

Toshinori forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth. "We have to go."

 

The four of them rushed out of the alleyway. The scene that greeted them on the main street was one of pure pandemonium. Civilians were running in terror, pointing toward the colossal suspension bridge that connected the Tatooin district to the mainland.

 

Rising from the water beneath the bridge was a villain of gargantuan proportions. It was a massive, rocky monstrosity, easily fifty meters tall, covered in jagged coral and barnacles. It possessed a combination of a Gigantification quirk and some form of seismic manipulation. With a swing of its massive, stone-like arm, it slammed into one of the bridge's primary support towers.

 

The sound of shearing steel was deafening. The thick suspension cables, each the size of a tree trunk, began to snap with the force of cannon fire, whipping wildly through the air and slicing through concrete and cars alike.

 

"Oh my god," Izuku breathed, his heart hammering against his ribs.

 

Dozens of cars were gridlocked on the bridge. Hundreds of people were trapped. The bridge deck was buckling, tilting violently. Cars were already beginning to slide toward the edge, plummeting into the dark, churning waters of the bay below.

 

Pro heroes were converging on the area, but they were utterly useless. Water-hose heroes were trying to attack the giant, but their streams barely registered against his rocky hide. Fliers were trying to grab civilians, but there were too many, and the whipping cables made aerial rescues a suicide mission.

 

"I have to stop him," Toshinori snarled. He clenched his fists, bending his knees. He tried to summon the power. He reached deep into the well of One For All, trying to pull forth the golden aura, the muscle mass, the symbol.

 

Cough.

 

A massive amount of blood sprayed from his mouth. Toshinori collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping for air, clutching the agonizing scar on his chest.

 

"All Might!" Mirio yelled, dropping to his side.

 

"I... I can't," Toshinori wheezed, his eyes wide with absolute terror. "The limit... I pushed it too far with the weather change. There's nothing left. I can't transform."

 

Nighteye’s face went pale. He quickly activated his quirk, Foresight, touching Toshinori’s shoulder to look into the immediate future. What he saw made the usually stoic man stagger backward.

 

"The bridge falls," Nighteye whispered, his voice trembling. "In exactly three minutes, the main support collapses. Two hundred and fourteen casualties. We... we can't stop it."

 

"No!" Mirio shouted. "I can phase through the debris! I can get people out!"

 

"You can't carry enough of them in time, Mirio!" Nighteye yelled. "Your permeation doesn't grant you the strength to hold up a collapsing steel deck! It's a structural failure! Without All Might's strength to brace the tower, they are going to die!"

 

Izuku watched a minivan, filled with a screaming family, slide off the edge of the tilted bridge. A pro hero with a flying quirk managed to catch it, but he was struggling under the weight, slowly sinking toward the water.

 

Three minutes.

 

Toshinori looked at the bridge, hearing the screams of the innocent. He looked at his own frail, useless hands. He had failed.

 

Then, he looked at Mirio, whose face was contorted in heroic fury, desperate to save them. And he looked at Izuku, whose powerful, coiled legs were already twitching, his mutant biology prepping for a jump he knew he couldn't make, but wanted to anyway.

 

Toshinori made a decision. It was irrational. It was unprecedented. It flew in the face of the entire history of One For All. But he was out of time, and two hundred lives were hanging in the balance.

 

With a swift, agonizing yank, Toshinori pulled two golden strands of hair from his head.

 

"Toshinori? What are you doing?" Nighteye asked, his eyes wide.

 

Toshinori shoved one hair into Mirio’s hand, and the other into Izuku’s sticky palm.

 

"Swallow it!" Toshinori roared, his voice suddenly echoing with a fraction of his former glory.

 

"What?!" Izuku shrieked, staring at the hair stuck to his finger pad. "Eat a hair?!"

 

"There is no time to debate!" Toshinori screamed, his eyes burning with frantic, desperate fire. "Togata! You have the training, the mass, the tactical mind! You must be the structural support! Midoriya! You have the agility, the adhesive grip, the mobility! You must be the net! Eat it! BOTH OF YOU! EAT IT NOW!"

 

Nighteye lunged forward. "Toshinori, you fool! You can't split the quirk! It's impossible! You'll tear the stockpile apart!"

 

"EAT IT!"

 

Mirio didn't hesitate. He trusted All Might implicitly. He tossed the golden hair into his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed it dry.

 

Izuku looked at the hair. He looked at the falling cars. He thought of Bakugo. He thought of all the times he was called a weak, slimy frog. I want to be a hero.

 

Izuku opened his wide mouth. His long tongue shot out, wrapping around his own hand, pulling the hair off his sticky pad and pulling it down his throat in a wet gulp.

 

For a single, agonizing second, nothing happened. The bridge groaned louder.

 

Then, the anomaly triggered.

 

Deep within the genetic code of the two boys, the crystalline network of One For All registered two biological endpoints simultaneously. The stockpile, cultivated over eight generations, had never been commanded to split. It was a singular torch. But All Might’s fierce, desperate intent acting as the catalyst forced a violent bisection.

 

Izuku hit the ground, screaming in absolute agony.

 

It felt like someone had injected liquid fire directly into his veins. But the power didn't rush to his biceps or his chest like a traditional strength enhancer. Because One For All adapts to the user's vessel, it violently intertwined with his mutant DNA.

 

Izuku felt his dense, coiled leg muscles expand, tearing and instantly rebuilding themselves with terrifying density. His heart, previously slow and sluggish to conserve his cold blood, began to pound with the force of a jackhammer, superheating his blood and sending steam rolling off his green-tinted skin. His microscopic setae—the sticky pads on his fingers and toes—swelled, their adhesive strength magnifying a thousandfold. The muscles at the base of his throat spasmed violently as his prehensile tongue was infused with raw, kinetic energy.

 

Beside him, Mirio roared to the heavens. His muscular frame bulged, golden lightning sparking off his skin. He didn't get the full stockpile. He felt a ceiling, a cap to the raw power, but 50% of One For All was still the power of a god compared to a normal man.

 

"GO!" Toshinori screamed, pointing at the bridge.

 

Mirio was the first to move. He didn't just run; he exploded forward, leaving a crater in the concrete. He reached the bridge in seconds.

