What if Deku Had A Obsidian Hardening Quirk

 

The world is not born equal.

 

It was a harsh, immutable truth that Izuku Midoriya learned at the tender age of four, though the exact nature of that inequality would prove to be vastly different than what he originally anticipated.

 

In a society saturated with the extraordinary, the wait for a Quirk was the defining suspense of a child's early life. It was a period of endless dreaming. Every shadow cast in the bedroom could be the beginning of a shadow-manipulation Quirk; every static shock from the living room carpet could be the birth of an electricity Quirk. For Izuku, whose room was a shrine dedicated to the smiling, unyielding figure of the Number One Hero, All Might, the dream was simple. He wanted a Quirk that would let him save people with a smile. He wanted to be strong, durable, a pillar of peace that could stand between the innocent and the terrifying forces of the world.

 

He imagined being an impenetrable shield.

 

The reality of his biology, however, had a cruel sense of irony. It would give him a power, yes. But it would not make him a shield. It would make him something entirely different, something dangerous, beautiful, and deeply flawed.

 

The playground was bathed in the golden, heavy light of a late summer afternoon. The air was thick with the scent of dry earth, pine needles, and the faint, sweet-and-sour odor of burnt caramel. The latter was the signature scent of Katsuki Bakugo, the undisputed king of the sandbox, and by extension, their entire neighborhood.

 

Katsuki was a prodigy. His Quirk, Explosion, had manifested with the subtlety of a localized earthquake. He was powerful, confident, and possessed a natural, feral charisma that drew the other children to him like moths to a flame. But fire burns, and Katsuki’s superiority had quickly curdled into a vicious arrogance.

 

Izuku stood at the edge of the sandbox, his small chest heaving, his oversized red sneakers planted firmly in the dirt. His knees knocked together, trembling so violently he felt as though his bones were vibrating. Tears pricked the corners of his large, emerald eyes.

 

Behind him, a young boy with a minor transformation Quirk sat in the dirt, clutching a scraped knee and weeping openly.

 

In front of him stood Katsuki, flanked by his two usual sycophants—a boy with leathery bat wings and another with elongated fingers. Katsuki smacked a small fist into his open palm, a sharp crack of detonation echoing across the playground. A wisp of gray smoke curled from his fingers.

 

"That's mean, Kacchan," Izuku's voice was a high, thin squeak, but he forced the words out anyway. He raised his small, chubby fists, mimicking a boxing stance he had seen All Might take on television. "Can't you see he's crying? If you keep going... I-I'll stop you myself!"

 

Katsuki’s crimson eyes narrowed. A cruel, jagged grin split his face, revealing small, white teeth. He didn't see a challenger. He saw a nuisance. He saw Izuku, the boy who hadn't even manifested a Quirk yet, daring to stand in his way.

 

"You want to pretend to be a hero, Deku?" Katsuki sneered, using the derogatory nickname he had coined months ago. "You don't even have a Quirk. You're just a pebble in my way."

 

"I... I can still try!" Izuku cried out.

 

Katsuki lunged.

 

He didn't use a full-powered explosion, but for a four-year-old, the difference hardly mattered. Katsuki closed the distance in a heartbeat, his right hand pulling back, the sweat on his palms igniting.

 

Time seemed to dilate for Izuku. He saw Katsuki’s hand rushing toward his face. He felt the intense, radiating heat of the impending blast. His mind screamed for him to run, to duck, to hide. But his body, driven by an instinct older and deeper than conscious thought, refused to yield the ground. He had to protect the boy behind him. He needed to be strong. He needed to be an impenetrable wall.

 

Please, Izuku’s mind begged, screaming to whatever genetic lottery governed his biology. Please, let me protect him.

 

A sensation unlike anything Izuku had ever felt suddenly bloomed in his chest. It wasn't warm, like he imagined a fire Quirk would be, nor was it a sudden rush of adrenaline. It was a cold, dense, heavy feeling, as if lead had suddenly been poured into his veins. It rushed from his core, down his shoulders, and into his forearms.

 

As Izuku instinctively raised his arms in an 'X' block over his face, a horrific, tearing sound echoed from his own skin.

 

To the onlookers, the transformation was instantaneous and terrifying. Izuku’s fair, freckled skin did not merely change color; it underwent a violent structural metamorphosis. The flesh on his forearms, from his elbows to his fingertips, turned a deep, abyssal black. But it wasn't a matte, rocky texture like some Quirks.

 

It was perfectly smooth, catching the golden afternoon sunlight and reflecting it with blinding intensity. It was glass. Pitch-black, hyper-dense volcanic glass.

 

Jagged, razor-sharp ridges erupted along his ulna bone, turning his forearms into grotesque, beautiful, terrifying weapons. The edges were so fine they seemed to disappear into the air, splitting the light itself.

 

Katsuki’s eyes widened in momentary shock. The "Quirkless" Deku had just manifested a Quirk. And it looked formidable. It looked like dark armor.

 

But momentum is a cruel master, and Katsuki was already committed to the strike. His pride, flaring hotter than his sweat, refused to let him pull back. If Deku had armor, Katsuki would just blast right through it.

 

"Die!" Katsuki roared, slamming his palm directly into the crossed, obsidian-black forearms of Izuku Midoriya.

 

The explosion detonated point-blank.

 

For a fraction of a millisecond, the scene was a perfect tableau of superhero fantasy: the explosive villain striking the armored hero.

 

But Izuku’s Quirk was not born to be a shield.

 

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is incredibly hard, capable of holding an edge far sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels. But it lacks a crucial structural component for a defensive Quirk: tensile strength. It is catastrophically brittle. It cannot absorb kinetic shock.

 

When the concussive shockwave of Katsuki's explosion slammed into the obsidian plating, the black glass didn't dent. It didn't bend.

 

It shattered.

 

The sound was deafening, a high-pitched, agonizing crash of a thousand breaking mirrors layered over the roar of the explosion.

 

Izuku didn't just feel the heat of the blast; he felt his own newly-formed armor implode. The concussive force pulverized the center of the obsidian mass, while the surrounding edges splintered outward and inward. Shards of razor-sharp black glass, some as fine as needles, others as large as jagged daggers, exploded in every direction.

 

"GAAAAAH!"

 

The scream that tore from Izuku's throat was raw, primal, and entirely devoid of heroic bravado.

 

The force of the blast threw the small boy backward, tumbling him through the abrasive sand of the playground. He rolled to a stop a few feet away from the boy he had been trying to protect, curling into a tight, trembling ball.

 

The playground fell into a deathly, suffocating silence.

 

The smoke from Katsuki’s explosion cleared, revealing the aftermath. Katsuki stood frozen, his hand still extended, trembling slightly. A thin line of blood trickled down Katsuki's own cheek where a tiny, flying shard of black glass had grazed him, slicing through his skin with zero resistance.

 

But Katsuki wasn't looking at his own blood. He was staring at Izuku.

 

Izuku lay in the sand, gasping for air, his eyes wide with a shock that transcended simple pain. The beautiful, pitch-black armor that had covered his arms was gone. In its place were his normal, pale arms—but they were a ruined mess.

 

Because the obsidian had generated from his skin, the shattering had violently ripped the armor away from his flesh. His forearms were covered in hundreds of lacerations. Some of the black shards were still embedded in his skin, glistening wetly. Blood, bright and crimson, welled up rapidly, dripping down his small fingers and staining the pale sand of the playground.

 

Katsuki’s breath hitched. He looked at his own hands, smelling the caramel smoke, and then looked back at the sobbing, bleeding boy in the dirt.

 

For the last year, Katsuki had viewed Izuku as a pebble. Something insignificant, something soft that could be kicked aside. But as he watched the sunlight catch the broken, bloody shards of black glass scattered across the sand, a new realization crystallized in Katsuki’s young mind.

 

Deku wasn't a pebble. He was glass.

 

He was shiny, perhaps even sharp if handled wrong, but ultimately, he was fragile. If Katsuki hit him, he broke. He broke spectacularly, violently, and painfully.

 

"You..." Katsuki's voice trembled, lacking its usual bravado. He took a step back, suddenly terrified by the amount of blood pooling in the sand. He hadn't meant to do that. He just wanted to scare him. "You're broken, Deku."

 

Izuku couldn't respond. The pain was a blinding white light in his brain. He looked down at his bleeding arms, the shattered remnants of his "shield." The tears streamed down his face, mixing with the dust.

 

He had wanted to be a wall to protect others. Instead, he had shattered at the very first strike, hurting himself more than the villain ever could.

 

The wail of a siren in the distance finally broke the playground's stunned silence, as a passing adult who had witnessed the explosion and the spray of blood rushed over, screaming for an ambulance.

 

 

 

The sterile, antiseptic smell of the hospital was overwhelming.

 

Izuku sat on the edge of the examination table, his legs dangling over the edge, far too short to reach the floor. Both of his arms, from the mid-bicep down to his wrists, were heavily wrapped in thick white gauze. The localized anesthetic had numbed the sharp, biting agony, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

 

His mother, Inko Midoriya, sat in the plastic chair beside the bed, her face pale, her hands wringing a tissue into a shredded pulp. She had been crying for two hours straight, ever since she received the phone call at work.

 

The door opened, and a doctor with a clipboard and a pair of thick, rectangular glasses walked in. He had a Quirk that gave him slightly elongated, feline ears, which twitched as he reviewed the chart.

 

"Well, Mrs. Midoriya, Izuku," the doctor said, his tone gentle but clinical. "I have the results of the Quirk registry analysis and the X-rays. First and foremost, Izuku is going to be fine. The lacerations were numerous, and we had to surgically extract twenty-three fragments of glass from his dermal layers, but there was no major arterial damage or nerve severance. He's a very lucky young man."

 

Inko let out a shuddering breath, fresh tears spilling over her cheeks. "Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness, Izuku." She reached out, carefully placing a hand on his knee, avoiding his bandaged arms.

 

Izuku stared at his lap. "My Quirk..." he mumbled, his voice hoarse. "It broke."

 

The doctor sighed, pulling up a stool and sitting down so he was eye-level with the boy. "Yes. And that is what we need to discuss. Izuku, your Quirk is quite extraordinary, but it comes with severe biological caveats."

 

He turned the clipboard around, showing them a microscopic image of a pitch-black, jagged structure.

 

"We've provisionally registered your Quirk as 'Volcanic Glass,' though you can name it whatever you like when you're older," the doctor explained. "Your body has the ability to rapidly convert the keratin and lipid layers of your epidermis into a highly condensed form of obsidian. It's an igneous extrusion. You essentially sweat liquid minerals that instantly cool and crystallize on the surface of your skin."

 

Izuku blinked, trying to process the big words. "So... I have rock armor? Like the pro hero, Crimson Riot?"

 

"Not quite," the doctor corrected gently. "Crimson Riot's Quirk hardens his body like granite or concrete. It has density and shock absorption. Obsidian is different. On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, your obsidian is incredibly high. It is harder than most steels. You cannot be easily scratched, slashed, or pierced while your Quirk is active."

 

Izuku's eyes widened a fraction. "So I am a shield."

 

"No, Izuku," the doctor said firmly, his feline ears pinning back slightly. "Hardness is not the same as toughness. Hardness is the resistance to being scratched. Toughness is the resistance to fracturing under kinetic impact. Because your obsidian is essentially a super-cooled liquid without a crystalline internal structure, it is catastrophically brittle."

 

The doctor picked up a wooden tongue depressor from the counter. He held it up and easily snapped it in half. "If someone hits wood, it splinters, but it absorbs the blow." He then tapped the glass of the medical jar holding cotton balls. "If someone hits glass with enough blunt force, it doesn't bend. The kinetic energy has nowhere to go. So, it violently shatters."

 

He looked deeply into Izuku’s eyes. "Today, your friend hit your hardened arms with an explosive shockwave. The blunt force trauma transferred directly into your obsidian. Because it couldn't bend, it shattered. And because the obsidian was attached to your skin, when it broke, it ripped your flesh and turned into shrapnel."

 

Inko gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. "So... his Quirk... it hurts him?"

 

"Only if used incorrectly," the doctor clarified. "Izuku, your Quirk is not meant for taking hits. You cannot block punches, explosions, or blunt-force impacts with it. If you try to act like a wall, you will break every single time, and the shrapnel will injure you and anyone standing near you."

