What if deku had twice quirk but better than Double

 

The concept of identity is a fragile thing. For most people, it is a singular, unbroken line drawn from birth to death. You are you. You inhabit one body, you look through one pair of eyes, and when you speak, only one voice echoes in the quiet of an empty room.

 

Izuku Midoriya learned very early on that his line was not singular. His line was a prism, capable of fracturing into a dozen brilliant, identical beams of light, all shining with the same exact purpose.

 

But society didn't see light when they looked at Izuku. They saw shadows. They saw a parlor trick fit for a ghost story.

 

It started, as most things in Izuku’s life did, with Katsuki Bakugo.

 

The summer sun was mercilessly beating down on the neighborhood playground, baking the sand into a dry, abrasive powder. Four-year-old Izuku stood with his knees trembling, his small arms outstretched in a desperate, trembling barricade. Behind him crouched a boy with a scraped knee, crying softly. In front of him stood Katsuki, flanked by his two lackeys, small sparks of terrifying, crackling heat popping in the palms of his hands.

 

"Move, Deku," Katsuki growled, a feral grin pulling at his cheeks. The smell of burnt sugar and ozone hung heavy in the humid air. "You don't even have a Quirk yet. You're just playing pretend."

 

"Y-You're being mean, Kacchan!" Izuku’s voice was high and thin, cracking under the weight of his terror. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. "If you keep hurting him, uh, I'll... I'll stop you myself!"

 

Katsuki laughed, a sharp, barking sound. He lunged forward, his hand drawn back. "Try it!"

 

Time seemed to slow down for Izuku. He saw the glowing orange light of Katsuki’s palm approaching. He felt the overwhelming, crushing weight of his own weakness. He was just one boy. He was small, he was fragile, and he was alone.

 

I need help, Izuku thought, squeezing his eyes shut. I wish someone was here. I wish there was someone just like me who could help.

 

Deep within his chest, a strange sensation bloomed. It didn't feel like the heat of fire or the pull of telekinesis. It felt like a sudden, sharp division—like a cell splitting under a microscope, a fundamental tearing of reality. A cold sensation washed over him, pooling at his side.

 

A collective gasp echoed across the playground.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. Katsuki had frozen, his explosive hand hovering inches away, his red eyes wide with shock. He wasn't looking at Izuku. He was looking next to him.

 

Izuku turned his head.

 

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him was a boy. He had the same messy, unruly green hair, the same wide green eyes, the same freckles dusting his cheeks, and the same trembling knees. He was wearing the exact same yellow t-shirt and blue shorts.

 

It was Izuku.

 

A profound, dizzying vertigo hit the original Izuku—the Prime Izuku. For a split second, he was looking out of his own eyes, but he was also looking out of the eyes of the boy beside him. He could feel the hot sand under his left shoe, and simultaneously, he could feel it under a different left shoe, three feet away. It wasn’t a hallucination. It was a perfect, seamless hive-mind.

 

"What the..." Katsuki muttered, stepping back, the sparks dying in his hands.

 

The second Izuku—the Echo—raised his hands, mirroring the Prime. When the Echo spoke, the voice resonated in Prime Izuku's mind before the sound even hit the air.

 

"Leave us alone, Kacchan," the Echo said.

 

Katsuki’s shock quickly morphed into outrage. The idea of two Dekus standing against him was an insult to his newfound superiority. "You think a stupid cloning trick makes you better than me?!" he roared, lunging forward again, bypassing the Prime and aiming a glowing palm squarely at the Echo's chest.

 

BOOM.

 

The small explosion connected. The Echo was thrown backward into the dirt.

 

But instead of crying out, the Echo’s form shimmered. The edges of the copy lost their color, melting rapidly into a viscous, gray-and-white sludge. Within seconds, the second Izuku had completely liquefied, soaking harmlessly into the playground sand.

 

And then, the real horror of the Quirk revealed itself.

 

As the sludge evaporated, a sudden, blinding spike of pain erupted in Prime Izuku's chest, right where Katsuki had struck the clone. But it wasn't just physical pain. A rush of data flooded his four-year-old brain: the exact heat of the explosion, the kinetic force of Katsuki's thrust, the trajectory of the strike, and the texture of the sand as the clone fell.

 

Izuku screamed, clutching his head and his chest, dropping to his knees. The sensory overload was agonizing. It was as if he had lived those three seconds of the clone's life, experienced its death, and had the memories violently shoved into his own skull.

 

Katsuki and his friends didn't stay to investigate. Spooked by the melting sludge and Izuku's agonizing screams, they bolted, leaving Izuku alone in the dirt, gasping for breath, his mind forever altered.

 

 

 

The doctor’s office was sterile, smelling of rubbing alcohol and fresh paper. Dr. Tsubasa adjusted his thick goggles, looking down at the chart, then up at Izuku, who was sitting quietly on the examination table next to his mother, Inko.

 

"Well, Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor said, a hint of genuine fascination in his gravelly voice. "It is safe to say your son is not Quirkless. In fact, he possesses an incredibly rare and potent Emitter-type Quirk."

 

Inko exhaled a breath she seemed to have been holding for months. She pulled Izuku close, her hands trembling. "Oh, Izuku... I'm so happy for you. A cloning Quirk! Just like that hero, Ectoplasm!"

 

"Not exactly like Ectoplasm," Dr. Tsubasa corrected, leaning back in his rolling chair. "Ectoplasm produces a physical ectoplasm from his mouth that he shapes into clones. Your son's Quirk is far more... absolute. We ran the tests on the residue he produced when he demonstrated it for us. He doesn't just make a construct; he replicates his cellular structure flawlessly. He bends the laws of conservation of mass to duplicate himself."

 

The doctor looked at Izuku. The four-year-old was staring at his own hands, remarkably quiet.

 

"We will register the Quirk as 'Perfect Echo,'" the doctor continued. "However, I must warn you. Quirks of this nature—duplication and self-replication—often come with severe psychological drawbacks. The villain known as Destro once wrote about the madness of cloning. Without a strong sense of self, users often forget which one is the original. It leads to identity crises, sometimes even madness."

 

Inko gasped, her grip tightening on Izuku's shoulder. "M-Madness?"

 

Izuku finally looked up. His green eyes were startlingly focused for a child his age. "I won't go mad."

 

Dr. Tsubasa raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And how do you know that, young man?"

 

"Because," Izuku said, his voice quiet but incredibly firm, "I can feel them. When I make an Echo... it's just me. Like extending an arm. I am the center. I'm the Prime. They know it, and I know it."

 

He didn't explain the other part to the doctor. He didn't explain that when an Echo vanished, he swallowed its memories whole. He didn't explain that he still remembered the exact temperature of Katsuki's explosion from the playground. Even at four years old, a deep, analytical instinct warned Izuku to keep that part a secret.

 

 

 

Growing up with Perfect Echo was a masterclass in isolation.

 

In a society that categorized Quirks into neat boxes of "Heroic," "Useful," and "Villainous," a Quirk that allowed you to perfectly duplicate yourself—and eventually, as Izuku discovered when he was eight, duplicate others—was viewed with deep suspicion.

 

It wasn't flashy like explosions or fire. It didn't make him super strong or incredibly fast. It made him a swarm. It made him a hive.

 

By the time Izuku was ten years old, he had mastered the fundamental mechanics of his ability through grueling, self-imposed experimentation.

 

His bedroom looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist. Stacks of his Hero Analysis for the Future notebooks formed crooked towers against the walls. On a rainy Tuesday evening, Izuku sat at his desk, carefully sketching the support gear of the Pro Hero Kamui Woods.

 

Across the room, sitting on his bed, was another Izuku, reading a thick encyclopedia on quirk genetics. On the floor, a third Izuku was doing push-ups until his arms shook violently.

 

The Prime Izuku sat at the desk, his pencil moving rapidly. He didn't need to look at the encyclopedia; he could mentally 'read' the text as the second Izuku scanned the pages. He didn't need to do the push-ups; he could feel the lactic acid building in the third Izuku's muscles, a dull, phantom burn echoing in his own real arms.

 

Mechanism Three: Memory and Fatigue Transfer, Izuku wrote in a private, encrypted notebook he kept hidden under his mattress.

When an Echo disperses, either by my command or by taking too much damage, all experiences, retained knowledge, and physical exhaustion transfer instantly to the Prime. The mental backlash is severe. If an Echo reads a book, I know the book. If an Echo breaks an arm, I feel the break, though my physical bone remains intact. The trauma is psychological.

 

Suddenly, the Izuku doing push-ups collapsed on the floor, exhausted.

 

"Dispel," Prime Izuku whispered.

 

The exhausted clone melted into gray sludge, which rapidly evaporated into nothingness. Immediately, Prime Izuku gasped, dropping his pencil. A wave of intense muscular fatigue washed over his core. His breath hitched, and he rubbed his real arms, which suddenly felt like they were made of lead. But along with the fatigue came the muscle memory. The micro-tears in his actual muscles didn't exist, but his nervous system was learning how to endure the strain.

 

"Fascinating," the reading Izuku said from the bed, looking up from the encyclopedia. "By doing that, we can effectively train our central nervous system's pain tolerance without taking actual physical damage."

 

"Yeah," Prime Izuku breathed heavily. "But the headaches are getting worse. We need to limit the dispersal rate to one per hour, or the sensory overload might cause a seizure."

 

"Agreed," the Echo said. It closed the book. "Dispel."

 

The second clone melted. A sharp spike of pain drilled behind Prime Izuku's eyes, followed instantly by the complete, eidetic memory of eighty pages of quirk genetics. Izuku clutched his temples, groaning softly, waiting for the migraine to pass.

 

This was the price of his genius. He could learn at ten times the rate of a normal human. He could study different martial arts simultaneously. He could analyze hero fights from multiple angles. But he paid for it in agonizing migraines and phantom pains that kept him awake at night.

 

School was a different kind of battlefield.

 

Katsuki Bakugo—now universally known as Kacchan—hated Izuku's Quirk with a passion that bordered on the obsessive. For Katsuki, strength was absolute, straightforward, and dominant. Izuku's strength was slippery, tactical, and unnerving.

 

During recess, Katsuki would often try to corner him. But cornering Izuku Midoriya was like trying to catch water with a net.

 

"Stop hiding behind your freaky mud-clones, Deku!" Katsuki roared one afternoon in their final year of elementary school, blasting a desk in half.

 

Four Izukus stood at the back of the classroom. They all looked at Katsuki with the exact same calm, analytical expression. They didn't cower. They didn't cry.

 

"I'm not hiding, Kacchan," the four Izukus said in perfect, overlapping unison. The stereophonic sound of their voices made the other students shiver and back away. "This is my Quirk. If you attack, you're just wasting energy."

 

"I'll find the real one and blow you to hell!" Katsuki charged.

 

He blasted the first Izuku. It melted into sludge. Prime Izuku (standing by the window) winced as the phantom heat of the explosion scorched his mind, but he immediately processed the data: Kacchan favors his right hand. His swing is wide when he's angry.

 

Katsuki spun and blasted the second Izuku. Sludge. More data: His recovery time after a large blast is approximately 0.8 seconds.

 

Katsuki grabbed the third Izuku by the collar and detonated his palm. Sludge. Data: He drops his center of gravity when executing a point-blank blast.

 

Panting, Katsuki glared at the final Izuku standing by the window. "Found you, you creepy bastard."

 

Izuku looked at the clock. Recess was over. He didn't want to fight. He just wanted to read.

