What If Deku had Yuji Powers

The world was not fair.

 

It was a lesson Izuku Midoriya had learned at the tender age of four, sitting in a sterile doctor’s office while a man in a white coat pointed at an x-ray of his foot. Two joints. A biological redundancy. A death sentence for his dreams. In a society where eighty percent of the global population possessed some kind of uncanny, superhuman ability—a Quirk—being part of the remaining twenty percent was a statistical anomaly. But statistics were cold and clinical. They didn't capture the reality of being Quirkless.

 

Being Quirkless meant you were a relic. You were an evolutionary dead end, left behind in a world that had suddenly decided to fly, explode, and reshape the very elements.

 

Izuku stood on the edge of a nondescript commercial building, the wind whipping his messy green hair into his eyes. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, but he wasn’t seeing the glittering skyline of Musutafu. He was seeing the fading, skeletal figure of his idol, All Might, vanishing down the stairwell, taking Izuku’s last fragile hope with him.

 

“I cannot simply say, ‘You can become a hero even without power.’”

 

The words echoed in his skull, heavier than the burn radiating from his right shoulder—a parting gift from Katsuki Bakugo’s explosive palms earlier that afternoon. Take a swan dive off the roof of the building, Katsuki had sneered, and pray you’ll be born with a Quirk in your next life.

 

For a terrifying, silent minute, Izuku looked down at the concrete street below. The cars were tiny, moving along like colorful beetles. The pavement looked hard. Unforgiving.

 

He swallowed hard, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, and stepped back from the ledge. No. He wouldn't do it. But the fire inside him—the burning, foolish, desperate belief that a Quirkless boy with a good heart could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the glittering gods of this society—was entirely, utterly extinguished. The notebook clutched in his trembling hands, labeled Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13, felt like a brick of lead. Its edges were charred and waterlogged from the koi pond.

 

Izuku turned away from the sky and began the long, quiet walk home.

 

 

 

The streets of Tatooin Shopping District were usually bustling with evening commuters, families grabbing dinner, and teenagers loitering outside arcades. But today, the air was thick with the acrid scent of burning plastic, shattered concrete, and raw sewage.

 

Izuku didn't know why his feet had carried him here. He had heard the distant, rhythmic thump-thump of explosions and seen the plume of black smoke rising over the buildings. For ten years, that stimulus meant one thing: Villain attack. A hero will be there. I need to take notes. But today, his legs moved out of hollow muscle memory rather than excitement.

 

He pushed his way through the dense crowd of onlookers. The police had established a meager perimeter, but the citizens were pressing tightly against the yellow tape, their smartphones raised high. In this modern age, heroics were a spectator sport. Villains were just unscripted entertainment.

 

"Why aren't the heroes doing anything?" a woman next to Izuku muttered, standing on her tiptoes.

 

Izuku peered around a broad-shouldered man and felt his heart stop.

 

The alleyway was a war zone. Fires licked up the sides of the brick buildings, chewing through power lines that sparked violently against the asphalt. In the center of the destruction was a swirling, undulating mass of foul-smelling, dark green sludge. Izuku recognized it instantly. It was the same villain that had ambushed him under the overpass, the same villain All Might had saved him from just an hour ago.

 

It’s my fault, Izuku realized, the blood draining from his face. When I grabbed All Might’s leg... the bottle must have dropped.

 

But that wasn't the worst part. The Sludge Villain had grown larger, more frantic. And trapped within its viscous, suffocating body was a teenager in a middle school uniform.

 

The Pro Heroes were there, but they were useless. Death Arms, a hero built like a professional wrestler, was shouting orders, barred from entering the fray by the sheer heat of the flames. Kamui Woods was attempting to find an angle, but his wooden limbs recoiled from the roaring fires. Mt. Lady was stranded at a nearby intersection, trapped by her own gigantic size and the narrow, two-lane street.

 

"It's no good!" Death Arms roared over the din of explosions. "None of us have the right Quirks for this! We have to wait for someone with a suitable Quirk!"

 

Wait? Izuku thought, his mind racing. Wait for who? The kid is suffocating right now!

 

Then, the Sludge Villain shifted, and the captive's face breached the surface of the muck. Ash-blonde hair. Ferocious, terrified crimson eyes.

 

Kacchan.

 

Bakugo was thrashing, his palms detonating rapidly in desperate attempts to blast his way out. But the explosions only fueled the fires around them, creating a localized inferno that kept the heroes at bay. The sludge was forcing its way down Bakugo’s throat, suffocating him from the inside out.

 

Bakugo's eyes darted frantically across the crowd of useless bystanders, the paralyzed heroes, and finally, they landed on Izuku.

 

In those crimson eyes, the usual arrogance, the pride, the sheer superiority was gone. It was replaced by a primal, silent scream for help.

 

He's going to die, Izuku realized. Because of me. Because I distracted All Might.

 

In the back of the crowd, a gaunt, skeletal man with blonde hair clutched his left side, coughing blood into his hand. Toshinori Yagi watched the horror unfold, disgusted by his own limits. His time was up. He was empty. He could only watch as a young life was snuffed out.

 

Suddenly, a blur of black school uniform and green hair broke the police line.