 

The doctor leaned in closer. "However, the edges of shattered obsidian can be sharpened to a molecular level. It is sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. If you grow this glass purposefully, you will have blades that can slice through almost anything. You are not a shield, young man. You are a very, very sharp sword. And you must be incredibly careful not to cut yourself, or others."

 

Izuku looked down at his heavily bandaged arms. The words echoed in his small mind, tearing down the posters of All Might that lined his bedroom walls.

 

All Might was a shield. He stood there, laughing, taking the villains' blows without flinching, protecting everyone behind him.

 

Izuku could never do that. If he stood and took a hit, he would shatter. He would bleed.

 

He wasn't an immovable object. He was a fragile, dangerous thing of glass.

 

 

 

Ten Years Later.

 

The rhythmic, abrasive sound of stone grinding against glass filled the dimly lit bedroom.

 

Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.

 

Fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom. The walls were still adorned with All Might memorabilia—posters, action figures, limited edition tapestries—but the desk in the corner told a different story. It was cluttered with advanced textbooks on mineralogy, human anatomy, physics, and martial arts treatises on evasion and parrying. Beside a meticulously organized first-aid kit lay an assortment of whetstones, ranging from coarse grit to ultra-fine diamond polishers.

 

Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.

 

Izuku held his right arm out in front of him. He took a slow, deep breath, centering his focus. He tapped into that cold, heavy sensation in his core, letting it flow down his shoulder and into his forearm.

 

With a soft, sickening crackle that he had long since grown accustomed to, the skin along the outer edge of his forearm shifted. It deepened into a void-like black, smoothing out into a highly reflective, mirror-like surface. He didn't cover his whole arm—he had learned the hard way that full-body armor was a death sentence for his mobility and a massive liability if he took a blunt hit.

 

Instead, he focused the Quirk into a specific extrusion. A single, sleek blade of pitch-black obsidian grew from his ulna, extending six inches past his elbow and tapering down to his wrist. It looked like a natural, demonic tonfa attached directly to his bone.

 

Izuku picked up a high-grit whetstone with his left hand. Carefully, with the practiced precision of a master bladesmith, he began to run the stone along the edge of the obsidian blade.

 

He didn't technically need to sharpen it. His Quirk naturally produced edges that were razor-sharp. But over the years, he had learned to manipulate the micro-structure of the glass. By filing it down at specific angles, he could increase the density of the edge, sacrificing a microscopic amount of sharpness for a slight increase in durability against chipping.

 

More than that, the act of sharpening was meditative. It was how he connected with his Quirk. It was how he reminded himself of his own nature.

 

He paused, holding his arm up to the desk lamp. The light caught the edge of the obsidian blade, gleaming with a deadly, mesmerizing allure. He reached out with his left thumb and lightly—very lightly—brushed the pad of his finger against the edge. A thin, red line immediately appeared, a drop of blood welling up before he pulled away.

 

Perfect.

 

He released his focus. The cold sensation receded. The obsidian blade seemed to melt back into his skin, leaving behind only the pale, scarred flesh of his forearm.

 

Both of Izuku's arms were covered in a network of thin, silvery scars. They were the legacy of ten years of trial and error, ten years of shattered glass and emergency room visits. Every scar was a lesson learned about the limits of his durability.

 

Don't block. That was the first rule of his fighting style. Deflect, parry, or dodge. Never take the hit.

 

Tomorrow was the entrance exam for U.A. High School, the most prestigious hero academy in the nation. The school that had forged All Might.

 

Izuku stood up, moving to the center of his room. He was not the small, chubby, trembling boy from the playground anymore. Underneath his loose t-shirt, his physique was lean, compact, and heavily muscled. He hadn't built bulk; bulk meant a larger target. He had built fast-twitch muscle fibers, extreme flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance. He trained in acrobatics, gymnastics, and a heavily modified form of Kali and Escrima—martial arts that relied on sticks and blades, prioritizing evasion, deflecting angles, and debilitating strikes.

 

He closed his eyes and visualized an opponent. He imagined the massive, bulky frame of a villain.

 

Izuku didn't brace himself. Instead, he dropped his center of gravity. He pivoted on his right heel, spinning away from an imaginary punch. As he spun, his left arm flashed outward, instantly hardening into a jagged obsidian spike. He didn't aim for the imaginary villain's chest or head. He aimed for the tendons behind the knee, the soft tissue of the armpit, the vulnerable junction of the neck.

 

Slice. Disable. Move.

 

He deactivated the Quirk instantly, dropping to the floor in a low crouch, rolling to his feet, and throwing a roundhouse kick, the edge of his shin momentarily hardening into an axe-blade of black glass before reverting to flesh.

 

He was a rogue. A glass cannon in the truest sense of the word. His offensive output, his lethality, was off the charts. But his defense was non-existent. If a villain with a strength Quirk landed a solid punch on his ribs, the resulting shattered armor would likely puncture his own lungs.

 

He opened his eyes, staring at his reflection in the full-length mirror on his closet door.

 

He didn't look like a traditional hero. He didn't have a flashy elemental power, and he certainly didn't have an invulnerable body.

 

His relationship with Bakugo—Katsuki—had only grown more complicated over the years. The bullying had changed after that day on the playground. Katsuki no longer viewed Izuku as completely pathetic. He viewed him as a liability, a walking hazard.

 

"You're gonna get yourself killed, Deku," Katsuki had snarled at him just last week in the middle school hallway. "Or worse, you're gonna shatter and take out a civilian. You can't take a hit. You're made of glass. Stay out of my way at U.A."

 

Katsuki wasn't entirely wrong. The entrance exam was famously geared toward flashy, destructive Quirks. Destroying giant robots.

 

Robots were made of metal. Metal was hard.

 

But Izuku had spent hours researching the exact tensile strength of the alloys U.A. used for their training bots. He had studied their joint mechanisms, their hydraulic lines, their optical sensors.

 

Metal was hard, yes. But glass—volcanic glass, sharpened to a molecular edge and driven by the kinetic force of a spinning, agile human body—could cut through hydraulic tubing like butter.

 

Izuku walked over to his desk, picking up a role of high-tensile athletic tape. He began to meticulously wrap his wrists and forearms. The tape wouldn't stop his Quirk from emerging—the obsidian would simply slice right through it as it grew from his skin—but it provided compression, supporting his joints against the violent recoil of his own slashing motions.

 

He looked at the poster of All Might one last time. The Number One Hero stood tall, laughing in the face of danger, holding up a collapsing bridge with nothing but his bare hands and raw durability.

 

"I can't be you," Izuku whispered to the poster. The words didn't carry the crushing despair they once had when he was a child. They carried a quiet, steel-cold acceptance.

 

"If I try to hold up a bridge, my arms will shatter. If I try to take a punch from a Nomu, my ribs will splinter into my heart."

 

He finished wrapping his right arm and clenched his fist.

 

"I can't be the shield that protects the innocent," Izuku continued, his emerald eyes narrowing with fierce determination. He let his Quirk activate across the knuckles of his clenched fist, creating four jagged, razor-sharp points of black glass that caught the light of the desk lamp.

 

"But I can be the sword that cuts down the villain before they ever get the chance to strike."

 

He deactivated the Quirk, grabbed his backpack, and turned off the light.

 

Tomorrow, he would show U.A. that glass, while fragile, was the deadliest thing in the world when it shattered.

 

The morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam did not begin with a magical encounter or a borrowed destiny. It began with the sharp, incessant trill of a digital alarm clock at 4:30 AM, and the familiar, dull ache in Izuku Midoriya’s joints.

 

Izuku sat up, throwing off his All Might themed comforter. The room was cool, the pre-dawn light casting long, blue shadows across the floor. He didn't stretch immediately. Instead, he carefully inspected his arms, tracing the silvery lines of old scars with his fingertips.

 

He closed his eyes and summoned his Quirk. The familiar, heavy coldness rushed into his right hand. A thin, perfectly smooth layer of pitch-black volcanic glass crept over his knuckles, ending in four needle-sharp points. He tapped the points against the wooden surface of his nightstand. They didn't dent the wood; they pierced it instantly, with zero resistance, like a hot knife through butter.

 

He released the Quirk, watching the obsidian retract and vanish, leaving his skin flawless once more.

 

"Right," Izuku whispered to the empty room. "Precision. Not power."

 

His morning routine was a ritual of agonizing precision. He went through an hour of intensive yoga and dynamic stretching, focusing on his hips, knees, and shoulders. If he was going to survive today, he couldn't afford to be stiff. His fighting style was entirely dependent on mobility. If he stopped moving, he was a target. If he was a target, he would be hit. And if he was hit, he would shatter.

 

By the time he walked into the small kitchen of their apartment, his mother was already awake, frantically flipping pancakes with a spatula that trembled in her grip.

 

"Izuku, honey, you're up," Inko Midoriya said, her voice tight with thinly veiled panic. She set a plate piled high with food on the table. "Did you pack your bandages? The gauze? The antiseptic spray? The heavy-duty ones?"

 

"Yes, Mom," Izuku said softly, pulling out a chair. He smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I have the medical kit. It's in the front pocket of my bag."

 

Inko sat across from him, ignoring her own food. She reached out, gently wrapping her hands around his forearms. She didn't squeeze. She treated him as if he were made of the very glass he produced.

 

"I know you want this, Izuku. I know you've trained so hard," she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes. "But please... please remember what Dr. Tsuragamae said. You aren't like the other kids with hardening Quirks. You can't just run into a wall."

 

"I know, Mom."

 

"If the robots are too big... if they shoot missiles or swing metal fists... just run away. There's no shame in running away."

 

Izuku looked down at his pancakes. In any other timeline, perhaps he would have had a mentor to tell him he could be the greatest hero. But in this timeline, Izuku was utterly alone in his pursuit. The world had looked at his Quirk, seen its lethal edges and its fragile nature, and told him to play it safe. To be a rescue worker. To stay in the back lines.

 

"I won't run into a wall, Mom," Izuku said, looking back up, his green eyes hardening into something resembling his Quirk. "I'm going to cut the wall down."

 

 

 

The gates of U.A. High School were monolithic, towering arches of glass and steel that made Izuku feel profoundly small. The courtyard was teeming with hundreds of prospective students, a kaleidoscope of mutations, elemental powers, and physical augmentations.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, adjusting the straps of his heavily modified backpack. He wore a fitted, long-sleeved athletic shirt and cargo pants made of tear-resistant fabric. His wrists and ankles were tightly wrapped in black athletic tape for joint support.

 

He took a step forward, his mind buzzing with calculated anxiety, when the toe of his red sneaker caught on an uneven paving stone.

 

Gravity asserted its dominance. Izuku’s arms instinctively flared out to catch himself. His mind raced—Don't harden your hands! If you brace against the concrete with obsidian, the impact will shatter it right into your palms!

 

He forced himself to keep his Quirk deactivated, preparing for the painful scrape of skin against concrete.

 

But the impact never came.

 

"Oops! Are you okay?"

 

Izuku felt a strange weightlessness. He was hovering three inches above the concrete, his limbs flailing slightly in the zero-gravity suspension. He looked over his shoulder to see a girl with a round face, rosy cheeks, and short brown hair, her hand still raised in his direction.

 

"I used my Quirk on you! Sorry for doing it without asking," she said cheerfully, placing her hands together and pressing her fingertips. "Release!"

 

Izuku dropped the remaining three inches, landing squarely on his feet. He stumbled slightly, turning to face her, his face flushing crimson. "O-oh! Um. Thank you! I was just... I tripped, and I couldn't use my Quirk to catch myself because it would've been bad, so... thank you!"

 

The girl beamed. "No problem! It would be bad luck to fall right before the exam, right? I'm Ochaco Uraraka. Good luck today!"

 

She waved and jogged off toward the auditorium, leaving Izuku standing there, a socially inept statue. I talked to a girl! Well, she talked to me, and I babbled, but it counts!

 

The momentary high faded as a familiar, aggressive presence shoved past his shoulder.

 

"Out of the way, glass boy," Katsuki Bakugo growled, not even bothering to look back as he marched toward the doors.

 

Izuku watched his childhood tormentor walk away. Katsuki’s confidence was a physical aura, loud and explosive. Izuku didn't resent it anymore. He just studied it. He knew how Katsuki fought. He knew Katsuki relied on overwhelming frontal assaults. It was a strategy that worked for Explosion.

 

It was a strategy that would get Izuku killed.

 

 

 

The written exam had been a breeze. Izuku had spent the last ten months studying not just hero law and mathematics, but advanced engineering and materials science.