 

"You didn't find me, Kacchan," Izuku said softly.

 

He stepped backward out the first-floor window, falling into the bushes below. Katsuki rushed to the window, looking down. The Izuku in the bushes hit the ground, smiled up at him, and dissolved into gray sludge.

 

Katsuki screamed in frustration, explosions crackling wildly from his palms.

 

Down the hall, hiding safely in a bathroom stall, the Prime Izuku wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, enduring the triple-wave of phantom pain and explosion memories. He pulled out a notebook titled Katsuki Bakugo: Combat Analysis Volume 4 and began writing furiously.

 

He's getting faster. But his anger makes him predictable. If I create a dummy Echo to feint a left hook, his instinct will be to counter with a right-handed blast, leaving his left side entirely exposed...

 

Izuku sighed, closing the notebook. The problem wasn't outsmarting Katsuki. The problem was that nobody liked the kid who could be in five places at once. The other students whispered about him. They called his Quirk "villainous." They said it was unnatural.

 

Why do you need to write things down? the teachers would ask. Why do you mutter to yourself?

 

They didn't understand. Izuku's Quirk was fundamentally tied to his intellect. To create an Echo of himself was easy; he knew himself perfectly. But a few years ago, he discovered that he could clone other people, too.

 

But there was a catch. He couldn't just look at someone and copy them. He had to understand them. He needed data. He needed to know their height, their weight, their muscle density, their psychological profile, and the exact mechanics of their Quirk. The deeper his analysis, the stronger and more durable the clone. If he tried to clone someone he didn't fully comprehend, the clone would be a mindless, fragile husk that melted upon a single touch.

 

His habit of taking notes, his incessant muttering, his obsessive fanboying over Pro Heroes—it wasn't just a hobby. It was him gathering ammunition. His notebooks were his armory.

 

But to the world, he was just creepy Deku, the boy who talked to his imaginary friends made of gray sludge.

 

 

 

Aldera Junior High was a breeding ground for mediocrity masquerading as excellence, and nowhere was this more apparent than in Mr. Kaneda’s third-year homeroom.

 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your futures," the teacher said, holding a thick stack of career aptitude papers. He looked around the room, a smirk playing on his lips. "I'll pass out handouts for your future plans now, but... you're all pretty much planning to go into the hero course, right?!"

 

He threw the papers into the air. The classroom erupted into cheers, students showing off their Quirks—stretchy necks, glowing hands, small rock formations.

 

Izuku sat at his desk, his chin resting on his hand, looking out the window. He didn't cheer. He didn't flaunt his Quirk. He just calmly continued writing in Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher chuckled. "But remember, using your powers at school is against the rules."

 

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

 

Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his feet kicked up on his desk. "I'm not gonna be stuck at the bottom with the rest of these rejects."

 

The class erupted in outrage, but Katsuki just laughed, arrogant and unchallenged. "You should all shut up like the extras you are! I aced the mock tests. I'm the only one at this school who stands a chance of getting into U.A. High School. I'll surpass All Might and become the top hero!"

 

"Oh, right," the teacher said, glancing at a clipboard. "Midoriya, you're also applying to U.A., aren't you?"

 

The classroom went dead silent. Then, they burst into laughter.

 

"Midoriya? No way!"

"You can't get into U.A. with a parlor trick Quirk!"

"What's he gonna do, make a clone of the villain and ask it to stop?"

"His Quirk is super creepy. U.A. doesn't take villains!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't look up from his notebook. He was used to the noise. It was just background static to him.

 

But Katsuki didn't take the news well. He slammed both hands onto Izuku's desk, an explosion destroying the wood and sending Izuku's chair flying backward. Izuku tumbled to the ground, landing hard on his back.

 

"Listen up, Deku!" Katsuki roared, standing over him. "You're worse than the rest of these rejects! Your Quirk is just a cowardly way of running away from a real fight! You think a bunch of weak, muddy copies can stand in the same ring as me?! You'd die in the exams!"

 

Izuku looked up at Katsuki. His green eyes were completely devoid of fear. There was only a cold, calculating calmness that infuriated Katsuki more than any insult could.

 

"The entrance exams are entirely point-based, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice level. He didn't get off the floor. "U.A. doesn't discriminate against intelligence-gathering or tactical Quirks. It's not about who punches the hardest. It's about who achieves the objective."

 

Katsuki growled, snatching Izuku's notebook from the floor. He read the cover. "Hero Analysis for the Future? Still playing pretend, you damn nerd?"

 

Katsuki pressed his palms together, sandwiching the notebook. A sharp explosion echoed in the room. The notebook was charred black, smoking heavily. Katsuki tossed it out the open window.

 

"Most top first-string heroes have stories about them from their school days," Katsuki said coldly. "I want the shine of being able to be called the only student to make it into U.A. from this mediocre city dump. So forget U.A., Deku. Or I'll blow every single one of your copies to ash."

 

Katsuki turned and walked toward the door with his cronies. Before he left, he paused, looking over his shoulder. "If you wanna be a hero so bad, there's a quick way to do it. Take a swan dive off the roof and pray you get a better Quirk in your next life!"

 

The cruelty of the words hung in the air. Katsuki's friends laughed nervously, waiting for Izuku to cry.

 

Izuku slowly stood up. He dusted off his pants. He didn't look angry. He just looked terribly, terribly tired.

 

"Hey, Katsuki," Izuku said. The use of his first name made Katsuki stop in his tracks.

 

Izuku raised a finger, pointing out the window. "You really shouldn't throw people's property away. It's littering."

 

Katsuki scowled. "What the hell are you—"

 

A shadow darkened the doorway. Katsuki and his friends turned. Standing in the hallway, holding the slightly charred, slightly damp notebook, was a second Izuku. It was breathing slightly heavily, having clearly sprinted down the stairs, caught the notebook out of the air before it hit the koi pond, and sprinted back up.

 

The Echo walked into the classroom, completely ignoring Katsuki. It walked up to the Prime Izuku and handed him the notebook.

 

"Thanks," Prime Izuku said.

 

"No problem," the Echo replied. Then, it turned its head toward Katsuki, its green eyes deadpan. "You're overcompensating, Kacchan. It's unflattering."

 

Before Katsuki could unleash the massive explosion building in his hands, the Echo melted into a puddle of gray sludge on the classroom floor.

 

Prime Izuku winced slightly as the fatigue of a two-story sprint hit his legs, but he slipped the notebook into his bag and walked out the door, stepping carefully over the sludge. He left Katsuki trembling with sheer, unadulterated rage.

 

 

 

The walk home was a routine of mental compartmentalization.

 

Izuku walked through the underpass, his mind racing. He was running simulations in his head. If the U.A. practical exam features robotic enemies, normal physical blows from my Echoes won't do much damage. My physical strength is average for a fourteen-year-old. I need weapons, or I need to perfectly clone someone with a destructive Quirk.

 

He flipped through the charred notebook. He had extensive data on Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, and Backdraft. But cloning a Pro Hero was astronomically difficult. He had tried to clone the local hero, Slugger, a few weeks ago. The mental bandwidth required to emulate Slugger's muscle density and his kinetic-enhancement Quirk had given Izuku a nosebleed, and the clone had only lasted forty seconds before collapsing.

 

I need a trump card, Izuku thought. A perfect copy. Someone whose moves I know so well I could perform them in my sleep.

 

A strange, gurgling sound echoed through the tunnel.

 

Izuku stopped. He looked back. Emerging from the manhole cover behind him was a massive, undulating mass of dark green sludge. Two massive, manic eyes stared out from the muck, and a jagged mouth formed into a cruel smile.

 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," the Sludge Villain rasped, its voice echoing off the concrete walls. "Perfect."

 

Izuku’s instincts, honed from years of predicting Katsuki’s attacks, kicked in instantly. As the villain lunged, throwing a massive wave of sludge at him, Izuku didn't try to run. He knew he couldn't outrun a fluid mass.

 

Instead, he focused his mind.

 

Split.

 

In a fraction of a second, an Echo materialized directly in front of Izuku, taking the full brunt of the villain's attack. The sludge slammed into the clone, wrapping around its body and shoving itself into the clone's mouth and nose.

 

"Don't worry," the villain hissed, "I'm just taking over your body. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds—wait, what the hell?"

 

The villain realized something was wrong. The body he was trying to hijack was losing its solidity. The Echo, violently suffocating, instantly dispersed upon taking lethal damage.

 

The clone melted back into gray sludge, violently mixing with the villain's green sludge.

 

Prime Izuku, who had scrambled backward, suddenly dropped to his knees, clutching his throat. The memory transfer hit him like a freight train. He felt the phantom sensation of thick muck sliding down his windpipe, the burning in his lungs, the panic of suffocation. He gagged, coughing violently, tears streaming down his face as his brain processed the trauma of drowning.

 

"What kind of Quirk is that?!" the villain yelled, spitting out the gray residue of the clone. "A decoy? Annoying brat! I'll just grab the real one!"

 

The villain lunged again. Prime Izuku, still reeling from the phantom suffocation, couldn't focus enough to create another Echo. He raised his arms, waiting for the end.

 

Suddenly, the manhole cover blew clean off its hinges, flying into the ceiling with a deafening CLANG.

 

A massive figure stepped out of the sewer. Even in the dim light of the underpass, the silhouette was unmistakable. The sheer physical presence of the man commanded the very air in the tunnel.

 

"Fear not, young man," a booming, impossibly deep voice echoed. "For I am here."

 

Izuku's eyes widened. He forgot about the pain in his throat. He forgot about the villain.

 

All Might.

 

"Texas..." All Might pulled back his massive right fist. The air pressure visibly warped around his knuckles. "...SMASH!"

 

The hero threw a punch. He didn't even make contact with the villain. The sheer wind pressure generated by the strike created a localized tornado within the tunnel. The concussive force blasted the Sludge Villain apart, splattering him against the walls.

 

The wind hit Izuku, throwing him backward. He hit the ground hard, his vision spinning. The last thing he saw before passing out was the towering figure of his idol standing triumphantly in the center of the tunnel.

 

 

 

"Hey! Hey! Wake up!"

 

A gentle, but massive hand was lightly tapping Izuku's cheek. Izuku's eyes fluttered open. He was outside, the afternoon sun blinding him. He sat up quickly, scrambling backward.

 

Standing over him was All Might. The Number One Hero in the flesh.

 

"Thought we lost you there!" All Might boomed, giving a thumbs up. "Sorry about getting you caught up in my villain hunting! I don't usually make mistakes like this, but I was in high spirits in a new city!"

 

Izuku was hyperventilating. His mind, usually a fortress of calm, analytical logic, completely short-circuited. All Might. It's All Might. The muscle mass. The height. The golden age costume. The stance. I need to write this down. I need to record everything.

 

"I need an autograph!" Izuku scrambled for his charred notebook, opening it to a blank page. He gasped. It was already signed, the massive signature taking up a two-page spread.

 

"Thank you so much!" Izuku bowed furiously, his head hitting the concrete. "It will be an heirloom! A family treasure!"

 

"Well, I must be going," All Might said, turning away. He patted a pair of plastic soda bottles hanging from his pocket, filled with the captured Sludge Villain. "I need to take this guy to the police."

 

"Wait!" Izuku yelled, standing up. "Already? But... I have so many questions. I need to know..."

 

He didn't just want an autograph. He wanted the ultimate piece of data. He wanted to understand the man standing before him.

 

"Pros are constantly fighting time and enemies!" All Might said, bending his knees. The concrete cracked under his boots. "I bid you adieu!"