 

The massive stone villain swung its arm again, shattering the primary steel support strut holding up the center of the deck. The bridge began to buckle, a massive section of asphalt breaking away, sending thirty cars plummeting toward the water.

 

Mirio didn't hesitate. He activated his quirk, Permeation, phasing through a falling bus to reach the severed steel strut. He deactivated his intangibility, grabbing the broken, jagged edges of the massive steel beam.

 

"HAAAAAH!" Mirio roared, his eyes glowing with golden light. He channeled the 50% stockpile into his arms and core.

 

With a sickening crunch of shifting metal, Mirio Togata caught the collapsing bridge deck. His boots shattered the concrete beneath him, sinking up to his knees, but he held it. He acted as a human pillar, his newly acquired strength preventing the deaths of over a hundred people in the center span.

 

But he couldn't hold it all. The peripheral sections of the bridge were still crumbling, and cars were still falling.

 

That was when the green blur arrived.

 

Izuku didn't run. He leaped.

 

Channeling the explosive, superheated energy coursing through his amphibian biology into his legs, Izuku kicked off the pavement. The resulting shockwave blew out the windows of a nearby office building.

 

Izuku shot into the sky like a ballistic missile. The wind tore at his face, pulling his cheeks back. He was flying. He had leaped over three hundred feet into the air in a single bound.

 

This power! Izuku thought, his mind racing to keep up with his body. It's too much! If I land on the bridge like this, I'll smash right through the deck!

 

He spotted a massive, falling section of the bridge, complete with five cars and screaming civilians, hurtling toward the river.

 

Izuku adjusted his trajectory mid-air by extending his limbs, increasing his aerodynamic drag like a flying frog. He swooped downward, aiming for the massive concrete pillar of the bridge that was still standing.

 

He slammed feet-first into the vertical concrete surface. The impact should have broken his legs into dust. Instead, the 50% One For All stockpile acted as a kinetic shock absorber, fortifying his dense frog-muscles. His microscopic sticky pads hit the concrete and locked in with a grip so absolute, it felt like his molecular structure had fused with the stone.

 

He was anchored.

 

Izuku looked down at the falling debris. He opened his mouth.

 

He channeled a fraction of the raw, stockpiled power into his throat. He didn't know how he knew how to do it; his mutant biology just instinctively guided the energy.

 

Snap.

 

His pink tongue shot from his mouth. But it was no longer just a fleshy appendage. Fueled by 50% of One For All, it shot forward with the speed and concussive force of a railgun slug. The air cracked with a sonic boom.

 

The tongue extended a staggering fifty meters, wrapping instantly around the front axle of a falling city bus.

 

Izuku braced his legs against the pillar. The weight of the bus hit the end of his tongue. The kinetic recoil ripped through his body. His neck muscles bulged, and the concrete around his sticky pads began to spiderweb and crack, but he didn't budge. He caught the bus mid-air.

 

With a massive heave, utilizing the elastic recoil of his amphibian tongue combined with raw super-strength, Izuku whipped his head backward. He essentially hammer-threw a twelve-ton city bus upward, tossing it safely onto a stable section of the mainland highway.

 

"He... he just caught a bus with his tongue," Nighteye whispered from the street, his glasses slipping down his nose as he watched the impossible spectacle.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He was a machine, driven by the superheated blood pumping through his veins. He leaped from pillar to pillar, bouncing around the crumbling bridge infrastructure like a pinball.

 

Every time he bounded, green lightning crackled off his skin. He used his sticky hands to catch a falling minivan, gently sticking it to the side of a concrete tower so the passengers could climb out. He used his tongue to snatch individual people who were in freefall, pulling them to safety with pinpoint, whip-like accuracy.

 

Because he only had 50% of the stockpile, the raw, explosive force wasn't tearing his unconditioned body apart as quickly as a 100% transfer would have. His mutant biology, specifically adapted to handle the severe mechanical stress of high-impact leaping and extreme stretching, was the perfect shock-absorbing vessel for the fractured power.

 

Below, the stone villain roared, frustrated that his destruction was being thwarted. He swung a massive fist toward the pillar Mirio was holding up.

 

"Oh no you don't!" Mirio yelled.

 

Mirio let go of the bridge strut with one hand, maintaining his hold with the other. As the villain's stone fist came crashing toward him, Mirio phased only his free arm, letting the fist pass through it, before solidifying his hand inside the villain's rocky wrist. With a surge of golden power, Mirio unleashed a localized shockwave from inside the villain's arm, shattering the stone limb into dust.

 

The villain shrieked, staggering backward into the bay. The distraction gave the arriving pro heroes, including the giant Mt. Lady, the opening they needed to dogpile the monster and pin it to the sea floor.

 

On the bridge, the chaos slowly ground to a halt. The remaining deck stabilized. The screaming subsided, replaced by the sounds of sirens and the groaning of stressed metal.

 

High up on the suspension cables, Izuku clung to the steel wire. He was panting heavily, his tongue lolling out of his mouth in exhaustion. The green lightning faded from his skin. The superheated blood began to cool, returning to its normal, ectothermic state.

 

A profound, bone-crushing exhaustion hit him like a physical wall. The adrenaline faded, and the pain set in. His tongue felt bruised and raw. His leg muscles were twitching violently, cramping with the buildup of lactic acid. His fingers were peeling slightly from the immense strain put on his sticky pads.

 

But as he looked down at the bridge, seeing the hundreds of people climbing out of their cars, hugging each other and crying in relief, a wide, goofy smile stretched across his face.

 

I did it, Izuku thought, his eyelids drooping. I saved them. I really am a hero.

 

His grip finally failed. Izuku slipped off the cable and fell.

 

He didn't hit the ground. Mirio, having phased up to the top of the bridge, caught him gently.

 

"You did great, little frog," Mirio smiled, though he looked equally exhausted, his hero costume torn and battered. "You did amazing."

 

 

 

The aftermath of the bridge incident was a bureaucratic nightmare. The media swarmed, trying to figure out who the blonde U.A. student and the mysterious green-haired boy were who had single-handedly prevented the worst disaster in Musutafu's history.

