What if Deku had a mutation of a Bewilderbeast from How to Train Your Dragon

 

The world of Quirks was one built on spectacle, but beneath the flashy heroics and colorful spandex lay a rigid, unspoken hierarchy. Quirks were categorized, judged, and ranked the moment they appeared. There were the beautiful Quirks, the powerful Quirks, the weak Quirks, and the useless ones.

 

And then, there were the monstrous ones.

 

For Izuku Midoriya, the obsession with Quirks and heroes began the moment he could comprehend the moving images on a computer screen. All Might, the Symbol of Peace, standing amidst the rubble of a disaster, a brilliant smile plastered across his face as he held a dozen people to safety. Izuku wanted that. He wanted to be the man who smiled in the face of fear, the man who made everyone feel safe just by being there.

 

At four years old, Izuku’s world was a waiting game. Every morning he would wake up, stretch his small hands, and wait for a spark of fire, a floating toy, a sudden surge of strength—anything that would signal his initiation into the world of heroes. His mother, Inko, watched his eager anticipation with a soft, affectionate smile, though a seed of maternal worry had begun to take root. Most of the children in Izuku’s preschool class had already manifested their abilities. Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku’s closest friend, had recently developed a brilliant, explosive Quirk that crackled like fireworks in his palms. Katsuki was already being hailed as a future top hero.

 

Izuku, meanwhile, was just waiting.

 

But as the weeks passed, something began to change. It didn’t start with a spark or a sudden burst of power. It started with a fever.

 

It was the middle of July, the peak of the Japanese summer, where the cicadas screamed in the trees and the air felt like a wet, suffocating blanket. For three days, Izuku had been confined to his bed, his small body radiating heat like a furnace. The thermometer read a terrifying 104 degrees, and no amount of cold compresses or fever-reducing medicine seemed to make a dent.

 

"Mommy..." Izuku whimpered, twisting in his sweat-soaked sheets. "It's hot. I'm so hot."

 

Inko wrung out a washcloth in a basin of ice water, her hands trembling. "I know, baby. I know. The doctor said it’s a Quirk manifestation fever. Your body is just... preparing for something big. Just hold on."

 

But this wasn't a normal fever. Inside Izuku’s cellular structure, a dormant, ancient genetic sequence was unlocking. It was a mutation so profound, so absolute, that his human DNA was being overwritten, forced to accommodate the biology of an apex predator that hadn't walked the earth, but rather ruled its oceans.

 

On the fourth night, the fever broke, but it was replaced by something much more terrifying.

 

Izuku woke up in the dead of night, gasping for air. The room was dark, the only light coming from the streetlamps filtering through his All Might curtains. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. But it wasn't just his heart. His entire skeleton felt like it was shifting, cracking, pulling apart and knitting back together.

 

A choked, guttural sound escaped his throat—a sound that didn't sound human. It sounded like the grinding of tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor.

 

"Mom...!" Izuku tried to scream, but the word came out distorted, deep and resonating with a strange, bass-heavy vibration.

 

He threw the blankets off his body and stumbled out of bed. His legs felt heavy, immensely heavy. He fell to his hands and knees, gasping as a tearing sensation ripped across his back, his shoulders, and down his arms. In the dim light, his wide, terrified green eyes watched as the soft, pale skin of his forearms began to split, not with blood, but with the emergence of thick, pearlescent white scales. They overlapped like armor, cold and hard to the touch, spreading rapidly up his neck and down his spine.

 

The pain was blinding. His jaw cracked, his lower teeth shifting painfully. Two sharp, hardened protrusions—tusks—began to push their way through his lower gums, angling upward past his upper lip. On either side of his neck, three sharp slits opened up, expanding and contracting as his lungs desperately sought oxygen. Gills.

 

His body was expanding, muscles swelling with terrifying density. At four years old, he was growing at an impossible rate, tearing through his pajamas. The heat inside him—the residual fever—was suddenly localized in his chest. It felt like he had swallowed a dying star, and it was burning him from the inside out. His biology, newly mutated into that of a deep-sea leviathan, was rejecting the stifling summer heat of the apartment.

 

Hot. Too hot. Need cold.

 

The instinct was primal, overriding his panicked human mind. He needed to cool down, or he felt like he was going to explode. He dragged himself toward the center of his bedroom, his newly enlarged, clawed fingers digging into the tatami mats. He took a massive, shuddering breath, his chest expanding to twice its normal size, his gills flaring wildly.

 

And then, he let it out.

 

It was not fire. It was not wind. It was the total, absolute cessation of molecular movement.

 

A blast of pure, absolute-zero energy erupted from Izuku’s mouth. It was a swirling, roaring vortex of liquid nitrogen-like mist and crystalline ice. The moment the breath made contact with the air, the moisture in the room flash-froze. A massive, jagged glacier erupted from his position, expanding outward with the force of an explosion.

 

CRACK-BOOM!

 

The ice tore through his bedroom, instantly consuming his bed, his desk, and his All Might posters. It burst through the drywall, shattering the wooden framework of the apartment. The sheer cold was so intense that the wallpaper peeled off and shattered like glass. The pipes inside the walls froze and burst, adding more water to the freezing vortex, compounding the ice.

 

Izuku couldn't stop. The relief the cold brought to his burning core was euphoric, but the power was completely out of control. He roared—a deafening, trumpeting bellow that rattled the foundation of the entire apartment complex. The ice blasted through the door of his bedroom, sweeping into the hallway, consuming the living room, freezing the couch, the television, and the kitchen in a foot-thick layer of diamond-hard permafrost.

 

Inko, who had been asleep in the next room, was thrown from her bed as the wall adjoining Izuku’s room violently buckled inward, a massive spike of ice piercing right through the plaster. The temperature in the apartment plummeted from a sweltering eighty degrees to a lethal sub-zero in a matter of seconds. Her breath plumed in front of her face as a blinding white mist filled the air.

 

"Izuku!" Inko screamed, ignoring the biting frost that instantly began to nip at her bare feet as she scrambled into the hallway.

 

The apartment was unrecognizable. It looked like the inside of an arctic cavern. Massive, jagged pillars of ice held up the ceiling, which was groaning under the sudden, immense structural stress. Frost covered every surface, and the air was so cold it burned her lungs.

 

"Izuku! Where are you?!"

 

She waded through the freezing mist, her teeth chattering violently, her hands wrapped around her arms. She reached what used to be her son's bedroom. The door had been blown entirely off its hinges, encased in a block of ice across the hall.

 

Inko stepped into the room, and her breath hitched.

 

In the center of the room, surrounded by a swirling halo of freezing mist, was a creature. It was huddled into a massive ball, shivering, though not from the cold. It was the size of an eight-year-old child, broad-shouldered and impossibly thick. Its skin was a patchwork of pale, slightly tanned flesh and thick, armored white scales that gleamed in the moonlight. Down its spine ran a ridge of hardened spikes, and around the crown of its head was a frill of bony, sensory appendages.

 

The creature slowly uncurled, turning its head toward her. Two small tusks protruded from its lower jaw, framing a face that was wider, more robust, and undeniably alien. But as it looked at her, two massive, wide, emerald-green eyes, brimming with heavy tears, locked onto hers.

 

"M-Mommy...?"

 

The voice was deeper, resonating with a strange, double-layered timbre—part human child, part ancient beast. But the cadence, the absolute terror in that single word, was entirely her son.

 

Inko didn't see the scales. She didn't see the tusks, or the gills, or the terrifying ice that had destroyed their home. She saw her baby boy, terrified of his own body.

 

"Izuku!" Inko dropped to her knees, heedless of the jagged ice cutting into her legs, and threw her arms around his massive, freezing shoulders. He was incredibly cold to the touch, like hugging a marble statue left out in a blizzard, but she held on tighter, pressing her face into his scaly neck.

 

Izuku buried his face in her shoulder, letting out a heavy, vibrating sob that sounded like a whale's cry. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Mommy, I don't know what happened, it hurts, everything feels so weird!"

 

"It's okay, baby, it's okay," Inko cried, her own tears freezing to her cheeks. "You're okay. Your Quirk... your Quirk came in. That's all. You're just so strong, Izuku. You're so strong."

 

Outside, the sounds of sirens began to wail in the distance. The sudden, massive drop in temperature and the structural damage to the apartment building had not gone unnoticed. Within minutes, the flashing red lights of fire engines and police cruisers illuminated the frosted windows of the Midoriya apartment.

 

 

 

The aftermath was a blur of flashing lights, shouting heroes, and terrified neighbors.

 

When the Pro-Heroes and firefighters breached the apartment, they came in ready for a villain attack. An ice-villain, they assumed, given the fact that the entire fourth floor of the complex had been turned into a meat locker. Two sidekicks of the Pro-Hero Backdraft kicked in the frozen front door, their hands glowing with readied Quirks.

 

"Clear the area! We have a severe Quirk-related incident, possible villain activity!" one of the heroes shouted, stepping carefully over the slick, icy floors.

 

They found Inko huddled in the corner of the living room, wrapped in three heavy blankets, shivering violently. And beside her, looming defensively, was Izuku.

 

When the heroes saw the scaled, tusked giant, they immediately raised their guard. Izuku, overwhelmed by the sudden intrusion, the loud noises, and the bright flashlights, felt a sudden, terrifying spike of adrenaline. A deep, instinctual defense mechanism flared to life inside his brain. His frills flushed with blood, standing erect around his head, and he let out a low, warning hiss, his gills flaring as a puff of freezing mist leaked from his mouth.

 

"Step away from the civilian, villain!" one of the heroes yelled, a stream of water shooting from his gauntlet.

 

"NO!" Inko shrieked, throwing off the blankets and standing between the heroes and Izuku. She spread her arms wide, her face pale but her eyes burning with maternal fury. "Don't you dare aim your Quirks at him! He's a child! He's my son!"

 

The heroes froze, staring in disbelief at the towering, armored creature shrinking behind the small, green-haired woman.

 

"Ma'am... that's your son?" the hero asked, lowering his hands slowly. "How old is he?"

 

"He's four years old!" Inko snapped, though her voice wavered with exhaustion. "His Quirk just manifested. He didn't mean to do this. He was just scared."