 

All Might leaped into the air, launching like a missile.

 

He didn't realize until he was five hundred feet in the air that extra weight was clinging to his leg.

 

"Hey, hey, hey!" All Might yelled, looking down. Izuku was gripping the hero's leg with a death grip, his face flapping in the wind pressure. "Release me! Your fanaticism is too much!"

 

"If I let go now, I'll die!" Izuku screamed over the roar of the wind.

 

"Oh, right," All Might muttered. He sighed, looking for a safe place to land. He spotted a nearby office building.

 

They crashed onto the rooftop, Izuku rolling onto the concrete, shaking violently.

 

"That was a very dangerous thing to do," All Might scolded, though his voice sounded strained. He turned away, grasping his side. "Now, please knock on the door to get downstairs. I have to go."

 

"Wait!" Izuku pleaded, getting to his feet. "Just one question. Please. It's about my Quirk."

 

All Might paused.

 

Izuku looked at his own hands. "My whole life, people have told me my Quirk is creepy. They say it's suited for a villain. I can make perfect copies of myself. I can make copies of other people, if I understand them well enough. But the copies just take hits for me. They die for me. And when they do, I feel it all."

 

He looked up at the broad back of his idol. "Can someone with a Quirk that just hides behind copies... a Quirk that relies on others to be strong... can someone like me become a hero like you? Can I save people with a smile?"

 

Silence stretched over the rooftop.

 

Izuku held his breath. He expected the usual response. He expected All Might to tell him he could be a great sidekick, or maybe an underground intelligence officer.

 

He didn't expect All Might to suddenly violently cough up blood.

 

A cloud of steam erupted from the hero's body. Izuku stepped back in shock. When the steam cleared, the towering, muscular god of heroism was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with sunken eyes and clothes that hung off him like sails on a mast.

 

"W-What?" Izuku stammered, looking around frantically. "Where is All Might? Are you an imposter? A shapeshifter? Did you use a Quirk?"

 

The skeletal man wiped blood from his chin and sighed, sitting down heavily against the rooftop railing. "I am All Might."

 

He proceeded to explain. He told Izuku about the injury. The missing stomach. The respiratory system destroyed. The surgeries. The limit of three hours a day.

 

"The symbol of peace who saves people with a smile," All Might said, his voice quiet, stripped of its booming bravado, "must never be daunted. I smile to show the pressure of heroes and to trick the fear inside of me."

 

He looked at Izuku. The hero's blue eyes were piercing, seeing right through the boy.

 

"You asked if you can be a hero," All Might said slowly. "A Quirk that duplicates is powerful, yes. But you just told me your clones take the hits for you. You feel their pain, but you stay safe. Pro Heroes put their own lives on the line. We don't hide behind pawns."

 

Izuku flinched as if he had been struck.

 

"Villains are dangerous," All Might continued, standing up and opening the roof door. "If your clones break easily against a strong opponent, and you don't have the physical strength to fight when the real you is cornered... then no. I cannot simply say you can become a top hero."

 

Izuku stared at the ground. The words crushed him. They dismantled his logic.

 

"If you want to help people," All Might said, his tone softening, "become a police officer. They get mocked for having villains delivered to them, but it is a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you have to consider what's realistic."

 

The door clicked shut. Izuku was left alone on the roof.

 

He didn't cry. He felt numb. He walked to the edge of the building, looking down at the city. He's right. If I face a villain like the sludge guy, my clones just melt. I don't have the offensive power. I'm just a glorified meat-shield generator.

 

Eventually, Izuku walked down the stairs and out onto the street. He wandered aimlessly, his notebook clutched tightly to his chest. His mind, usually buzzing with equations and analysis, was silent.

 

A loud explosion shattered his stupor.

 

Izuku looked up. Black smoke was billowing into the sky from Tatooin Shopping District. Sirens wailed in the distance.

 

Without thinking, Izuku's legs moved. He ran toward the smoke.

 

When he arrived at the edge of the crowd, what he saw made his blood run cold.

 

The shopping street was a war zone. Fires raged uncontrollably, feeding off the shops. In the center of the destruction was the Sludge Villain. It had escaped. (Izuku realized with horror that All Might must have dropped the bottles when Izuku grabbed his leg).

 

But that wasn't the worst part. The villain had a hostage.

 

Trapped within the thick, suffocating green muck was a teenager. The boy was thrashing wildly, setting off massive explosions from his palms, inadvertently causing the fires to spread.

 

Kacchan.

 

Pro Heroes stood at the perimeter. Death Arms was holding the crowd back. Kamui Woods was hesitating, his wooden body vulnerable to the flames. Mt. Lady couldn't fit down the street. They were doing nothing. They were waiting for someone with a suitable Quirk.

 

"It's no good!" Death Arms yelled. "None of us can get close! That kid's Quirk is making it impossible!"

 

Izuku watched Katsuki struggle. He saw the sheer, unadulterated terror in Katsuki's eyes—the eyes of someone who thought they were going to die.

 

All Might's words echoed in his head. Pro Heroes put their own lives on the line. We don't hide behind pawns.

 

Izuku looked at the heroes. They were waiting. They were being realistic.

 

Screw realistic, Izuku thought.

 

His eyes hardened. The analytical machinery in his brain kicked into overdrive. Time slowed down.

 

Objective: Rescue the hostage.

Obstacles: Fire, fluid-based villain, hostage's own volatile Quirk.

Assets available: Perfect Echo.

 

Izuku dropped his backpack. He sprinted past the police line.

 

"Hey! Kid! Stop!" Death Arms roared.

 

Izuku didn't listen. As he ran into the inferno, he placed his hands together.

 

Split. Split. Split.

 

In rapid succession, three perfect Echoes materialized beside him, running in perfect sync. The crowd gasped.

 

"Is that a cloning Quirk?!" a civilian yelled.

 

Izuku's mind expanded into the hive. He was running as four people simultaneously. The coordination was flawless.

 

Echo One, suppress the fire, Prime Izuku ordered mentally.

 

The first clone veered to the left, grabbing a discarded fire extinguisher from outside a convenience store. It pulled the pin and charged straight into the flames, creating a narrow, foam-covered path toward the villain.

 

The Sludge Villain noticed them. "You again! The brat with the fake bodies!"

 

The villain whipped a massive tendril of sludge at the clones.

 

Echo Two, intercept.

 

The second clone leaped into the air, taking the strike directly to the chest. The impact shattered the clone instantly. It dissolved into sludge mid-air.

 

Prime Izuku stumbled mid-sprint, gasping as the phantom sensation of a crushed ribcage exploded in his mind. He gritted his teeth, tasting blood where he had bitten his lip, but he pushed through the pain. The data from the destroyed clone told him everything he needed to know.

 

The tendril is slow to retract. He's overextended.

 

"Now!" Prime Izuku shouted.

 

Echo Three sprinted up the foam-covered path, using the villain's overextended tendril like a ramp. The clone ran straight up the sludge, leaping directly toward the villain's eye.

 

At the same time, Prime Izuku reached behind his back, grabbing his charred notebook. With pinpoint accuracy, he threw it like a frisbee directly at the villain's other eye.

 

The book hit its mark. The villain roared in pain, flinching back. His grip on Katsuki loosened slightly.

 

Echo Three reached Katsuki. It didn't try to pull Katsuki out by the arm—it knew Katsuki's explosions would blow its hands off. Instead, Echo Three grabbed the collar of Katsuki's uniform and kicked violently off the villain's solid eye-stalk, using leverage to rip the blonde boy out of the muck.

 

Katsuki gasped for air, coughing up sludge, staring in shock at the Izuku clone holding him. "Deku?!"

 

"Get out of here, Kacchan!" Echo Three yelled, throwing Katsuki backward toward the heroes.

 

The Sludge Villain recovered, enraged. "I'll kill you!"

 

It raised a massive wall of sludge, preparing to crush both the Prime Izuku and Echo Three.

 

Prime Izuku couldn't run. The phantom pain of the crushed ribs was slowing him down. He couldn't make another clone. He had reached his mental limit. He looked up at the descending wave of death, his heart pounding.

 

I saved him, Izuku thought. At least I saved him.

 

Suddenly, a blur of motion tore past him.

 

"I really am pathetic," a voice coughed, blood spraying into the air.

 

All Might, in his massive, muscular form, stood between Izuku and the sludge wave. He was trembling, pushing past his absolute limit, blood leaking from his mouth.

 

"I told you the traits to make a great champion," All Might roared, raising both fists. "But I didn't live up to my own ideals! Pros are always risking their lives!"

 

"DETROIT SMASH!"

 

The downward swing of his fists was like a meteor impact. The shockwave ripped the Sludge Villain to microscopic particles, blowing out the fires in the street and summoning a literal rainstorm from the changing air pressure.

 

Prime Izuku and Echo Three were blown backward, tumbling across the wet asphalt.

 

Silence fell over the street, broken only by the patter of rain.

 

The heroes stared in awe. The civilians cheered.

 

Prime Izuku lay on his back, looking up at the sky. He was exhausted. His head felt like it was splitting open.

 

"Dispel," he whispered.

 

Echo Three, sitting a few feet away, smiled at him, then melted into sludge. Prime Izuku absorbed the memory of gripping Katsuki's collar, the heat of the fire, the terror of the villain's eye. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

 

 

 

The aftermath was a blur of flashing lights and stern voices.

 

The Pro Heroes severely reprimanded Izuku. Kamui Woods and Death Arms lectured him for twenty minutes about the dangers of using his Quirk without a license, emphasizing that his clones could have escalated the situation.

 

"It was reckless," Death Arms scolded. "A tactical Quirk like that isn't meant for frontline assault. You're lucky All Might was here."

 

Izuku just nodded, looking at the ground. He knew they were right. He wasn't strong enough.

 

Katsuki, on the other hand, was praised for his "heroic resistance" and his powerful Quirk. The heroes offered him internships on the spot.

 

As Izuku walked home in the twilight, his body aching with phantom pains, he heard footsteps running behind him.

 

"Deku!"

 

Izuku turned. Katsuki was standing there, panting, his uniform torn and dirty.

 

"Listen to me, you nerd!" Katsuki yelled, pointing a finger at him. "I didn't ask for your help! You didn't save me! Your creepy little mud-puppets didn't do anything! I could have handled it myself! Don't you dare think you can look down on me!"

 

Katsuki spun around and marched away, leaving Izuku blinking in surprise.

 

He's terrified, Izuku realized, his analytical mind parsing Katsuki's outburst. For the first time, he saw that my Quirk can do something his can't. It can protect.

 

"I am here!"

 

Izuku jumped. All Might bounded out of a nearby alleyway in his muscular form, immediately deflating into his skeletal form with a violent cough of blood.

 

"All Might!" Izuku gasped. "Why are you here? Were you followed?"

 

"Hah," All Might wiped his mouth. "I slipped away from the press. I came here to thank you, young man. And to revise my earlier statement."

 

Izuku froze.

 

"If you hadn't been there," All Might said, his blue eyes incredibly serious, "if you hadn't told me about your life... I would have been a worthless bystander. You spurred me into action."

 

All Might stepped forward. "Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think."

 

Tears welled up in Izuku's eyes. The memory of running into the fire flashed in his mind.

 

"That was true for you today, wasn't it?" All Might asked gently.

 

Izuku dropped to his knees, burying his face in his hands. The tears he had held back all day, all his life, finally broke free. "Yes," he sobbed.