 

"Hey! Kid, stop!" a police officer yelled, reaching out, but his fingers only grazed the fabric of Izuku’s jacket.

 

Izuku didn't know why he was running. His mind was blank, entirely devoid of logic or reason. The notebook, the doctor’s words, All Might’s rejection—everything faded into white noise. There was only the fire, the stench of sludge, and the boy he had known since childhood drowning in the street.

 

"Deku?!" Bakugo gurgled, his eyes widening in disbelief as he saw the Quirkless weakling sprinting toward the inferno.

 

"What the hell is that brat doing?!" Death Arms bellowed, stepping forward, only to be forced back by another wild explosion from Bakugo's trapped hands.

 

Izuku ripped his yellow backpack off his shoulders. With a wild cry, he spun and hurled it like a discus. The bag unzipped mid-air, scattering textbooks, pens, and his charred hero notebook directly into the Sludge Villain’s gelatinous eye.

 

"AGH!" the villain roared, its grip loosening just a fraction of an inch as one of its massive, liquid hands instinctively recoiled to clutch its eye. Bakugo gasped, pulling in a ragged, desperate breath of oxygen.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He closed the distance, his sneakers sliding against the slick, debris-covered asphalt. He reached out with bare, trembling hands, plunging them into the foul, acidic sludge to grab Bakugo’s collar. He pulled with every ounce of his meager strength.

 

"What the hell are you doing here?!" Bakugo rasped, coughing up muck.

 

"I don't know!" Izuku screamed back, tears streaming down his face. "My legs moved on their own! You looked... you looked like you were asking for help!"

 

For a split second, the world seemed to freeze. The pro heroes stared in shock. All Might’s breath hitched in his throat, a forgotten spark igniting deep within his sunken chest.

 

But a Quirkless boy's willpower could not alter the laws of physics.

 

"You little pest!" the Sludge Villain snarled. The eye regenerated, blinking rapidly. "I'll kill you first!"

 

A massive tendril of dense, hardened sludge whipped out like a bat, slamming directly into Izuku’s ribs. The impact was like getting hit by a speeding car. Izuku’s breath left him in a violent rush. He heard a sickening crack, and then he was airborne.

 

He flew backward, crashing hard against the side of a burning brick building before slumping into a pile of garbage and discarded boxes in the mouth of a dark alleyway.

 

Pain, absolute and all-consuming, radiated from his side. His vision blurred, swimming with dark spots. He tried to move, to get back up, but his body refused. His left arm felt dead. His ribs were definitely broken.

 

I'm so weak, Izuku thought, tasting copper in his mouth. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't save him.

 

Through his blurred vision, he watched the Sludge Villain rear up, preparing to slam a massive, solidified fist down on him to finish the job. Bakugo was screaming something, but the ringing in Izuku's ears drowned it out.

 

As Izuku’s head lolled to the side, his cheek pressed against the rough asphalt, he noticed something inches from his nose.

 

When he had crashed into the debris, he had smashed a small, ornate wooden box. It looked like it had been dropped by someone fleeing the initial villain attack—perhaps one of the black-market smugglers that operated in Tatooin's underbelly. The box was shattered, and a heavy, red wax seal, depicting a bizarre, many-eyed mask, was broken in two.

 

Resting amidst the splinters was an object wrapped in ancient, rotting cloth.

 

As Izuku stared at it, the cloth unraveled just enough to reveal what lay inside. It was a finger. But it was far too large to be human. It was mummified, the flesh a sickly, grave-wax purple, hardened like fossilized wood. A long, jagged, black fingernail protruded from the tip.

 

Suddenly, the world went completely silent. The roar of the flames, the shouts of the heroes, the explosions—they all vanished, replaced by a deafening, static hum.

 

The air around the finger seemed to warp. It radiated a feeling that Izuku had never experienced before. It wasn't heat. It wasn't cold. It was dread. Pure, unadulterated malice. It felt like standing at the bottom of a dark ocean, feeling the pressure of miles of black water crushing down on your chest.

 

And then, a voice echoed. Not in the air, but directly inside Izuku's skull.

 

It was a voice that sounded like grinding stones, deep, ancient, and dripping with a sadistic, arrogant amusement.

 

"Pathetic."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened, locking onto the mummified finger.

 

"A fragile vessel, throwing itself at a beast with no fangs, no claws, no power. Do you wish to die a worm, boy?"

 

The Sludge Villain's fist was descending. Death Arms was screaming. Time seemed to be moving like molasses.

 

"You want the strength to tear that filth apart? You want to save the loud one? Then take it. Eat. Prove you are more than a maggot."

 

Izuku’s mind was fracturing. He was hallucinating. He had to be. But the crushing weight of his own powerlessness, the agonizing truth that he had spent fourteen years praying for a miracle that would never come, eclipsed his fear. If there was power here—if there was even a fraction of a chance to save Bakugo—he would take it. He would take anything.

 

Izuku didn't think. He didn't hesitate. With his one good arm, his right hand, he lunged forward and snatched the mummified relic from the dirt.

 

It was cold. Disgustingly cold.

 

As the Sludge Villain's shadow eclipsed him, Izuku shoved the decaying finger into his mouth.