 

The heroes exchanged uneasy glances. Four years old. Quirks were known to cause physical mutations, but this was extreme even by modern standards. The sheer power required to flash-freeze an entire apartment to the point of structural failure was something you'd expect from a seasoned Pro, not a preschooler who had just woken up from a fever.

 

Izuku peered around his mother's legs—though he was already nearly as tall as her waist. He looked at the heroes, the people he had idolized his entire short life. He expected them to smile, to tell him that his Quirk was amazing, that he was going to be a great hero.

 

Instead, he saw their eyes. He saw the tight grip on their weapons. He saw their hesitation.

 

He saw fear.

 

They were looking at him the way people looked at the villains on television. The realization hit Izuku like a physical blow. He looked down at his massive, clawed hands. He felt the cold, hard scales covering his arms. He reached up, trembling, and touched the sharp, bony tusks jutting from his jaw.

 

I'm a monster.

 

 

 

The transition into his new life was brutal. The Midoriyas were forced to move out of their apartment, which had sustained severe water and structural damage from the thawing ice. The insurance, thankfully, covered "Quirk Manifestation Accidents," a common enough clause in a superhuman society, but the emotional damage was not so easily repaired.

 

They moved to a slightly larger, ground-floor apartment. Inko had to buy completely new clothes for Izuku. He was rapidly outgrowing everything. Within a month of his manifestation, he stood nearly four-and-a-half feet tall, heavily muscled and broad. His skin remained a mix of pale human flesh and thick, white, overlapping scales that acted as a natural thermal regulator and armor. His tusks grew slightly longer, curving up past his top lip. He was required to drink massive amounts of cold water and eat nearly triple his normal caloric intake, mostly raw fish and proteins, to sustain his mutated biology.

 

But the hardest part wasn't the physical changes. It was the social ones.

 

Three weeks after the incident, Inko decided it was time to try and return to normal. She dressed Izuku in an oversized yellow hoodie, pulling the hood up to try and conceal his frills and tusks as much as possible, and walked him to the local neighborhood playground. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the park was filled with the familiar sounds of laughing children and chatting mothers.

 

Izuku’s heart pounded with a mix of anxiety and desperate hope. He hadn't seen Katsuki since before he got sick. He couldn't wait to show his friend that he finally had a Quirk. Even if he looked scary, Katsuki would understand. Katsuki thought all powerful Quirks were cool.

 

"Go on, Izuku," Inko said softly, giving him a gentle push toward the sandbox. "I'll be right over here on the bench."

 

Izuku nodded, his heavy footsteps thudding dully against the soft rubber matting of the playground. He kept his head down, clutching the hem of his oversized hoodie.

 

Near the jungle gym, a familiar shock of spiky ash-blonde hair caught his eye. Katsuki Bakugo was holding court, surrounded by two extra kids who were watching in awe as Katsuki popped small, crackling explosions in his palms.

 

"And that's why I'm gonna be the number one hero!" Katsuki boasted, a cocky grin on his face. "Nobody has a Quirk as flashy and strong as mine!"

 

"Kacchan!"

 

Izuku’s voice rang out. It was deeper than before, carrying a strange, resonant echo that made several kids turn their heads.

 

Katsuki stopped his explosions, turning to face the voice. His red eyes widened slightly as he took in the massive, hooded figure approaching him. Izuku pulled back his hood, offering a hesitant, tusked smile.

 

"It's me, Kacchan! My Quirk came in!" Izuku said, his tail—a thick, muscular, scaled appendage he had recently discovered he could control—swishing nervously behind him.

 

The playground went dead silent. The other children backed away, their eyes wide with terror at the sight of the giant, scaled boy. Even some of the parents on the nearby benches stood up in alarm.

 

Katsuki stared. For a brief second, Izuku saw something in his friend's eyes that he had never seen before: shock. But Katsuki Bakugo was not a boy who processed shock well. His ego, inflated by weeks of praise for his own Quirk, immediately identified the towering boy in front of him not as his friend, but as a threat. Izuku was bigger than him. Izuku looked scarier than him.

 

That was unacceptable.

 

"Deku?" Katsuki sneered, stepping forward, masking his unease with aggressive bravado. "What the hell happened to you? You look like a freak."

 

Izuku flinched, the words stinging worse than the ice that had burned his skin. "I... I'm a mutation-type, Kacchan. But my Quirk is ice! I can freeze things! We can be heroes together now!"

 

"Heroes?" Katsuki scoffed, slapping his hands together. A loud POP of an explosion echoed in the quiet park. "You don't look like a hero, Deku. You look like a villain. A big, ugly villain."

 

"I'm not a villain!" Izuku protested, taking a step forward. He just wanted his friend to understand. "I want to save people!"

 

"Stay back, you freak!" Katsuki yelled. His pride demanded that he put this monster in its place. He lunged forward, his right hand crackling with heat and light, aiming a point-blank explosion right at Izuku’s chest.

 

BOOM.

 

The explosion connected, singeing the front of Izuku’s yellow hoodie and filling the air with the smell of burnt fabric and ozone.

 

Izuku stumbled back, but he didn't fall. He didn't even feel the heat. His armored scales, designed to withstand the crushing pressures of the ocean floor and the freezing temperatures of the arctic, completely absorbed the blast.

 

But something else happened.

 

When Katsuki attacked him, a switch flipped deep inside Izuku’s hindbrain. The Leviathan DNA, the apex predator biology, recognized the hostile action. It didn't care that this was Katsuki Bakugo, a four-year-old boy. It recognized a challenger to the Alpha. It recognized a threat that needed to be subjugated.

 

Izuku’s eyes, normally wide and innocent, suddenly narrowed into sharp, reptilian slits. His pupils dilated until his eyes were almost entirely pitch black. His frills flared out aggressively around his head, the spikes standing on end. He drew in a massive breath, his chest expanding, his gills opening wide.

 

"Izuku, no!" Inko screamed from the bench, already sprinting toward them.

 

Izuku didn't blow ice. He didn't need to. Instead, he released the Alpha Aura.

 

He opened his mouth and let out a sound. It wasn't a loud, deafening roar like before. It was a low, infrasonic rumble, a vibration so deep that it didn't just register in the ears; it rattled the bones. It was the sound of a god of the deep commanding its domain.

 

But the sound was only the vehicle. The true power was the empathic weight behind it. The Alpha Aura was a biological, psychic projection of absolute dominance. It was designed to force lesser creatures—which, to a Class-10 Leviathan, was everything—into immediate, instinctual submission.

 

The invisible wave hit Katsuki like a freight train.

 

The explosive boy froze. The spark in his palms died instantly. His breath hitched in his throat. Suddenly, Katsuki wasn't standing on a sunny playground. His lizard-brain, the oldest, most primal part of his human neurology, was screaming at him that he was standing in the shadow of a mountain that was about to crush him. The sheer, overwhelming pressure of Izuku’s presence felt like the air had been sucked out of the park. It was a terror so pure, so biological, that no amount of pride or willpower could fight it.

 

Katsuki’s knees buckled. He collapsed into the sandbox, his hands shaking violently as they fell to his sides. He stared up at Izuku, his red eyes blown wide, welling up with uncontrollable tears. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to grovel, to submit, to show his throat to the apex predator before it devoured him.

 

"Kacchan...?"

 

Izuku blinked. The instinctual fog cleared from his mind just as quickly as it had arrived. His pupils returned to normal, his frills lowering. The oppressive, terrifying aura vanished, leaving the air feeling suddenly light and empty.

 

Izuku looked down at his best friend. Katsuki was on his knees, shivering uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face, staring at Izuku with a look of absolute, unadulterated horror.

 

The other kids who had been watching screamed. One by one, they turned and ran, fleeing toward their parents, crying about the monster. The parents were shouting, grabbing their children and glaring at Izuku as if he were a rabid dog that had wandered into a petting zoo.

 

"Kacchan, I'm sorry..." Izuku reached a hand out to help him up. "I didn't mean to—"

 

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Katsuki shrieked, scrambling backward in the sand like a crab, kicking up dust. He scrambled to his feet, wiping furiously at his tears, his face contorted in a mix of profound humiliation and lingering, deep-seated fear. "Stay away from me, you monster! You're a villain! You're a villain!"

 

Katsuki turned and ran, leaving Izuku standing alone in the center of the sandbox.

 

Izuku slowly lowered his hand. The words echoed in his ears, syncing with the terrified whispers of the parents hurriedly vacating the playground.

 

Monster. Villain.

 

Inko arrived a second later, wrapping her arms around Izuku’s waist, her own heart breaking as she saw the shattered look on her son's face.

 

"Mommy..." Izuku whispered, his deep voice trembling. "Why did he look at me like that? I didn't even hit him. I just... I just looked at him."

 

Inko didn't have an answer. She just held him, shielding him from the glaring eyes of the remaining adults. "Let's go home, Izuku. Let's just go home."

 

 

 

The incident at the playground established the new reality of Izuku Midoriya's life.

 

As the years passed, the isolation only grew. His Quirk, officially registered as an Emitter/Mutant hybrid dubbed "Alpha Leviathan," was incredibly powerful. He possessed immense superhuman strength, durability that allowed him to shrug off nearly any physical impact, aquatic adaptation that made him a torpedo in the water, and the terrifying absolute-zero ice breath.

 

But it was the passive aspects of his Quirk that ruined his childhood.

 

He was huge. By the time he was in middle school, he was nearly seven feet tall, dwarfing his teachers and classmates. His shoulders were impossibly broad, heavily muscled and covered in those pale, armored scales. His tusks were prominent, and the gills on his neck fluttered slightly whenever he was anxious.

 

And then there was the aura. Even when Izuku wasn't actively trying to use his Alpha roar, his sheer presence made normal humans deeply uncomfortable. It was an uncanny valley of predator and prey. People instinctively crossed the street when they saw him walking. Teachers avoided calling on him, rushing through parent-teacher conferences just to get out of the room. Store owners followed him nervously when he went to buy groceries for his mother.

 

He learned to compress himself. He slouched constantly, trying to make his massive frame seem smaller. He wore clothes several sizes too big, long sleeves and high collars, desperately trying to hide his scales and gills. He learned to speak softly, suppressing the deep, rumbling bass of his natural voice. He buried his instincts deep down, terrifying himself whenever he felt that flare of Alpha dominance—the urge to stand tall, flare his frills, and demand the space around him.