 

"You said your clones take the hits for you," All Might said, looking down at the crying boy. "I misunderstood. They don't take the hits for you. They are you. Every time one of them falls, you bear the weight of their pain. You don't hide behind them. You lead them. You suffer with them. That takes a mental fortitude I cannot even begin to fathom."

 

All Might placed a hand on Izuku's shaking shoulder.

 

"You can become a hero," All Might said.

 

The words were everything Izuku had ever wanted to hear. They validated the headaches, the isolation, the relentless note-taking, the endless phantom deaths he had endured to train his Quirk.

 

"I was looking for a successor," All Might continued quietly. "Someone to inherit my power. But watching you... watching the way your mind works, the way you coordinated a rescue under extreme pressure with a Quirk that requires absolute self-control..."

 

All Might smiled. "You don't need my power, young Midoriya. Giving you raw, destructive strength would ruin the brilliant tactical weapon you've already built in your mind."

 

Izuku looked up, wiping his eyes. "I... I don't need it?"

 

"No," All Might said proudly. "You are already an army. You are already a commander. What you need, my boy, is to get into U.A. High School. You don't need a new Quirk."

 

All Might stood tall, even in his skeletal form.

 

"You just need a license."

 

 

The ten months leading up to the U.A. Entrance Exam were an exercise in self-inflicted psychological torture.

 

All Might had kept his promise. While he couldn't give Izuku One For All, he had taken the boy under his wing. After analyzing the mechanics of Perfect Echo, All Might had designed a training regimen tailored specifically for a Quirk that destroyed its user from the inside out.

 

"Your Quirk is fundamentally a battle of mental endurance," All Might had explained on the first day, standing over Izuku at Dagobah Municipal Beach. The beach was a sprawling mountain of illegal trash, rusted refrigerators, and decaying cars. "When an Echo disperses, it dumps its physical fatigue and sensory data into your brain. If you create twenty copies and they all run a mile, when you dispel them, your brain instantly processes twenty miles of exhaustion. If they all get punched in the face, your brain processes twenty concussions."

 

All Might had pointed a massive, accusatory finger at Izuku’s scrawny chest. "Your mind is a supercomputer, young Midoriya. But your body is a cheap, fragile casing. If you overload the processor, the casing will crack. You need physical stamina to ground your nervous system. You need to build a vessel capable of surviving your own mind."

 

And so, the hell began.

 

Izuku cleaned the beach, but he didn't do it as a swarm. All Might strictly forbade him from using his clones to lift the trash. "If you use your Echoes to clean the beach, you'll finish in a week, but the cumulative fatigue will put you in a coma! Prime Izuku must do the heavy lifting!"

 

Instead, Izuku used his Echoes for mental conditioning. While Prime Izuku dragged a rusted microwave across the sand, his muscles screaming and his lungs burning, he would summon five Echoes. He ordered the Echoes to sit on a nearby sea wall and read different textbooks—calculus, physics, quirk history, hero law, and advanced chemistry.

 

At the end of the hour, Prime Izuku would shout, "Dispel!"

 

The five Echoes would melt into gray sludge. Instantly, the eidetic memory of five different subjects would violently force its way into Izuku's skull, alongside the phantom sensation of sitting on a cold wall for an hour. The sensory clash between his real body’s physical exhaustion and the sudden, overwhelming data injection would drop him to his knees. He would clutch his head, his nose bleeding, his vision swimming with equations and legal codes.

 

"Stand up!" All Might would bark. "Process it! Sort the data! Do not let the hive overwhelm the Prime!"

 

By month three, Izuku could maintain ten Echoes while doing heavy physical labor.

By month six, he could hold twenty, and he began sparring with them. He would fight ten versions of himself simultaneously, learning how to coordinate a hive-mind assault while his real body dodged and blocked. When the sparring Echoes were "killed" by a solid hit, Izuku learned to swallow the phantom pain of the blow without breaking his stride.

 

By month nine, Dagobah Beach was spotless, the golden sand gleaming under the sunrise. And Izuku Midoriya had changed.

 

He hadn't gained the hulking, unnatural musculature of a brawler. He was lean, compact, and deeply scarred by the phantom traumas of thousands of shattered Echoes. His green eyes held a sharp, unsettling depth—the gaze of a boy who had lived thousands of hours of life in the span of a few months. He had died in his own mind countless times. He had drowned, burned, suffocated, and been crushed by his own training methods.

 

He was no longer afraid of pain. He was a commander who had already witnessed every worst-case scenario.

 

 

 

The morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam was crisp and clear. Izuku stood before the towering, H-shaped glass gates of the legendary school, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He wore a custom, dark green tracksuit, specifically heavily pocketed to hold five different analytical notebooks.

 

"Stupid Deku."

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He slowly turned his head to see Katsuki Bakugo walking toward him, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his red eyes glaring with their usual mix of superiority and deep-seated irritation.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice even.

 

"Get out of my way," Katsuki growled, shoulder-checking Izuku as he walked past. "I don't care what kind of creepy training you've been doing. You're still just a faker hiding behind mud dolls. Don't embarrass our middle school by dying in there."

 

Izuku watched him walk away. In the past, Katsuki's words would have made him stutter and shrink. Now, Izuku just analyzed the gait, the slight tension in Katsuki's shoulders, the way he favored his right foot. Data.

 

Izuku turned back toward the gates and took a step forward.

 

"Whoa, ah!"

 

A girl with round cheeks and a short bob of brown hair tripped over a misplaced paving stone, falling face-first toward the concrete.

 

Before Prime Izuku even consciously registered the movement, the space next to him shimmered. An Echo materialized seamlessly, reaching out and catching the girl by her backpack straps, halting her fall entirely. The Echo smoothly set her upright.

 

"Are you okay?" the Echo asked, smiling gently.

 

"O-Oh! Thank you!" the girl gasped, looking at the Echo, then looking over at Prime Izuku. Her eyes went wide, bouncing between the two identical boys. "Whoa! Twins? Wait, no, the way you appeared... a cloning Quirk?! That is so cool!"

 

Prime Izuku felt a slight flush creep up his cheeks. He wasn't used to compliments. "Uh, yes. It's called Perfect Echo. I... we... just wanted to make sure you didn't fall."

 

"Dispel," Prime Izuku murmured instinctively.

 

The Echo beside the girl melted into a puddle of gray sludge, instantly evaporating. The girl let out a squeak of surprise, taking a step back.

 

Izuku winced inwardly. Ah. Right. People usually find the melting part creepy.

 

But to his surprise, the girl's eyes sparkled. "Whoa! It just vanished! That's so handy for the exam! I'm Ochaco Uraraka. Good luck in there, um..."

 

"Izuku Midoriya," he said, offering a small smile. "Good luck to you too, Uraraka."

 

As she happily skipped away, Izuku felt a strange warmth in his chest. It was the first time someone outside of his mother, the doctor, and All Might had called his Quirk cool.

 

 

 

The orientation auditorium was vast and intimidating. Izuku sat next to Katsuki, meticulously reading over the printed handout.

 

On the stage, the Voice Hero: Present Mic was giving a boisterous explanation of the practical exam. It was a mock cityscape where students would destroy villain bots to earn points. One-pointers, two-pointers, and three-pointers.

 

"Are you ready?! Yeah!!" Present Mic screamed. The crowd was dead silent.

 

Izuku began muttering, his brain already running simulations. "Robots. So, no psychological manipulation, no fatigue to exploit. Pure mechanical destruction. My physical strength is solid, but punching steel will shatter my bones, and my Echoes will disperse upon taking a heavy hit. I'll need to rely on weapons, environmental hazards, or dismantling them. If I summon twenty Echoes, we can form five squads of four. One squad acts as bait, three flank, one provides overwatch..."

 

"Excuse me!" a loud, booming voice interrupted.

 

A tall, broad-shouldered boy with glasses and stiff posture stood up, pointing a rigid finger at the stage. "On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the most prominent school in Japan, should be ashamed of that foolish mistake!"

 

The boy then whipped around, pointing his rigid finger directly at Izuku. "And you, with the curly hair! You've been muttering this entire time! It's distracting! If you're here on a pleasure trip, then you should leave immediately!"

 

The auditorium went silent. Katsuki snickered next to him.

 

Izuku stopped muttering. He looked at the boy with glasses. He didn't blush. He didn't cower.

 

Without breaking eye contact with the boy, a second Izuku materialized in the empty seat to Prime Izuku's left.

 

"I apologize if my analysis was distracting you," the Echo said in a clear, carrying voice, its tone perfectly polite but utterly unbothered. "However, processing tactical variables in real-time is a fundamental aspect of my Quirk. I assure you, I take this exam very seriously."

 

The boy with glasses recoiled slightly, startled by the sudden duplication. "A-A cloning Quirk? I... see. Very well. My apologies for the interruption." He sat down quickly, clearly unnerved.

 

Present Mic cleared his throat, leaning into his microphone. "Okay, okay, Examinee Number 7111! Thanks for the great message! The fourth villain type is worth zero points! It's an obstacle, so you're better off avoiding it!"

 

Izuku dispelled the Echo. A tiny spike of phantom annoyance flared in his head, which he brushed aside.

 

A zero-pointer, Izuku thought, his eyes narrowing. An obstacle meant to be avoided. A test of threat assessment. Understood.

 

 

 

Battle Center B was a sprawling, hyper-realistic replica of a modern city. Skyscrapers, paved roads, traffic lights, and alleyways stretched out for miles behind a massive steel gate.

 

Dozens of examinees stood before the gate, stretching, psyching themselves up, or sizing up the competition. Izuku stood near the front, adjusting the cuffs of his tracksuit. He felt the weight of stares on his back. Word of his little display in the auditorium had spread.

 

He saw Uraraka taking deep breaths near the back. He saw the boy with glasses doing highly synchronized lunges.

 

I don't have an explosive Quirk like Kacchan, Izuku thought, closing his eyes. I don't have massive physical enhancement. If I want to pass, I can't just be a participant. I have to be a plague. I have to flood the zone.

 

"RIGHT, LET'S START!" Present Mic's voice suddenly boomed from the hidden speakers. "There are no countdowns in real battles! Run, run, run!"

 

The massive gates began to slowly grind open.

 

Before the gates were even wide enough for a person to walk through, Izuku was already sprinting. He slid through the narrow gap, leaving the confused examinees behind.

 

As his feet hit the pavement of the fake city, Izuku took a deep breath, expanded his mind, and unlocked the floodgates of his consciousness.

 

"Perfect Echo: Legion."

 

Split. Split. Split. Split. Split.

 

The air around Izuku warped and rippled as the space violently displaced. In a cascading wave of shimmering light and forming matter, identical boys wearing green tracksuits materialized. It didn't stop at five. It didn't stop at ten.

 

In the span of three seconds, fifty identical Izuku Midoriyas stood in the middle of the main street.

 

The psychic weight hit Prime Izuku like a sledgehammer. For a terrifying, intoxicating second, his singular vision shattered into a kaleidoscope of fifty different perspectives. He could see down five different alleyways at once. He could smell the ozone of electric engines from three blocks away. He could feel the wind shifting against fifty different faces. It was a symphony of consciousness, perfectly synchronized by the singular will of the Prime.

 

Behind him, the rest of the examinees finally ran through the gates. They stopped dead in their tracks, their jaws dropping.

 

An entire platoon of green-haired boys stood before them, stretching their necks and cracking their knuckles in unsettling unison.

 

"Engage," Prime Izuku said quietly.