 

The taste was indescribable. It tasted like ash, like rotting meat, like centuries of dried blood and rusted iron. His body violently rejected it. His throat closed up, his stomach heaving in a desperate reflex to vomit the foul thing out. But Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, tilted his head back, and forced it down. The jagged black nail scratched the back of his throat, tearing the soft tissue as he swallowed it whole.

 

For a second, nothing happened. The Sludge Villain’s fist was inches from his face.

 

Then, Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

It didn't flutter. It didn't palpitate. It simply ceased beating.

 

A beat of absolute silence.

 

Then—THUD.

 

It wasn't a heartbeat. It was a detonation inside his chest.

 

An explosive wave of pressure erupted from Izuku's body, colored a sick, mesmerizing dark red and black. It didn't look like a Quirk. It didn't behave like physics. It was energy, dense, negative, and suffocating.

 

The Sludge Villain’s descending fist hit the aura and instantly vaporized. Not deflected. Not broken. It was erased, scattered into microscopic droplets of foul-smelling rain.

 

"What?!" the villain shrieked, reeling back, suddenly feeling a terror it had never known.

 

The Pro Heroes were blown backward by the sheer force of the shockwave. Windows along the street shattered simultaneously, raining glass down on the screaming bystanders. Even Toshinori Yagi had to cross his arms, bracing himself against a pressure that felt heavier than the strongest villain he had ever faced. What is this presence? Toshinori thought, his eyes wide with horror. It feels like... pure evil.

 

In the center of the cratered asphalt, the smoke began to clear.

 

Izuku Midoriya stood up. His broken ribs were completely healed. His dead arm was flexing with terrifying vitality. But he didn't look like the timid, Quirkless boy anymore.

 

Sharp, jagged black lines had manifested on his skin, tattooing his wrists, his neck, and his cheeks. Below his wide, emerald green eyes, the skin split open. A second pair of eyes, burning a bright, blood-red crimson, opened on his cheekbones.

 

He slowly lowered his hand from his face. His green hair seemed to spike sharper, wilder. When he looked up, the expression on his face was one of absolute, unhinged euphoria.

 

"Ah..." the boy breathed, his voice laced with an unnatural, dual-toned resonance. The ancient, grinding voice was perfectly overlaid with Izuku’s adolescent tenor. "The light... the feeling of flesh... it's been a long time."

 

He tilted his head back, cracking his neck, and let out a laugh. It started as a low chuckle and evolved into a booming, maniacal roar that echoed off the buildings, chilling the blood of every hero, villain, and civilian present.

 

"Who... what are you?!" the Sludge Villain stammered, its gelatinous body trembling violently. It tightened its grip on Bakugo, trying to use the boy as a shield. "Stay back! I'll snap his neck! I'll drown him!"

 

The boy with the black tattoos stopped laughing. He slowly lowered his gaze to the Sludge Villain. His two pairs of eyes narrowed with utter contempt.

 

"A cursed spirit?" he muttered, sounding almost disappointed. "No. Just a mutation. A fleshy blob mimicking life. How utterly mundane."

 

Before the Sludge Villain could react, before any Pro Hero could blink, the boy vanished.

 

There was no sound of footsteps. There was simply a vacuum of displaced air.

 

CRACK.

 

He reappeared directly in front of the Sludge Villain, suspended in mid-air. He didn't use a flashy blast of energy. He didn't summon fire or wind. He simply drew back his right fist.

 

Dark, reddish-black energy—foul and crackling—swirled around his knuckles.

 

"A maggot," the boy whispered.

 

He punched the center of the villain's mass.

 

The impact did not create a localized explosion. It created a localized catastrophe. The raw kinetic force, reinforced by an ocean of Cursed Energy, blasted through the sludge. The villain’s body didn't just scatter; it was pulverized, blown apart into a mist of green fluid that painted the walls of the alleyway for a hundred feet.

 

Bakugo, freed from the villain's grasp, was caught in the shockwave. But before he could hit the ground, a hand grabbed him by the throat.

 

Bakugo gasped, clutching the hand that held him suspended in the air. He looked down and froze.

 

It was Deku. But it wasn't. The green eyes were gone, replaced entirely by crimson red. The black tattoos slashed across his face made him look like a demon from mythology. The aura radiating off him made Bakugo's formidable Quirk feel like a cheap parlor trick.

 

"D-Deku...?" Bakugo choked out.

 

The entity occupying Izuku’s body tilted its head, inspecting the explosive boy. "Deku? Is that what the vessel is called?" He smiled, revealing teeth that seemed suddenly too sharp. "I am Ryomen Sukuna. Remember the name in the afterlife, brat."

 

Sukuna raised his free hand, extending his index and middle fingers. The air around Bakugo’s chest began to distort, a microscopic blade of cursed energy forming, ready to cleave the boy into neatly diced cubes.

 

"Let him go!" Kamui Woods roared, finally overcoming the paralyzing fear. He shot out a massive volley of wooden branches, aiming to ensnare the possessed boy.

 

Sukuna didn't even look. He merely flicked his wrist.

 

SWISH.

 

A localized wave of invisible, slashing energy erupted outward. Kamui Woods’ branches were cleanly severed into dozens of perfectly identical pieces, falling harmlessly to the ground. The slash continued, slicing through a nearby streetlamp and embedding itself deep into the concrete wall behind the heroes.