 

Toshinori and Nighteye had quietly extracted the boys before the press could corner them, bringing them to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town.

 

Izuku lay on a dusty couch, wrapped in a thermal blanket. His body was shivering, struggling to regulate its temperature after the massive spike in metabolic heat.

 

"I cannot believe what I just witnessed," Nighteye said, pacing back and forth, rubbing his temples. "The quirk... it fractured. It adapted."

 

"It split perfectly," Toshinori said, his skeletal face filled with awe. He looked at his two successors. "Togata received the raw, blunt force. The physical strength of the stockpile. And young Midoriya..."

 

"He received the kinetic energy," Nighteye finished the thought, his eyes darting to Izuku. "His mutant biology acted as a conduit. The power didn't pool in his muscles to create bulk; it infused into his nervous system and connective tissues, enhancing his natural agility and biological traits. It's... it's a completely unprecedented evolution of One For All."

 

Mirio, sitting on a crate nearby, flexing his incredibly sore arms, looked over at Izuku. "We make a pretty good team, huh, Midoriya?"

 

Izuku poked his head out from beneath the thermal blanket, offering a weak, exhausted smile. "Y-Yeah. We did."

 

"However," Nighteye said strictly, stopping his pacing to glare at both of them. "You are both incredibly lucky you didn't explode. This was reckless, Toshinori. They only possess half the power each. Togata will never reach your absolute peak of strength, and Midoriya... Midoriya is a wild card. If he pushes that kinetic energy too far, he will snap his own spine."

 

"Then we will train them," Toshinori said firmly, standing up. "We have ten months before the U.A. Entrance Exams. Togata is already enrolled, but he must learn to integrate this new strength with Permeation. And young Midoriya... you have the heart, and now you have the power. But your vessel needs to learn how to contain this superheated energy."

 

Izuku gripped the edges of the blanket. He looked at Toshinori, the skeletal man who had given up his greatest treasure to save others.

 

"I won't let you down, All Might," Izuku whispered, his green eyes burning with a fierce, unwavering light. "I'll learn to control it. I'll become a hero you can be proud of."

 

Toshinori smiled softly. "I am already proud of you, my boy."

 

 

 

The next morning, the sun rose over the Midoriya apartment complex.

 

Izuku woke up in his bed, tangled in his sheets. He felt strange. Usually, in the mornings, his body was stiff and cold, requiring him to sit under a heat lamp for twenty minutes just to get his joints moving.

 

But today, he felt warm. A subtle, thrumming energy hummed beneath his skin, right at the base of his spine.

 

He sat up, stretching his arms over his head. He let out a wide, frog-like yawn, his long tongue extending out and curling upward.

 

"Man, what a crazy dream," Izuku muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes. "All Might, half a quirk, catching a bus with my tongue... I really need to stop reading comic books before bed."

 

He swung his legs out of bed. He felt unusually limber. He stood up, stretching his legs. He decided to do his morning stretches, placing his hands on his hips and lifting his right leg backward to stretch his thigh.

 

He pressed the sole of his foot flat against the bedroom wall to brace himself.

 

He leaned into the stretch.

 

Subconsciously, the fractured stockpile of One For All, now permanently bonded to his amphibian muscle fibers, flared to life in response to the pressure. Green lightning suddenly sparked violently around his right calf.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. "Wait, what—"

 

BOOOOOOM.

 

With the force of a wrecking ball, Izuku’s foot blasted straight through the drywall, the wooden studs, the insulation, and the exterior brickwork of the apartment building.

 

A massive, gaping hole, roughly the size of a refrigerator, now connected his bedroom to the crisp morning air outside. The shockwave blew all his All Might posters off the opposite wall.

 

Izuku stood frozen on one leg, his foot still extended out into the open air, a perfect view of the Musutafu skyline visible through the new, jagged window he had just created.

 

From the kitchen down the hall, he heard the shattering of plates, followed by his mother's panicked voice.

 

"IZUKU?! WHAT WAS THAT?!"

 

Izuku slowly pulled his foot back into the room, dust and plaster raining down on his All Might slippers. He looked at his green-tinted skin, watching a tiny, residual spark of golden electricity dance across his sticky fingertips before fading away.

 

It wasn't a dream.

 

He was the Green-Horned Tree Frog. And he now possessed half of the greatest power in the world.

 

"Uh... nothing, Mom!" Izuku squeaked, his voice cracking violently. "Just... stretching!"

 

The hole in the wall took three rolls of duct tape, a large piece of scrap plywood Izuku found behind the local convenience store, and an incredibly meticulously placed All Might poster to cover up.

 

"Izuku, are you absolutely sure you didn't hear a bomb go off?" Inko Midoriya asked nervously from the hallway, wringing her hands together. "The entire building shook!"

 

"P-Positive, Mom!" Izuku called back, pressing his back against the poster and sweating profusely. "I think... I think a construction truck just hit a pothole outside! I'm fine! I'm going for a run!"

 

Before his mother could ask to inspect his room, Izuku threw on his yellow backpack, bolted down the hallway, and practically threw himself out the front door. He didn't take the stairs; he bounded over the railing of the third-floor walkway, his sticky, spatulate fingers catching the brick of the building. He slid down the side of the complex like a gecko and hit the pavement running.

 

His heart was hammering in his chest, but for the first time in his life, it wasn't just from anxiety. It was the power.

 

Deep within his ectothermic, sluggish biology, a phantom furnace had been ignited. He could feel it humming right at the base of his spine—a compressed, coiled well of raw, superheated kinetic energy. It felt alive. It felt dangerous.

 

Fifty percent, Izuku thought as he sprinted through the morning streets of Musutafu. I have fifty percent of One For All. And yesterday, I couldn't even control a fraction of it without blowing up my own apartment.

 

He needed help. He needed the Symbol of Peace.

 

Twenty minutes later, Izuku arrived at Dagobah Municipal Beach Park. Or, rather, what used to be a beach park. For the past decade, the ocean currents had turned the cove into an illegal dumping ground. Mountains of rusted refrigerators, broken tires, crushed cars, and rotting furniture piled up to the sky, blocking the view of the water completely.

 

Standing atop a particularly precarious stack of washing machines was a skeletal man in a baggy tracksuit.