 

Fifty voices echoed the command. "Engage."

 

The swarm scattered. They didn't run like a mob; they moved with the terrifying precision of a military unit. They scaled fire escapes, dove down alleyways, and sprinted down the main avenue in organized squads.

 

Prime Izuku grappled up a fire escape to the roof of a three-story building, sitting on the edge to act as the central processing hub. He closed his eyes, entirely surrendering to the hive-mind.

 

Three blocks north, Squad Alpha (Echoes 1 through 5) encountered a group of three One-Pointers. The robots raised their blasters, their robotic voices declaring, "Target acquired."

 

Echo 1 and Echo 2 didn't dodge. They sprinted directly at the robots, drawing their fire. Rubber bullets slammed into the two clones, shattering them instantly into gray sludge.

 

Up on the roof, Prime Izuku gasped, a phantom bruise blooming across his chest and shoulder. But the data was received instantly. Targeting speed: 1.2 seconds. Blind spots identified.

 

While the robots were resetting their targeting lazers, Echoes 3, 4, and 5 leaped from a second-story window directly above them. They didn't punch the metal. Echo 3 landed on a robot's shoulders, ripping open the panel behind its neck and brutally tearing out a fistful of exposed wiring. The robot sparked and died.

 

Echo 4 and Echo 5 grabbed the downed robot's heavy, cylindrical arms, ripping them free from the chassis. Armed with thirty-pound steel clubs, they smashed the optical sensors of the remaining two robots, blinding them before beating their central batteries into scrap metal.

 

Three points, Prime Izuku logged in his mind.

 

Across the city, the chaos was absolute.

 

Squad Delta (Echoes 15 through 22) encountered a massive Three-Pointer in a narrow alley. It was too heavily armored to beat with pipes.

Adapt, the hive-mind commanded.

The Echoes lured the heavy robot over a manhole cover. Echo 15 dove under the robot’s treads, letting himself be crushed—a horrific phantom pain that caused Prime Izuku's nose to start bleeding profusely—but in his final second, Echo 15 pried the manhole cover off. The Three-Pointer's tread slipped into the sewer grate, trapping it. The remaining Echoes swarmed it like ants, pulling its exhaust vents apart until the engine overheated and seized.

 

Six points.

 

Squad Sigma utilized environmental hazards. They shattered storefront windows, spreading slippery debris across the streets to cause the wheeled Two-Pointers to crash into walls. Once incapacitated, the Echoes would descend, dismantle, and move on.

 

To the other examinees, the city had become a haunted house.

 

The boy with glasses, Tenya Iida, kicked the head off a One-Pointer, panting heavily. "That makes twenty points!" he declared proudly. He turned the corner, expecting to find more prey.

 

Instead, he found a street littered with smoking, dismantled robotic corpses. Standing atop the wreckage were eight identical green-haired boys, all holding ripped-off robotic limbs like weapons. They all turned to look at Iida at the exact same time, their green eyes glowing with an eerie, analytical light.

 

"Area clear," the eight Izukus said in perfect unison. "Moving to Sector 4."

 

They dropped the steel clubs and sprinted up the walls, vanishing over the rooftops. Iida shuddered, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. "What... what kind of processing speed does that boy have?"

 

 

 

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

 

Dozens of screens displayed the carnage. But unlike previous years, where the screens highlighted various students with flashy, destructive Quirks, nearly half the monitors in Battle Center B were tracking the same student.

 

Or rather, the same fifty students.

 

"Incredible," Principal Nedzu, the dog-mouse-bear hybrid, whispered. He was leaning so close to the monitor his nose was nearly touching the glass. "Absolutely incredible. Look at the coordination. It's not a mindless swarm. He’s running independent tactical operations across a two-mile radius simultaneously."

 

"He's over seventy points already," the R-Rated Hero: Midnight said, tracing a finger over a tablet. "And he's not just destroying them. He's weaponizing them. He's using parts from the One-Pointers to disable the Three-Pointers."

 

In the corner of the room, standing in the shadows, a skeletal Toshinori Yagi (All Might) beamed with pride, a wide, bloody smile stretching across his sunken face. Show them, my boy. Show them the commander you are.

 

"His Quirk isn't just duplication," a tired, drawling voice spoke up. Eraserhead (Shota Aizawa) leaned forward, his dark, baggy eyes narrowing as he watched a monitor showing Prime Izuku sitting on a rooftop, bleeding from his nose and trembling. "It's an intelligence Quirk disguised as an Emitter. He feels it when they die."

 

"Pardon?" Nedzu asked, his ears twitching.

 

"Look at the Prime," Aizawa pointed to the screen. "Every time a clone takes a lethal hit and disperses, the Prime’s body reacts. He’s taking on the sensory data—the pain, the trauma, the exhaustion. He's lost twelve clones so far to enemy fire. That means his brain has processed twelve physical deaths in the last seven minutes."

 

The room went quiet. The Pro Heroes looked at the boy on the roof. He was visibly shaking, sweat pouring down his face, a thick stream of blood running from his nostril. Yet, his eyes were closed, and his expression was locked in a state of absolute, iron-willed concentration.

 

"The mental fortitude required to endure that without going insane or passing out..." Midnight whispered, a shiver running down her spine. "That's terrifying."

 

"He's a tactician," Nedzu smiled, taking a sip of his tea. "But let us see how the tactician handles an unpredictable variable. A true hero must face overwhelming odds, not just puzzles they can dismantle."

 

Nedzu pressed a large, red button on his console.

 

"Unleash the Zero Pointer."

 

 

 

Down in Sector B, Izuku opened his eyes.

 

Something is wrong.

 

The ground began to vibrate. It started as a low tremor, rattling the pebbles on the rooftop, but rapidly escalated into a violent, localized earthquake.

 

"Status report," Prime Izuku ordered out loud.

 

Instantly, the remaining thirty-eight Echoes scattered across the city turned their heads toward the center of the sector. Through their eyes, Izuku saw the buildings parting.

 

A massive hand, the size of a city block, smashed through a skyscraper, sending glass and steel raining down like confetti. The Zero Pointer pulled itself up from beneath the street. It was a mechanical titan, towering higher than the tallest buildings in the mock city. Its single, glowing red eye swept over the streets, locking onto the screaming examinees.

 

Threat level: Unmanageable, Izuku's analytical mind calculated instantly. Armor thickness: Impervious to conventional strikes. Weak points: None accessible.

 

"Run!" an examinee screamed. "It's the obstacle! Get out of here!"

 

The students fled in terror, abandoning their fights to escape the shadow of the behemoth. Izuku stood up on his rooftop. He was about to command his Echoes to retreat and assist in the evacuation, when a singular stream of data hit his mind.

 

Echo 29 visual feed.

 

Izuku looked through the eyes of an Echo standing three blocks away, near the base of the Zero Pointer. The giant robot had smashed a building, sending massive chunks of concrete into the street.

 

Underneath one of those chunks, pinned by her leg, was Uraraka.

 

She was trying to push the rubble off, her face contorted in pain. "Ow... it won't budge..."

 

The Zero Pointer's massive, tank-like treads were rolling forward, grinding the street to dust. It was heading directly for her.

 

Time seemed to freeze. Prime Izuku looked at the distance. He was too far away to reach her in time. His Echoes in the area were too physically weak to lift a three-ton slab of concrete, and pushing her wouldn't work—her leg was trapped.

 

He didn't have the strength. Katsuki was right. A parlor trick Quirk couldn't stop a falling mountain.

 

No, Izuku thought, his green eyes blazing with a sudden, desperate fury. I won't let her die.

 

He needed power. He needed specialized Quirks. And he knew exactly how to get them.

 

"DISPEL!" Prime Izuku screamed at the top of his lungs.

 

Across the city, thirty-eight active Echoes instantly melted into gray sludge.

 

The backlash was catastrophic. Thirty-eight streams of consciousness, thirty-eight sets of memories, the cumulative exhaustion of a brutal ten-minute war zone, all slammed into Izuku's fragile human brain in a single microsecond.

 

Izuku screamed, falling to his knees on the rooftop. Blood sprayed from his nose and ran from his tear ducts. His vision went completely white. It felt like his skull was splitting open, his brain boiling in its own fluids. The phantom pain of thirty-eight bodies vanishing tore at his nervous system.

 

But he didn't pass out. He dug his fingernails into his palms until they bled, using the physical pain to anchor his mind to reality.

 

Focus! he roared internally. Access the archives!

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 11 and Vol. 13. He didn't need to open them; he had memorized every single word, every sketch, every behavioral tic, and every biological parameter of the heroes within.

 

He visualized the man first. Height: 195cm. Weight: 115kg. Quirk: Strength enhancement via localized muscle hypertrophy. Psychological profile: Stern, disciplined, relies on brute force lifting mechanics.

 

Then, he visualized the second. Height: 180cm. Weight: 85kg. Quirk: Arbor. Wood generation and manipulation from the cellular level. Psychological profile: Dramatic, swift, relies on binding and aerial mobility.

 

To clone someone else, Izuku couldn't just create an empty shell. He had to temporarily fracture his own identity, forcing a piece of his soul to emulate the sheer presence of another human being. It was the most dangerous aspect of his Quirk. If he lost himself in the emulation, he might forget he was Izuku Midoriya.

 

I am the Prime, Izuku whispered, blood dripping off his chin. I am the commander.

 

He slammed both hands onto the concrete roof.

 

"Perfect Echo: Heroic Summoning."

 

The space beside Izuku didn't just ripple; it cracked, emitting a blinding flash of golden light. The displacement of mass was so violent it shattered the windows of the building he was standing on.

 

From the light stepped two figures.

 

They weren't green-haired boys. They were fully formed, perfect replicas.

 

On his left stood the Pro Hero Death Arms, his massive, yellow-and-black gauntlets gleaming in the dust.

On his right stood the Pro Hero Kamui Woods, his wooden armor creaking as he stretched his limbs.

 

Down in the street, Iida, who was running away from the robot, stopped dead in his tracks, looking up at the roof. "P-Pro Heroes?! Why are Pro Heroes here?!"

 

The clones were perfect. But if one looked closely, their eyes weren't the eyes of the Pros. Their eyes were glowing, brilliant emerald green. They were Izuku's puppets, fueled by his stamina and bound by his will.

 

Prime Izuku was panting heavily, barely able to stand. Maintaining two high-tier Pro Hero clones was draining his life force at an alarming rate. He felt like his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

 

"Execute," Izuku gasped, pointing a trembling, blood-stained finger at the Zero Pointer.

 

The clones moved.

 

Death Arms leaped off the three-story building, his massive weight cracking the street below. He sprinted toward the trapped Uraraka, placing himself directly between the girl and the incoming treads of the Zero Pointer.

 

"A-A Pro?" Uraraka cried, tears in her eyes.

 

The Death Arms clone didn't speak. It grabbed the massive chunk of concrete pinning her leg. With a roar that sounded exactly like the real hero, the clone activated its strength Quirk. Its muscles expanded violently, ripping the sleeves of its costume. It hurled the three-ton slab of concrete away like a pebble.

 

But the Zero Pointer was right on top of them. The massive treads were descending, about to crush both Uraraka and the clone.

 

Death Arms stepped forward, raising his massive arms. He caught the front of the tread.

 

The sheer kinetic force of the giant robot slammed into the clone. The Death Arms clone’s boots shattered the asphalt, dragging backward, trenches ripping through the street. The clone groaned, its arms trembling as it held back thousands of tons of forward momentum.