 

The Pro Heroes froze. One casual movement had nearly dismantled one of the rising stars of the hero rankings.

 

Sukuna sighed, dropping Bakugo unceremoniously to the pavement. The blonde boy landed hard, coughing and wheezing, too terrified to even ignite sparks in his palms.

 

Sukuna turned his back on him, looking out at the crowd of terrified civilians, the flashing police lights, the towering skyscrapers of Musutafu. He took a deep breath, savoring the polluted city air.

 

"A different era," Sukuna mused, spreading his arms wide. "The buildings are taller. The lights are brighter. But the fear... the fear smells exactly the same."

 

He looked at the crowd. Thousands of people, packed closely together. Women, men, children.

 

A sadistic grin split his face. "So much flesh. So many lives to sever. It’s a wonderful age. A magnificent era for a massacre!"

 

Sukuna bent his knees, Cursed Energy flaring around him like a dark halo. He prepared to launch himself into the crowd, ready to turn the Tatooin Shopping District into a slaughterhouse.

 

"Stop right there, villain!" Death Arms yelled, stepping forward, though his knees were visibly shaking.

 

Sukuna didn't even acknowledge him. He coiled his leg muscles, ready to leap.

 

But his body didn't move.

 

Sukuna blinked. The dark energy swirling around him flickered, then sputtered out. He tried to push forward, but his right hand shot up, completely against his will, and tightly gripped his own face.

 

"What?" Sukuna muttered, his crimson eyes widening in genuine surprise.

 

The fingers of his right hand dug into his cheek, pulling at the skin. Izuku’s body began to tremble violently.

 

Inside the shared mindscape of the body, a battle was raging.

 

Get out, a voice echoed. It wasn't the voice of a king. It was the terrified, desperate, but unimaginably stubborn voice of a fourteen-year-old boy.

 

What is this? Sukuna thought, feeling a tremendous, impossible resistance pulling at his control. The vessel... he’s fighting back? No, he’s not just fighting back. He’s suppressing me!

 

"I said..." Izuku’s voice gasped out loud, fighting for control of his own vocal cords. The dual tone was fading, leaving only the boy's strained tenor. "...don't hurt them!"

 

"You insolent little brat!" Sukuna roared through Izuku’s mouth. "I am the King of Curses! You cannot contain me!"

 

"It's my body!" Izuku screamed, his left hand coming up to grip his right arm, violently wrestling himself to a standstill. The second pair of eyes below his main ones began to rapidly blink, struggling to stay open.

 

Bakugo, coughing on the ground, stared in absolute bewilderment as Midoriya literally fought himself, his face twisting between a demonic sneer and a look of agonizing effort.

 

In the crowd, Toshinori Yagi took a step forward, his jaw slacked in awe. He's pushing it back. Whatever that evil is... that boy is overpowering it with sheer willpower!

 

"I won't let you!" Izuku roared, dropping to his knees. The pavement cracked beneath him. "I swallowed that thing... to save Kacchan! Not to let a monster kill everyone!"

 

Damn you! Sukuna’s voice echoed entirely inside Izuku’s head now, fading away like a receding storm. I will shred your soul to pieces, you little—

 

With a final, desperate gasp, Izuku ripped his hands away from his face.

 

The black markings faded, sinking back into his skin like disappearing ink. The second pair of eyes vanished completely, leaving unblemished skin behind. The terrifying, suffocating aura of Cursed Energy evaporated into the cool night air, leaving only the smell of smoke and ozone.

 

Izuku pitched forward, catching himself on his hands and knees. He was panting heavily, sweat pouring down his face. His green eyes were wide, panicked, and entirely human.

 

He looked at his hands. There was no blood on them. He looked up at Bakugo, who was staring back at him as if he were a ghost. He looked at the Pro Heroes, who were slowly inching forward, weapons drawn and Quirks activated, treating him like a ticking time bomb.

 

"I... I did it," Izuku whispered, his vision beginning to spin. The adrenaline was crashing. The physical toll of containing the greatest curse in human history, combined with the lingering shock of the Sludge Villain's attack, was too much for his Quirkless body.

 

"Don't move!" Death Arms shouted, pointing a finger at him. "Whatever you just did, put your hands behind your head!"

 

Izuku tried to comply, but his arms felt like lead. The world tilted sideways. The flashing red and blue lights of the police cars blurred into streaks of color.

 

Before his face could hit the concrete, a massive hand caught him by the shoulder.

 

Izuku blearily looked up. Standing over him, out of breath and looking incredibly frail in his baggy white t-shirt, was a skeletal blonde man. Toshinori Yagi.

 

"Rest now, young man," Toshinori said softly, his voice carrying a weight of profound respect. "You have fought a battle none of us could comprehend."

 

Izuku wanted to ask what he meant, to apologize for throwing his notebook, but the darkness claimed him, pulling him down into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

Far away, beneath the towering glass and steel of U.A. High School, in a subterranean facility designed to hold the most dangerous individuals in the country, a series of alarms silently blinked to life.

 

Sitting in a dimly lit office, a man with unkempt black hair and a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck stared at a monitor. Shouta Aizawa rubbed his tired eyes, reading the seismic and energy readings transmitted from the Tatooin district.