 

He hated it. He hated his Quirk. He hated that his body was built for a violent, ancient world that didn't exist anymore.

 

Because beneath the scales, the tusks, and the terrifying aura, Izuku Midoriya was still just a boy who wanted to save people with a smile. His heart was pure, bleeding with empathy for everyone around him. He took meticulous notes on Pro-Heroes, filling notebook after notebook with strategies, Quirk analysis, and rescue tactics. He watched All Might videos religiously, tracing the hero's smile with a clawed finger, dreaming of a day when people would look at him with hope instead of fear.

 

But Katsuki never let him forget his place.

 

Their dynamic had mutated into something toxic and complex. Katsuki bullied Izuku relentlessly, calling him "Deku"—the useless one, the freak. But it wasn't the standard bullying of a strong kid picking on a weak one. It was driven by a deep, unacknowledged insecurity. Katsuki had never forgotten the day at the playground. He had never forgotten the feeling of being forced to his knees by the sheer, biological weight of Izuku's presence.

 

Katsuki’s bullying was a constant, desperate test of his own dominance. He needed to prove to himself, every single day, that he was the apex predator, not the hulking ice-monster that sat in the back of the classroom. He threw explosions, he shouted, he swaggered.

 

And Izuku took it.

 

Izuku let Katsuki burn his desk. He let Katsuki insult him. Because Izuku knew, with terrifying certainty, that if he ever truly fought back—if he ever let the Leviathan off its leash—he would break Katsuki in half. And if he did that, he would confirm what everyone already believed. He would be the monster they all saw him as.

 

So, he endured. The gentle giant, weathering the explosions and the insults, silently holding onto a dream that felt more impossible with every passing day.

 

 

 

It was a rainy afternoon in his second year of middle school. Izuku was walking home alone, holding a ridiculously large umbrella that still barely covered his broad shoulders. He took a shortcut under a dark, concrete overpass to avoid the stares of the people on the main street.

 

He was thinking about a new hero he had seen on the news, Mt. Lady, analyzing her gigantification Quirk and comparing its structural density to his own, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from his mother, asking him to pick up some more fish for dinner.

 

Izuku smiled softly. His mother was the only person in the world who looked at him and saw a boy. She never flinched when he accidentally crushed a glass cup with his grip. She never complained when she had to buy an industrial freezer just to store his food. She just loved him.

 

He typed back a quick 'On my way, Mom!' and pocketed the phone.

 

As he stepped out from under the bridge, the rain picking up, a dark thought crept into his mind, as it often did on lonely days. He thought about UA High School. The premier hero academy in Japan. It was the only school he wanted to attend. But the entrance exam was notoriously difficult, and more importantly, the Hero Public Safety Commission was strict about who they allowed into the hero course.

 

What if they take one look at me and decide I'm too dangerous? Izuku thought, his heavy boots splashing in a puddle. What if my aura scares the examiners? A hero is supposed to make people feel safe. All I do is make people afraid.

 

He paused, staring at his reflection in a large puddle on the asphalt.

 

The face staring back at him was not the face of a Symbol of Peace. It was the face of a beast. The sharp tusks, the slit pupils, the pale, armored scales. He looked like the final boss of a video game. He looked like the villain All Might would punch through a building to save the day.

 

A heavy, aching sorrow settled in his chest. The rain dripped from his frills, running down his face like cold tears.

 

He remembered being four years old, sitting in the freezing, destroyed apartment, asking his mother the question that had defined his life.

 

Can I be a hero too?

 

He remembered Inko's response. She hadn't cried and apologized, the way he had seen mothers do in movies when their children were diagnosed with tragic illnesses. Inko had pulled him into her arms, pressing her warm cheek against his freezing, scaled neck.

 

"Yes," she had whispered fiercely, her voice cutting through the chill of the room. "You will be the greatest hero, Izuku. Because you know what it feels like to be scared. You know what it feels like to be judged. A true hero protects the weak, and nobody has a bigger heart than you. Your body is strong so it can carry the weight of everyone who needs saving. Do you understand me? You are not a monster. You are my hero."

 

Izuku clenched his massive fists, the scales on his knuckles shifting slightly. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of the rain-slicked air.

 

His mother believed in him. That had to be enough. It had to be. He would prove everyone wrong. He would control the beast inside him. He would master the ice, he would suppress the aura, and he would show the world that a monster's exterior could hold a hero's heart.

 

He opened his eyes, the green irises burning with renewed determination. He adjusted his grip on his umbrella, his broad chest rising and falling in a steady, powerful rhythm.

 

"I'm going to UA," Izuku rumbled softly into the rain, the deep timber of his voice echoing off the concrete. "I have to."

 

Little did the gentle leviathan know, his vow to keep his head down and suppress his instincts was about to be violently tested. Because fate, it seemed, had a funny way of forcing monsters out of their caves, especially when a certain explosive blonde friend was about to wander into the jaws of a real villain.

 

The rain continued to fall, washing over the city of Musutafu, as the Alpha walked quietly toward home, waiting for the day he would finally be allowed to roar.

 

The world is not built for giants.

 

For fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya, this wasn’t a metaphor. It was a suffocating, daily physical reality.

 

Aldera Junior High was a building designed for average teenagers. The doorways were standard height. The hallways were of standard width. The desks were small, flimsy combinations of cheap metal and imitation wood, meant to hold boys and girls who weighed no more than a hundred and twenty pounds.

 

Izuku weighed nearly five hundred pounds. He stood a fraction of an inch under seven feet tall.

 

He sat in the back of his third-year classroom, folded into himself like a massive, apologetic origami figure. His knees bumped against the underside of his desk, forcing him to splay his legs out into the aisles just to fit. His broad, heavily muscled shoulders hunched forward, curling inward to take up as little horizontal space as possible. He wore a custom-ordered, 4XL dark green hoodie that swallowed his torso, the thick cotton meant to hide the pale, armor-like scales that covered his arms, chest, and back. The hood was pulled up tightly over his head, shadowing his face to conceal the bony, sensory frills that crowned his skull, and the twin ivory tusks that jutted upward from his lower jaw.

 

He breathed slowly, methodically. In... out. Keep the air warm. Don't let the frost out.

 

Whenever he exhaled, the three parallel slits on either side of his thick neck—his gills—fluttered softly beneath the collar of his shirt. He was constantly monitoring his internal temperature. His Leviathan biology craved the cold, constantly generating a sub-zero core temperature that, if left unchecked, would leak out of him and drop the ambient temperature of the classroom to freezing. It took immense, exhausting concentration to suppress it, to act like a normal, warm-blooded human.

 

But hiding the cold was easier than hiding the Aura.

 

Izuku had spent a decade learning how to cage the beast inside his mind. The "Alpha" instinct. It was a biological imperative, a low-frequency psychic weight that naturally emanated from him, demanding submission from everything around him. If he relaxed for even a second, that aura would seep out, making his classmates' hearts race with sudden, primal terror, making the hair on their arms stand up as their lizard-brains screamed that an apex predator was in the room.

 

So, he made himself small. He kept his eyes locked on his notebook, his massive, claw-tipped fingers carefully gripping a standard pencil that looked like a toothpick in his hand. He wrote in tiny, meticulous letters: Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13.

 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your future," the homeroom teacher announced, standing at the front of the class with a stack of career aptitude forms. "I'll pass out these printouts for your desired life paths, but... you all pretty much want to go into the hero course, right?"

 

The classroom erupted. Quirks flared to life. Hands elongated, water sprayed, small fires danced across fingertips. The students cheered, showing off the abilities they hoped would earn them fame and fortune.

 

Izuku didn't cheer. He just kept his head down, shrinking further into his hoodie. He didn't dare use his Quirk. The last time he had accidentally let out a sigh of relief, he had frosted over the classroom windows and given the girl in front of him mild frostnip.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher sighed, though he was smiling. "But remember, using your powers in school is against the rules."

 

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these background characters!"

 

The voice was arrogant, loud, and accompanied by the smell of burnt sugar and nitroglycerin. Katsuki Bakugo kicked his feet up onto his desk, leaning back with a feral, confident grin. "I'm not gonna be stuck at the bottom with the rest of these rejects."

 

The class instantly turned on him, yelling indignantly.

 

"You've got a lot of nerve, Katsuki!"

"We'll see who the reject is!"

 

"Shut up like the extras you are!" Bakugo barked, a small explosion popping in his palm to silence them. "I aced the mock exams. I'm the only one from this crappy middle school who actually has a shot at UA High School. I'm gonna surpass All Might and become the top hero, and my name's gonna be inscribed on the list of the highest earners!"

 

"Oh, right," the teacher said, glancing down at his clipboard. "Midoriya, you're also applying for UA, aren't you?"

 

The silence that fell over the classroom was instantaneous and suffocating.

 

Every single head turned slowly to the back of the room. Izuku froze. His pencil snapped in half under the sudden tightening of his grip. Beneath his hood, his massive emerald eyes widened in panic. His gills flared, and a tiny puff of freezing white mist leaked from his nose.

 

For three seconds, nobody spoke. They just stared at the giant, hooded figure.

 

And then, the laughter started. It wasn't the good-natured laughter of friends. It was nervous, mocking, and deeply uncomfortable.

 

"Midoriya? UA?"

"No way. They don't let actual monsters into the hero course, do they?"

"Could you imagine him doing rescue work? He'd give the victims a heart attack!"

"I heard he has to eat raw meat just to survive. Gross."

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. Don't look up. Don't roar. Don't let the Alpha out. They're just kids. They're just afraid of what they don't understand. It's okay. It's okay.

 

SLAM!

 

Katsuki Bakugo leaped across the desks, landing squarely in front of Izuku. The sheer force of Bakugo's landing made Izuku's reinforced desk groan in protest. Bakugo’s red eyes were blazing with a fury that bordered on manic.

 

"Listen to me, you overgrown freak!" Bakugo snarled, slamming a smoking hand down onto Izuku’s desk, directly over his notebook. "You're worse than Quirkless! You're a walking disaster! What the hell are you gonna do at UA? Freeze the examiners to death? Eat them?"

 

Izuku slowly looked up. From beneath the shadow of his hood, his large, slit-pupil eyes met Bakugo's. Even hunched over, seated at his desk, Izuku's face was level with Bakugo's, who was standing.