 

On the roof, Prime Izuku screamed in agony, his real arms bruising, the phantom weight of a skyscraper pressing down on his spine.

 

"Now!" Izuku roared.

 

Swinging through the air on an elongated branch of solid wood was the Kamui Woods clone. It swooped down in a graceful arc, grabbing Uraraka around the waist with a thick, gentle vine, pulling her out of the crush zone and safely depositing her on a distant rooftop.

 

But Kamui Woods didn't stop there.

 

The Zero Pointer is unbalanced, Prime Izuku analyzed, watching the robot struggle to push past the Death Arms clone. If we bind the right tread, the torque will cause a catastrophic failure.

 

The Kamui Woods clone landed on the chassis of the giant robot. "Pre-emptive Binding... Lacquered Chain Prison!"

 

Massive, thick trunks of solid wood erupted from the clone's arms, shooting downward and wrapping entirely around the right tread of the Zero Pointer. The wood snaked into the gears, the cogs, and the axels, hardening instantly into an unbreakable cage of timber.

 

The Zero Pointer's left tread kept moving, but its right tread was completely jammed.

 

The resulting torque was disastrous. The giant robot groaned, the internal gears screeching and sparking as they tore themselves apart. The massive machine violently twisted to the right, losing its center of gravity.

 

With a deafening, earth-shattering crash, the Zero Pointer toppled over, smashing into the fake city and sending a massive plume of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air.

 

The robot was defeated.

 

Silence descended upon Battle Center B. The examinees stared in utter disbelief.

 

On his rooftop, Prime Izuku swayed on his feet. The stamina drain was complete.

 

"Dispel," he whispered.

 

The Death Arms and Kamui Woods clones instantly melted into pools of gray sludge. The sudden release of tension, combined with the phantom memory of holding back a building-sized robot, was too much.

 

Izuku’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed onto the roof, plunging into darkness.

 

 

 

In the judges' room, the silence was absolute.

 

No one spoke. No one moved. They just stared at the monitor showing the unconscious boy on the roof, surrounded by shattered glass and his own blood.

 

Midnight slowly lowered her tablet. Her hands were shaking slightly. "He... he cloned Pro Heroes. Perfectly. Down to their Quirk activation."

 

"It's not just a copy," Aizawa said, his voice softer than usual, stripped of its usual apathy. "He utilized their Quirks in a perfectly synchronized tactical maneuver. He used Death Arms for localized brute force and Kamui Woods for rescue and immobilization. He understood the mechanics of their powers better than most sidekicks."

 

Nedzu pressed his paws together, his black eyes gleaming with a mixture of profound respect and genuine caution.

 

"We asked him to defeat villains," Nedzu said quietly. "He gave us an army. We gave him an insurmountable obstacle. He gave us a miracle."

 

All Might turned his back to the room, hiding his face in the shadows. He clenched his fists, tears streaming down his skeletal cheeks. You did it, my boy. You proved them all wrong.

 

"What's his final score?" Aizawa asked, though he already knew it would be astronomical.

 

Midnight looked at her tablet. "He earned 74 Villain Points through the coordinated swarm." She swallowed hard, looking at the footage of the Pro Hero clones saving Uraraka. "And for risking his life—and his sanity—to save a fellow examinee against a Zero-Point threat... 60 Rescue Points."

 

Nedzu smiled, a wide, genuine expression. "134 points. A new U.A. record."

 

 

 

A week later, Izuku sat at the desk in his bedroom. His mother, Inko, was pacing back and forth, wringing her hands nervously.

 

"Izuku, what if the letter is bad news? You came home covered in blood! Recovery Girl said your brain activity was off the charts, that you nearly gave yourself a stroke!" Inko fretted.

 

Izuku just stared at the blank envelope on his desk. It bore the wax seal of U.A. High School.

 

He didn't need to summon an Echo to calm himself down. He had faced down the Sludge Villain. He had endured the deaths of thirty-eight clones simultaneously. He had held back a titan.

 

He picked up the envelope and tore it open. A small, metal disk fell onto the desk.

 

Suddenly, a holographic projection sprang to life, illuminating the dark room.

 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!" All Might’s booming voice filled the room. The hero was in his muscle form, wearing a sharp yellow suit.

 

Inko gasped and covered her mouth.

 

"Young Midoriya!" All Might pointed directly at the camera. "You passed the written test with flying colors! But that's to be expected of a mind like yours. The practical exam, however... you left us speechless."

 

The hologram shifted, showing a leaderboard.

 

"Your Quirk is terrifyingly potent, but it was your heroic spirit that shined the brightest!" All Might continued. "You scored 74 Villain Points. But there was another panel of points! Rescue Points! For putting your life on the line to save Examinee Uraraka, you were awarded 60 Rescue Points!"

 

Izuku's breath hitched. 134 points.

 

The leaderboard zoomed in.

 

1. Izuku Midoriya - 134 Points

2. Katsuki Bakugo - 77 Points

 

"You didn't just pass, my boy," All Might said, his voice softening, filled with immense pride. "You conquered. Come, young Midoriya. This is your hero academia!"

 

The hologram faded.

 

Izuku sat in the silence of his room. He looked at his hands—the hands that could shape armies, the hands that could call upon the strength of heroes.

 

He clenched his fists, a fierce, determined smile breaking across his face.

 

The boy who was never alone was finally going to show the world exactly who he was.

 

The concept of a "first day of school" usually conjured images of fresh notebooks, nervous introductions, and the gentle anxiety of finding the right classroom. For Izuku Midoriya, the first day at U.A. High School’s Hero Course felt more like stepping onto a battlefield he had been mapping in his mind for ten months.

 

He stood before the towering door of Class 1-A, his hand hovering over the oversized handle.

 

I am the Prime, he reminded himself, a necessary morning mantra. He took a deep breath, anchoring his consciousness to his physical body. The phantom exhaustion from summoning Death Arms and Kamui Woods during the entrance exam had finally faded, but the memory of their immense, crushing power still lingered in his muscles.

 

He slid the door open.

 

The classroom was already buzzing with energy, but the loudest noise came from the front row.

 

"Take your feet off that desk immediately!" Tenya Iida, the tall, glasses-wearing boy from the orientation, was chopping his arm through the air with mechanical precision. "It is disrespectful to the upperclassmen who sat there before you, and to the craftsmen who made it!"

 

Sitting at the desk, his feet kicked up and a feral smirk plastered across his face, was Katsuki Bakugo. "Hah? What middle school did you go to, you four-eyed extra?"

 

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

 

"Somei? So you're a damn elite," Katsuki sneered, small sparks popping from his palms. "I'll have fun crushing you."

 

Izuku stepped into the room.

 

Almost instantly, Katsuki’s red eyes snapped to him. The explosive blonde’s smirk vanished, replaced by a scowl so deep it looked physically painful. Katsuki hadn't spoken to Izuku since the incident with the Sludge Villain. The revelation that Izuku had scored a U.A. record—beating Katsuki’s score by nearly double—had festered in Katsuki’s mind like an open wound.

 

"Ah! It's you!"

 

Izuku turned to see Ochaco Uraraka beaming at him, her round face lit up with genuine delight. "The boy with the cool cloning Quirk! Midoriya, right? You were amazing at the entrance exam! When you summoned those Pro Heroes out of nowhere, I thought my heart was going to stop!"

 

The rest of the class suddenly quieted down, turning to stare at the green-haired boy in the doorway. Whispers broke out.

 

"Wait, he's the one who got 134 points?"

"He summoned Pro Heroes? Is his Quirk a summoning type or a cloning type?"

"He looks so... plain."

 

"I... uh, thank you, Uraraka," Izuku muttered, feeling the sudden, heavy weight of two dozen eyes on him. He instinctively wanted to summon an Echo to hide behind, to let a clone handle the social interaction while he analyzed everyone's Quirks from the corner. He suppressed the urge. All Might said I need to stand on my own.

 

"If you're just here to make friends, you can pack up your things and leave."

 

The voice didn't come from the students. It came from the floor.

 

Izuku looked down. Lying in the hallway, zipped entirely inside a yellow sleeping bag, was a haggard-looking man with messy, shoulder-length black hair and deep, dark bags under his eyes.

 

The man unzipped the sleeping bag like a shedding caterpillar and stood up, pulling a juice pouch from his pocket. "It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down. Time is a limited resource. You kids aren't rational enough."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He recognized the man instantly. The goggles hidden under the scarf. The capture weapon. The underground hero, Eraserhead. He's an ambush specialist. What is he doing teaching a homeroom?

 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa," the man drawled, his voice devoid of any enthusiasm. He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue-and-white U.A. gym uniforms. "Change into these and head out to the P.E. grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

The sun beat down on the sprawling dirt field behind the main campus. The twenty students of Class 1-A stood in their gym uniforms, looking confused.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" Uraraka asked, tilting her head. "But what about the entrance ceremony? Or orientation?"

 

"If you want to be heroes, we don't have time for frilly events," Aizawa said, his back turned to them as he chalked a throwing circle onto the dirt. "U.A.'s selling point is how unrestricted its traditions are. That also applies to how the teachers run their classes. You've been doing physical fitness tests since junior high, but without using your Quirks. The country still uses averages taken from results devoid of Quirks. It's irrational. The Ministry of Education is procrastinating."

 

Aizawa turned around, his deadpan gaze locking onto Katsuki. "Bakugo, you finished second in the practical exam. What was your best result for the softball throw in junior high?"

 

"Sixty-seven meters," Katsuki muttered.

 

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

 

Katsuki stepped into the circle, rolling his shoulders. A sadistic grin spread across his face. He wound his arm back, his palm glowing fiercely.

 

"DIE!" he roared.

 

A massive explosion erupted from his hand, propelling the baseball into the sky with a concussive shockwave that kicked up a cloud of dust. The ball vanished into the stratosphere.

 

Aizawa held up a small device. It beeped. "Know your own maximum first. That is the most rational way to form the foundation of a hero."

 

He turned the screen toward the class. It read: 705.2m.

 

The class erupted into cheers.

"Over 700 meters?! That's insane!"

"We can use our Quirks as much as we want?! This looks like so much fun!"

"Awesome! A true test of our powers!"

 

Aizawa's eyes narrowed. The air around him suddenly dropped ten degrees.

 

"Fun?" Aizawa repeated softly. "You have three years to become heroes. Are you going to have an attitude of 'fun' the whole time?"

 

He smiled, but it was a terrifying, predatory expression. "Right. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential, and will be punished with expulsion."

 

The class gasped in horror.

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

 

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, and selfish villains," Aizawa listed coldly. "Calamities whose time and place can't be predicted. Japan is covered in unfairness. Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you wanted to talk with your friends after school, too bad. For the next three years, U.A. will inflict hardship after hardship on you. Go beyond. Plus Ultra. Overcome it with all you've got."

 

Izuku felt a chill run down his spine, but it wasn't fear. It was anticipation.

 

A test of raw physical potential combined with Quirk application, Izuku's mind raced. My base physical stats are above average due to the beach training, but against Quirks like Iida's engines or Katsuki's explosions, my Prime body will lose. I need to maximize the hive.

 

"Test one," Aizawa announced. "Fifty-meter dash."

 

Izuku was lined up against Iida.

 

Iida dropped into a perfect runner's stance, the exhaust pipes on his calves humming to life. "I don't know how your cloning Quirk will help you in a foot race, Midoriya, but I will not hold back!"

 

"I wouldn't want you to, Iida," Izuku said calmly.