 

Now, he sat in the massive, darkened auditorium, the bright screens illuminating the stage where the Voice Hero, Present Mic, enthusiastically explained the practical portion of the exam.

 

Three types of robots. One point, two points, three points. An urban combat center.

 

Izuku didn't just listen; his hands were a blur as he furiously sketched in his notebook. He was drawing the silhouettes of the robots displayed on the screen.

 

If U.A. is mass-producing these, Izuku thought, his pencil scratching rapidly, they aren't using titanium or heavy composites for the internal structures. It's too expensive. They'll use standard steel alloys for the chassis, but the joints have to be articulated. That means exposed hydraulic lines, motorized pivot points, and synthetic rubber hosing for the coolant and oil.

 

"Excuse me!"

 

A tall boy with glasses and a severe haircut stood up several rows ahead, pointing rigidly at Present Mic. "On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the most prominent school in Japan, should be ashamed!" The boy then turned, his arm snapping toward Izuku's row. "And you, with the curly hair! Your incessant muttering and scribbling is distracting! If you are here on a pleasure trip, I suggest you leave!"

 

Izuku froze, his pencil snapping under the sudden pressure of his grip. Hundreds of eyes turned to look at him. Katsuki, sitting two seats away, scoffed loudly.

 

"I-I'm sorry," Izuku squeaked, instinctively bowing his head.

 

Present Mic waved his hands. "Okay, okay, Examinee 7111, thanks for the great message! The fourth villain is a Zero Pointer! It's just an obstacle! I recommend you listeners try to avoid it!"

 

The boy bowed perfectly. "Thank you very much! Please excuse the interruption!"

 

As the boy sat down, Izuku looked back at his notebook. The Zero Pointer. An obstacle. A gimmick meant to test situational awareness and threat avoidance.

 

Izuku circled the Zero Pointer on his page and wrote two words next to it: RUN AWAY.

 

 

 

Battle Center B was a massive, sprawling mock-city. Skyscrapers, paved roads, traffic lights—it was an eerily perfect replica of a metropolitan district, enclosed by impossibly high concrete walls.

 

Izuku stood near the back of the massive crowd of teenagers congregated before the giant metal gates. He was bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, keeping his heart rate elevated. He closed his eyes, visualizing the intricate anatomy of a machine.

 

Metal is hard. Glass is brittle. I cannot punch. I cannot block. I must slice. I must parry.

 

"RIGHT, LET'S START!"

 

Present Mic's voice echoed from a massive speaker tower. "WHAT'S WRONG? THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL BATTLES! RUN, RUN, RUN!"

 

The crowd hesitated for a fraction of a second. Izuku did not.

 

His training kicked in. He didn't sprint like a track star; he launched himself forward with the low, predatory grace of a sprinter coming off the blocks. He slipped through the gaps in the confused crowd, his red sneakers pounding against the asphalt as he crossed the threshold of the gates first.

 

Target acquired.

 

A One-Pointer rolled out from an alleyway a hundred yards down the main street. It was essentially a heavily armored unicycle with twin cannon arms and a singular red optic sensor.

 

"Target locked," the robot's synthesized voice droned, its cannons swiveling toward the charging green-haired boy.

 

Other students were finally pouring into the city behind him, yelling and preparing their Quirks.

 

Izuku didn't slow down. The robot fired, a high-velocity tennis-ball-sized rubber slug tearing through the air. Izuku didn't brace for it. He dropped to his knees, sliding across the abrasive asphalt.

 

As he slid under the projectile, the cold sensation flooded his right arm. A terrifyingly sleek, two-foot-long blade of pitch-black obsidian erupted from the back of his forearm.

 

He didn't swing the blade like a baseball bat. That would cause blunt-force trauma to the glass, snapping it. He needed a drawing cut.

 

As he slid past the robot's singular wheel, Izuku extended his right arm, angling the razor-sharp edge of the obsidian against the inner axle of the wheel joint. He let his own forward momentum do the work.

 

SCREEEEEEECH!

 

The sound of molecularly sharpened volcanic glass shearing through industrial steel and hydraulic hosing was a horrific, ear-splitting shriek. Sparks erupted in a blinding shower.

 

Izuku popped up from his slide, continuing his forward momentum without missing a beat, the obsidian blade melting back into his skin.

 

Behind him, the One-Pointer sparked violently. Dark hydraulic fluid sprayed from its severed axle. The massive wheel seized up, and the robot toppled over, crashing into the asphalt in a heap of dead, sparking metal.

 

"One point," Izuku breathed, his eyes already scanning the rooftops.

 

He didn't have time to celebrate. The roar of battle erupted across the city as the rest of the examinees engaged. Explosions, blasts of ice, and the shattering of concrete filled the air.

 

Izuku moved like a ghost. He didn't look for fights; he looked for angles.

 

Two Two-Pointers crashed through a storefront window to his left. They resembled humanoid mantises, with large, scythe-like appendages.

 

Izuku ran toward the wall of the nearest building. He jumped, planting his foot against the brickwork to wall-run vertically for three steps. As gravity began to pull him down, he kicked off the wall, launching himself over the head of the first Two-Pointer.

 

Mid-air, he activated his Quirk on both legs. From his shins, two jagged, crescent-shaped obsidian blades grew outward. He crossed his legs slightly, aligning the blades.

 

As he fell past the back of the robot's neck, he hooked his legs around the machinery. The blades sank into the exposed cabling at the base of the robot's cranial unit. Izuku used his core strength to violently jerk his body backward.

 

The glass didn't break, because it was a pulling, slicing motion. The blades effortlessly severed the main neural processors. The Two-Pointer went limp instantly, crashing forward.

 

Izuku hit the ground rolling to absorb the impact, his leg blades instantly retracting so they wouldn't shatter against the pavement.

 

The second Two-Pointer lunged, swinging a massive metal scythe directly at Izuku's torso.

 

Panic spiked. Izuku couldn't dodge in time. Instinct screamed at him to harden his chest, to build a wall.

 

No! It will shatter into my lungs!

 

Instead of a wall, Izuku raised his left arm. He didn't create a shield. He created a ramp. A highly polished, angled plate of obsidian grew over his forearm. He didn't meet the force of the robot's swing head-on; he stepped into the swing, angling his arm at a 45-degree slope.

 

The heavy metal scythe struck the glass. But because of the angle and the mirror-smooth surface of the obsidian, the weapon didn't bite. It deflected, skittering up the slope of his arm with a shower of sparks, redirecting the devastating kinetic energy over Izuku's shoulder.

 

The deflection threw the robot completely off balance. Its chest cavity was left wide open.

 

Izuku’s right hand shot forward, fingers extended. The skin blackened and hardened into a needle-thin stiletto of glass. He thrust his hand forward, piercing perfectly through a ventilation grate on the robot's chest and puncturing the battery core within.

 

He yanked his hand back, the glass melting away. The robot sparked and shut down.

 

"Five points," Izuku muttered, his chest heaving. Sweat stung his eyes.

 

The physical toll of his fighting style was immense. Constantly shifting his center of gravity, perfectly timing the activation and deactivation of his Quirk, calculating angles of deflection—it was burning through his stamina at a terrifying rate. He couldn't just stand in the middle of a street and blast things like Katsuki. He had to hunt.

 

For the next eight minutes, the mock city became his hunting ground.

 

He racked up points through surgical disassembly. He didn't destroy the robots; he crippled them. He sliced the treads off Three-Pointers, rendering them immobile. He severed the optic sensors of One-Pointers, leaving them firing blindly into walls.

 

He was a dancer in a theater of heavy metal. He moved with a brutal, terrifying elegance, his black glass flashing in the simulated sunlight, leaving a trail of sparking, cleanly severed machinery in his wake.

 

"Thirty-two... thirty-five... thirty-eight points," Izuku gasped, ducking into an alleyway to catch his breath.

 

His muscles burned. His lungs felt like they were filled with hot sand. He looked down at his arms. Despite his flawless technique, the recoil of slicing through metal was taking a micro-toll. Thin, hairline fractures had formed in the glass during his last few kills before he could deactivate the Quirk, resulting in microscopic shards flaking off and embedding themselves in his skin. His forearms were covered in a thin sheen of blood, the tiny cuts stinging furiously.

 

"Two minutes remaining!" Present Mic's voice boomed over the speakers.

 

Izuku wiped the sweat and a smear of blood from his forehead. Thirty-eight points was good. It was solid. But U.A. was the elite. Was it enough?

 

Before he could calculate his standing, the ground beneath his feet heaved violently.

 

It wasn't a localized tremor. It was a localized earthquake. The buildings on either side of the alley groaned, dust raining down from the brickwork.

 

Izuku stumbled out of the alley and onto the main thoroughfare. The other examinees were doing the same, stopping their fights, their heads turning toward the center of the city.

 

A shadow fell over them.

 

Izuku looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

 

Tearing through the faux-cityscape at the end of the avenue was a machine of incomprehensible scale. It was easily the size of a twenty-story building. Its colossal treads crushed a concrete skyscraper as if it were made of cardboard. Its singular, glowing red eye swept across the street, a spotlight of doom.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

"Run!" someone screamed. "It's the obstacle! Run away!"

 

The examinees didn't need to be told twice. A chaotic stampede ensued. Teenagers with powerful Quirks turned and fled in absolute terror.

 

Izuku’s own instincts screamed at him in agreement. Run. You can't slice that. The armor plating is too thick. If you try to cut it, the sheer friction and density will shatter your blades into dust.

 

He turned, taking two steps toward the exit gates.

 

"Ow! S-Someone... please!"

 

The voice was faint, barely audible over the grinding roar of the colossal machine's treads. But Izuku heard it.

 

He stopped, his sneakers skidding on the asphalt. He looked back over his shoulder.

 

The Zero Pointer had smashed through a building, sending a shower of massive concrete debris into the street. Trapped beneath a slab of that concrete, desperately trying to push it off her legs, was the girl who had stopped him from falling. Uraraka.

 

The massive, tank-like treads of the Zero Pointer were slowly rolling forward, directly toward her. She was in its path.

 

Izuku didn't think. The calculations, the physics, the self-preservation that had dictated his entire life vanished in the span of a single heartbeat.

 

He spun around. The other students were fleeing past him, a blur of panicked faces. Izuku was the only one running toward the behemoth.

 

His mind shifted into a state of hyper-focused overdrive. He couldn't lift the rubble; he didn't have a strength Quirk. If he tried to slice the rubble, he risked the glass shattering and cutting her to pieces.

 

He had to stop the machine.

 

How do you kill a giant with a scalpel?

 

He stared up at the towering monstrosity. It was heavily armored, yes. But it was still a machine. It obeyed the laws of mechanics. A head that size required heavy hydraulic articulation to look down.

 

Izuku sprinted toward a rusted, overturned bus that had been caught in the robot's initial rampage. He leaped onto the side of the bus, his legs bunching beneath him.

 

He needed altitude. He needed to reach its neck.

 

Izuku closed his eyes and channeled every ounce of his Quirk's generative power into his legs. He didn't form blades on his shins. He formed a solid, thick pillar of dense obsidian between the soles of his shoes and the metal chassis of the bus, growing it at an explosive, instantaneous rate.

 

The rapid expansion of the hyper-dense glass acted like a hydraulic press in reverse. The sheer, violent force of the obsidian column growing downward launched Izuku upward like a cannonball.

 

The G-force nearly made him black out. The wind roared in his ears as he rocketed fifty, sixty, seventy feet into the air, perfectly intercepting the massive, descending face of the Zero Pointer.

 

He hung there, suspended in the air, directly in front of the colossal red optic sensor.

 

I can't just slice the eye. The glass over it will be reinforced bulletproof poly-carbonate. A thin blade will snap on impact.

 

He needed mass. He needed a wedge. He needed an axe.

 

Izuku thrust both of his arms forward. He channeled all of his remaining energy, forcing the Quirk to its absolute, horrifying limit.

 

From his elbows down to his fingertips, his skin blackened, expanded, and crystallized. He didn't form thin, elegant swords. He formed massive, brutal, heavy cleavers of pitch-black volcanic glass. They were thick, wedge-shaped, and terrifyingly dense, easily adding fifty pounds of weight to each arm.

 

The pain of stretching his skin to accommodate the massive glass extrusions was excruciating, a burning tearing sensation that made him scream.

 

"SMAAAAAAASH!"

 

He didn't have One For All, but he had the battle cry of his idol in his heart.