 

Deep within Izuku’s chest, a low, rhythmic vibration began. It was the biological response of the Leviathan—a warning growl to a challenger. The air around Izuku dropped by ten degrees in a matter of seconds. Frost began to form on the edges of Bakugo's desk.

 

Bakugo felt it. The hairs on his arms stood on end. His breath caught in his throat. That invisible, crushing weight of the Alpha Aura began to press against his mind, screaming at him to back away, to bare his throat, to submit. Bakugo’s hands shook, his explosions sputtering out.

 

Izuku saw the terror in Katsuki’s eyes. He saw the way the boy's tough facade cracked under the sheer, biological superiority of the mutation.

 

And Izuku hated himself for it.

 

No. I'm a gentle giant. I am not a monster.

 

Izuku clamped down on the instinct with everything he had. He swallowed the growl, forcing his muscles to relax. He blinked, allowing his pupils to dilate back to their round, softer human shape. He consciously pulled the oppressive aura back into his own body, locking it away.

 

The pressure in the room vanished. The air returned to normal.

 

Bakugo gasped softly, staggering back half a step as if a physical weight had been lifted off his chest. For a moment, he looked genuinely shaken. But that vulnerability was immediately replaced by a profound, violent humiliation. The fact that he had been scared—even for a second—made him irate.

 

"Don't look at me like that, Deku," Bakugo hissed, his voice trembling slightly with rage. He snatched Izuku’s Hero Analysis notebook off the desk.

 

"Kacchan, please," Izuku rumbled, his voice a deep, resonant bass that vibrated through the floorboards. He reached out a massive, scaled hand. "That's mine."

 

Bakugo slammed his hands together, sandwiching the notebook. BOOM. An explosion ripped through the paper, charring the cover and smoking the pages. He then tossed the ruined book out the open third-story window.

 

"Most top-tier heroes have stories about their school days. I want mine to be that I was the only one from this garbage heap to make it," Bakugo said, leaning in close, though he made sure to keep out of arm's reach. "So forget UA, you damn lizard. Go live in the ocean where you belong."

 

Izuku said nothing. He just stared at the empty space where his notebook used to be. His heavy, scaled tail, hidden beneath his oversized pants, thumped once, mournfully, against the leg of his chair.

 

Bakugo turned and walked away, his lackeys following close behind, snickering.

 

Izuku waited until the bell rang and the classroom emptied before he finally stood up. When he uncurled to his full height, he nearly brushed the ceiling tiles. He let out a long, heavy sigh, a plume of icy mist swirling around his head before dissipating.

 

Just another day, he thought, adjusting his hood. Just keep walking. Keep smiling on the inside.

 

 

 

The walk home was a solitary affair. It always was. Izuku had retrieved his burned notebook from the koi pond in the courtyard, apologizing profusely to the fish for the disturbance in a low, rumbling hum that seemed to make the koi swim in synchronized, happy circles. Animals, unlike humans, didn't fear him. To animals, the Alpha Aura wasn't a threat; it was a comforting umbrella of protection.

 

He was walking through a commercial district, his massive boots making heavy thud, thud, thud sounds against the pavement. The afternoon sun was sweltering, the concrete radiating heat that made Izuku’s gills itch uncomfortably. He wanted nothing more than to submerge himself in an ice bath.

 

He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of an explosion.

 

It wasn't a construction noise. It was the sharp, violent crack of nitroglycerin. Izuku stopped, his head snapping up. The sensory frills beneath his hood twitched, picking up the subtle changes in air pressure.

 

Another explosion. Louder this time. And then, the distant sound of screaming.

 

Izuku’s heart picked up its pace. A villain attack. Normally, he would rush to the scene to take notes on the Pro-Heroes. But this time, the sound of the explosions was too familiar. It was the exact same acoustic signature he had heard for the last ten years.

 

Kacchan.

 

Izuku broke into a run. Despite his massive size, he was deceptively fast. His leviathan musculature was designed to propel tons of weight through the crushing resistance of the deep ocean; moving through the air was like moving through a vacuum. Each step cracked the pavement slightly, his speed generating a cold wind that trailed behind him.

 

He rounded the corner of the shopping district and skidded to a halt.

 

The street was a war zone. Several buildings were engulfed in raging fires, the heat washing over the crowd of onlookers like an open oven. The asphalt was scorched, and shattered glass littered the ground. Police had set up a perimeter, and several Pro-Heroes were on the scene. Death Arms, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady were standing near the barricades, looking utterly helpless.

 

In the center of the chaos was a nightmare. A massive, shifting mountain of foul-smelling, dark green sludge was thrashing wildly. The villain had no solid form, just a gelatinous mass of liquid hate with two bulging, manic eyes and a jagged mouth.

 

And trapped within the center of that sludge was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

The sludge was forcing its way into Bakugo's mouth and nose, suffocating him. In his panic, Bakugo was firing off massive explosions from his palms, but the blasts were doing nothing but igniting the surrounding buildings and creating a localized firestorm that kept the heroes at bay.

 

"It's no good!" Death Arms shouted, shielding his face from the intense heat. "I can't get a grip on that fluid body! And the kid's explosions are making it impossible to get close!"

 

"My wood will catch fire instantly!" Kamui Woods gritted his teeth, stepping back.

 

"I need at least a two-lane road to get big," Mt. Lady groaned in frustration. "I can't fit in there without crushing the civilians!"

 

Izuku stood at the back of the crowd, towering over the civilians. His large eyes were locked on the scene.

 

They're not doing anything, Izuku thought, his mind racing. The villain has a hostage. The hostage is suffocating. The heroes are waiting for someone with a better Quirk.

 

He watched as Bakugo thrashed, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. The explosions were getting weaker. The sludge villain laughed, a wet, sickening sound.

 

"What a great Quirk!" the villain gurgled. "With this kid's body, I'll be unstoppable! Just stop fighting, kid. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds..."

 

Izuku felt a strange sensation wash over him. It wasn't the panic of a human boy. It was something deeper, older, and far more powerful.

 

The pack is in danger.

 

The thought wasn't in his voice. It was a biological imperative. To the Leviathan inside him, Katsuki Bakugo wasn't a bully. He wasn't an tormentor. Katsuki was a child that Izuku had known since infancy. In the twisted, primal logic of the Bewilderbeast mutation, Katsuki was part of Izuku's "flock."

 

And a Class-10 Alpha does not let its flock be hunted.

 

The intense heat of the fires, which usually made Izuku lethargic and uncomfortable, suddenly served as a catalyst. His core temperature plummeted in response to the external heat, his body preparing for extreme thermal shock. The air around Izuku dropped so rapidly that the civilians standing near him gasped as a sudden, biting frost formed on their clothes.

 

Izuku’s eyes locked onto Bakugo’s. Through the thick, suffocating sludge, Bakugo looked back. The explosive boy's eyes were wide with pure, unfiltered terror. He was begging for help.

 

The human part of Izuku—the anxious, bullied, self-deprecating boy—screamed at him to stay put. You'll just get in the way. You'll hurt someone with your ice. They'll call you a villain.

 

But the beast had seen enough.

 

CRACK.

 

The concrete beneath Izuku's boots spider-webbed violently.

 

"Hey! Kid, what are you doing?!" a police officer yelled.

 

Izuku didn't hear him. He was already moving. He shoved past the police barricade like it was made of paper. The oversized yellow backpack he was wearing tore off as he surged forward, and the heavy 4XL hoodie he wore ripped down the seams of the back as his muscles expanded, his hidden spinal ridges flaring outward.

 

"Stop! It's suicide!" Death Arms roared, reaching out to grab Izuku's arm.

 

The Pro-Hero managed to grab Izuku’s bicep. Death Arms possessed super-strength, capable of lifting cars. But when he tried to pull the charging teenager back, it was like trying to stop a bullet train with his bare hands. Izuku's forward momentum violently yanked Death Arms off his feet, tossing the hero aside.

 

Izuku stepped into the ring of fire.

 

The heat was blistering, but Izuku barely registered it. His armored scales, naturally colored a pale, pearlescent white, began to emit a blinding, freezing mist. The flames that licked at his pants and shoes were instantly extinguished, the fire unable to survive in the absolute-zero aura that Izuku was unconsciously projecting.

 

"What the...?" The Sludge Villain paused, its bulging eyes locking onto the massive, towering figure striding through the flames.

 

Izuku reached up and gripped the collar of his hoodie. With a single, powerful tear, he ripped the garment off, tossing it aside.

 

The crowd gasped. The heroes froze.

 

Without the hoodie, the full extent of his mutation was laid bare. He was a titan of muscle and armor. Thick, overlapping plates of white scales covered his chest, arms, and back. His neck was thick, housing the three rapidly flaring gills that hissed as they took in oxygen. His face, freed from the shadows, was terrifying—the jaw wide, the twin ivory tusks gleaming in the firelight, and the crown of sensory frills standing fully erect, vibrating with aggression.

 

His eyes were no longer those of a timid schoolboy. The pupils had narrowed into sharp, reptilian slits, swallowed entirely by pitch black, leaving only a ring of glowing, toxic green.

 

"Deku...?" Bakugo choked out through the sludge, his eyes widening in disbelief.

 

"Another hero?!" The Sludge Villain snarled. "You think you can take me, you overgrown lizard? I'm fluid! Physical attacks don't work on me!"

 

The villain whipped a massive tendril of sludge forward, aiming directly for Izuku’s chest.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He simply raised his left hand and caught the tendril mid-air.

 

"Idiot!" the villain laughed. "I'll just seep into your pores and—"

 

The laugh died in the villain's throat.

 

The moment the sludge made contact with Izuku's scaled palm, the ambient moisture in the slime flash-froze. A jagged, crystalline layer of ice erupted from Izuku's grip, traveling up the tendril at lightning speed. Within half a second, the entire appendage was frozen solid into a massive icicle.

 

Izuku crushed his grip. The frozen sludge shattered into a million harmless pieces of dirty ice.

 

The villain shrieked in pain and shock. "What the hell are you?!"

 

Izuku didn't answer with words. He answered with the Aura.

 

He didn't hold it back this time. He let the Alpha out.

 

It hit the alleyway like a physical shockwave. A low, vibrating hum that rattled the windows of the surrounding buildings and shook the very air. The fires surrounding them seemed to flicker and die under the sheer, oppressive weight of the dominance Izuku was projecting.