 

Izuku didn't take a runner's stance. Instead, he stood perfectly straight. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

 

Split. Split. Split. Split.

 

In a rapid succession of visual warping, four Echoes materialized in a straight line extending from the starting line to the halfway point of the track.

 

"Runners, on your marks," the robotic voice of the camera drone called out. "Get set..."

 

BANG.

 

Iida launched forward, his engines roaring. He crossed the fifty meters in a blinding flash.

"3.04 seconds!" the machine declared.

 

But Izuku hadn't run. The moment the gun fired, Prime Izuku stepped backward, into the waiting arms of Echo 1.

 

Echo 1 spun violently, using the momentum of the turn to hurl Prime Izuku forward through the air. As Prime Izuku began to lose altitude, Echo 2, positioned ten meters down the track, caught him mid-air, spun, and threw him again, compounding the kinetic energy.

 

Echo 3 caught him, adding a violent, perfect-pitch rotation, hurling him toward Echo 4.

 

Echo 4 caught the Prime, dug its heels into the dirt, and unleashed a massive, full-body baseball throw, launching Prime Izuku across the finish line before he ever touched the ground.

 

"3.12 seconds!" the machine announced as Prime Izuku skidded to a halt in the dirt, rolling gracefully to his feet.

 

The class stared in absolute silence.

 

"He... he used his clones to play hot-potato with his own body?" a boy with yellow, lightning-bolt hair asked, his jaw unhinged.

 

"Dispel," Prime Izuku commanded. The four Echoes melted into sludge.

 

Instantly, the phantom sensation of catching a hundred-and-forty-pound human moving at high speeds tore at Izuku's arm muscles. He winced, rubbing his real shoulders to soothe the phantom burn, but he quickly processed the data. Trajectory was slightly off on Echo 2's throw. Can optimize for the next test.

 

Aizawa watched from the sidelines, his red eyes burning from beneath his messy hair. Interesting. His Quirk isn't a simple physical manifestation. The coordination required to catch a moving target mid-air, spin, and throw without losing momentum requires a hive-mind link. His brain is calculating mass, trajectory, and wind resistance for five different bodies simultaneously.

 

Test Two: Grip Strength.

Izuku couldn't cheat this one. A machine measures localized pressure. He summoned an Echo, and together, they both squeezed the device, combining their strength. It wasn't the highest score—an octopus-armed boy named Shoji got 540kg—but Izuku's combined 130kg kept him safely out of the bottom rung.

 

Test Three: Standing Long Jump.

Izuku summoned ten Echoes. They rapidly climbed onto each other's shoulders, forming a human pillar that leaned forward. Prime Izuku ran up the backs of his own clones, using them as a massive ramp. Just as the tower fell forward, the top Echo grabbed Prime Izuku and threw him over the sandpit. He cleared the box entirely.

 

Test Four: Repeated Side Steps.

Izuku summoned twenty Echoes. They formed a tight grid around him. Prime Izuku simply stood in the center, perfectly still. When the buzzer sounded, the twenty Echoes blurred into motion, crossing the lines with terrifying, synchronized speed.

The machine, tracking the visual data of the "examinee" crossing the lines, completely short-circuited trying to count twenty overlapping bodies moving at max speed.

 

By the fifth test—the softball throw—the class wasn't just impressed. They were deeply unsettled.

 

"It's like watching a military drill," Uraraka whispered to Iida as they watched Izuku. "They don't even talk to each other. They just... do it."

 

"It's absolute synchronization," Iida marveled, adjusting his glasses. "The mental strain must be astronomical, yet he doesn't show a single sign of fatigue."

 

Iida was wrong. Prime Izuku was in agony.

 

Behind his calm, emerald eyes, a brutal migraine was hammering against his skull. The phantom exhaustion of twenty Echoes doing rapid side-steps, combined with the muscle tearing of the throwing drill, was pooling in his nervous system. His nose had begun to bleed slightly, which he subtly wiped away with the back of his hand.

 

It was time for the softball throw.

 

Uraraka went up, tapped the ball to remove its gravity, and tossed it. It went into orbit. The machine read: Infinity.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa called out. "You're up."

 

Izuku walked into the circle. He held the small, white baseball in his hand. He looked out at the massive dirt field.

 

If I use the same compounding throw technique as the fifty-meter dash, I can achieve a high velocity, Izuku calculated. But a human arm has a structural limit. Even if I chain twenty Echoes, the final Echo's arm will snap under the torque before releasing the ball.

 

He closed his eyes. I need to break the structural limit. If the final Echo's arm shatters, it doesn't matter. It will disperse, and the ball will already be in flight. I just have to endure the phantom fracture.

 

"Perfect Echo," Izuku whispered.

 

The space in front of him warped violently. Not one, not five, but twenty-five Echoes materialized in a perfect, straight line extending outwards from the throwing circle.

 

The class gasped.

 

Izuku tossed the ball to Echo 1.

 

"Initiate sequence," Prime Izuku commanded.

 

Echo 1 spun, throwing the ball to Echo 2. Echo 2 spun faster, throwing to Echo 3.

 

The speed of the ball compounded with every throw, moving down the line of identical green-haired boys. By Echo 10, the ball was a blur. By Echo 15, a sonic boom cracked the air.

 

Echo 24 caught the ball—its hands instantly blistering from the friction—and spun with everything it had, hurling it to the final clone, Echo 25.

 

Echo 25 caught the ball. The sheer kinetic energy transferring into its hands caused its arms to physically warp. The clone planted its feet, roaring in exertion, and threw the ball into the sky.

 

SNAP.

 

The sound of Echo 25's arm bones splintering under the supersonic torque echoed across the field. The ball vanished into the clouds, leaving a visible shockwave in its wake.

 

Instantly, Echo 25 melted into gray sludge. Then, like dominoes, Echoes 24 down to 1 dispersed, having served their purpose.

 

On the field, Prime Izuku gasped. His right arm dropped to his side, totally limp. The phantom sensation of a compound fracture violently overriding his pain receptors. He dropped to his knees, clutching his shoulder, biting his lip so hard it bled to keep from screaming.

 

Aizawa held up the device. 815.3m.

 

"What... what just happened?" a boy with red, spiky hair named Kirishima asked, his eyes wide. "He just made a human railgun! But why does he look hurt? He didn't even throw it!"

 

Aizawa stepped forward, his capture weapon floating ominously around his neck. His eyes glowed a fierce red, and his hair stood on end.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice cold.

 

Izuku looked up, still clutching his screaming, perfectly intact right arm.

 

"Your Quirk is highly versatile. Your processing speed is frankly terrifying," Aizawa noted. "But I watched the entrance exam. And I am watching you now. Every time those copies disperse, you take the damage psychologically. You are actively destroying your own mind to achieve these results."

 

Aizawa's capture weapon shot forward, wrapping securely around Izuku's torso, pulling the boy to his feet.

 

"You think you're being clever by letting your copies take the physical damage," Aizawa hissed, stepping close. "But what happens when your mind breaks? What happens when a villain kills fifty of your clones at once, and the phantom trauma puts you in a coma? You become a liability. A hero cannot afford to rely on meat-shields, even if those shields are made of their own flesh."

 

Izuku stared into Aizawa’s glowing red eyes. He felt the erasure of his Quirk. The connection to his hive—the ever-present, low-humming potential in his blood—was gone. It was a terrifying, suffocating silence.

 

For the first time since the playground, Izuku felt truly, entirely singular.

 

"I have erased your Quirk," Aizawa said. "If you cannot fight without breaking your own mind, then you cannot be a hero."

 

Katsuki, standing in the crowd, sneered. Finally. A teacher who sees the truth. Deku is just a weakling playing a numbers game.

 

Izuku took a deep breath. The silence in his head was deafening, but the words of All Might from that rooftop ten months ago anchored him.

 

You are already an army. You are already a commander.

 

"You're right, Sensei," Izuku said softly, his voice carrying over the silent field. "The trauma could put me in a coma. It has before. During my training."

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes.

 

"But you misunderstand the nature of my Quirk," Izuku continued, his emerald eyes hardening into polished stones. He didn't flinch away from the terrifying Pro Hero. "They are not meat-shields. They are not 'others' that I hide behind."

 

Izuku raised his trembling, phantom-broken right arm. He pointed a finger at Aizawa's chest.

 

"They are me. We share the same fear. We share the same pain. Every time they die, I die. And I have died thousands of times to learn how to endure it." Izuku's voice dropped to a fierce whisper. "My mind will not break, Eraserhead. Because I have already mapped every crack in it."

 

Aizawa stared at the boy. The sheer, unwavering intensity in Izuku's eyes was something Aizawa rarely saw, even in veteran Pro Heroes. It was the gaze of someone who had completely conquered their own fear of death.

 

Aizawa blinked. His hair fell flat. The capture weapon unwound.

 

Izuku felt the hive-mind potential rush back into his blood. The comforting, terrifying prism of his identity returned.

 

"Your pain tolerance is irrational," Aizawa muttered, turning his back and walking away. "But it is functional. Go to Recovery Girl after class and get some painkillers for that migraine. Next test."

 

As Aizawa walked away, a microscopic smile tugged at the corner of his mouth beneath his scarf. This kid... he's not relying on his Quirk to save him. He's weaponizing his own trauma. Incredible.

 

 

 

The following afternoon, the tension in Class 1-A reached a boiling point.

 

"I AM HERE!" All Might shouted, bursting through the classroom door in his Golden Age costume. "COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A HERO!"

 

The class erupted in awe, but Izuku just smiled softly. He noted the slight hesitation in All Might’s step—the hidden injury.

 

"Welcome to the most important class at U.A. High!" All Might bellowed. "Hero Basic Training! And today, we are doing... BATTLE TRIALS!"

 

The screen behind him flashed with the word BATTLE.

 

Katsuki Bakugo leaned forward in his chair, a feral, bloodthirsty grin splitting his face. He slowly turned his head to look at Izuku. The message in his eyes was clear: I am going to kill you.

 

"And to go with your battles," All Might pointed to the wall, which slid open to reveal numbered cases. "Your hero costumes! Change and meet me at Ground Beta!"

 

Ten minutes later, Class 1-A emerged from the tunnel into the mock city of Ground Beta.

 

Izuku stepped into the sunlight. His costume was a stark departure from the bright, flashy outfits of his peers. It was highly tactical. He wore a muted, dark forest-green combat suit made of a lightweight, flexible mesh. There was no cape. His chest, thighs, and waist were lined with sleek, armored pouches containing his various notebooks, pens, and a few medical supplies. A dark metal half-mask rested around his neck, capable of pulling up over his nose and mouth, outfitted with a built-in comms unit.

 

It was the suit of a commander. It was designed to blend in, to carry data, and to not restrict movement when he spawned his Echoes.

 

"Midoriya!" Uraraka ran up to him. She was wearing a skin-tight pink-and-black suit. "Your costume looks so cool! It looks like something a special-ops hero would wear!"

 

"T-Thanks," Izuku stuttered, suddenly hyper-aware of how tight her suit was. He quickly averted his eyes to his notebooks. "Yours is very... functional for zero-gravity!"

 

All Might stood before the class, holding a box. "Now, we will draw lots to form teams of two! One team will be the Heroes, tasked with infiltrating a building and securing a nuclear weapon. The other team will be the Villains, tasked with protecting it!"

 

Izuku reached into the box and pulled out a ball. Team A.

Uraraka cheered beside him. "We're a team! The hive-mind and the anti-gravity girl!"