 

Using his upward momentum and the sheer, unnatural weight of the obsidian axes, Izuku swung his arms outward in a massive cross-slash.

 

He didn't hit the armored plating. He targeted the deep, recessed crevice beneath the massive head—the neck joint.

 

The razor-sharp, molecular edges of the heavy obsidian wedges bit into the thick clusters of main hydraulic cables and the central optic processor nerves.

 

For a microsecond, the blades sliced smoothly. But these cables were thick, armored, and under immense pressure. The resistance was catastrophic.

 

The kinetic shockwave of the impact, combined with the extreme density of the target, violently rejected the brittle nature of Izuku's Quirk.

 

CRACK-SHATTER!

 

An explosion of black glass erupted in mid-air. The massive axes on Izuku's arms detonated, unable to handle the blunt force trauma of cleaving such dense material.

 

Hundreds of shards of razor-sharp obsidian, ranging from the size of dinner plates to microscopic dust, exploded outward.

 

The agonizing shriek of tearing metal was instantly drowned out by Izuku’s own scream of absolute agony. The shattering of the massive axes tore the skin of his forearms to shreds. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc across the green chassis of the robot.

 

But the axes had done their job before they broke.

 

The heavy wedges had severed the main hydraulic pressure lines. The optic cables were sheared cleanly in half.

 

The Zero Pointer's massive red eye flickered, sparked violently, and died.

 

Without the hydraulic pressure to support its immense head, and completely blinded, the machine's internal failsafes triggered. Warning sirens blared from its chassis. The colossal gears groaned, the tracks locked up, and the titan began to tilt backward, collapsing onto its rear chassis with an earth-shattering boom that sent a shockwave of dust rolling across the city.

 

Izuku was already falling.

 

The pain in his arms was a blinding, white-hot fire. He was practically in free-fall from eighty feet in the air, his vision swimming with black spots. His arms were mangled, bleeding profusely from the shrapnel of his own Quirk.

 

I'm going to die, he thought, the wind rushing past him. I saved her... but I'm going to hit the concrete.

 

He tried to shift his body, to land on his legs, to sacrifice his lower half to save his spine, but his muscles refused to obey.

 

Suddenly, a sharp, stinging slap landed directly across his face.

 

The world tilted. The sickening sensation of falling vanished, replaced by an abrupt, weightless float.

 

Izuku blinked, his vision clearing just enough to see Uraraka, floating beside him, panting heavily. She had somehow freed herself—or someone else had—and used a piece of debris to launch herself up, slapping him just before he hit the ground.

 

"Got... you..." she gasped, pressing her fingertips together. "Release!"

 

They dropped the remaining ten feet, tumbling onto the rough asphalt. Izuku groaned, rolling onto his back. Every nerve in his arms was screaming. He couldn't even lift them. They were covered in blood and tiny fragments of glittering black glass.

 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic's voice echoed across the silent, dust-choked city.

 

Izuku lay on the ground, staring up at the clear blue sky, his chest heaving. He heard footsteps rushing toward them. He heard Uraraka asking if he was okay.

 

He didn't answer. He just slowly turned his head to the side.

 

There, towering over the ruined buildings, was the disabled, headless form of the Zero Pointer. Hydraulic fluid was raining down from its severed neck like a black waterfall.

 

He hadn't punched it into the stratosphere. He hadn't broken it with brute strength. He had surgically dismantled a titan, paying the price with his own blood.

 

"I'm not a shield," Izuku whispered to the empty air, his eyes fluttering closed as exhaustion finally dragged him into darkness. "I am a sword."

 

 

 

"Oh, dear. Oh, my goodness, this is a mess."

 

The voice was old, slightly crotchety, and accompanied by the tapping of a cane.

 

Izuku groaned, peeling his eyes open. The glare of the simulated sun in the Battle Center made him wince. He was still lying on the asphalt. A small crowd of examinees had gathered around him in a loose circle, their faces a mixture of awe and horror.

 

Standing over him was a diminutive old woman in a nurse's uniform, an oversized syringe serving as a walking stick. Recovery Girl. U.A.'s legendary youthful heroine.

 

"Don't move, sonny," she chided, kneeling beside him with surprising agility. She grabbed his right wrist. Izuku hissed in pain.

 

"Fascinating," Recovery Girl muttered, examining the deep lacerations and the glittering black shards embedded in his flesh. "I see a lot of broken bones from kids who don't know how to handle their Quirks. But this... this is self-inflicted laceration on a massive scale. Your Quirk is a brittle hardening type?"

 

"Y-Yes, ma'am," Izuku choked out, his throat dry. "Volcanic glass. The blunt force of the robot's neck... it shattered my blades."

 

"And because it grows from your skin, the shattering ripped you to pieces," she finished, shaking her head. "A very dangerous power you have there, boy. You're a walking hazard to yourself."

 

She puckered her lips, extending them to an unnatural length, and planted a loud kiss directly onto his forehead.

 

Izuku felt a sudden, massive drain on his stamina. It was as if his very life force was being sucked out of his core. But instantly, the agonizing fire in his arms began to cool. He watched in morbid fascination as the deep cuts knit themselves together, the skin weaving back into place. The shards of black glass that were embedded in his flesh were pushed out by the rapidly healing tissue, falling onto the asphalt like dark, bloody diamonds.

 

Within seconds, his arms were whole again, though they were covered in a fresh layer of pale, silvery scar tissue, adding to his already extensive collection.

 

"There," Recovery Girl said, sitting back and wiping her brow. "That's healed the tissue damage. But you've got zero stamina left. I had to use your own body's energy to accelerate the healing. If you try to stand up right now, you'll pass out."

 

"T-Thank you," Izuku whispered. He felt impossibly heavy, as if gravity had been dialed up to ten.

 

He rolled his head to look at Uraraka, who was sitting a few feet away, holding her own stomach and looking slightly green. She had saved his life. He owed her everything.

 

As the medical robots arrived with stretchers to carry away the exhausted and the injured, Izuku was lifted gently onto a gurney.

 

He didn't know if he had passed. He didn't know if U.A. awarded points for saving people, or if they only cared about the thirty-eight points he had meticulously carved out of the metal beast.

 

But as the gurney was wheeled toward the massive exit gates, Izuku caught sight of Katsuki Bakugo standing near the edge of the crowd. Katsuki wasn't glaring at him with his usual fiery rage. He was staring at the decapitated Zero Pointer, and then he looked down at the puddle of Izuku’s blood and black glass on the asphalt.

 

Katsuki’s expression was unreadable, a tight mask of shock and forced neutrality.

 

Izuku didn't gloat. He simply closed his eyes and let the stretcher carry him away.

 

He was fragile. He was brittle. He bled easily, and his own power was a constant threat to his well-being.

 

But U.A. now knew exactly what happens when glass is pushed to its absolute limit. It doesn't just break.

 

It cuts through everything.

 

The heavy, cream-colored envelope bearing the crimson wax seal of U.A. High School sat on the Midoriya family’s worn dining table like an unexploded bomb.

 

It had arrived three weeks after the Entrance Exam. For twenty-one days, Izuku had lived in a state of suspended animation. His arms, healed by Recovery Girl but still aching with phantom pains deep in the marrow, were a constant reminder of the price he had paid. The U.A. entrance exam was theoretically graded on Villain Points, of which he had secured a respectable thirty-eight. But he had spent the final minutes of the exam bleeding out on the asphalt, having sacrificed himself to stop a zero-point obstacle.

 

"Izuku," Inko Midoriya whispered, her hands hovering nervously over her chest. "Are you... are you going to open it?"

 

Izuku swallowed hard. The skin of his forearms, beneath the long sleeves of his shirt, prickled. "Yeah. I'm opening it."

 

He didn't use a letter opener. He simply focused for a fraction of a second, letting the tip of his right index finger crystallize into a microscopic, razor-sharp point of black volcanic glass. He slid the obsidian edge beneath the wax seal, severing the thick paper with a whisper-quiet snick. The glass melted away a second later.

 

He pulled out a small, metallic disk. He barely had time to register its weight before it whirred to life, projecting a massive, high-definition hologram into the center of their small living room.

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. Standing there in holographic glory, wearing a bright yellow pinstripe suit, was his idol.

 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!" All Might’s booming voice rattled the teacups in the kitchen sink.

 

Izuku stared, wide-eyed. All Might? Why is the Number One Hero doing the U.A. acceptance letters?

 

"Young Midoriya!" All Might pointed directly at the camera, his trademark smile blinding. "You must be wondering why I am the one delivering this message! The truth is, I have recently joined the faculty at U.A. High School! And it is my distinct pleasure to evaluate the results of a young man who showed remarkable... edge... in the exam!"

 

The hologram shifted, showing a video feed from the Battle Center. It was a bird's-eye view. Izuku watched himself—a tiny, green-haired blur—sliding under the One-Pointer, the black blade of his Quirk severing the axle in a shower of sparks. The feed fast-forwarded, showing him gracefully dismantling the robots, an agile dancer wielding lethal glass.

 

"You scored thirty-eight Villain Points, Young Midoriya! A solid score! Enough to pass on its own!" All Might's voice dropped an octave, growing softer, more serious. "But U.A. is not simply a school for those who can destroy. A hero must also protect. A hero must sacrifice."

 

The footage cut. The angle was now from a camera mounted on a nearby building, pointing down at the colossal Zero Pointer. It showed Izuku launching himself into the air, screaming, bringing down those massive, terrible axes of black glass upon the beast's neck. It showed the violent explosion of the obsidian, the spray of his own blood, and the colossal machine grinding to a halt, saving the girl trapped beneath the rubble.

 

Inko gasped, covering her mouth as she saw the sheer amount of blood her son had lost on the screen.

 

"You threw away your own safety, pushing a dangerous and brittle Quirk past its breaking point, to save a fellow examinee," All Might said, his blue eyes piercing through the hologram. "How could a hero course reject someone who commits to saving others with such absolute resolve? We have a panel of hidden judges. And they awarded you..."

 

The screen flashed, displaying a scoreboard.

 

"Sixty Rescue Points!"

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

"Giving you a grand total of ninety-eight points! Young Midoriya... you placed first in the U.A. Entrance Exam."

 

All Might extended a hand toward the camera, a gesture of absolute welcome. "Come, Young Midoriya. This is your Hero Academia!"

 

The projection sputtered and vanished, leaving the living room bathed in the mundane light of the afternoon sun.

 

Izuku sat perfectly still. The silence in the room was deafening. He looked down at his hands, at the faint, silvery scars that crisscrossed his knuckles. He had done it. He had taken a Quirk that the world—and doctors, and Katsuki—had deemed a fragile liability, and he had carved his way to the top of the mountain.

 

A sob broke the silence. Inko rushed forward, throwing her arms around her son's neck, burying her face in his shoulder. "Oh, Izuku! I'm so proud of you! I'm so, so proud of you!"

 

Izuku hugged her back, burying his face in her shoulder. For the first time in ten years, the tears that fell from his eyes were not tears of pain or frustration. They were tears of pure, unadulterated triumph.

 

 

 

The first day of school was a blur of nervous energy.

 

Izuku stood in his bedroom, staring at the grey blazer, white shirt, and red tie of the U.A. uniform. It felt heavy, like armor. Before putting the shirt on, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out two rolls of heavy-duty black athletic tape.

 

He methodically wrapped his wrists and forearms, binding the joints tightly. It was a habit born of necessity. His fighting style required immense, sudden torque, and the tape provided compression to keep his tendons from snapping under the strain of his own acrobatics. Furthermore, the tape provided a psychological barrier; it hid the worst of the scarring. He didn't want his new classmates to look at him and see a victim of his own biology. He wanted them to see a hero.

 

The walk to school was surreal. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, drifting through the air like pale pink snow. Izuku’s mind raced with a million possibilities. Who would be in his class? Would they be impressed by his Quirk, or terrified of it? Would Bakugo be there? (He knew the answer to that; Bakugo had placed second in the exam, an irony that Izuku was sure the explosive boy was currently stewing over).

 

When he finally navigated the massive, labyrinthine corridors of U.A., he found himself standing before a door that seemed designed for giants. A massive red '1-A' was painted on the wood.

 

This is it, Izuku thought, taking a deep breath. No turning back. I'm not the fragile glass boy anymore. I'm U.A. student Izuku Midoriya.

 

He slid the massive door open.

 

"Take your feet off that desk immediately!"