 

The Sludge Villain recoiled, a feeling of absolute, primal dread washing over its fluid body. It felt like it was standing at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, staring into the jaws of a predator that had hunted its ancestors to extinction.

 

"Get away!" The villain screamed in terror, wildly firing Bakugo's explosions at Izuku.

 

A point-blank, massive blast of nitroglycerin erupted right in Izuku’s face. The explosion was blinding, shaking the ground.

 

"NO!" Kamui Woods yelled from the sidelines.

 

But as the smoke cleared, Izuku was still walking forward. He hadn't even blinked. His pale scales were slightly blackened with soot, but he was completely unharmed. The Bewilderbeast biology could withstand the crushing pressures of the deep ocean; a localized explosion was nothing more than a warm breeze.

 

Izuku reached the villain. He raised his massive right hand and plunged it directly into the center of the sludge, his clawed fingers wrapping securely around Bakugo's uniform collar.

 

"Let him go!" the villain shrieked, desperately trying to slither up Izuku's arm, trying to force its way into Izuku's mouth and gills.

 

Bad idea, Izuku thought, his internal temperature plummeting to its absolute limit.

 

The sludge villain screamed as the slime making contact with Izuku's scales began to instantly crystallize and die.

 

Izuku tightened his grip on Bakugo, pulling him close to his chest to shield him. Then, Izuku opened his mouth.

 

He took a deep, shuddering breath. The air around him rushed into his lungs, his chest expanding to twice its size. The gills on his neck flared wide open, expelling excess heat. Deep within his throat, a swirling vortex of blue-white energy began to glow.

 

He had to be careful. He had to be precise. If he just unleashed his breath blindly, he would freeze Bakugo solid alongside the villain. He needed surgical precision.

 

Izuku roared.

 

It wasn't a blast of fire or a gust of wind. It was a concentrated, swirling beam of absolute zero. The temperature was so low that the air itself turned into liquid nitrogen, a blinding white mist that hit the Sludge Villain point-blank.

 

The effect was instantaneous.

 

The massive, towering body of the Sludge Villain stopped moving. The dark green fluid turned a pale, sickly white as it was flash-frozen on a molecular level. The villain's eyes locked in an expression of frozen terror. Within two seconds, the entire creature was transformed into a massive, jagged sculpture of dirty ice.

 

Izuku stopped his breath, his jaws snapping shut.

 

With a sickening CRUNCH, Izuku yanked his arm back, easily tearing Bakugo free from the brittle, frozen prison. The icy remains of the villain shattered and collapsed into a heap of frozen chunks on the scorched asphalt.

 

The street was dead silent. The fires had been completely extinguished by the sudden drop in temperature. A thick, wintry fog blanketed the alleyway.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the destruction, his massive chest heaving. He looked down at the boy in his arms. Bakugo was coughing violently, hacking up bits of frozen sludge, shivering from the intense cold radiating off Izuku's body.

 

But he was alive. He was safe.

 

The Alpha instinct, having neutralized the threat and secured the flock member, immediately shut down. The adrenaline vanished, replaced by a wave of exhausting, human anxiety. Izuku’s pupils dilated, returning to their soft, rounded shape. His frills lowered, pressing flat against his skull. The crushing aura of dominance dissipated entirely.

 

Izuku Midoriya, the gentle, terrified teenager, was back in the driver's seat.

 

He gently set Bakugo down on the ground. "Kacchan... are you okay?" Izuku asked, his deep voice trembling slightly.

 

Bakugo looked up at him. The explosive boy's face was a complex canvas of emotions—relief, shock, and a deep, agonizing humiliation. He had been completely helpless. And he had been saved by the monster he despised.

 

Before Bakugo could speak, the Pro-Heroes swarmed them.

 

"What were you thinking?!" Death Arms roared, marching up to Izuku and pointing an accusing finger at his broad chest. "You absolute fool! You could have gotten yourself and the hostage killed!"

 

Kamui Woods nodded sternly. "There is a reason we leave this to the professionals! Your Quirk is incredibly destructive. You flash-froze the entire area! What if you had missed and frozen the victim? What if your aura had caused a panic and a stampede?"

 

Izuku shrank back. The massive, seven-foot-tall leviathan curled his shoulders inward, looking at the ground, suddenly looking like a scolded child. He wrapped his arms around himself, his tail tucking between his legs.

 

"I... I'm sorry," Izuku mumbled, his voice thick with shame. "I just... I saw him... and my legs moved on their own."

 

"You don't have a license!" Mt. Lady chimed in, looking at Izuku with a mixture of awe and distinct unease. "With a mutation like yours, going feral in the middle of a city is a villainous act. You need to keep those instincts in check, kid."

 

A villainous act. The words echoed in Izuku's mind. They think I'm a monster.

 

Meanwhile, the paramedics were fussing over Bakugo, and the other heroes were praising him.

 

"That's an amazing Quirk you have, kid," Death Arms said to Bakugo, his tone completely shifting to one of respect. "Once you're a Pro, you'll be a force to be reckoned with. You held out so long!"

 

Bakugo didn't look proud. He looked furious. He shoved the paramedics away and glared at Izuku.

 

"I didn't need your help!" Bakugo yelled, his voice cracking slightly. "I had him right where I wanted him! Don't you dare pity me, you damn freak! You hear me? I didn't ask you to save me!"

 

Bakugo turned and stormed off, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

 

Izuku watched him go, a heavy ache settling in his massive chest. He had saved his life, but he had only made things worse. He had terrified the villain, terrified the heroes, and humiliated his friend.

 

After taking Izuku's statement and giving him a stern warning about vigilantism, the police let him go. Izuku picked up the torn, ruined remnants of his hoodie from the street, tying it around his waist. He walked away from the scene, ignoring the whispers and stares of the crowd.

 

Look at him.

He's terrifying.

Did you feel that pressure? It was like standing next to a dragon.

I thought he was going to eat that kid.

 

Izuku pulled his shoulders up, trying to hide his gills, trying to hide his face. It didn't matter what he did. It didn't matter that he had just saved a life. The world saw the scales. They saw the tusks. They saw a beast.

 

He was never going to be a hero. He was just a freak with a dangerous Quirk.

 

 

 

The sun was beginning to set, casting long, orange shadows over the quiet suburban streets as Izuku walked home. He took the back alleys, wanting to avoid people at all costs. He felt incredibly drained. The heat of the day, combined with the extreme expenditure of ice and the emotional toll of the Alpha Aura, left his limbs feeling like lead.

 

"I should just give up," Izuku whispered to himself, his deep voice barely a rumble. "I should just become a marine biologist. Or work in a freezer facility. At least there, I wouldn't scare anyone."

 

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, young man!"

 

Izuku jumped, his frills instantly flaring in surprise. He spun around, his heavy boots skidding against the pavement.

 

Standing at the entrance of the alleyway was a man. But not just any man.

 

He was a giant in his own right, easily standing seven feet tall, practically vibrating with muscle. He wore a simple white t-shirt and cargo pants, but his presence was unmistakable. The blonde hair swept back into two prominent V-shaped bangs. The impossibly wide, blinding smile.

 

"All... All Might?!" Izuku gasped, his eyes going wide. His deep voice cracked, suddenly sounding exactly like the fourteen-year-old fanboy he was on the inside. "W-What are you doing here?! You were on the news this morning in Tokyo! How did you—Can I get your autograph?! I don't have my notebook, it got burned and then I threw it away, but maybe you could sign my scales?!"

 

All Might laughed, a booming sound that echoed off the brick walls. "Hahaha! I appreciate the enthusiasm, young—"

 

Suddenly, All Might coughed. A violent, wet cough that sent a spray of blood from his mouth.

 

Izuku gasped in horror as the Symbol of Peace was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of thick white steam. When the steam cleared a second later, the towering, muscular god of justice was gone.

 

In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with sunken eyes, a sharp jawline, and clothes that hung off him like a scarecrow. He wiped a trail of blood from his chin, sighing heavily.

 

Izuku stared, his jaw hanging open, his tusks gleaming in the fading light. "W-What happened?! You deflated! Are you an imposter?! Did the Sludge Villain do this to you?!"

 

"No, no, calm down, kid," All Might said, holding up a bony hand. He leaned against the wall, pulling up his shirt to reveal a horrifying, spider-webbed scar covering the entire left side of his chest. "I got this in a fight five years ago. Half my respiratory organs were destroyed. I can only do my hero work for about three hours a day now."

 

Izuku’s encyclopedic knowledge of heroes immediately went into overdrive. Five years ago... The fight with Toxic Chainsaw? No, that was kept under wraps...

 

"Why are you showing me this?" Izuku asked, his deep voice softening, laced with genuine concern. He took a step forward, his massive frame towering over the frail man. "You're bleeding. Should I freeze the wound? It helps with inflammation."

 

All Might looked up at the giant, mutated teenager. Despite the terrifying appearance—the armor, the tusks, the sheer, crushing physical power the boy possessed—All Might saw exactly what he had seen in the alleyway an hour earlier.

 

He saw a boy with the gentlest eyes in the world.

 

"I followed you here to thank you," All Might said, his voice serious, stripping away the booming persona. "And to apologize."

 

Izuku blinked. "Apologize? To me?"

 

"I was there today," All Might confessed, looking down at his hands in shame. "I had reached my limit. I couldn't transform. I stood in the crowd, watching that young man suffocate, and I told myself I couldn't do anything. I made excuses."

 

All Might looked up, his sunken blue eyes locking onto Izuku’s slit pupils.

 

"But then, I saw you," All Might said softly. "A kid with a mutation so strong it terrified the Pro-Heroes, running into a raging fire with zero hesitation. You didn't do it for glory. You didn't do it for praise. Your body moved before you even had a chance to think."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. His gills fluttered rapidly.

 

"The Pro-Heroes scolded you," All Might continued, stepping closer to the massive teenager. "They called you reckless. They called you dangerous. Because they were ashamed. They were ashamed that a frightened kid had more courage than all of them combined."

 

"They... they called me a monster," Izuku whispered, his massive shoulders slumping. "They said I looked like a villain. I always look like a villain. Whenever I use my power... people get scared. My friend hates me. I can't be a hero if everyone is terrified of me."