 

All Might drew the villain team. Team D.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

Standing across from him, holding the Team D ball, was Katsuki Bakugo. Beside him was Tenya Iida, looking completely immersed in his armored hero suit.

 

Katsuki pounded his explosive gauntlets together. The heavy, grenade-shaped bracers clinked menacingly. "Fate is a beautiful thing, Deku," Katsuki growled loudly enough for the whole class to hear. "I finally get to prove that your cheap tricks mean nothing in a real fight."

 

 

 

The monitor room was silent as the rest of the class watched the screens.

 

Inside the five-story concrete building, Iida and Katsuki stood in the weapon room on the top floor. Iida was pacing, monologuing about how to best embrace his villainous role.

 

Katsuki wasn't listening. He was staring at the door.

 

"Bakugo, we should set up a perimeter," Iida suggested. "If Midoriya uses his cloning Quirk, he will likely try to overwhelm us with numbers. We need to block the entrances."

 

"Shut up, Four-Eyes," Katsuki snarled, turning away. "Deku isn't going to overwhelm us. He's a coward. He's going to hide while his little mud-puppets do the work. I'm going to hunt down the Prime and blow him to ash."

 

Outside the building, Prime Izuku and Uraraka stood before the front entrance.

 

"Okay, Midoriya, what's the plan?" Uraraka asked, bouncing on her heels. "Do we storm the front?"

 

"No," Izuku said, adjusting his mask. His eyes locked onto the building, slipping into the cold, calculating mindset of the commander. "Kacchan won't wait. He's obsessed with me. He's going to abandon the weapon and come hunting for me immediately."

 

"Wait, he'd abandon the objective just to fight you?"

 

"Yes," Izuku said. He pressed his hands together. "Legion: Scout Swarm."

 

Ten Echoes materialized around him. They didn't speak. They instantly scattered, shooting grappling hooks (from their costume pouches) up to the second, third, and fourth-floor windows, infiltrating the building from every possible angle in complete silence.

 

"The Echoes will map the building," Prime Izuku explained to Uraraka. "When they find the weapon or Kacchan, they'll disperse. The data will transfer to me, and we'll know exactly where to go. We wait here for thirty seconds."

 

Inside the building, Katsuki was stomping down the third-floor hallway. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of green hair darting past an intersection.

 

"Found you!" Katsuki roared, launching himself forward with an explosion. He rounded the corner and blasted a massive fireball down the hall.

 

The fire engulfed the green-haired boy. The boy didn't scream; he simply melted into gray sludge.

 

Katsuki snarled. "A fake!"

 

Outside the building, Prime Izuku gasped, a phantom wave of blistering heat scorching his face. He blinked rapidly, processing the data. "Third floor. North corridor. He's moving down. Uraraka, we go in now. Take the south stairwell. I will intercept Kacchan."

 

"You're going to fight him alone?!" Uraraka asked, alarmed.

 

"I'm never alone," Izuku said.

 

Izuku entered the building. He walked up the central stairwell, his footsteps echoing in the silence. He reached the second floor.

 

BOOM.

 

The wall next to him exploded. Concrete shrapnel tore through the air. Izuku dove to the side, rolling across the dusty floor of a wide, open corridor.

 

Katsuki emerged from the smoke, his red eyes manic. "No more hiding behind copies, Deku! Fight me!"

 

Katsuki lunged, drawing back his right arm for a devastating right hook.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He stood his ground.

 

Split.

 

An Echo materialized directly in front of Izuku, taking the full brunt of Katsuki's explosive punch to the stomach. The clone shattered into sludge, instantly dispersing.

 

The phantom pain of a ruptured abdomen hit Prime Izuku, but the data hit faster. He opens with a right straight, leaving his left flank exposed for 0.4 seconds.

 

Prime Izuku sidestepped the sludge, pivoting on his heel. "Echo Two."

 

A second clone materialized on Katsuki's exposed left side, delivering a brutal, perfectly timed roundhouse kick to Katsuki's ribs.

 

Katsuki grunted, stumbling sideways. Enraged, he spun and blasted the second clone point-blank. It melted.

 

Prime Izuku swallowed the phantom burn of the blast. "Echo Three. Echo Four."

 

Two more clones materialized simultaneously behind Katsuki. One grabbed Katsuki's arms, pinning them to his sides, while the other swept his legs.

 

Katsuki roared, detonating explosions from his palms, propelling himself backward and ripping free of the clones' grip. The blast destroyed both clones.

 

Prime Izuku dropped to one knee, coughing violently as the combined trauma of two point-blank blasts rocked his nervous system. Blood dripped onto his mask.

 

"Is that all you've got?!" Katsuki screamed, panting heavily. "You're just throwing bodies at me! You're pathetic!"

 

"You don't understand, Kacchan," Prime Izuku wheezed, slowly standing up. The air around him began to warp heavily, groaning under the sheer displacement of mass. "I'm not throwing bodies at you. I'm taking your measure."

 

Izuku opened his arms.

 

"Legion: The Labyrinth."

 

The corridor erupted.

 

Thirty Echoes materialized in the enclosed space. But they didn't swarm Katsuki. They formed walls. They interlocked their arms, stacking on top of one another, completely blocking the hallway. They created a literal maze of human bodies, trapping Katsuki in a confined space.

 

Katsuki's eyes went wide. "What the hell is this?!"

 

"A tactical containment field," all thirty Echoes said in terrifying unison.

 

Katsuki blasted the wall of clones in front of him. Five clones melted into sludge.

 

But instantly, five more clones materialized from the sludge, stepping forward to replace them.

 

Prime Izuku, standing safely behind the final wall of clones, bit his lip until it bled, absorbing the agonizing trauma of five deaths. He pushed the pain into a dark corner of his mind. He was the commander. He could not fall.

 

"Every time you blast them," Prime Izuku's voice echoed from every single clone in the maze, disorienting Katsuki, "I absorb the kinetic data. I know your blast radius. I know your reaction time. Your attacks are becoming mathematically predictable, Kacchan."

 

Katsuki spun around, blasting a clone behind him. It melted, and another took its place. He blasted above him. Melted. Replaced.

 

He was trapped in a meat-grinder of Izuku's making. Everywhere he turned, dead, green eyes stared at him, calculating his every move.

 

"Stop looking at me like that!" Katsuki roared, unleashing a massive, continuous stream of explosions, spinning in a circle. Dozens of clones melted, turning the floor into a slippery swamp of gray sludge.

 

Behind the wall, Prime Izuku dropped to the floor, vomiting a small amount of blood into his mask. The mental load was reaching critical mass. His brain was frying under the weight of thirty simultaneous, violent deaths.

 

Just a little longer, Izuku thought, his vision blurring. Uraraka, please...

 

 

 

On the fifth floor, Uraraka slipped through a cracked doorway.

 

Iida was standing in front of the massive, papier-mâché nuclear weapon. "Come out, Hero! I know you are here! My villainous engines will crush you!"

 

Uraraka hid behind a pillar, tapping her comms unit. "Midoriya! I'm in position. But Iida has the weapon locked down. If I make a move, his speed will catch me before I can touch it."

 

Static crackled on the line. Then, Izuku's voice came through, strained and ragged, as if he was fighting through immense pain.

 

"Uraraka. Look to your left."

 

Uraraka blinked. She looked to her left.

 

Crouching in the shadows behind a stack of crates was another Uraraka.

 

The real Uraraka almost screamed. The clone looked exactly like her. It was wearing the exact same pink-and-black suit. Its eyes were perfectly brown.

 

The clone placed a finger to its lips, smiling softly. It was a terrifyingly perfect replica, right down to the slight flush on her cheeks.

 

"I analyzed your Quirk during the entrance exam and the ball throw," Izuku's voice spoke through the earpiece. "I understand your mass limit. I understand your biological parameters. This Echo possesses your Quirk. But I cannot maintain it for long. My Prime body is failing."

 

The real Uraraka stared in awe. "You... you can clone me?"

 

"You are going to double your output," Izuku commanded through the comms. "Wait for my signal."

 

Down on the second floor, Katsuki had finally broken through the maze. He stood panting in a pool of gray sludge, his arms shaking from overuse. He locked eyes with Prime Izuku, who was leaning heavily against the wall, blood pouring from his nose, his eyes half-closed.

 

"I got you," Katsuki wheezed, raising his right arm. He pulled the pin on his grenade bracer. "This one's fully loaded, Deku. It won't just kill your clones. It'll tear down the whole building."

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said softly, a bloody smile spreading across his face. "You forgot the objective."

 

Izuku tapped his earpiece. "Execute."

 

On the fifth floor, the Uraraka clone sprinted out of the shadows, charging directly at Iida.

 

"Ah! There you are!" Iida roared, his engines bursting to life. He dashed forward, preparing to intercept her.

 

But as the clone ran, it reached out and tapped the massive concrete pillars holding up the ceiling. Zero Gravity.

 

Simultaneously, the real Uraraka sprinted from her hiding spot on the other side of the room, tapping the floor tiles and the surrounding debris.

 

Iida skidded to a halt, completely disoriented. "Two of them?! Which one is the real one?!"

 

He didn't have time to decide.

 

The real Uraraka and the clone pressed their hands together in perfect synchronization. "Release!"

 

With their combined Quirk output, the entire structural integrity of the fifth-floor ceiling and the debris around Iida lost all gravity. Hundreds of tons of concrete, dust, and metal floated into the air, completely blinding Iida and blocking his path.

 

Using the floating debris as stepping stones, the real Uraraka bounded over Iida's head.

 

"Weapon secured!" Uraraka yelled, wrapping her arms around the papier-mâché nuke.

 

 

 

Down on the second floor, the buzzer sounded.

 

"HERO TEAM WINS!" All Might's voice echoed through the PA system.

 

Katsuki froze. His finger was still hooked on the grenade pin. He slowly lowered his arm. The realization washed over him like a bucket of ice water.

 

He looked around. He was standing in an empty hallway, covered in sludge. He hadn't protected the weapon. He hadn't even landed a single hit on the real Izuku Midoriya. He had spent the entire match fighting ghosts, trapped in a cage designed specifically to neutralize his anger.

 

He had been utterly, completely outplayed.

 

Prime Izuku slid down the wall, sitting on the floor. His breathing was shallow. He wiped the blood from his chin, looking up at Katsuki.

 

"I told you, Kacchan," Izuku whispered, his voice laced with absolute exhaustion. "It's not about who punches the hardest."

 

Izuku slowly, painfully extended a trembling, blood-stained hand toward Katsuki. It was a genuine gesture. An offer of peace from a commander to a fallen opponent.

 

Katsuki stared at the hand. His red eyes widened, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. His pride, the foundation of his entire identity, cracked wide open.

 

"Don't..." Katsuki’s voice trembled with sheer, unadulterated fury and humiliation. "Don't you dare look at me like that."

 

Katsuki slapped Izuku's hand away, turning his back. He didn't yell. He didn't set off an explosion. He just walked away, his shoulders shaking.

 

Izuku let his hand fall to his side. He closed his eyes, letting the darkness take over, the silence of a singular mind finally bringing him peace.

 

In the monitor room, Class 1-A stood in stunned, absolute silence.

 

They had just watched a boy with no offensive physical power dismantle the strongest student in their class without throwing a single punch of his own.

 

Aizawa, standing in the back of the room, pulled his scarf up over his mouth, hiding his smirk.

 

He's not just a student, Aizawa thought, watching Izuku's unconscious body on the screen. He's a phenomenon.