 

The loud, robotic voice belonged to the tall, bespectacled boy who had reprimanded Izuku in the auditorium. He was currently chopping his hand through the air in rigid, geometric patterns, glaring at Katsuki Bakugo.

 

Bakugo was slouched in his chair, his feet propped up on the pristine wood of the desk, looking supremely bored. "Huh? What's your problem, four-eyes?"

 

"It is disrespectful to the upperclassmen who used these desks before us, and to the craftsmen who made them! I am Tenya Iida, from Soumei Junior High School!"

 

"Soumei? Oh, so you're a stuck-up elite, huh?" Bakugo sneered, small sparks popping off his fingertips. "I'm gonna have fun crushing you."

 

Izuku sighed internally. Some things never change.

 

He took a step into the room. Iida immediately snapped his attention to the door, his eyes widening. He marched over to Izuku with startling speed.

 

"You!" Iida announced loudly, causing the rest of the chatter in the room to die down. "You are the one who realized the true nature of the practical exam! The hidden rescue points! I had no idea... I misjudged you completely. I must apologize for my behavior in the auditorium. You are clearly a superior student!"

 

Iida bowed perfectly at a ninety-degree angle.

 

Izuku waved his hands frantically, his face burning. "N-No! It's not like that! I just... I saw someone in trouble, and I moved! I didn't know about the points!"

 

"Oh! It's you! The falling boy!"

 

Izuku peeked around Iida to see Uraraka bounding toward him, her U.A. uniform perfectly fitted, her smile radiant. "I was hoping you'd be in my class! That punch... well, slash, I guess... that you did to the giant robot was amazing! You were like SHING! and CRACK! and then it was falling!"

 

"T-Thank you, Uraraka-san," Izuku stammered, rubbing the back of his neck. "And thank you for catching me. If you hadn't, I would have... well, it wouldn't have been pretty."

 

"Hey, you're the guy who got first place, right?"

 

A new voice cut through the air. A boy with bright, spiky red hair and a shark-like grin walked up, extending a hand. "I'm Eijiro Kirishima! Man, I saw some of your footage on the news. Your Quirk is super manly! Slicing right through those robots!"

 

"Oh, um, I'm Izuku Midoriya," Izuku said, reaching out to shake Kirishima’s hand.

 

As their skin made contact, Kirishima’s eyes lit up. "Whoa, hold on. We might be Quirk bros!"

 

Without warning, Kirishima activated his Quirk. His entire arm, from the shoulder down to his hand, hardened. The skin took on a jagged, rocky texture, turning a dull, concrete grey.

 

Izuku, caught off guard, instinctively reacted. In a split second, the skin of his own right hand, currently enclosed in Kirishima's, shifted. The warmth of human flesh vanished, replaced by an icy, heavy void. His hand turned pitch-black, smoothing out into a perfect, reflective surface of volcanic glass. He didn't form blades—just a blunt hardening over his knuckles and palm to protect his bones from Kirishima's rough grip.

 

The contrast was immediate and stark.

 

"Holy crap!" Kirishima laughed, examining their joined hands. "This is wild! It's like rock against... wait, what is this? It's so cold. And smooth!"

 

Kirishima tapped his jagged, rock-hard thumb against the back of Izuku’s obsidian hand. Clink. Clink. The sound was high and sharp, like two wine glasses being struck together.

 

"It's volcanic glass," Izuku explained, gently pulling his hand back and letting the Quirk fade. The warmth returned to his skin. "Obsidian. My body rapidly crystallizes minerals into a glass extrusion."

 

Kirishima let his own Quirk deactivate, his skin returning to normal. "That is so cool! Mine is just standard Hardening. I get super tough and can take a ton of hits. I'm basically a walking tank. We're like the Ultimate Shield brothers!"

 

Izuku offered a small, somewhat sad smile. He liked Kirishima immediately. The boy wore his heart on his sleeve. But he needed to correct the misconception before it led to an accident in training.

 

"Actually, Kirishima-kun... we're opposites," Izuku said softly.

 

Kirishima tilted his head. "Opposites? What do you mean? We both get hard."

 

Across the room, Bakugo let out a loud, mocking scoff. "Yeah, spiky-hair. You're a rock. Deku over there is a window. Hit him too hard and he explodes into a million pieces and cries about it."

 

The room went dead silent. Several students looked between Bakugo and Izuku, sensing the heavy, toxic history between them.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't cower like he would have years ago. He met Bakugo's crimson glare with a cool, emerald stare.

 

"Bakugo is right," Izuku said to Kirishima, his voice perfectly level. "Your Quirk gives you density and tensile strength. You can take a punch. My Quirk is glass. It's incredibly hard, so it can't be scratched, and it can be sharpened to a molecular edge. But it has zero toughness. If I try to block a blunt force impact, my armor shatters. And because it's attached to my skin..."

 

Izuku deliberately pulled up the sleeve of his blazer, and then peeled back an inch of the black athletic tape on his wrist, revealing the dense, silver webbing of scars beneath.

 

"When it breaks, it acts like shrapnel," Izuku finished quietly. "I'm not a shield, Kirishima. If I get hit, I break."

 

Kirishima stared at the scars, his eyes wide. The boisterous energy faded, replaced by a look of profound, solemn respect. "Dude... and you still fought that giant robot? Knowing it would do that to you?"

 

"I didn't have a choice," Izuku said simply, rolling his sleeve back down.

 

"If you're just going to stand around sharing your tragic backstories, you can pack up and leave."

 

The voice was dry, raspy, and seemed to come from the floor.

 

The students jumped in unison, looking down at the front of the classroom. A man with unkempt black hair, heavy bags under his eyes, and a scruffy beard was lying on the floor, fully encased in a bright yellow sleeping bag. He looked like a giant, exhausted caterpillar.

 

The man unzipped the sleeping bag and stood up, pulling a juice pouch out of nowhere and taking a sip.

 

"It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down," the man said, his eyes sweeping over the class with bored apathy. "Time is a limited resource. You kids aren't rational enough."

 

He stepped out of the sleeping bag entirely, revealing a black jumpsuit and a long, grey scarf wrapped loosely around his neck.

 

"I'm Shota Aizawa. I'm your homeroom teacher."

 

The class stared at him in disbelief. This disheveled man was a teacher at the most prestigious hero academy in the country?

 

"Right, let's get to it," Aizawa said, reaching into his sleeping bag and pulling out a bundle of U.A. physical education uniforms—blue tracksuits with white stripes. He tossed them onto the front desk. "Put these on and head out to the training grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

The changing room was loud, filled with the nervous chatter of teenage boys sizing each other up. Izuku claimed a corner locker, quickly stripping off his blazer and shirt.

 

He didn't remove the black tape on his wrists, but the scars on his upper arms and shoulders—remnants of shattered glass from his earlier, less controlled years of training—were fully visible.

 

A boy with half-white, half-red hair, who had introduced himself as Shoto Todoroki, glanced over from the next locker. His heterochromatic eyes lingered on Izuku's scarred arms for a fraction of a second before returning to his own uniform. Todoroki had a nasty burn scar over his left eye. Izuku wondered, fleetingly, if Todoroki’s power had a backlash as well.

 

"Midoriya, right?"

 

Izuku turned to see a boy with blonde hair and a black lightning bolt streak, Denki Kaminari, pointing at him. "Man, Bakugo was brutal in there. Is your Quirk really that dangerous to yourself?"

 

Izuku pulled the P.E. shirt over his head, adjusting the collar. "It's all about physics, Kaminari-kun. Glass is brittle. If I use it right, it's fine. If I make a mistake, I pay for it."

 

"Manly," Kirishima muttered from a few lockers down, nodding his head in solemn approval. "A Quirk that demands absolute perfection. That's hardcore."

 

Izuku offered a small smile, grabbing his red sneakers. He appreciated Kirishima's positive spin on it, but the reality was far less glamorous. It wasn't about being 'hardcore'. It was about survival.

 

Ten minutes later, Class 1-A stood assembled on the massive, dirt expanse of P.E. Ground Gamma. The sun was bright, the wind was cool, and Shota Aizawa looked thoroughly unimpressed by all of them.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" Uraraka asked, her hands clasped nervously. "But what about the entrance ceremony? The orientation?"

 

"If you're going to become heroes, you don't have time for leisurely events," Aizawa said coldly, his back turned to them as he set up a pitching circle. "U.A.'s selling point is how unrestricted its traditions are. That's also how the teachers run their classes. You kids have been doing these standardized tests since junior high, right? Sit-ups, 50-meter dash, softball pitch. But you were always forbidden from using your Quirks."

 

Aizawa turned around, holding a softball. His gaze locked onto Bakugo.

 

"Bakugo, you finished second in the practical exam. What was your farthest softball pitch in junior high?"

 

Bakugo scowled, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Sixty-seven meters."

 

"Try doing it with your Quirk," Aizawa instructed, tossing the ball to Bakugo. "Stand in the circle. As long as you don't leave the circle, anything goes. Don't hold back."

 

Bakugo caught the ball. A savage grin spread across his face as he walked to the center of the white chalk circle. He stretched his arms, rolling his shoulders.

 

Izuku watched intently. He knew exactly what Bakugo was going to do.

 

Bakugo wound up, his right arm pulling back. As he threw the ball, he didn't just release it; he detonated a massive explosion directly from his palm, launching the ball with the force of a cannon strike.

 

"DIE!" Bakugo roared, the shockwave ruffling the hair of the students standing twenty feet away.

 

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

 

Aizawa held up a digital device. It beeped. He turned the screen toward the class.

 

705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted into exclamations of shock and excitement. Kaminari pumped his fist. "Whoa! Seven hundred meters? That's insane!"

 

"This looks like fun!" a girl with pink skin and horns, Mina Ashido, cheered. "We get to use our Quirks as much as we want!"

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. The air temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

 

"Fun, you say?"

 

Aizawa lowered the device, his expression turning terrifyingly grim. "You have three years to become heroes. Will you have an attitude like that the whole time? Alright. New rule. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential..."

 

Aizawa smiled, and it was a smile devoid of any warmth. "...and will be punished with expulsion."

 

The class gasped.

 

"Expulsion?!" Uraraka cried out. "But it's the first day! Even if it wasn't, that's totally unfair!"

 

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, and selfish villains," Aizawa droned, rubbing the back of his neck. "Calamities whose time or place can't be predicted. Japan is covered with unfairness. Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you wanted to go talk to your friends at McDonald's after school, too bad. For the next three years, U.A. will inflict hardship after hardship upon you. Go Plus Ultra. Overcome it with all you've got."

 

Izuku felt a cold knot form in his stomach. Expulsion.

 

He looked down at his taped wrists. He couldn't afford to hold back, but he also couldn't afford to break himself. If he shattered his arms on the first day, Aizawa would deem him a liability and expel him on the spot. He had to be smart. He had to be surgical.

 

The first test was the 50-meter dash.

 

Izuku lined up at the starting line alongside a boy named Yuga Aoyama, who had a laser built into his belt.

 

At the end of the track, a robotic camera was set up to record their times.

 

"Runners, on your marks," the robotic voice announced.

 

Izuku dropped into a low crouch. He closed his eyes. I need traction. Explosive traction. But if I cover my whole foot, the sheer force of my own leg muscles will shatter the glass against the pavement. I need localized, micro-extrusions.

 

He focused the cold energy of his Quirk downward. He didn't coat his shoes. Instead, he forced the volcanic glass to grow through the rubber soles of his red sneakers. Dozens of tiny, needle-sharp spikes of pitch-black obsidian erupted from the bottom of his shoes, sinking half an inch into the specialized rubberized track of the U.A. field.

 

He was creating perfect, indestructible track cleats.

 

"Ready... Go!"

 

The gun fired.

 

Aoyama shot backward, propelled by a blast of sparkling laser light from his navel.

 

Izuku didn't use a flashy propulsion method. He relied on the brutal biomechanics he had spent ten years perfecting. The obsidian spikes dug into the track, providing absolute zero-slip traction. Every single ounce of kinetic energy generated by his powerful thigh and calf muscles was translated directly into forward momentum.

 

He exploded off the line like a bullet. His upper body remained perfectly still, his arms pumping in tight, aerodynamic arcs. He crossed the finish line in a blur.

 

"3.84 seconds," the robotic voice chimed.

 

Aoyama crossed a moment later, having had to stop and re-fire his laser. "5.51 seconds."

 

Izuku immediately deactivated the Quirk as he decelerated. The spikes melted away, and he slid to a comfortable halt. He glanced over at Aizawa, who was writing on a clipboard. Aizawa didn't look impressed, but he didn't look displeased either. He was simply observing.