 

"Ah, Young Midoriya! You're exactly on time!" Toshinori Yagi called out, coughing lightly into his fist before leaping down. Despite his frail appearance, he moved with the grace of a seasoned martial artist, landing softly on the sand.

 

"All Might!" Izuku panted, jogging up to him. He bowed deeply. "Thank you for meeting me!"

 

"Raise your head, my boy," Toshinori smiled warmly, though his sunken eyes were calculating. "Tell me, how do you feel? Has the stockpile settled into your DNA?"

 

"I think so," Izuku said, rubbing the back of his neck. "But... it's weird. Yesterday, when I stretched my leg, I accidentally kicked a hole in my wall. I wasn't even trying to use it! And... I feel hot. I'm a tree frog mutation. I'm usually freezing in the mornings, but today I feel like I have a fever."

 

Toshinori nodded, pulling a small, crumpled notebook from his pocket. "Nighteye and I have been theorizing about that. One For All is a stockpile of raw power, but it adapts to the vessel. Togata’s body is a standard, robust human physiology, so the power manifested as blunt, full-body enhancement. But your body is different."

 

Toshinori stepped forward, poking Izuku in the chest, right over his heart.

 

"You are cold-blooded. Your muscles are intensely dense, built like biological springs for leaping and snapping, not for sustained lifting. Your body is forcefully converting the raw strength of One For All into thermal and kinetic energy to fuel those springs. You are quite literally a combustion engine now."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. "A combustion engine?"

 

"Exactly. But an engine needs an exhaust, and it needs a sturdy chassis, otherwise it will tear itself apart," Toshinori warned, gesturing to the mountains of trash surrounding them. "If you use 100% of your half of the power right now, your frog muscles will snap under the tension, and your bones will turn to powder. Your body is a wet paper towel, and One For All is a firehose."

 

"S-So what do we do?"

 

Toshinori grinned, a wide, slightly terrifying expression that mirrored his muscle-form. He pointed a bony finger at a rusted pickup truck half-buried in the sand.

 

"We turn that paper towel into Kevlar. You have ten months until the U.A. Entrance Exams. In that time, you are going to clean this entire beach. You will haul every piece of junk off this sand. But here is the catch, Young Midoriya: you are not allowed to use your hands to carry the heavy items."

 

Izuku blinked. "Wait, what? How am I supposed to move a truck without my hands?"

 

Toshinori tapped his own chin, then pointed at Izuku's mouth. "You are an arboreal amphibian. What is your strongest muscle?"

 

Izuku’s jaw dropped. "My tongue?!"

 

"Precisely!" Toshinori barked. "If you are to master your unique half of One For All, you cannot fight like me, and you cannot fight like Togata. You must fight like you. You must turn your mutant traits into weapons of mass destruction. Your tongue, your leaping power, your wall-crawling—these are your vectors for the power! Now, get to work!"

 

 

 

Months 1-3: The Furnace

 

The training was quite literally hell on earth.

 

Hauling trash was hard enough, but doing it by wrapping a prehensile, pink tongue around rusted axles and waterlogged tires was agonizing. By the end of the first week, Izuku’s tongue was so bruised and swollen he could barely speak, reduced to giving Toshinori muddy thumbs-ups.

 

But the physical pain wasn't the worst part. It was the heat.

 

As spring turned into the sweltering Japanese summer, Izuku discovered the horrifying drawback of his new biology. Tree frogs thrive in warm weather, but One For All was constantly generating internal thermal energy. When Izuku tried to access the power, his core temperature skyrocketed.

 

"Focus, Midoriya!" Toshinori yelled from atop a pile of microwaves on a blisteringly hot July afternoon. "Don't let the power pool in your core! Channel it out!"

 

Izuku stood in the sand, groaning. He was strapped to a harness, trying to drag a massive steel safe. He closed his eyes, searching for that phantom furnace at the base of his spine. He clamped down on it, trying to pull the energy outward.

 

Sizzle.

 

Steam physically rolled off Izuku’s green-tinted skin. His sweat evaporated instantly. He fell to his knees, gasping for air, feeling like he had just swallowed a lit charcoal briquette.

 

"I... I can't!" Izuku choked out. "It's too hot! I feel like I'm melting!"

 

"Your ectothermic biology doesn't know how to sweat efficiently enough to cool down a nuclear reactor!" Toshinori called down, tossing Izuku a bottle of ice water. "You have to force the energy into specific muscle groups! Don't let it flood your whole body! Restrict it!"

 

Izuku poured the water over his head, sighing in relief as his body absorbed the moisture. Restrict it. Okay.

 

He stood up. He visualized the energy not as a flood, but as an electrical current. He didn't want it everywhere. He just wanted it in his legs.

 

He took a deep breath. Five percent. Just five percent of the stockpile.

 

He commanded the energy down. Instead of the all-encompassing glow that All Might possessed, Izuku’s transformation was startlingly localized. Jagged, emerald-green lightning erupted purely around his massive, muscular thighs and calves, crackling with static electricity. The veins in his legs glowed faintly through his skin. The rest of his body remained normal.

 

"Yes!" Toshinori cheered. "You isolated it!"

 

Izuku grinned. The heat was manageable now, localized to his lower half like a pair of heated pants. He dug his feet into the sand. He didn't pull with his back. He leaped forward.

 

The kinetic snap of his frog-legs, amplified by One For All, generated a small shockwave. Izuku shot forward, dragging the 500-pound steel safe behind him like it was a plastic sled.

 

"I did it!" Izuku laughed, skidding to a halt. "It's not a full-body enhancement... it's a localized kinetic burst! I'll call it... Overdrive!"

 

 

 

Months 4-7: The Whip and the Wall

 

By autumn, the beach was starting to look like an actual beach. The mountains of trash were reduced to hills. Izuku’s body had changed dramatically. He was still lean—he hadn't bulked up into a bodybuilder like Toshinori—but his muscles were cut from granite. His legs, in particular, were incredibly thick, coiled with terrifying, dense power.

 

He was also beginning to master his mutant traits in conjunction with Overdrive.

 

"Speed is your weapon, Midoriya!" Toshinori instructed, throwing a flurry of empty glass bottles into the air. "Togata is the hammer! You are the whip! Strike!"