 

The monitor was flashing a warning protocol that hadn't been activated in over a century. A protocol dating back to a time before Quirks, before heroes, when humanity fought in the shadows against unseen terrors.

 

WARNING. SPECIAL GRADE CURSED OBJECT ACTIVATION: RYOMEN SUKUNA.

 

A small, white creature resembling a chimera of a mouse, dog, and bear hopped onto Aizawa’s desk, holding a cup of steaming tea. Principal Nezu’s normally cheerful face was entirely devoid of a smile.

 

"It seems," Nezu said quietly, sipping his tea, "that the world is about to change very abruptly, Aizawa."

 

Aizawa narrowed his eyes at the screen, where a police helicopter feed showed paramedics loading a green-haired boy onto a stretcher. The boy was unconscious, but Aizawa could see the faint, residual traces of black ink beneath the boy's skin on the thermal imaging.

 

"A vessel," Aizawa muttered, his voice flat but carrying a lethal edge. "After a thousand years. Why now?"

 

"Fate has a cruel sense of humor," Nezu replied. "The Hero Public Safety Commission will want the boy executed immediately, of course. Protocol dictates a vessel of Sukuna must be destroyed before the soul can fully root itself."

 

Aizawa stood up, unwinding his capture weapon slightly. "Then I should head down to the precinct. If he wakes up and loses control, a police station won't be able to hold him. The whole block will be wiped out."

 

"Wait, Shouta," Nezu said, raising a paw. "Look closely at the footage. Notice anything peculiar?"

 

Aizawa reviewed the last ten seconds of the helicopter feed. The boy had suppressed the curse. Voluntarily. Without any talismans, without any binding vows, a seemingly ordinary child had taken control of his own brain back from the King of Curses.

 

"He pushed it down," Aizawa said, a hint of disbelief cracking his stoic facade. "That's... impossible. It's a lethal poison. Even if a human could survive ingesting a finger, their ego would be instantly obliterated."

 

"And yet, there he is," Nezu said, his black eyes gleaming with a sudden, dangerous curiosity. "A boy who can cage a god."

 

Nezu turned away from the monitor, looking out into the dark, reinforced corridors of the facility.

 

"Tell the police to transfer him directly to U.A.’s black site, Aizawa. Do not let the Commission get their hands on him."

 

"Are you insane?" Aizawa snapped. "You want to bring a walking apocalypse onto a school campus?"

 

"I want to see if the boy can be saved," Nezu countered gently, though there was steel in his tone. "If he can control it, we may have just found the ultimate deterrent against the rising tide of villains. And if he can't..."

 

Nezu looked back at Aizawa, his gaze falling to the capture weapon around the underground hero's neck.

 

"...I trust you will know exactly what to do."

 

Aizawa sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. He hated it when Nezu got like this. It meant late nights, massive headaches, and usually, a lot of paperwork. But looking at the screen, at the unconscious kid who had just survived the impossible, Aizawa felt a rare spark of intrigue.

 

"Fine," Aizawa grumbled, turning toward the door. "But if that thing takes over, I'm not hesitating. I'll erase whatever Quirk he might have and take his head off."

 

"Understood," Nezu chirped, his cheerful demeanor returning in a flash. "Have a safe trip, Shouta!"

 

 

 

Deep within the subconscious void of Izuku Midoriya's mind, a new architecture was forming.

 

The sterile, quiet emptiness of a Quirkless soul was being forcibly reshaped. Blood-red water flooded the floor of his mindscape. Massive, rib-like structures of decaying bone erupted from the water, forming a horrific, macabre shrine. Skulls of beasts and humans alike were piled high, creating a throne of death and despair.

 

Sitting atop that throne, resting his chin on a fist, Ryomen Sukuna opened his eyes.

 

He was trapped inside the innate domain of his own vessel. He could feel the boy's pulse, hear his breathing, sense the weak, pathetic dreams of heroism floating in the periphery of his consciousness.

 

Sukuna looked down at his own hands, marveling at the feeling of having a physical anchor to the world of the living once more, even if he was currently barred from the driver's seat.

 

"Izuku Midoriya," Sukuna whispered, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.

 

A slow, terrifying smile spread across the King of Curses' face.

 

"You think you've won, little hero? You think you can cage me?" Sukuna chuckled, the sound echoing endlessly through the valley of bones. "This is just the beginning. I will carve you from the inside out. I will make you watch as I slaughter everything you hold dear. And when your will finally breaks... this body will be mine."

 

Sukuna leaned back on his throne of skulls, closing his crimson eyes, and prepared to wait. He had waited a thousand years in the darkness. He could wait a little longer for the boy to slip.

 

For the first time in his life, Izuku Midoriya was no longer alone.

 

He was a hero in the making. And he was a vessel for a god of death. The lines between the two would soon blur, and the world of heroes and villains would never be the same.

 

 

 

Consciousness returned to Izuku Midoriya not as a gentle awakening, but as a violent, gasping breach.

 

He inhaled sharply, his lungs expanding against a torso that felt as though it had been trampled by a stampede of rhinos. The air he drew in was sterile, chilled to an uncomfortable degree, and smelled faintly of antiseptic and ozone.