 

Bakugo crossed the finish line in his heat with a time of 4.13 seconds, using explosions behind his back to propel himself. He glared at Izuku, smoke wafting from his palms. Izuku had beaten him by pure physical mechanics.

 

The second test was grip strength.

 

Izuku stood in the gym, staring at the digital dynamometer in his hand.

 

This was a problem. If he activated his Quirk to try and increase his grip, the obsidian would form over his fingers. Obsidian was slick, and if he squeezed too hard against the metal device, the glass would shatter under his own pressure, shredding his hand.

 

He sighed, resigning himself to biology. He didn't use his Quirk. He just gripped the device with his bare hand and squeezed as hard as his physically conditioned muscles would allow.

 

68 kg.

 

It was a fantastic score for a quirkless fourteen-year-old, the result of years of pull-ups and weapon handling. But compared to Mezo Shoji, a boy with six arms who scored 540 kg, it was profoundly average.

 

The standing long jump and repeated side steps went similarly well. Izuku's acrobatics training and the use of his micro-cleats allowed him to excel in agility and explosive short-distance movement. He cleared the sandbox entirely, landing gracefully on the other side.

 

Then came the fifth test. The ball pitch.

 

The sun had begun to dip slightly, casting long shadows across the dirt field. Izuku watched as Uraraka stepped into the circle. She touched the ball, threw it, and it sailed up into the sky until it was nothing but a speck, disappearing entirely.

 

Aizawa showed the screen. It displayed a sideways figure-eight. Infinity.

 

The class cheered.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa called out, his voice cutting through the noise. "You're up."

 

Izuku swallowed, stepping forward to retrieve a softball from the bucket. The ball felt light in his hands. Too light.

 

He walked to the center of the chalk circle. He couldn't throw it normally; he'd get maybe fifty meters. He couldn't use explosions like Bakugo.

 

How do I throw this? Izuku thought, his mind racing. I can't make my arm stronger. I can't generate a concussive blast. Force equals mass times acceleration. My acceleration is capped by my human muscles. So, I have to increase the mass.

 

He held the softball in his right hand. He took a deep breath, dropping his center of gravity. He spread his feet wide, adopting the stance of an Olympic hammer thrower.

 

He tapped into his Quirk. But he didn't apply it to his arm. He applied it to the ball.

 

The cold sensation rushed down his arm, bypassing his flesh, and extruded directly out of his pores where his skin touched the leather of the softball. Pitch-black volcanic glass rapidly grew over the ball, engulfing it entirely.

 

But Izuku didn't stop there. He kept pouring the minerals out, allowing the obsidian to grow thicker, denser. The ball grew from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a bowling ball, perfectly smooth, catching the sunlight like a black pearl.

 

The weight was immense. A solid sphere of pure volcanic glass of that size weighed roughly twenty-five pounds.

 

Izuku grabbed the massive, heavy sphere with both hands. He couldn't throw this like a baseball; it would dislocate his shoulder.

 

"What is he doing?" Kaminari whispered. "That looks heavy."

 

Izuku began to spin.

 

He stayed strictly within the chalk circle, but he used his flawless footwork to pivot on his heels, spinning his body in a rapid, tight circle. Once, twice, three times. He was building centrifugal force, turning his entire body into a catapult. The heavy obsidian sphere dragged behind him, the immense torque straining his back and core muscles.

 

On the fourth spin, he hit his maximum velocity. He planted his left foot, roaring with exertion, and released the massive sphere, throwing it upward at a perfect 45-degree angle.

 

Because the ball was incredibly dense and perfectly smooth, it ignored air resistance. It shot into the sky like a cannonball fired from a siege weapon, a black streak cutting through the blue.

 

Izuku collapsed onto one knee, gasping for breath, his arms trembling from the sheer weight he had just hurled. He looked up, waiting for the beep.

 

Beep.

 

Aizawa turned the screen.

 

412.6 meters.

 

It wasn't Bakugo's 700 meters, and it wasn't Uraraka's infinity, but it was a staggering distance.

 

The class was silent for a moment, and then Kirishima let out a loud whoop. "Dude! That was amazing! You turned it into a cannonball!"

 

Izuku wiped sweat from his brow, offering a tired smile. But before he could stand up, he felt a strange, chilling sensation wash over him.

 

He looked toward Aizawa. The homeroom teacher was glaring at him. Aizawa's long grey scarf was suddenly levitating around his neck like a nest of angry snakes, and his hair was floating upward, defying gravity. But most terrifying of all were his eyes. They were glowing a brilliant, piercing red.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice deadly quiet. "Come here."

 

Izuku felt the blood drain from his face. He stood up, his legs feeling like lead, and walked over to the teacher.

 

Aizawa kept his red eyes locked on Izuku. "I saw your records from the entrance exam. You shattered your own constructs to defeat the Zero Pointer, severely lacerating both of your arms in the process. You required extensive healing from Recovery Girl."

 

"Y-Yes, sir," Izuku said, staring at the ground.

 

"Your Quirk is highly lethal, but structurally unsound," Aizawa continued, stepping closer. The levitating scarf rustled ominously. "You are brittle. And yet, you just subjected your spine and shoulders to immense torque to throw a twenty-five-pound solid block of glass. If your foot had slipped, or if your grip had failed, you would have torn your own rotator cuffs, or dropped that glass onto your own feet, likely shattering it and crippling yourself."

 

Aizawa leaned in, his glowing red eyes boring into Izuku's soul. "You have no self-preservation instinct. You treat your own body as a disposable tool to achieve a goal. If you think someone is going to be around to heal you every time you break yourself, you are dead wrong."

 

Aizawa blinked. His hair fell flat, the scarf dropped, and his eyes returned to their tired, black state. The chilling pressure vanished.

 

"I erased your Quirk just now," Aizawa said, his voice returning to its normal, apathetic drawl. "To see if you would panic. You didn't. That's good. But listen to me carefully, Midoriya."

 

Aizawa reached out and tapped a finger directly against Izuku's chest, right over his heart.

 

"You survived the entrance exam by the skin of your teeth. But in the real world, a hero who constantly breaks himself is a liability. It means someone else has to step in to save you. If you treat yourself like a shield, you will break. You need to learn your material. You need to learn when to strike, and when to step back. If you can't figure out how to be a hero without bleeding for it every single time..."

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. "...then you do not belong in my course."

 

The words hit Izuku harder than Bakugo’s explosion ever could. It was the brutal, unvarnished truth that he had been wrestling with for ten years, spoken aloud by a professional.

 

He wasn't invulnerable. He was a liability if he wasn't perfect.

 

Izuku didn't argue. He didn't offer excuses about saving people. He looked Aizawa straight in the eye and bowed deeply.

 

"I understand, Sensei. I will learn."

 

Aizawa grunted, turning away. "See that you do. Next."

 

Izuku walked back to the group. He felt the weight of Aizawa's warning settling over his shoulders. The rest of the tests passed in a blur. He performed adequately in the sit-ups and the toe-touch, entirely relying on his physical fitness.

 

When the sun finally began to set, casting an orange hue over the school, Aizawa gathered them together in front of the holographic scoreboard.

 

"I'll quickly read out the total results," Aizawa said, pulling out his juice pouch again. "The total is simply the marks you got from each test. It's a waste of time to explain verbally, so I'll just show you."

 

The screen flickered to life.

 

Izuku scanned the names from the bottom up. Mineta Minoru was in 20th place. Toru Hagakure was 19th. He kept scrolling up.

 

He found his name.

 

4. Izuku Midoriya.

 

He had placed fourth overall. Behind Yaoyorozu (who had created a cannon for the ball pitch), Todoroki, and Bakugo. His times in the dash and agility tests, combined with his solid physical scores and the massive ball pitch, had secured him a top spot.

 

Izuku let out a long, shuddering breath. He wasn't expelled.

 

"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion," Aizawa said suddenly, a horrifying, wide grin stretching across his scruffy face.

 

The class froze.

 

"It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your Quirks."

 

"WHAT?!" Several students screamed in unison.

 

Yaoyorozu, a tall girl with black hair tied in a spiky ponytail, sighed, placing a hand on her cheek. "Of course it was a lie. It was rather obvious if you just thought it through."

 

No, it wasn't, Izuku thought, looking at Aizawa's retreating back. He meant it. If any of us had shown zero potential, he would have cut us in a heartbeat.

 

"Hey. Deku."

 

Izuku turned. Bakugo was standing a few feet away. The explosive boy's face was shadowed by the setting sun, his crimson eyes burning with a complex, furious intensity.

 

Bakugo had seen the scoreboard. He had placed third. Izuku, the boy who used to tremble at the mere sound of a firecracker, had placed right behind him. The "glass boy" had thrown a boulder four hundred meters and run a 50-meter dash faster than Bakugo.

 

"You've been hiding this," Bakugo said, his voice dangerously low. Small, involuntary sparks popped from his clenched fists. "You've been pretending to be a fragile little pebble for ten years, while you were building all this up."

 

"I wasn't pretending, Kacchan," Izuku said quietly. He didn't back away. "I am fragile. My Quirk hasn't changed. It's still brittle. But I stopped trying to use it like you use yours."

 

Izuku took a step forward, the orange light catching the determined glint in his emerald eyes.

 

"I'm not a shield anymore, Kacchan. And I'm not a pebble. I'm going to be a hero. And I'm not going to break."

 

Bakugo stared at him for a long, tense moment. The sheer animosity between them was a palpable weight in the air. Finally, Bakugo scoffed, turning on his heel and walking away, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

 

"We'll see about that, Deku. The moment you shatter, I'm walking right over you."

 

Izuku watched him go. He knew the rivalry was far from over. If anything, it had just truly begun.

 

"Midoriya-kun!"

 

Izuku turned to see Uraraka and Iida jogging toward him. Iida was moving his arms in his robotic, chopping motion, and Uraraka was smiling brightly.

 

"Are you walking to the station?" Uraraka asked. "We should go together! You were so amazing today! That ball throw was crazy!"

 

"I agree," Iida said solemnly. "Your application of physics to your Quirk is highly commendable. You will make an excellent hero."

 

Izuku looked at the two of them. A warm feeling, entirely different from the cold genesis of his obsidian, bloomed in his chest. He wasn't alone. He had friends. He had peers who respected him not for a flashy, indestructible power, but for his mind and his resolve.

 

"Yeah," Izuku smiled, a genuine, bright expression that reached his eyes. "Let's walk together."

 

As they headed toward the massive gates of U.A., Izuku pulled his sleeves down slightly, covering the black athletic tape on his wrists. He knew Aizawa was right. The road ahead was dangerous. His body was a fragile vessel carrying a lethal weapon.

 

But as he listened to Uraraka laugh and Iida lecture, Izuku realized something crucial. He didn't need to be an impenetrable wall. He just needed to be sharp enough to cut through the darkness, before it ever reached the people he cared about.

 

The glass had been forged. Now, it was time to test the edge.

 

The transition from a normal middle school to U.A. High School was a jarring one, primarily because the mundane and the extraordinary were smashed together with reckless abandon. Morning classes consisted of agonizingly normal subjects like English with Present Mic and Modern Literature with Cementoss. Izuku Midoriya sat at his desk, his notebook open, diligently taking notes on irregular verbs, but his leg bounced with a relentless, nervous energy.

 

He was waiting for the afternoon. He was waiting for Hero Basic Training.

 

When the lunch bell finally rang and the afternoon session commenced, the atmosphere in Class 1-A shifted instantly. The heavy oak door of the classroom didn't just slide open; it burst inward, accompanied by a booming voice that Izuku had spent his entire life listening to through computer speakers and television screens.

 

"I AM COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"

 

All Might stood in the doorway, clad in his Silver Age costume—a skin-tight bodysuit of vibrant red, white, and blue, complete with a billowing yellow cape. He was a mountain of muscle, his iconic V-shaped grin radiating an aura of absolute security.

 

The classroom erupted.

 

"It's All Might!" Kaminari cheered, leaning so far over his desk he nearly fell out of his chair.

 

"Wow, he really is a teacher!" Kirishima grinned, his shark teeth glinting. "That's a Silver Age costume, isn't it? Its design is so retro!"

 

All Might marched to the podium, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. "Hero Basic Training! The class that will put you through all sorts of special training to mold you into true heroes! No time to dally! Today's activity is... Battle Training!"