 

Tears began to pool in Izuku’s massive green eyes. He sniffled, a sound that sounded like a heavy gust of wind.

 

All Might smiled—not the booming, performative smile of the Symbol of Peace, but the warm, genuine smile of Toshinori Yagi.

 

"Young man," All Might said, reaching out to place a hand on Izuku's heavily armored arm. "A hero's job is to conquer fear. Sometimes, that means conquering the fear in the hearts of civilians. And sometimes, it means conquering the fear of what you are."

 

Izuku looked down at the frail man, tears spilling over his pale scales, freezing into tiny diamonds before they hit the ground.

 

"I saw the way you controlled your ice today," All Might said. "You could have frozen that entire city block. But you didn't. You pinpointed the threat, and you saved that boy without leaving a single scratch on him. That wasn't a monster acting on instinct. That was a hero calculating a rescue."

 

Izuku fell to his knees. The concrete cracked slightly under his immense weight, but he didn't care. He covered his face with his massive, clawed hands, his chest heaving with heavy, resonant sobs. For ten years, he had been told to hide. He had been told he was too dangerous, too scary, too mutated.

 

And now, the greatest hero in the world was standing in front of him, telling him the exact opposite.

 

"You can become a hero," All Might declared, his voice ringing with absolute certainty.

 

Izuku cried harder, his heavy tail thumping against the ground, the emotional release vibrating through his entire massive frame.

 

All Might waited patiently until the giant boy’s sobs subsided into gentle, icy hiccups.

 

"Now," All Might said, crossing his arms. "I hear you want to get into UA High School."

 

Izuku looked up, wiping his eyes with the back of his scaly hand. "Y-Yes. But... the entrance exam is in ten months. And my Quirk... my instincts... when I fight, I have this 'Alpha' drive. It makes me want to dominate everything around me. I don't know how to control it without hurting people. I don't know how to be a hero instead of a king."

 

All Might nodded thoughtfully. He had initially come to this city looking for a successor to his own Quirk, One For All. But looking at the titan in front of him, he realized something. Izuku Midoriya didn't need One For All. Giving this boy any more physical power would be redundant, possibly even dangerous.

 

What Izuku needed wasn't power. He needed guidance. He needed someone to teach him how to walk among glass without breaking it. He needed someone to teach him how to be a Symbol.

 

"Your body is a fortress, and your power is that of a leviathan," All Might said, his eyes gleaming with a new, fierce determination. "But your heart is that of a true hero. You don't need my power, young man. You just need to learn how to wield your own."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

 

"I mean," All Might grinned, transforming back into his massive, muscle-bound muscle form in a puff of steam. "I am going to train you! For the next ten months, I will be your personal instructor! I will teach you how to control your strength! I will teach you how to master the beast within! And together, we will show the world that the gentlest hearts can reside in the mightiest forms!"

 

Izuku stared up at the towering hero. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like a freak. He didn't feel like a mistake of genetics. He felt a fire ignite in his chest, completely at odds with the ice in his veins.

 

He stood up, rising to his full seven-foot height. He wiped the last of the frost from his face, his jaw setting with a newfound resolve. He didn't slouch. He didn't fold his shoulders inward. For the first time in a decade, Izuku Midoriya stood tall.

 

"Yes, sir!" Izuku rumbled, his deep voice carrying the weight of a promise.

 

The Alpha had found its guide. And UA High School was not ready for the storm that was coming.

 

The ten months of training with All Might had not been about building muscle. Izuku Midoriya’s body was already a biological fortress, heavily armored and packed with the dense, hyper-oxygenated musculature of a deep-sea leviathan. Instead, those ten months had been about control.

 

Before All Might, Izuku’s power was a leaky faucet of absolute-zero temperatures and unchecked, predatory instincts. If he got anxious, the room froze. If he felt threatened, the Alpha Aura leaked out, suffocating anyone within a fifty-yard radius with an invisible, psychic pressure.

 

Under the Symbol of Peace’s tutelage, however, Izuku learned the art of suppression and precision. They trained at Dagobah Municipal Beach, a massive illegal dumping ground. But Izuku wasn’t just tasked with moving the trash. He was tasked with destroying it, specifically using his ice breath, while leaving the sand beneath it completely unfrozen. He learned to control the aperture of his throat, narrowing the blast of his absolute-zero breath from a wide-area blizzard to a concentrated, laser-like beam of molecular stillness. He learned to cap his internal temperature, keeping the frost from constantly billowing out of his gills.

 

Most importantly, he learned to meditate. All Might taught him how to visualize the "Alpha" inside him not as a monster to be locked in a cage, but as a guardian to be placed at a gate.

 

When the morning of the UA Entrance Exam finally arrived, Izuku stood in front of his full-length mirror, taking a deep, controlled breath.

 

He had grown even more massive over the past ten months. At fifteen years old, he stood a staggering seven feet, two inches tall. He was built like a mythological titan, his shoulders so impossibly broad they barely fit through the apartment doorways. His skin was a striking juxtaposition of slightly tanned human flesh and thick, pearlescent white scales that overlapped across his chest, arms, back, and outer thighs. The bony sensory frills framing his head were sharp and regal, while the twin ivory tusks jutting from his lower jaw gave his face a permanent, intimidating underbite. His eyes, large and emerald green, were calm, his slit pupils resting in a relaxed, widened state.

 

He wore a custom-tailored black tracksuit. Inko had spent weeks modifying it, adding reinforced seams to accommodate his massive bulk and a hidden slit in the lower back for his heavy, scaled tail.

 

"Izuku?" Inko’s voice called softly from the hallway. "Are you ready, sweetie?"

 

Izuku turned, his heavy boots thudding softly against the floorboards. "Yes, Mom."

 

His voice was a deep, resonating bass that vibrated through the walls, but he had learned to soften the edge of it, keeping it at a gentle, warm timber. He stepped out into the living room.

 

Inko looked up—way up—at her son. Tears immediately welled in her eyes. She reached out, her small hands resting against his massive, scaled forearm. "You look so handsome. You look like a hero."

 

Izuku smiled, his tusks lifting slightly. "Thanks, Mom. I'll do my best."

 

"Just... be careful," she whispered, her maternal worry bleeding through. "Not just for yourself, but... you know how people get. Don't let their stares hurt your heart."

 

"I won't," Izuku promised. He leaned down, pulling his mother into a gentle, careful hug, wrapping his massive arms around her without applying even a fraction of his strength. "I'm not going to hide anymore. I'm going to show them that I can protect them."

 

With a final wave, Izuku stepped out into the crisp late-winter morning, adjusting the strap of his oversized duffel bag. His journey to UA High School had begun.

 

 

 

The gates of UA High School were colossal, towering structures of glass and steel that screamed prestige. Hundreds of students from across the country were swarming the entrance, chattering nervously, comparing Quirks, and buzzing with the electric anticipation of the exam.

 

Then, Izuku Midoriya arrived.

 

It started as a ripple. The students at the back of the crowd stopped talking. They turned around, sensing the heavy, rhythmic THUD... THUD... THUD of Izuku’s massive boots approaching the paved walkway.

 

As Izuku walked, keeping his posture perfectly straight, the crowd naturally and immediately parted. It was like Moses splitting the Red Sea. Teenagers scrambled out of his way, their eyes wide with disbelief and a deep, instinctual unease.

 

Look at the size of him!

Is he a student? He looks like a Pro!

No, he looks like a villain. Look at those tusks...

I can feel the cold coming off him from here.

 

Izuku heard the whispers. His sensory frills twitched, picking up every muttered comment, every gasp of fear. Six months ago, this would have made him hunch over, curl his tail between his legs, and try to make himself invisible.

 

Today, he kept his chin up. He didn't smile—his tusked smile usually terrified people more than his neutral expression—but he kept his eyes soft and relaxed. He was in complete control of his aura. He wasn't projecting dominance; he was just walking. If they were afraid, it was only because of his appearance, not his biology. He could live with that. He would change their minds through his actions.

 

"Out of the way, extras!"

 

A familiar, angry voice snapped through the crowd. Katsuki Bakugo stomped up the pathway, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his red eyes glaring daggers at anyone who dared look at him. He was completely ignoring the parted crowd, assuming they had moved for him.

 

Then, Bakugo looked up and saw the mountain of white scales walking ten paces ahead of him.

 

Bakugo froze. His jaw tightened. Since the Sludge Villain incident, Bakugo had completely avoided Izuku. The humiliation of being saved by the 'monster' still burned like acid in Bakugo's veins.

 

Izuku stopped and glanced over his massive shoulder. "Good morning, Kacchan."

 

Bakugo's hands twitched in his pockets. He wanted to scream. He wanted to fire an explosion right at that terrifying, armored face. But his lizard-brain, no matter how much he fought it, remembered the overwhelming, crushing terror of Izuku's Alpha Aura. Bakugo ground his teeth together, his pride warring with his instincts.

 

"Don't talk to me, you overgrown freak," Bakugo hissed, speed-walking past Izuku, making sure to keep a wide berth. "I'm gonna crush this exam, and I don't need you getting in my way."

 

Izuku just let out a soft sigh, watching his childhood friend stomp away. Some things never change.

 

He turned his attention back to the towering H-shaped building of UA. He took a step forward, a small feeling of excitement finally bubbling up in his chest. This is it. The first step.

 

"Whoa—!"

 

A sudden, sharp yelp broke Izuku from his thoughts. Directly to his right, a girl with round cheeks and short, auburn hair had tripped over her own feet. She was pitching forward, plummeting face-first toward the hard concrete.

 

Izuku moved before he even processed the action. His Leviathan reflexes, honed for snatching prey out of turbulent ocean currents, flared to life. In a blur of motion that defied his massive size, Izuku lunged forward, his heavy hand extending.

 

He caught her by the straps of her backpack, mere inches from the pavement.

 

The girl gasped, squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the impact that never came. She dangled in the air for a second before Izuku gently pulled her upright, setting her back on her feet.

 

"Are you alright?" Izuku asked. His voice was a deep, resonant rumble, like the sound of large boulders grinding together deep underground.

 

The girl opened her large, brown eyes and looked up. And up. And up.

 

She took in the massive white scales, the sharp tusks, the fluttering gills on his neck, and the glowing green eyes that looked like they belonged to a dragon. For a fraction of a second, she stiffened, her breath catching in her throat.