 

His eyes snapped open, expecting to see the starless sky above the Tatooin Shopping District, the roaring inferno of the Sludge Villain’s attack, or the terrified crimson eyes of Katsuki Bakugo. Instead, he was greeted by a blinding, harsh white light that forced him to squeeze his eyes shut again. A sharp, throbbing ache pulsed behind his temples—a migraine that felt less like a headache and more like a physical pressure pressing against the inside of his skull.

 

Where am I?

 

Izuku tried to bring his hands up to rub his eyes, only to find they wouldn't move. A cold, metallic clinking sound echoed in the quiet room.

 

Panic, sudden and icy, flooded his veins. He wrenched his arms, discovering that his wrists were bound securely to the armrests of a heavy steel chair. Thick, reinforced cuffs dug into his skin. He kicked his legs, finding his ankles similarly restrained. He wasn't just tied up; he was anchored to the floor.

 

He forced his eyes open, squinting through the glare until his pupils adjusted.

 

He was in a square, windowless room composed entirely of reinforced concrete. The walls were thick, lacking any seams or doors save for one heavy steel bulkhead directly in front of him. There was no mirror, no clock, no furniture other than the chair he was bolted to and a simple metal table a few feet away. It looked less like a hospital room and more like a high-security interrogation cell.

 

What happened? Izuku's mind raced, his encyclopedic memory scrambling to piece together the fragmented events of the evening. The villain attack... Kacchan was dying... the heroes couldn't do anything. I ran in. I was thrown back.

 

And then, a memory so visceral it made him gag breached the surface of his thoughts.

 

He remembered the alleyway. The shattered wooden box. The cloth unraveling. The mummified, purplish finger with the jagged black nail.

 

He remembered the voice in his head, grinding and ancient. He remembered the taste of centuries-old rot sliding down his throat.

 

I ate it, Izuku realized, his breathing growing shallow and rapid. I ate that... that thing. And then...

 

He remembered the power. A terrifying, intoxicating surge of dark energy that had erupted from his very pores. He remembered obliterating the Sludge Villain with a single, casual punch. He remembered the feeling of another consciousness—a vast, suffocating presence—stepping into the driver's seat of his body, viewing the modern world with sadistic hunger.

 

"I am Ryomen Sukuna. Remember the name in the afterlife, brat."

 

"Oh god," Izuku whispered, his voice cracking in the desolate silence of the room. He trembled against his restraints. He had lost control. He had let a monster loose. Did he hurt someone? Did he kill Kacchan? Did he attack the heroes?

 

Calm down, he told himself, though his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. You stopped it. You grabbed your own face. You pushed him back. I... I think I pushed him back.

 

As if summoned by the mere thought of him, a low, rumbling chuckle vibrated not in the room, but deep within the cavernous recesses of Izuku’s own mind.

 

"You are a remarkably pathetic creature," the voice purred, dripping with a venomous amalgamation of amusement and utter contempt. "Trembling like a beaten dog in a cage. Is this the 'hero' who thought he could leash a god?"

 

Izuku froze, his breath catching in his throat. He darted his eyes around the empty room, but there was no one there. The voice was echoing from the inside of his skull, vibrating against his brain stem.

 

"Get out," Izuku whispered, his voice shaking. "Get out of my head."

 

"Your head?" The entity—Sukuna—laughed, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "Boy, this flesh belongs to me now. You are merely renting the space until I decide to tear your soul to shreds and take the helm permanently. Enjoy the silence while it lasts."

 

Before Izuku could respond, the heavy steel bulkhead door hissed, the sound of pressurized locks disengaging echoing loudly.

 

Izuku’s head snapped up.

 

Three figures entered the room, stepping into the harsh fluorescent light.

 

The first was a tall man wearing a tan trench coat and a fedora, looking every bit the classic noir detective. Izuku recognized him from various hero news broadcasts: Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi of the police force.

 

The second was a man who looked like he hadn't slept in a decade. He wore baggy black clothing, and a thick, grey capture weapon was wrapped voluminously around his neck. His long, unkempt black hair framed a face set in a permanent scowl, and his eyes—dark and piercing—fixed on Izuku with a predatory intensity. Izuku’s fanboy brain instantly supplied the name: Eraserhead. The Underground Hero.

 

But it was the third figure that truly threw Izuku off balance. Walking in between the two men was a small creature, roughly the size of a large dog, covered in pristine white fur. It walked on two legs, wore a tailored three-piece suit, and possessed the face of a mouse, the paws of a dog, and the rounded ears of a bear.

 

Principal Nezu of U.A. High School? Izuku thought, utterly bewildered. What is the principal of the top hero academy in Japan doing here?

 

The door hissed shut behind them, sealing with a heavy, final thud.

 

Detective Tsukauchi stepped forward, pulling a small notepad from his coat. "Izuku Midoriya. Fourteen years old. Student at Aldera Junior High." He didn't ask; he stated it. "My name is Detective Tsukauchi. My Quirk is called Lie Detector. I can tell, with absolute certainty, whether any statement you make is a truth or a falsehood. Do you understand?"

 

Izuku swallowed hard, his throat dry. "Y-Yes, sir."