 

All Might pointed a massive, gloved finger toward the wall. "And for that, you need these!"

 

With a mechanical whir, a section of the wall slid open, revealing twenty numbered, metallic briefcases stacked neatly in rows.

 

"In accordance with the Quirk registry and the special request forms you filled out before being admitted, your hero costumes have been prepared!" All Might announced. "Change into them, and gather at Ground Beta! Let's see what you've got, you zygotes!"

 

Izuku stared at briefcase number eighteen. His heart hammered against his ribs. The hero costume. The ultimate physical expression of a hero's identity. He had submitted his designs months ago, heavily revising them after the reality check of his Quirk's awakening when he was four.

 

He grabbed his case and headed for the locker room.

 

Ten minutes later, Class 1-A began to file out of the dark tunnel and into the blinding sunlight of Ground Beta, a massive, unpopulated mock-city.

 

"They say the clothes make the man, young men and women!" All Might boomed, standing in the center of the street with his hands on his hips. "Be fully aware... from now on, you are heroes! That's great, everyone! You all look so cool!"

 

Izuku emerged from the tunnel near the back of the pack. He felt exposed, yet oddly secure.

 

In his original childhood notebooks, he had designed a costume meant to look like a heavily armored version of All Might. But the reality of his brittle, volcanic glass Quirk demanded something entirely different.

 

Izuku’s hero costume was built for stealth, speed, and unobstructed mobility. He wore a form-fitting, dark emerald-green combat shirt made of a breathable, high-tensile synthetic weave, designed to resist tearing. Over it, he wore a matte-black tactical harness that strapped tightly across his chest and waist, holding small pouches for first-aid supplies and capture wire. His pants were loose-fitting black cargo trousers, tucked into lightweight, flexible red combat boots that allowed for maximum ankle articulation.

 

But the most important elements were on his arms. From his mid-biceps down to his wrists, he wore heavy-duty, compression-grade crimson wrappings. They looked like Muay Thai hand wraps, but they were woven with carbon fibers to provide intense joint support, protecting his tendons from the violent recoil of his own slashing attacks. The gloves were fingerless, exposing his knuckles so his Quirk could deploy without destroying the fabric. Finally, a sleek, dark metal respirator mask hung loosely around his neck, ready to be pulled up to protect his lower face from dust and debris.

 

He didn't look like a tank. He looked like a rogue. A striker.

 

"Oh, Deku-kun!"

 

Izuku turned to see Uraraka jogging toward him. She was wearing a skin-tight, pink and black spacesuit with rounded, bubble-like accessories on her wrists and waist.

 

"Your costume looks so cool!" Uraraka beamed, looking him up and down. "It looks really practical! Mine ended up being a tight skintight suit... it's a little embarrassing." She rubbed the back of her helmet, her cheeks flushing pink.

 

"N-No! It looks great!" Izuku stammered, his face instantly turning a matching shade of crimson. "The Quirk physics make sense! If you're manipulating gravity, loose clothing would create dangerous drag, so the aerodynamic fit is optimal!"

 

Uraraka laughed. "You're always mumbling about physics! But thank you."

 

"Now then, it's time for combat training!" All Might called out.

 

Iida, wearing a massive, blocky suit of white armor that made him look like a futuristic knight, raised a heavily plated hand. "Sir! This is the battle center from the entrance exam. Will we be conducting urban mock battles again?"

 

"No! We're moving ahead two steps!" All Might held up two fingers. "Most villain fights you see on the news take place outside. However, statistically speaking, the appearance rate of atrocious villains indoors is actually higher. Imprisonment, house arrest, backroom deals. In this hero-saturated society, truly intelligent villains hide in the shadows."

 

All Might pulled out a small script, squinting at it slightly. "For this class, you'll be split into villains and heroes and fight 2-on-2 indoor battles."

 

"Without basic training?" Tsu asked, tilting her head.

 

"This is a real battle to understand those basics!" All Might countered. "However, the key this time is that there's no robot you can just beat up."

 

He went on to explain the rules. The villains would guard a papier-mâché nuclear weapon hidden somewhere in a multi-story building. The heroes needed to either capture the villains using specialized capture tape or touch the weapon before time ran out. The villains won if they protected the weapon until the timer expired or captured the heroes. Teams would be determined by drawing lots.

 

Izuku reached into the yellow box when it was his turn, pulling out a white ball with the letter 'A' printed on it.

 

"I'm team A!" Uraraka cheered, holding up a matching ball. "We're together, Deku-kun!"

 

Izuku smiled, relief washing over him. Uraraka’s Quirk was incredibly versatile, and he already trusted her. "That's great. Let's do our best."

 

He looked around the crowd, checking the other teams. His eyes landed on a figure standing near the edge of the group, glaring daggers at the ground.

 

Katsuki Bakugo wore a terrifying ensemble. His black, sleeveless tank top featured a bright orange 'X' across the chest, but the most prominent features were the massive, grenade-shaped gauntlets encasing his forearms, and the explosive flares flaring up behind his head.

 

All Might reached into a second set of boxes. "The first teams to fight will be... these guys!"

 

He pulled out two balls. A white 'A' and a black 'D'.

 

"Team A will be the Heroes! Team D will be the Villains!"

 

Izuku felt the blood freeze in his veins. He slowly turned his head.

 

Across the crowd, Bakugo's head snapped up. His crimson eyes locked onto Izuku. The feral, bloodthirsty grin that split Bakugo's face was genuinely terrifying. Small, crackling explosions popped aggressively from the palms of his gauntlets, the smell of burnt sugar and ozone drifting across the pavement.

 

Team D, Izuku thought, his stomach twisting. Bakugo... and Iida.

 

"Everyone else, head to the monitor room!" All Might ordered. "Villain team, go inside and set up! In five minutes, the hero team will break in, and the battle will start!"

 

 

 

Inside the dim, concrete interior of the fifth-floor payload room, Tenya Iida was taking his role very seriously. He walked up to the massive, fake nuclear bomb, rapping his knuckles against the papier-mâché surface.

 

"Even if this is training, it pains me to become a villain," Iida muttered, adjusting his glasses beneath his helmet. "But I must commit! To be a true hero, one must understand the mind of the enemy."

 

He turned to his partner. Bakugo was standing by the window, staring down at the street below, his hands twitching.

 

"Bakugo-kun," Iida said authoritatively. "We must coordinate a defense strategy. Midoriya is highly analytical, and Uraraka's Zero Gravity can bypass our barricades if she touches the payload. I suggest I remain here to guard the weapon, utilizing my engine speed to intercept anyone who enters, while you..."

 

"Shut up, four-eyes," Bakugo snarled, not even looking back.

 

Iida blinked, taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"

 

"I don't give a crap about the fake bomb," Bakugo said, turning away from the window. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated with a singular, obsessive focus. "Deku has a Quirk. He lied to me for ten years. He strutted around that entrance exam, breaking himself, trying to look like a badass. And yesterday, he placed above me."

 

Bakugo slammed his fists together. A concussive blast echoed through the concrete room, making Iida flinch.

 

"I don't care about the girl," Bakugo growled, walking toward the door. "I'm going down there. And I'm going to shatter that glass nerd into a million pieces. I'll make him remember exactly why he's fragile."

 

"Bakugo, wait! That is highly irrational!" Iida called out, but the explosive blonde was already marching down the hallway, leaving Iida alone with the bomb.

 

 

 

Outside, Izuku and Uraraka were huddled by the entrance of the building, reviewing a blueprint All Might had provided.

 

"It's a five-story building," Izuku muttered, tracing his finger along the map. "Multiple stairwells, lots of blind corners. Perfect for an ambush."

 

He looked up at Uraraka. "Uraraka-san, there's something you need to know about Kacchan. Bakugo."

 

"He's the one who's always glaring at you, right?" Uraraka asked, looking concerned. "He seems really... intense."

 

"He hates me," Izuku said plainly. "And he's incredibly proud. He won't stay with the bomb. He's going to come looking for me specifically."

 

Uraraka gasped softly. "But that's abandoning the objective!"

 

"To him, crushing me is the objective," Izuku explained, adjusting the red wraps on his wrists. "His Quirk, Explosion, secretes a nitroglycerin-like sweat from his palms and ignites it. The more he sweats, the stronger the explosions. He relies on overwhelming frontal assaults and high-speed maneuvers. He's brilliant in combat, but he's aggressive."

 

Izuku took a deep breath. "When we go in, he's going to ambush us. When he does, I will take his aggro. I want you to slip away and find the bomb."

 

"Deku-kun, no!" Uraraka protested. "You told us yesterday! Your Quirk is brittle. If you fight someone who creates giant explosions, you'll shatter! You'll get hurt!"

 

Izuku looked down at his gloved hands. He remembered the pain of the entrance exam. He remembered the agony of the playground ten years ago.

 

"I know," Izuku said, looking back up with a gaze of pure, focused steel. "But I spent ten years learning how not to break. I won't fight him his way. I'll fight him mine. Trust me, Uraraka-san. Go for the bomb. I can handle Kacchan."

 

A loud buzzer echoed across the training grounds.

 

"NOW, LET THE INDOOR COMBAT TRAINING BEGIN!" All Might's voice crackled through the comms in their ears.

 

Izuku nodded to Uraraka. He pulled his metal respirator mask up over his mouth and nose, ensuring he wouldn't inhale smoke or dust. He slid through the ground-floor window, moving with absolute silence, Uraraka right behind him.

 

The interior of the building was dark, lit only by the sunlight filtering through the dirty windows. The air was stale and smelled of old concrete.

 

They crept down the first-floor hallway. Izuku kept his back to the wall, sliding toward the intersection. His senses were dialed to the absolute maximum. He wasn't looking for movement; he was listening. He was smelling.

 

A faint scent drifted down the stairwell to their right. It was sweet, like burnt caramel.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. Above us!

 

"Uraraka, get back!" Izuku hissed, shoving her hard backward by her shoulder.

 

A fraction of a second later, a figure dropped from the ceiling above the stairwell landing, twisting in mid-air.

 

"DEKU!"

 

Bakugo didn't hesitate. He swung his right arm in a wide, vicious arc, igniting a massive explosion point-blank at the corner where Izuku was standing.

 

The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. A shockwave of heat, fire, and kinetic energy ripped through the hallway, shattering the nearby windows and blowing a cloud of concrete dust into the air.

 

In the monitor room, several students gasped.

 

"A surprise attack from the start?!" Kirishima yelled, leaning closer to the screen. "Bakugo isn't holding back!"

 

"That's a dirty move, Bakugo!" Ashido frowned.

 

All Might stood silently, watching the screen intently. Let's see how you handle this, Young Midoriya.

 

Back in the hallway, the smoke began to clear. Bakugo stood with a feral grin, expecting to see Izuku blown across the hall, clutching his bleeding, shattered arms like a crying child.

 

But as the dust settled, Bakugo’s grin faltered.

 

Izuku had not been blown away. He hadn't even lost ground.

 

Izuku was standing in a low, perfectly balanced martial arts stance. His right arm was raised, but it wasn't a standard block, and it wasn't a solid shield.

 

From Izuku's wrist to his elbow, his skin had transformed into a sheet of pitch-black volcanic glass. But he hadn't grown it straight out. He had grown the obsidian at a sheer, aggressive forty-five-degree angle, forming a perfectly smooth, mirror-polished ramp that sloped upward over his shoulder.

 

When Bakugo's explosion had hit, the concussive force hadn't slammed into the glass. It had struck the frictionless, highly dense surface of the slope and immediately slid upwards, redirecting the kinetic shockwave and the fire entirely over Izuku’s head, scorching the ceiling instead of his body.

 

Because the blunt force hadn't been absorbed, the glass hadn't shattered. There wasn't a single crack in the obsidian.

 

Izuku’s green eyes locked onto Bakugo’s shocked red ones through the visor of his mask.

 

"A right hook," Izuku said, his voice calm, muffled slightly by the respirator. "You always start fights with a big right hook, Kacchan. I know your moves."

 

Bakugo’s shock instantly boiled over into absolute, incandescent rage.

 

"You think you can read me?!" Bakugo roared, lunging forward, rearing his left hand back for another blast.

 

"Uraraka, go!" Izuku yelled.

 

Uraraka didn't hesitate. She scrambled backward, turning and sprinting down the opposite hallway to find the stairs, leaving the two boys alone.

 

Bakugo fired his left hand. Izuku didn't bother trying to deflect this one. He dropped his center of gravity, spinning beneath Bakugo's arm with the grace of a gymnast.