 

Izuku didn't punch. He crouched low to the sand. Green lightning sparked around his neck and jaw.

 

OFA: Overdrive - 5%.

 

He opened his mouth.

 

CRACK!

 

The sound was literally deafening, mimicking the supersonic crack of a bullwhip. Izuku’s tongue shot out so fast it was invisible to the naked eye. In a fraction of a second, the prehensile muscle zigzagged through the air, shattering all six glass bottles simultaneously before retracting.

 

Izuku snapped his jaw shut, exhaling a puff of steam.

 

"Excellent!" Toshinori clapped. "The kinetic force transferred perfectly into the muscle fibers of your tongue! You can use it as a blunt-force weapon, a grappling hook, or a binding tool. You are a mid-range terror, my boy!"

 

But it wasn't just the tongue. Izuku’s spatulate fingers, the sticky pads that allowed him to climb, had mutated further under the stress of One For All. By channeling Overdrive into his fingertips, the microscopic setae could generate an adhesive force strong enough to rip chunks of concrete out of walls if he pulled hard enough. He could cling to the bottom of a steel beam, holding two tons of trash, and not slip a single millimeter.

 

Winter approached, and with it came Izuku’s greatest test.

 

The cold.

 

As December hit, the temperature dropped below freezing. Usually, Izuku would be bundled in four layers, constantly fighting off hibernation-induced sleepiness. But this year, he stood on the freezing, snowy beach in nothing but his tracksuit pants and a t-shirt.

 

"How are you feeling, Midoriya?" Toshinori asked, bundled in a thick parka, shivering violently in his skeletal form.

 

Izuku closed his eyes. He activated Overdrive at a constant, low hum of 2% throughout his core. His body emanated a gentle, rising steam, melting the snowflakes before they even touched his green hair.

 

"I'm warm," Izuku smiled, opening his bright eyes. "The quirk... it completely negates my weakness. I'm generating my own heat."

 

Toshinori smiled proudly. "Then finish the job, young man. Clear the rest of this beach."

 

 

 

Month 10: The Horizon

 

It was 6:00 AM on the day of the U.A. Entrance Exam.

 

Toshinori Yagi stood on the seawall, looking out at the horizon. The sun was just peeking over the ocean, casting a brilliant orange glow across the water. The gentle waves lapped against pristine, golden sand. There was not a single tire, refrigerator, or piece of scrap metal in sight.

 

Suddenly, a deafening sonic boom cracked the morning air.

 

Toshinori looked up. High above the beach, a silhouette blocked out the rising sun. Izuku Midoriya was in freefall. He had leaped off the roof of a nearby apartment building, soared over the entire length of the beach, and was plummeting toward the sand.

 

"HAHAHA!" Toshinori transformed instantly, bulking up into his massive muscle form. "COME ON DOWN, YOUNG MIDORIYA!"

 

Izuku aimed his descent. As he neared the sand, he channeled Overdrive into his legs. He didn't just land; he cratered the beach, sending a massive plume of sand into the air.

 

As the dust cleared, Izuku stood up. He was shirtless, his lean, incredibly defined torso glistening with sweat. His legs looked like coiled steel cables. He exhaled, a cloud of steam rising from his mouth in the cool morning air.

 

"I did it, All Might," Izuku beamed, looking at the clean beach.

 

All Might walked over, placing a massive, heavy hand on Izuku's shoulder. "You did more than just clean a beach, my boy. You forged a vessel capable of holding the fire of the gods. You took a power meant for a brawler and molded it to your own biology."

 

All Might looked down, his blue eyes softening. "I gave you a fractured legacy. Half a quirk. I worried that I had cursed you to always be second best to Togata. But seeing you now... I know you are going to be a hero completely unlike any other."

 

Izuku felt tears prick his eyes. He wiped them away with his sticky fingers.

 

"Now," All Might boomed, pointing toward the city. "Go! Show the world what the Green-Horned Tree Frog can do!"

 

 

 

The Entrance Exam

 

U.A. High School was a massive, imposing fortress of glass and steel, shaped like a giant 'H'.

 

Izuku stood at the front gates, wearing his black middle school uniform. His heart fluttered nervously. This is it. Ten months of hell, all for today.

 

He took a step forward, lost in his thoughts, and his shoe caught the edge of a raised paving stone.

 

Usually, Izuku's frog-like reflexes would instantly correct his balance. But his mind was so occupied with strategies that he completely forgot to engage his muscles. He pitched forward, bracing for a face-plant on the concrete.

 

Slap.

 

A soft hand pressed against his back. Suddenly, gravity ceased to exist. Izuku floated in mid-air, his legs kicking comically like a swimming frog.

 

"Oops! Sorry for using my quirk on you without asking," a cheerful voice said.

 

Izuku twisted in mid-air to see a girl with short, bobbed brown hair and a permanent flush on her cheeks. She pressed her fingertips together, and Izuku dropped unceremoniously to his feet.

 

"But it'd be bad luck if you fell right before the exam, right?" she smiled warmly. "I'm Ochaco Uraraka! You looked super nervous!"

 

Izuku’s brain, which had very little experience speaking to girls, short-circuited entirely. His face flushed a brilliant shade of green. "I-I-I-I-uh... thank you! G-Gravity! Cool!"

 

Uraraka giggled. "Well, good luck!" She waved and jogged inside.

 

Izuku stood there, frozen. I talked to a girl! Well, I squeaked at a girl! But it counts!

 

"Are you going to stand there blocking the gate all day, ribbit?"

 

Izuku jumped, turning around. Standing behind him was a girl who looked remarkably like... him. She had long, dark green hair tied in a bow at the bottom, and her posture was slightly slouched. But what caught Izuku's attention were her eyes—wide, dark, and distinctly amphibious—and her abnormally large hands.

 

"Oh! Sorry!" Izuku stepped aside.

 

The girl looked at him closely, tilting her head. "You have a mutation. You're an amphibian type too, aren't you?"

 

Izuku’s eyes lit up. "Yeah! I'm a Tree Frog mutation! Hylidae family! Are you a frog too?"