 

Tsukauchi nodded. "Good. We have a lot of ground to cover, and very little time. Let's start with the basics. Are you associated with the League of Villains, the Shie Hassaikai, or any known criminal smuggling syndicate?"

 

"No!" Izuku blurted out, straining against his cuffs. "I'm just a student! I don't know any villains!"

 

Tsukauchi glanced at Eraserhead and Nezu. "True."

 

Eraserhead stepped closer, leaning over the metal table. His dark eyes bored into Izuku’s, analyzing every micro-expression. "Then explain what happened in the Tatooin district, Midoriya. You, a supposedly Quirkless middle schooler, effortlessly obliterated a villain that had several Pro Heroes at a standstill. Your medical records say you have the extra toe joint. You are Quirkless. Is that correct?"

 

"Yes," Izuku said softly, looking down at his restrained hands. "I don't have a Quirk."

 

"True," Tsukauchi affirmed, though he frowned, clearly confused by the discrepancy between the boy's medical history and the explosive power displayed on the street.

 

"If you don't have a Quirk," Eraserhead said, his voice dangerously low, "then how did you vaporize a sludge mutation with a single punch? What did you ingest in that alleyway?"

 

Izuku flinched. The memory of the rotting taste coated his tongue again. "I... I found a box. When I was thrown into the alley. It was broken open. There was this... this thing inside. It looked like a finger. A really old, dried-up finger."

 

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Eraserhead and Tsukauchi exchanged a grim, darkened look. Nezu’s perpetual smile faded into a thin, solemn line.

 

"And you ate it," Eraserhead said, not as a question, but as a horrifying realization.

 

"I didn't want to!" Izuku cried out, tears of residual terror pricking his eyes. "Kacchan—Katsuki Bakugo—was dying! The heroes couldn't do anything! I heard a voice... it told me I was weak. It told me if I wanted the power to save him, I had to eat it. I was desperate! I just wanted to save my friend!"

 

Tsukauchi closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "It's all true."

 

Eraserhead pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering a string of curses under his breath. "A teenager. Of course it had to be a reckless, suicidal teenager."

 

"Why..." Izuku stammered, looking between the three silent adults. "Why am I chained up? What was that thing I ate? When I ate it, something else took over. It said its name was... Ryomen Sukuna."

 

At the mention of the name, Eraserhead’s capture weapon actually flared out slightly, as if reacting to the mere syllables.

 

Principal Nezu finally stepped forward, his small paws clasped behind his back. He looked up at Izuku with dark, intelligent, and deeply sorrowful eyes.

 

"Izuku Midoriya," Nezu began, his voice calm, measured, and entirely lacking its usual cheerful lilt. "What do you know about the history of Quirks?"

 

Izuku blinked, thrown off by the academic question. "Uh... the first glowing baby was born in Qing-Qing City. After that, paranormal abilities started appearing globally. Society collapsed for a while until the Pro Hero system was established to maintain order."

 

"That is the sanitized, modern history," Nezu corrected gently. "But the world is much older than the advent of Quirks, Midoriya. Long before the glowing baby, long before heroes and villains in spandex, humanity possessed a different kind of power. A darker power. It was born not of genetics or evolution, but of the human mind."

 

Nezu paced slowly in front of the table.

 

"Humanity leaks negative emotion. Fear, grief, anger, hatred, jealousy. In the ancient past, when large amounts of these negative emotions pooled together, they created a dark energy. We called it 'Cursed Energy.' When this energy grew dense enough, it manifested into physical, terrifying monsters known as Curses."

 

Izuku stared at the principal, completely captivated despite his fear. This sounded like dark fantasy, not history. "Curses?"

 

"Yes," Nezu continued. "And there were individuals—Shamans, or Jujutsu Sorcerers—who learned to harness their own Cursed Energy to fight these monsters in secret. It was a bloody, endless shadow war that raged for millennia, completely hidden from the general public. However, around two centuries ago, human biology began to aggressively mutate. The 'Quirk' factor emerged. As Quirks proliferated, the human brain fundamentally changed. The average human stopped leaking Cursed Energy, and began expressing their individuality through Quirks instead. The Curses starved. The Sorcerers faded into myth. The shadow war ended, replaced by the flashy, public battles of Heroes and Villains you see today."

 

Nezu stopped pacing and looked directly into Izuku’s eyes.

 

"But the remnants of that dark era still exist, hidden away in vaults and sealed shrines. The most dangerous of these remnants are Cursed Objects—indestructible artifacts that carry a concentration of pure, unadulterated evil. And you, Izuku Midoriya, have just consumed a piece of the worst one in human history."

 

Nezu gestured vaguely to Eraserhead, who pulled a tablet from his coat, tapping the screen before holding it up for Izuku to see.

 

It was an ancient, faded scroll, depicting a demonic figure with four arms and two faces, standing atop a mountain of butchered corpses.

 

"Over a thousand years ago, during the Heian Era, there was a Sorcerer who transcended humanity and became a curse himself," Nezu explained, his voice turning grim. "He was an unprecedented calamity. He slaughtered countless Sorcerers. He could level cities with a wave of his hand. He was the undisputed King of Curses. His name was Ryomen Sukuna."

 

Izuku felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him ice-cold. The creature inside him... a thousand-year-old calamity?