 

As Izuku spun past Bakugo's side, his left hand shot out. He didn't form a blade—a blade would slice Bakugo open and end the match with a fatal injury. Instead, Izuku formed a dense, blunt node of obsidian over his knuckles, like a set of natural brass knuckles.

 

He struck Bakugo hard in the ribs.

 

Bakugo gasped, the breath knocked out of him as the dense, rock-hard glass slammed into his side. He stumbled sideways, clutching his ribs, his eyes wide with fury and a sudden spark of genuine pain.

 

Izuku immediately dropped the hardening, springing backward to put ten feet of distance between them. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, his hands raised in a modified Escrima stance, relaxed and fluid.

 

"You're trying to hit me with blunt force, Kacchan," Izuku said, keeping his voice level. "You think because I'm glass, all you have to do is hit me hard enough, and I'll break."

 

"Shut up!" Bakugo spat, straightening up. Sparks danced violently across both of his palms. "You're a fragile little weakling! You always have been!"

 

"I am fragile," Izuku agreed. "If you hit my chest right now, my ribs will shatter. If you hit my face, my skull will fracture. I know my weakness."

 

Izuku slowly raised his arms. A terrifyingly beautiful sound—like ice cracking over a frozen lake—filled the hallway.

 

Instantly, from the elbows down, both of Izuku's forearms blackened and crystallized. He didn't form massive, heavy axes like he did with the Zero Pointer. He formed two sleek, two-foot-long blades of pure obsidian extending from his ulna bones, tapering to edges so fine they seemed to disappear into the dim light. The black glass was mirror-polished, reflecting the crackling orange light of Bakugo's sparks.

 

"But I spent ten years learning how to make sure you never hit me," Izuku finished, shifting into an offensive stance, the blades gleaming.

 

Bakugo screamed in rage, propelling himself forward with back-to-back explosions. He closed the distance in a millisecond, swinging a devastating double-palm strike meant to obliterate Izuku's guard.

 

Izuku didn't block. He sidestepped, moving with water-like fluidity. He swung his right arm in a tight arc.

 

SCREEECH!

 

The sound of molecular glass shearing metal echoed through the corridor. Izuku hadn't aimed for Bakugo's flesh. He had aimed for the massive, grenade-shaped gauntlet on Bakugo's right arm.

 

The razor-sharp obsidian blade sliced a clean, two-inch gash directly through the heavy, reinforced steel plating of the gauntlet, sparks showering the ground.

 

Bakugo recoiled, staring at his damaged gauntlet in horror. The steel had been carved like butter. If Izuku had aimed three inches to the left, Bakugo's arm would have been severed.

 

"You bastard!" Bakugo yelled, throwing a wild kick.

 

Izuku ducked under it, his footwork flawless. He was fighting a matador's game against a raging bull. Bakugo fired explosion after explosion, tearing the hallway to shreds, destroying the walls and ceiling.

 

But Izuku was a ghost. He used parkour to bounce off the walls, rolling beneath blasts, deflecting indirect shockwaves with perfectly angled, micro-second extrusions of glass that melted away as soon as they served their purpose. He was conserving stamina, letting Bakugo burn through his.

 

In the monitor room, the class was dead silent.

 

"This is unbelievable," Yaoyorozu whispered, her hand over her mouth. "Bakugo is using overwhelming power, but Midoriya... his spatial awareness and reaction time are flawless. He's parrying explosions."

 

"Look at Midoriya's face," Todoroki noted, his heterochromatic eyes narrowed in intense observation. "He's not scared. He's analyzing every single micro-movement Bakugo makes."

 

"He's fighting like a pro!" Kaminari yelled. "But if Bakugo lands even one hit, Midoriya is done for, right?"

 

"That's the knife's edge he walks on," Aizawa's voice suddenly echoed from the doorway, startling the students. The homeroom teacher had slipped in to watch. "Midoriya's Quirk has zero margin for error. What you're seeing is the result of thousands of hours of failing, breaking, and learning from the pain."

 

Back in the building, Bakugo was panting heavily. The sweat on his skin was slick, glistening in the dim light. The hallway looked like a war zone. But Izuku hadn't taken a single scratch.

 

Bakugo’s frustration reached a boiling point. The psychological torment of fighting Deku—the boy who used to cry in the sandbox—and not being able to touch him was snapping his sanity.

 

"Stop running away, you damn nerd!" Bakugo screamed, raising his right arm. He reached up with his left hand, grabbing the metal pin on the side of his grenade gauntlet.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He had studied the support company specs for those gauntlets. They were designed to store Bakugo's explosive sweat inside the casing. If he pulled that pin...

 

"Young Bakugo, stop!" All Might's voice roared through the intercom, sounding genuinely panicked. "Are you trying to kill him? If you use that inside, you'll bring the building down!"

 

"If he dodges, he won't die!" Bakugo roared back, completely consumed by bloodlust.

 

He yanked the pin.

 

The sound of the blast was unlike anything before. It was a concentrated, hyper-pressurized pillar of white-hot fire and concussive force that consumed the entire width of the hallway, roaring toward Izuku like a freight train of destruction.

 

There was no room to dodge. There was nowhere to parkour.

 

I can't deflect this with an angle, Izuku's mind raced at the speed of light. The volume is too massive. It will engulf me. If I form a wall, it will shatter instantly, and the shrapnel and the blast will kill me.

 

He had less than half a second to act.

 

Izuku didn't try to block the physical force of the explosion. He fell to his knees, burying his face into his chest, pulling his arms in tight. But instead of covering himself in glass, he focused his Quirk entirely on the floor in front of him.

 

He slammed his palms against the concrete.

 

A massive, thick slab of pitch-black obsidian erupted from the ground, angled heavily back over his body like a lean-to roof.

 

The blast hit the glass.

 

The impact was catastrophic. The sheer, overwhelming blunt force of the concentrated explosion hit the brittle volcanic glass.

 

CRACK-BOOM!

 

The entire massive slab of obsidian shattered violently into thousands of pieces. The concussive shockwave blew the shrapnel backward, straight over Izuku's huddled form. Because he had anchored the glass to the floor and not his skin, he wasn't ripped apart, but the residual shockwave still slammed into his back, sending him skidding across the concrete floor.

 

The building groaned. The walls cracked, and the windows on the entire side of the building blew out.

 

Through the comms, Izuku could hear Uraraka screaming as the building shook.

 

Izuku coughed violently, tasting copper in his mouth. The respirator mask had saved his lungs from the smoke, but his back screamed in agony from the blunt force trauma. He slowly pushed himself up to one knee. His uniform was singed, his ears ringing loudly.

 

Bakugo stood at the other end of the ruined hallway, his gauntlet smoking, his chest heaving. A look of deranged triumph washed over his face as he saw Izuku on his knees.

 

"You see that, Deku?" Bakugo panted, a manic grin spreading across his face. "I told you. You're glass. You break when I hit you."

 

Izuku slowly stood up. Every muscle in his body ached. He looked down at the ruined hallway, at the shattered remains of his massive obsidian shield scattered across the floor like dark, jagged snow.

 

He had survived, but he knew he couldn't survive another one of those. His stamina was plummeting. The sheer heat of the environment was making it harder to concentrate.

 

He needed to end this. Now.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, centering himself. He reached behind his waist, his fingers brushing against the spool of capture tape hooked to his belt.

 

"You're right, Kacchan," Izuku called out, his voice echoing eerily in the smoking corridor. "Glass breaks. But you forgot the other property of glass."

 

Bakugo scowled, raising his left arm, sparking a fresh explosion in his palm to propel himself forward. "I don't care about your nerd facts! Die!"

 

Bakugo launched himself, flying down the hallway at terrifying speed, rearing his fist back for a close-range, devastating blast.

 

Izuku stood his ground. He didn't form blades. He didn't form a ramp.

 

He waited until Bakugo was exactly ten feet away.

 

In a fraction of a second, Izuku poured every ounce of his remaining Quirk energy into his left arm. He rapidly grew a massive, perfectly circular buckler shield of obsidian. But he didn't thicken it for defense. He focused entirely on the microscopic structure of the surface. He made it perfectly, flawlessly smooth. A pitch-black mirror.

 

Bakugo swung his fist, detonating a massive, bright orange explosion point-blank at the shield.

 

Izuku didn't brace for the impact. He knew the shield was going to shatter. That was the plan.

 

As Bakugo's explosion ignited, generating a blinding flash of incandescent light, Izuku angled the mirror-polished surface of his obsidian buckler precisely toward Bakugo's face.

 

The intense, blinding light of the explosion hit the perfect mirror and reflected back with zero diffusion.

 

It was a localized flashbang, generated entirely by Bakugo's own power.

 

The intensely concentrated light hit Bakugo's retinas point-blank.

 

"GAAAAAH!"

 

Bakugo screamed, squeezing his eyes shut as white-hot blindness seared his vision. His spatial awareness vanished instantly. The explosion hit Izuku's thin shield, shattering it instantly into a cloud of harmless black dust, but the concussive force was severely weakened by Bakugo's sudden recoil.

 

Izuku dropped his ruined left arm, ignoring the stinging cuts on his skin from his own shattered glass.

 

This was his window.

 

Izuku stepped inside Bakugo's guard. He used his right hand, keeping it entirely flesh and bone, to grab Bakugo's wrists. In a move so fast it was a blur, Izuku spun his body, using Bakugo's own forward momentum against him. He swept Bakugo's leg, throwing the explosive boy off balance.

 

As Bakugo tumbled toward the ground, blind and wildly disoriented, Izuku whipped the capture tape from his belt.

 

He looped it around Bakugo's wrists, securing them tightly together, before pinning Bakugo face-down against the concrete with his knee firmly planted in the middle of Bakugo's back.

 

"Bakugo has been captured!"

 

Izuku's voice was ragged, heavy with exhaustion, as he spoke into his comms.

 

A moment of profound silence blanketed the entire building. Even the ringing in Izuku's ears seemed to fade.

 

Bakugo lay pinned against the floor. His vision was swimming with purple and white spots. He struggled weakly against the tape, his mind entirely unable to process what had just happened.

 

He hadn't landed a single direct hit. He had used his ultimate move. He had gone all out. And Deku... Deku had used the light of his own explosion to blind him, disarm him, and capture him.

 

The boy made of glass hadn't just survived the sledgehammer. He had outsmarted it.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku gasped into his earpiece, sweat pouring down his face beneath the mask. "Status?"

 

"I... I got it!" Uraraka's voice crackled back, sounding equally exhausted but elated. "Iida was distracted by the building shaking! I floated myself over him and touched the bomb!"

 

The loud, piercing wail of a buzzer echoed throughout Ground Beta.

 

"HERO TEAM... WIIIIIIIIINS!"

 

All Might's voice boomed over the PA system, followed by the muffled cheers of the students in the monitor room.

 

Izuku let out a long, shuddering breath. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright vanished, replaced by a crushing wave of physical exhaustion. His arms ached, his back throbbed, and he was covered in dust and sweat.

 

He slowly lifted his knee off Bakugo's back and stood up, stumbling slightly. He reached down, offering a hand to his childhood tormentor.

 

Bakugo slowly pushed himself up to his knees, his vision finally clearing. He looked at Izuku's extended hand. He looked at the white capture tape binding his own wrists.

 

Then, Bakugo looked up at Izuku's face. The respirator mask was pulled down, revealing Izuku's bruised, dirty face. But there was no fear in Izuku's eyes anymore. There was no trembling, crying child waiting to be bullied.

 

There was only a quiet, absolute strength. A strength built on the full acceptance of his own fragility.

 

Bakugo didn't take the hand. He swatted it away with his bound wrists, his face contorting into a mask of pure, devastating humiliation and shock. He stood up on his own, his whole body trembling, not with rage this time, but with a profound, terrifying realization.

 

His entire worldview—that power was absolute, that the strong broke the weak—had just been violently shattered.

 

"You didn't break," Bakugo whispered, his voice hoarse, staring at Izuku as if he were looking at an alien.

 

Izuku looked down at his own heavily taped, scarred forearms.

 

"I break all the time, Kacchan," Izuku replied softly, turning to walk toward the exit. "But I learned how to piece myself back together into something sharper."

 

As Izuku walked away, leaving Bakugo standing alone in the ruins of the hallway, he knew nothing would ever be the same between them. The glass had not only held its edge; it had cut straight to the core of the strongest boy he knew.