 

"Tsuyu Asui," she introduced herself, giving a small, blunt nod. "Bullfrog mutation. Call me Tsu. I don't see many frog-types aiming for the hero course. We usually get routed to marine rescue."

 

"I know, right?" Izuku practically vibrated with excitement. "People think because we don't shoot fire, we can't fight! But our mobility is top-tier! Your leg density must be amazing for aquatic propulsion!"

 

Tsu blinked, slightly taken aback by his intense muttering, but a small smile graced her lips. "You're a strange one. But I like your energy. Good luck, Tree Frog."

 

"You too, Tsu!"

 

Izuku walked into the auditorium feeling lighter than air. He had a power, he had trained, and he had just met two nice people. Nothing could ruin this mood.

 

"Outta my way, Deku."

 

Izuku froze. He looked to his left. Katsuki Bakugo was glaring at him, his red eyes burning with their usual mixture of arrogance and rage.

 

"K-Kacchan," Izuku stammered, his old fears briefly surfacing.

 

Bakugo sneered, looking Izuku up and down. He noticed the changes. Izuku wasn't a scrawny, trembling twig anymore. The black uniform was tight around Izuku’s shoulders, and his legs looked ridiculously thick.

 

"I don't know what kind of steroids you've been taking, you gross bug," Bakugo growled, sparking a small explosion in his palm. "But U.A. isn't a place for side-characters. You're gonna fail this exam, and then you're gonna crawl back under whatever damp rock you came from. Got it?"

 

For a decade, Izuku would have shrunk away, apologizing profusely.

 

Today, Izuku stood his ground. He didn't glare back—that wasn't in his nature—but his green eyes were calm, focused, and unyielding.

 

"I'm going to pass, Kacchan," Izuku said quietly. "I'm going to be a hero."

 

Bakugo’s eye twitched in fury, but before he could shout, the lights in the auditorium dimmed. The Voice Hero, Present Mic, exploded onto the stage, screaming into the microphone and outlining the rules of the practical exam.

 

They were to be dropped into massive, faux-city battle centers. Their goal was to destroy villain robots worth one, two, and three points. There was also a massive Zero Pointer—an obstacle to be avoided.

 

Speed, Izuku thought, stretching his legs beneath his desk. I don't have All Might's raw power to smash a robot to dust with my fists. I have to use kinetic strikes and my mobility.

 

 

 

The Practical Exam: Battle Center B

 

Izuku stood before the massive, towering gates of Battle Center B. He was dressed in his green tracksuit. Around him, dozens of other examinees were stretching, looking nervous. He spotted Uraraka a few yards away, taking deep breaths.

 

"Right, let's start!" Present Mic's voice echoed from a massive speaker tower. "There are no countdowns in a real battle! Go, go, go!"

 

The massive gates began to slowly swing open. The other examinees paused, waiting for the gates to open wide enough to run through.

 

Izuku didn't wait.

 

OFA: Overdrive - 5%.

 

Green lightning erupted around Izuku’s massive thighs and calves. The concrete beneath his red sneakers shattered instantly.

 

With a concussive boom that deafened the examinees next to him, Izuku launched himself forward. He didn't run through the gates; he leaped straight over them. He soared forty feet into the air, completely bypassing the bottleneck at the entrance, and landed halfway down the main street of the faux-city before anyone else had even taken their first step.

 

"Holy crap! What was that?!" a random examinee yelled, staring at the dust cloud Izuku left behind.

 

Inside the city, Izuku hit the ground rolling, absorbing the kinetic energy perfectly. He immediately heard the mechanical whirring of gears.

 

Three One-Pointer robots rolled out from an alleyway, their red optical sensors locking onto him. "Target acquired."

 

Izuku didn't panic. He analyzed. Light armor. Wheels for mobility. Exposed wiring at the neck joints.

 

He crouched low. He didn't charge them. He leaped sideways, bouncing off the hood of a parked car, and slapped his hands against the sheer brick wall of a nearby building. His sticky pads locked in. He was stuck to the wall like a spider, three stories up.

 

The robots tracked him, aiming their arm-cannons upward.

 

Now!

 

Izuku pushed off the wall with explosive force, diving straight down toward the center robot. As he fell, he opened his mouth.

 

CRACK.

 

His tongue lashed out, infused with the kinetic energy of Overdrive. It wrapped twice around the robot's mechanical neck. Izuku didn't pull the robot up; he used his own falling momentum and his tongue as a pivot point to violently swing his body in a tight arc.

 

He swung completely around the robot's head, gaining massive centrifugal force, and drove his heavy, steel-hardened right heel directly into the back of the second robot's head.

 

SMASH.

 

The two-pointer's head caved in on itself, exploding in a shower of sparks.

 

Izuku released his tongue, backflipping off the destroyed robot. As he landed, the third robot fired a tennis-ball-sized rubber bullet at him.

 

Izuku's amphibian reflexes flared. He dropped flat to his stomach, the projectile whizzing over his head. From a prone position, he activated Overdrive in his legs and kicked backward like a mule. His heel struck the center of the first robot's chest plate. The kinetic shockwave crumpled the armor, destroying the internal battery.

 

Three points in less than ten seconds.

 

"It works," Izuku breathed, green lightning dancing across his skin. "I can't punch them... but I don't need to!"

 

For the next eight minutes, Izuku Midoriya became a localized natural disaster.

 

The examiners in the observation room watched the monitors in absolute stunned silence.

 

"Who the hell is examinee number 7111?" the Pro Hero Snipe asked, leaning close to a screen. "Is that an enhancement quirk or a mutation?"

 

"Both, it seems," Aizawa Shota muttered from the back of the dark room, his tired eyes narrowed. "He possesses the physiology of a tree frog, but he's generating localized kinetic shockwaves to amplify his leg strength and tongue velocity. It's incredibly efficient. He hasn't thrown a single punch, yet his destruction output is rivaling Bakugo Katsuki's."

 

On the screen, Izuku was a green blur. He wasn't running on the streets; he was traversing the city entirely by wall-crawling and leaping between rooftops. He would drop down from above, execute a devastating dropkick, use his tongue to rip out a robot's optics, and instantly leap back into the sky before the machines could even track his heat signature.