 

Izuku immediately braced himself for the scream. He prepared for her to scramble away, to call him a monster, to look at him with that same terror he had seen a thousand times before.

 

Instead, the girl blinked, her cheeks flushing a bright, embarrassed pink.

 

"Oh my gosh!" she breathed, her hands flying to her cheeks. "Thank you so much! I'm so clumsy, I would have totally eaten concrete right there!"

 

Izuku stared at her, genuinely stunned. She wasn't running. She wasn't shaking.

 

"Y-You're not scared?" Izuku asked, the genuine surprise making his deep voice falter slightly.

 

The girl tilted her head, looking him over again. "Scared? Why would I be scared? You just saved my face! Plus, you're super warm!" She laughed softly, rubbing the back of her neck. "Well, your hand looked cold, but you feel... I don't know, safe? Like a big, scaly shield!"

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. Safe. No one outside of his mother and All Might had ever used that word to describe him. He felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of gratitude. His heavy, scaled tail, which had been hanging motionless, suddenly gave a small, happy thump against the ground behind him.

 

"I'm Ochaco Uraraka!" she chirped, offering a bright smile.

 

"Izuku Midoriya," he replied, giving a very careful, polite bow so he didn't accidentally hit her with his frills. "It is very nice to meet you, Uraraka-san. Good luck on the exam."

 

"You too, Midoriya-kun! See you inside!" With a cheerful wave, she hurried off toward the entrance.

 

Izuku stood there for a moment, a genuine, albeit tusked, smile breaking across his face. He felt lighter. He felt human.

 

I can do this.

 

 

 

The written exam was challenging, but Izuku’s meticulous note-taking and obsessive studying paid off. The real challenge was sitting in the auditorium for the orientation.

 

Izuku had been forced to sit in the very back row, taking up two seats just to accommodate his width, his knees jammed uncomfortably against the back of the chairs in front of him. He kept his tail wrapped tightly around his own waist to keep it out of the aisles.

 

At the front of the massive, darkened room, the Voice Hero: Present Mic stood under a spotlight, radiating chaotic energy.

 

"WELCOME TO MY LIVE SHOW, EVERYBODY!" Present Mic screamed, striking a pose. "EVERYBODY SAY HEYYY!"

 

Total silence.

 

Izuku winced, his sensitive frills flattening against his skull to block out the harsh, amplified noise. His hearing was designed to pick up the low-frequency songs of whales miles away underwater; Present Mic’s voice was borderline painful.

 

Present Mic explained the rules of the practical exam. It was a mock cityscape, filled with robotic villains. There were three types of robots, worth one, two, and three points respectively. The goal was to destroy them and rack up points.

 

"So it's like a video game," Izuku muttered to himself. His mutterings, however, were not the high-pitched whispers of a normal teenager. They were low, bass-heavy rumbles that literally vibrated the floorboards. "Physical attacks, mobility... my ice will be highly effective, but I need to make sure I don't catch any other examinees in the crossfire. If I freeze the chassis of the robots, the internal mechanics will shatter due to thermal shock..."

 

"Excuse me!"

 

A tall, stiff-looking boy with glasses and blue hair suddenly stood up in the middle of the auditorium, pointing a rigid finger. First, he directed it at Present Mic. "On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, UA should be ashamed!"

 

Then, the boy whipped around, pointing his finger directly at the back row, right at Izuku.

 

"And you, in the back!" the boy barked. "Your constant, vibrating growling is highly distracting! Furthermore, your intimidating posture and lack of decorum are unbefitting of a UA applicant! If you are here to act like a wild beast, you should leave immediately!"

 

The entire auditorium turned to look at Izuku.

 

A flash of heat flared in Izuku’s chest. The Alpha instinct, provoked by a direct challenge in front of a massive crowd, demanded that he stand up, flare his gills, and roar the boy into submission.

 

Izuku took a slow, deep breath, forcing the ice in his veins to cool his temper. He didn't growl. He didn't unleash his aura. Instead, he simply bowed his head in a deep, apologetic motion.

 

"I apologize for the noise," Izuku rumbled politely, his deep voice carrying easily across the large room without a microphone. "I was merely analyzing the exam parameters. I will remain quiet."

 

The blue-haired boy blinked, completely taken aback by the incredibly polite, articulate response from the terrifying giant. He awkwardly adjusted his glasses. "Ahem. V-Very well. Just see that you do."

 

Present Mic quickly regained control of the room, explaining that the fourth robot was a "Zero Pointer"—a massive obstacle meant to be avoided. With a final, deafening "PLUS ULTRA," the orientation ended, and the students were directed to buses that would take them to their designated battle centers.

 

Izuku looked down at his card. Battle Center B.

 

He cracked his massive knuckles, the sound echoing like gunshots in the empty hallway. It was time to show them what a monster could do when it wanted to save people.

 

 

 

The towering gates of Battle Center B loomed over the applicants. It was a massive, fake city, complete with skyscrapers, roads, and traffic lights.

 

Dozens of students stood before the gates, stretching and psyching themselves up. But there was a noticeable, twenty-foot empty circle around Izuku. He stood alone, his heavy tail resting on the pavement, his arms crossed over his massive chest. He spotted Uraraka a few yards away, looking incredibly nervous. He wanted to go over and wish her luck, but he didn't want to break her concentration. He also spotted the blue-haired boy from the auditorium, who was doing strange, robotic stretches.

 

"Right, let's start!"

 

Present Mic’s voice boomed from a watchtower high above the gates. "What's wrong? There are no countdowns in real battles! Run, run, run!"

 

The massive steel gates began to slowly groan open.

 

Most of the students hesitated, waiting for the doors to open fully.

 

Izuku did not.

 

The moment there was a gap wide enough for a normal person, Izuku lunged. He didn't just run; he exploded off the starting line. His heavy boots shattered the concrete beneath him, launching his five-hundred-pound frame forward with the speed of a fired torpedo. He slammed into the heavy steel doors, forcing them apart with raw, brutal strength, and burst into the city.

 

"Whoa! Look at him go!" one of the students yelled in shock as the rest of the pack finally began to sprint.

 

Izuku was already three blocks deep into the mock city. His slit pupils darted rapidly, taking in the environment. He heard the whirring of gears before he saw them.

 

From an adjacent alleyway, three One-Pointer robots rolled out, their red optical sensors locking onto his massive form. "Target acquired!" they synthesized in unison.

 

"Too slow," Izuku rumbled.

 

He didn't use his ice. He needed to test his physical output. Izuku closed the distance in a fraction of a second. He grabbed the nearest One-Pointer by its mechanical head with his right hand. He didn't punch it; he simply squeezed. The reinforced steel groaned and crumpled like a soda can under his grip, sparking wildly before shutting down.

 

Without breaking momentum, Izuku spun, his massive tail whipping around with devastating force. The heavy, scaled appendage smashed into the second robot, cleaving it cleanly in half.

 

The third robot fired a rubber bullet at him. It bounced off Izuku's chest scales with a pathetic ping. Izuku stepped forward, raised his heavy boot, and brought it down on the robot's chassis, flattening it into a metallic pancake.

 

Three points, Izuku thought, his breath pluming slightly in the air. I need more. I need to be faster.

 

He took off down the main street. A group of Two-Pointers and Three-Pointers emerged from a cross street, cornering several other students who had just caught up.

 

"There's too many!" one boy yelled, backing away.

 

Izuku surged past them, a towering blur of white scales and muscle. He leaped into the air, ascending nearly forty feet. As he hung suspended above the cluster of robots, he took a deep breath.

 

Control the aperture. Focus the blast.

 

He exhaled. A spiraling vortex of absolute-zero mist erupted from his mouth, slamming into the intersection. He didn't freeze the buildings. He didn't freeze the road. He hit the robots directly. The liquid nitrogen-like breath encased the machines in thick, jagged glaciers of ice in less than a second.

 

Izuku landed heavily, the ground shaking beneath his boots. The sudden drop in temperature shattered the internal circuitry of the frozen robots.

 

Twenty-five points.

 

The other students stared at him, shivering from the residual cold, their jaws on the floor.

 

"Don't just stand there!" Izuku bellowed to them, his deep voice carrying a commanding but protective timber. "Keep moving! Find your own targets!"

 

He didn't wait for them to respond. Izuku sprinted toward a towering skyscraper. A swarm of aerial Two-Pointers was hovering near the third-story windows. Instead of finding stairs, Izuku inhaled deeply and fired a sustained blast of ice at the side of the building, creating a massive, jagged ramp of solid frost.

 

He bounded up the ice ramp on all fours, his claws digging into the frost for traction, moving with the terrifying grace of an apex predator. He launched himself off the top of the ramp, intercepting the aerial robots in mid-air, crushing them with his bare hands and freezing their wings, sending them plummeting to the streets below.

 

Forty points.

 

He was a force of nature. But he was not a mindless beast. Every blast of ice was calculated. Every strike was precise. He made sure no student was ever caught in his crossfire. If he saw someone struggling, he would intervene, destroy the villain, and immediately move on, leaving the points to them if they had already engaged.

 

He was doing exactly what All Might had taught him. He was a protector.

 

 

 

High above the mock city, in a darkened observation room, the faculty of UA High School watched the monitors in stunned silence.

 

Nezu, the principal of UA, a small, impeccably dressed creature that was a mix of a mouse, dog, and bear, sat in a high chair, sipping tea. "Fascinating. Truly fascinating. The applicant pool this year is quite impressive."

 

"Look at camera four," Nemuri Kayama, the R-Rated Hero: Midnight, said, her eyes wide as she pointed at a screen showing Izuku tearing a Three-Pointer apart with his bare hands. "Applicant Midoriya. That mutation... it's incredible. He looks like a Class-S villain, but his combat efficiency is flawless."

 

"It's not just his power," Shota Aizawa, the Erasure Hero, muttered from the back of the room, wrapped in his yellow sleeping bag. His dark, tired eyes were locked onto Izuku’s movements. "Look closely. He's massive, but he hasn't caused any collateral damage to the fake buildings. His ice blasts are surgically precise. He's constantly checking his blind spots to ensure other students aren't in danger. He's holding back."