 

Thirty-five points... forty-two points... forty-eight points! Izuku counted in his head as he landed on a lamppost, perching on it like a gargoyle. That should be enough to pass the baseline! I did it!

 

"Two minutes remaining!" Present Mic's voice echoed across the city.

 

Suddenly, the ground beneath Izuku's lamppost began to tremble violently. The shaking was so intense that buildings around him began to crack, shedding glass and brick into the streets below.

 

A shadow eclipsed the sun.

 

At the end of the main avenue, a colossal machine rose from beneath the street. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, possessing massive, grinding treads and hands the size of city buses. It was the Zero Pointer.

 

"It's huge!" an examinee screamed from the street below. "Run!"

 

The crowd of teenagers began a frantic stampede toward the exit gates. The Zero Pointer swung its massive arm, smashing through an entire building as if it were made of cardboard. Debris rained down like artillery fire.

 

Izuku clung to his swaying lamppost. It's a gimmick. Present Mic said to avoid it. I just need to retreat.

 

He coiled his legs, preparing to leap backward.

 

"Ow! My leg!"

 

The cry was faint, barely audible over the roaring of the giant machine, but Izuku’s sensitive hearing caught it. He stopped, his head snapping around.

 

Down on the street, near the base of the Zero Pointer's grinding treads, Ochaco Uraraka was trapped. A massive chunk of concrete from the destroyed building had fallen, pinning her leg to the ground. She was desperately pressing her hands against the rubble, trying to use her gravity quirk, but she had exhausted her limit and was dry-heaving from nausea.

 

The Zero Pointer's tread rolled forward, crushing the asphalt. In less than ten seconds, it would crush her.

 

Izuku didn't think.

 

“Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think.”

 

All Might’s words echoed in his mind.

 

Izuku didn't run away. He leaped forward, dropping from the lamppost and landing on the street fifty yards from the giant robot.

 

He stared up at the mechanical titan.

 

I can't just pull her out, Izuku analyzed frantically, his mind operating at a million miles an hour. The rubble is too heavy, and I don't have the upper-body strength to lift it quickly. If I try to yank her out with my tongue, I'll dislocate her leg or tear it off completely. The only way to save her... is to destroy the robot.

 

Izuku squeezed his fists together.

 

I have fifty percent of One For All. All Might said I can't use it all, or my body will shatter. But I don't have a choice.

 

Izuku widened his stance, dropping into a deep crouch. He closed his eyes and found that phantom furnace at the base of his spine.

 

He didn't pull out 5%. He didn't pull out 10%.

 

He ripped the floodgates completely open.

 

OFA: Overdrive - 100% of the 50% Stockpile.

 

The result was terrifying. Izuku’s dense, coiled leg muscles violently expanded, tearing through his tracksuit pants. The microscopic muscle fibers audibly snapped and re-wove themselves in milliseconds, trying to accommodate the sheer, apocalyptic volume of kinetic energy flooding into them. Brilliant, blinding golden-green lightning erupted from his lower half, illuminating the shadowed street like a miniature sun.

 

The pain was unimaginable. It felt like his legs were submerged in molten lava, his bones cracking under the pressure of his own contracting muscles.

 

Izuku screamed, the sound echoing off the ruined buildings.

 

In the observation room, All Might, who was in his muscle form watching the monitors, suddenly stood up, his chair clattering backward. "Young Midoriya! NO! Your legs will break!"

 

Izuku didn't hear him. He looked up at the head of the Zero Pointer.

 

He pushed off.

 

The shockwave didn't just shatter the concrete; it atomized it. A massive crater, thirty feet wide, blew outward from where Izuku had been standing. The sheer air pressure knocked the fleeing examinees off their feet.

 

Izuku didn't jump. He launched. He broke the sound barrier instantly, ascending completely vertically like a surface-to-air missile.

 

Uraraka, pinned under the rubble, looked up in awe as a streak of emerald light shot up the front of the colossal machine.

 

Izuku reached the apex of his jump, floating perfectly level with the Zero Pointer's massive, glowing red optical sensor. He was completely horizontal in the air. The wind roared around him.

 

He pulled his right leg back. His femur and tibia were already fracturing under the strain of holding the energy, glowing a terrifying, radioactive green beneath his skin.

 

This is it! Everything I have! For her!

 

"DETROIT... LEAP!"

 

Izuku whipped his leg forward, executing a flawless, mid-air roundhouse kick directly into the center of the robot's face.

 

The moment his foot made contact, the kinetic transfer occurred. The 50% stockpile of One For All, compressed entirely into a single point of impact, was unleashed.

 

The shockwave deformed the air itself, creating a visible ring of compressed atmosphere.

 

The head of the Zero Pointer didn't just dent. It imploded. The reinforced steel armor crinkled like tin foil. The massive internal chassis violently sheared backward, the head snapping off its neck joint completely.

 

The concussive force traveling down the spine of the robot caused its core to detonate. The towering titan of steel exploded in a massive fireball, tilting backward and crashing into the faux-city with a seismic thud that shook the entire U.A. campus.

 

Silence fell over the battle center.

 

Then, gravity took over.

 

Izuku began to fall.

 

He was hundreds of feet in the air. The adrenaline was fading, and the agony was rushing in. Izuku looked down at his legs. They were mangled. The skin was bruised a deep purple, his tracksuit pants completely shredded. The bones in both his legs were shattered in dozens of places from the recoil of his own kick. They flopped uselessly in the wind.

 

I broke them, Izuku realized, his vision blurring. Both of them. I can't land. I can't use my sticky pads if I can't reach the wall. I'm going to fall to my death.

 

He was hurtling toward the concrete.

 

Think! What do I have left? My arms are fine, but they aren't strong enough to brace a terminal velocity fall. My legs are gone.

 

My tongue.

 

He was twenty feet from the ground. He saw the sharp edge of a destroyed building adjacent to him.

 

Izuku opened his mouth. Snap.

 

He didn't use Overdrive. He couldn't. He just used his natural, amphibian strength. His tongue wrapped tightly around a protruding steel rebar sticking out of the fourth floor of the ruined building.

 

The slack ran out.

 

CRACK.

 

The whiplash was violent. Izuku’s descent was halted instantly, his body swinging wildly on the end of his tongue. The muscles in his neck screamed in agony, nearly tearing under the strain of catching his own body weight, but they held.

 

He hung there, dangling like a pendulum, three stories above the street.

 

"Release!"

 

Below him, Uraraka, who had managed to free herself from the rubble during the robot's collapse, slapped the side of a large piece of falling debris she had floated, sending it drifting under Izuku. She released her quirk on it, creating a makeshift ramp.

 

Izuku retracted his tongue, falling the remaining ten feet. He hit the slanted debris and rolled, sliding down into the street.

 

He came to a stop on his back. He couldn't move. The pain in his legs was a blinding, roaring siren in his brain.

 

"Time's up!" Present Mic yelled.

 

Izuku lay on the asphalt, staring up at the clear blue sky. He was breathing heavily, a small trickle of blood running from his nose.

 

Uraraka limped over to him, her eyes wide with terror and awe. "Are... are you alive? That was... you saved me."

 

Izuku slowly turned his head to look at her. Despite the agonizing pain, despite knowing he had just irreparably damaged his body, he forced a wide, comforting smile.

 

"Are you... okay?" Izuku croaked out.

 

Uraraka burst into tears, dropping to her knees beside him. "I'm fine! But your legs! Someone get a medic!"

 

 

 

The Infirmary

 

The ceiling of the U.A. infirmary was a boring shade of white.

 

Izuku stared at it, feeling the dull, throbbing ache in his lower half. Both of his legs were encased in heavy plaster casts, elevated on pillows.

 

The door slid open. The Youthful Heroine, Recovery Girl, walked in, leaning on her syringe-shaped cane. Behind her, in his skeletal form, was Toshinori Yagi.

 

"Ah, the boy who thinks his bones are made of disposable plastic is awake," Recovery Girl scolded, walking over and whacking Izuku lightly on the head with her cane.

 

"Ow! I'm sorry!" Izuku winced.

 

"You should be sorry," she grumbled, climbing onto a stool next to his bed. "I used my quirk on you. Your bones are mended, but you're completely drained of stamina. You'll be in casts for a few days while the micro-fractures finish healing."

 

She turned to look at Toshinori, her expression hardening. She pointed her cane at the Number One Hero.

 

"And you. Yagi. You gave this boy half a cup."

 

Toshinori flinched. "Chiyo, I—"

 

"Don't 'Chiyo' me," she snapped. "I examined his cellular structure. I know exactly what you and Mirai did. You split the stockpile."

 

Izuku looked between them, confused. "Half a cup?"

 

Recovery Girl sighed, turning her sharp gaze to Izuku. "Listen to me closely, Midoriya. The power you possess is not complete. Because Togata holds the other half, your ceiling for raw, brute force is permanently capped. Your body, with its mutant traits, is incredibly efficient at weaponizing the kinetic energy you do have. But today, you tried to force half a cup of water to fill a whole bucket."

 

She pointed to his casted legs.

 

"You tried to unleash 100% of the raw, blunt force of One For All to destroy that robot, just like Yagi would have. But you don't have the raw, blunt force. You have the kinetic edge. When you tried to force it, your muscles expanded beyond their physical limit and shattered your bones. If you do that again... if you try to fight like a brawler instead of using your agility... you will permanently paralyze yourself."

 

Izuku swallowed hard, looking at his casts. She's right. I couldn't just punch it. I had to kick it. And even then, my body broke. I can't be All Might.

 

"You must be a scalpel, Midoriya," Recovery Girl said softly. "Not a hammer. Leave the heavy lifting to Togata. You must be the speed. The precision. Do you understand?"

 

"I understand," Izuku whispered.

 

Recovery Girl nodded, hopping off the stool. "Good. Now get some rest. The letters will be sent out in a week."

 

As she left the room, Toshinori walked over to the bed. He looked incredibly guilty.

 

"I'm sorry, Young Midoriya. I pushed you into a situation where you felt you had to break yourself."

 

"Don't be sorry, All Might," Izuku smiled, a genuine, warm expression. "I saved her. I didn't get any points from it, but I saved her. Even if I fail, I don't regret it."

 

Toshinori smiled, a tear pricking his eye. "You truly are a hero, my boy."

 

 

 

One Week Later

 

Izuku sat at his desk in his bedroom, staring at the small, holographic projector sitting on the wood. It had arrived in the mail ten minutes ago, stamped with the U.A. wax seal.

 

His mother was pacing outside the door, chewing her fingernails.

 

Izuku reached out, his green, sticky fingers trembling. He pressed the button.

 

A holographic projection of All Might, in his yellow suit, sprang to life.

 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!" All Might boomed. "Young Midoriya! You scored forty-eight villain points in the practical exam! A respectable score, but perhaps not enough to break the top ten!"

 

Izuku’s heart sank. Forty-eight points. He knew it wouldn't be enough. He had spent the last two minutes of the exam with broken legs.

 

"HOWEVER!" All Might's projection pointed a finger forward. "A hero course does not grade solely on destruction! How could we reject someone who risks their life to save another?"

 

The projection shifted, showing a video of Uraraka Ochaco standing in Present Mic's office.

 

“Excuse me!” the video Uraraka said, bowing deeply. “The boy with the green hair and the frog quirk... he saved me! If he lost points because he was hurt, can I give him mine? Please! He’s a hero!”

 

Izuku gasped, tears instantly welling up in his large eyes.

 

"RESCUE POINTS!" All Might roared, a scoreboard appearing next to his face. "Given by a panel of judges! Izuku Midoriya... Sixty Rescue Points! For a grand total of One Hundred and Eight points! You are tied for first place!"

 

The scoreboard showed Izuku’s name at the very top, directly tied with a student named Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"Come, Young Midoriya," All Might smiled, holding out his hand. "This is your Hero Academia!"

 

The projection clicked off.

 

Izuku sat in the silence of his room. He looked down at his hands, at his swollen, sticky fingertips that society had told him were useless. He looked at his legs, now free from their casts, dense and coiled with half the power of a god.

 

He threw his head back, tears streaming down his cheeks, and let out a triumphant, croaking laugh.

 

He was going to U.A.