 

"Holding back?!" Snipe exclaimed. "He just threw a robot into the stratosphere! He's sitting at seventy-two points! He's completely dominating the field!"

 

Toshinori Yagi, in his skeletal form, stood in the corner of the room, a proud, fatherly smile spreading across his sunken face. That's right, young Midoriya. Show them. Show them the hero you are.

 

"Well, let's see how he handles a real challenge," Nezu said, his small paw hovering over a large red button on his control console. "A true hero must be prepared to face an insurmountable obstacle. Let's separate the wheat from the chaff."

 

Nezu slammed the button.

 

 

 

With two minutes left on the clock, Izuku was standing in the center of a wide intersection, his breath coming in steady, frosty plumes. He had racked up eighty-five points. He felt confident. He hadn't lost control. He hadn't terrified anyone.

 

Then, the ground beneath his feet buckled.

 

An earsplitting explosion of concrete and steel erupted at the far end of the main street. A massive shadow fell over the city, blocking out the sun.

 

Izuku’s frills flared violently. He turned, his slit pupils dilating in shock.

 

Tearing through the skyscrapers like they were made of cardboard was the Zero Pointer. It wasn't a robot; it was a mechanical titan, standing easily three hundred feet tall. Its treads crushed entire roads, and its massive arms obliterated buildings with a single swing.

 

"What the hell is that?!"

"Run! It's the Zero Pointer!"

 

The students who had been fighting nearby immediately turned and fled in terror. It was a natural human reaction. The robot was too big. It was invincible.

 

Izuku’s biological instincts flared. The Leviathan inside him analyzed the colossal machine. It was massive. It was a threat. The rational, human part of his brain told him to run—it was worth zero points, there was no reason to fight it.

 

Izuku turned to join the retreating students.

 

"Ow! Please... someone..."

 

The voice was faint, barely audible over the grinding gears of the mechanical titan. But Izuku’s hearing was absolute. His head snapped back toward the destruction.

 

Through the dust and falling rubble, Izuku saw her. Uraraka. She was trapped on the ground, her leg pinned beneath a massive slab of concrete from a destroyed building. She was desperately trying to push it off, but she was exhausted.

 

And the Zero Pointer’s massive, tank-like tread was rolling directly toward her.

 

In that fraction of a second, the world seemed to stop. Izuku Midoriya’s brain completely bypassed his human anxiety, his fear of failure, and his desire to pass the exam.

 

The Alpha instinct—the primal, deep-seated urge to protect the flock at all costs—took total, absolute control.

 

But it wasn't the feral, mindless rage he had experienced as a child. This was focused. This was the result of ten months of meditation. He wasn't losing control of the beast; he was taking the reins.

 

Izuku’s eyes turned pitch black, the glowing green ring around his pupils flaring with toxic intensity. His sensory frills stood completely erect, vibrating with a low, thrumming hum that shook the remaining glass in the nearby windows.

 

He didn't run away. He charged.

 

"Hey! Giant guy! What are you doing?!" the blue-haired boy yelled from a safe distance, watching in horror as Izuku sprinted directly toward the colossal machine. "It's suicide!"

 

Izuku ignored him. He closed the distance in a matter of seconds, sliding to a halt directly in front of Uraraka, placing his massive body between her and the approaching tread of the Zero Pointer.

 

Uraraka looked up, her eyes wide with fear, but when she saw the broad, scaled back of the boy who had caught her at the gates, she felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of calm.

 

"Midoriya?" she whispered.

 

Izuku didn't look down. He planted his heavy boots into the concrete, sinking knee-deep into the street to anchor himself. He threw his arms wide, his chest expanding to terrifying proportions. The gills on his neck snapped open, hissing violently as they drew in massive amounts of oxygen.

 

The internal temperature of his core plummeted past absolute zero, delving into a realm of physics that defied logic. The air around him completely stopped moving. The dust hanging in the air froze and fell to the ground like snow.

 

The Zero Pointer loomed over them, raising a massive, skyscraper-sized fist to crush the obstacle in its path.

 

Izuku Midoriya unleashed the Alpha's Roar.

 

He thrust his head back and fired. It was a localized hurricane of blinding, blue-white ice. A vortex of liquid nitrogen and crystalline frost erupted from his jaws with the force of a volcanic eruption. The sheer concussive force of the blast hit the falling fist of the Zero Pointer, instantly flash-freezing the metal.

 

But Izuku didn't stop there. He poured every ounce of his power, every ounce of his biological supremacy into the breath.

 

The vortex expanded, swirling rapidly up the arm of the colossal robot, consuming its shoulder, its chest, its massive optical sensors. The sound was deafening—a mixture of screaming, tearing metal and the deep, trumpeting roar of an ancient sea god.

 

Within five seconds, the entire intersection was transformed into an arctic wasteland.

 

Izuku snapped his jaws shut, cutting off the breath.

 

The silence that followed was absolute.

 

The Zero Pointer, all three hundred feet of it, was suspended in mid-air, perfectly encased in a massive, glittering glacier of diamond-hard ice. It looked like a monument to a forgotten ice age. The intense thermal shock had instantly destroyed every circuit, every wire, and every motor within the machine.

 

With a deafening CRACK, the frozen titan leaned backward, entirely off-balance from the added weight of the ice, and crashed heavily to the ground behind it, shaking the earth but safely away from Uraraka and Izuku.

 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic’s voice echoed across the frozen city.

 

Izuku stood frozen in his stance for a moment, his chest heaving, his breath pluming in thick white clouds. The intense expenditure of energy had completely exhausted his core. The Alpha instinct immediately receded, leaving him suddenly dizzy and drained.

 

He blinked, his eyes returning to normal. He turned around, his massive frame slumping slightly as he looked down at Uraraka.

 

With incredible gentleness, Izuku reached down and gripped the massive slab of concrete pinning her leg. He lifted it with one hand, tossing it aside as if it were made of styrofoam.

 

"Are you okay, Uraraka-san?" Izuku asked, his deep voice soft and laced with exhaustion.

 

Uraraka stared at him, then up at the towering, frozen mountain of the Zero Pointer, and then back at Izuku. "You... you saved me again."

 

Before Izuku could respond, a sudden wave of dizziness hit him. His leviathan biology was desperate for warmth to reboot its systems. His massive eyes rolled back, and the giant boy collapsed backward, hitting the frost-covered street with a heavy, unconscious thud.

 

 

 

In the observation room, there was absolute, pin-drop silence.

 

Nezu had stopped sipping his tea. Midnight’s jaw was slack. Snipe had dropped his pen.

 

Aizawa stared at the monitor, his eyes wide, his Erasure Quirk completely forgotten. The sheer scale of the destruction—the absolute, god-like power required to flash-freeze a three-hundred-foot machine in less than five seconds—was something that belonged in the ranks of the Top Five Pro-Heroes, not a fifteen-year-old applicant.

 

"Good lord," Midnight finally breathed. "He didn't just beat it. He stopped it cold."

 

"His Quirk..." Aizawa muttered, leaning forward, analyzing the frozen wasteland on the screen. "It's not just an Emitter. It's a fundamental alteration of the local environment. He's a walking natural disaster. But..." Aizawa's eyes flicked to the footage of Izuku gently lifting the rubble off the girl before passing out. "...he has the heart of a savior."

 

Nezu smiled, his small, beady eyes gleaming with intense satisfaction. "It seems, my dear faculty, that we have a true prodigy on our hands. A monster on the outside, perhaps. But undoubtedly, a hero."

 

 

 

Izuku woke up an hour later in the UA infirmary. He was wrapped in several heated blankets, lying on two beds that had been pushed together to accommodate his width. Recovery Girl, the school's youthful-healing heroine, was bustling about, muttering about "reckless kids" and "improper thermal regulation."

 

Izuku was discharged shortly after, completely physically healed but mentally exhausted.

 

The wait for the results was agonizing. For a week, Izuku paced his small bedroom, his heavy tail thumping nervously against the floor. He knew he had scored a lot of villain points, but his final action—destroying the Zero Pointer—had been reckless. He had unleashed his full power. What if they saw him as a threat? What if they thought his Alpha aura was too dangerous for a hero?

 

On the seventh day, Inko slid a thick, white envelope under his door. It bore the wax seal of UA High School.

 

Izuku sat on his reinforced bed, his massive hands trembling as he carefully tore the envelope open with a single claw. A small metal disk fell out, clattering onto his desk.

 

A holographic projection flickered to life.

 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!"

 

Izuku gasped. It was All Might, wearing a sharp yellow suit, grinning brightly.

 

"Young Midoriya!" All Might boomed. "You did an excellent job on the written exam! But of course, you already knew that. What you don't know are the results of the practical!"

 

The projection shifted, showing a leaderboard.

 

"You passed the villain combat portion with flying colors, racking up a staggering eighty-five points!" All Might announced. "However, at UA, we don't just judge a hero by their combat prowess. How could a hero course reject someone who saves others and does the right thing?"

 

The screen shifted again, showing a replay of the exam. It showed Izuku leaping in front of Uraraka, placing his massive body between her and the Zero Pointer, before unleashing his terrifying, majestic breath.

 

"Rescue Points!" All Might cheered. "A panel of judges evaluates your heroic actions! For putting yourself in harm's way, for protecting a fellow examinee without a moment's hesitation, and for neutralizing an insurmountable threat..."

 

The scoreboard updated.

 

Izuku Midoriya:

Villain Points: 85

Rescue Points: 60

Total Score: 145 Points.

 

Izuku’s jaw dropped. His tusks scraped against his chest. 145 points.

 

"You completely shattered the previous school record, young Midoriya!" All Might’s voice softened, filled with immense pride. "You showed us that power is only terrifying when it lacks compassion. You, my boy, have both in spades."

 

The hologram shifted to show the gates of UA High School.

 

"Come, young Midoriya," All Might said, reaching a hand out toward the camera. "This is your Hero Academia."

 

The hologram fizzled out.

 

Izuku sat in the silence of his room. He looked down at his massive, scaled hands. He felt the cold power humming just beneath his skin. But for the first time in his entire life, he didn't feel afraid of it. He didn't feel like a monster.

 

A deep, rumbling purr began in his chest, vibrating through the floorboards, a sound of absolute, unadulterated joy.

 

He was going to UA. He was going to be a hero.

 

The Ice Age had just begun.