 

"When Sukuna was finally defeated," Nezu continued, "his body could not be entirely destroyed. His remains—his twenty fingers—were preserved as Special Grade Cursed Objects. They are highly toxic. If a normal human were to ingest one, it would be a lethal, agonizing poison. You would die instantly."

 

"But I didn't die," Izuku whispered, his chest tightening.

 

"No," Eraserhead said bluntly, leaning in close. "You didn't. Which means you are a one-in-a-million genetic anomaly. You are a 'Vessel.' You didn't just survive the poison, kid. You absorbed his soul into your body."

 

The reality of the situation crashed down on Izuku like a physical weight. He wasn't just sick. He was infected by an ancient god of death. And that god was currently sitting in the back of his mind, listening to every word.

 

"He flatters me," Sukuna’s voice echoed in Izuku’s mind, a dark amusement coloring the ancient tone. "But they speak the truth, brat. I am a plague they cannot cure."

 

"So..." Izuku’s voice trembled, tears finally spilling over his cheeks. "What happens to me now? Can you... can you take it out? A surgery?"

 

"No," Nezu said softly. "Cursed Objects cannot be destroyed or surgically removed once assimilated. The finger has completely integrated into your cellular structure."

 

Silence stretched in the room, thick and suffocating. Izuku looked at Eraserhead’s grim expression, at Tsukauchi’s averted eyes, and finally at Nezu.

 

"Then..." Izuku swallowed, forcing the words out. "Why am I chained to a chair in a concrete bunker?"

 

Eraserhead crossed his arms, his posture rigid. "Because, under international anomalous law, the emergence of a Vessel of Sukuna is classified as an extinction-level threat. The Hero Public Safety Commission was notified the moment the energy signature was detected. They have already passed their judgment."

 

Eraserhead looked Izuku dead in the eye, offering no pity, only cold truth.

 

"They want you executed, Midoriya. Tonight."

 

The word hung in the air. Executed. Izuku felt a ringing start in his ears. Fourteen years old. No Quirk. A lifetime of bullying, a shattered dream, and now... a death sentence. It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. He had only wanted to save someone. He had only wanted to be a hero.

 

He slumped back in the chair, the fight draining out of him. He closed his eyes.

 

"I understand," Izuku whispered, his voice broken. "If... if I lose control again, and that thing gets out... people will die. Kacchan could die. My mom..." A sob ripped from his throat at the thought of Inko Midoriya receiving the news. "If it has to be me to keep everyone safe... then do it."

 

Tsukauchi looked away, his jaw clenched tight. Eraserhead’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch, clearly unprepared for the boy to accept his own murder so readily.

 

"Are you serious?" Eraserhead demanded, his voice cracking slightly with incredulity. "You're just giving up? You're a child."

 

"What else can I do?!" Izuku cried out, straining against the cuffs, tears flowing freely. "You said I can't be cured! I felt him, Mr. Aizawa! When he took over, I felt his mind. He wants to kill everything! If you don't kill me, he's going to slaughter innocent people!"

 

"Fascinating," Sukuna mused in the dark of his mind. "You would offer your own neck to the guillotine to save sheep you do not know. How wonderfully pathetic."

 

"I won't let him out!" Izuku shouted, seemingly to the empty room, but Eraserhead knew he was talking to the demon inside.

 

Before Eraserhead could speak again, the heavy steel door hissed open a second time.

 

A massive, towering figure ducked through the doorway. Even in the harsh, unflattering light of the bunker, his presence was radiant. Golden blonde hair, a tailored suit that stretched over impossible muscles, and a shadow-cast face that commanded absolute authority.

 

"They will not touch a hair on your head, young Midoriya!"

 

Izuku gasped. "A-All Might?!"

 

The Number One Hero stepped into the room, his massive hand resting on Eraserhead's shoulder. Aizawa merely grunted, not looking away from Izuku.

 

"I apologize for my late arrival, Principal Nezu," All Might said, his booming voice echoing off the concrete walls. He looked down at Izuku, his usual wide smile absent, replaced by a look of profound, solemn respect. "I was... dealing with the Commission. Arguing on your behalf, my boy."

 

"My... behalf?" Izuku stammered, utterly bewildered. The man who had crushed his dreams just hours ago was now defending him?

 

All Might stepped around the table and knelt down so he was at eye level with the chained boy.

 

"Midoriya," All Might said gently. "Earlier today, I told you that you could not be a hero without power. I was a fool. And I was wrong."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched.

 

"When the Pro Heroes stood paralyzed, when I myself was too weak to step forward, a Quirkless boy with a brave heart was the only one who moved," All Might continued, his blue eyes shining with genuine emotion. "You moved before you thought. You moved to save a life, even when it meant sacrificing your own. That is the essence of a true hero."

 

All Might placed a massive, warm hand over Izuku’s trembling, restrained hands.

 

"You consumed a nightmare to save a friend. I saw you wrestle a demon back into its cage through sheer force of will. The Commission sees a threat. But I see a boy with the strongest heart I have ever encountered."

 

All Might stood up, turning to Nezu and Aizawa. "Principal, please tell him the conditions."

 

Nezu nodded, stepping forward again. "The Commission wanted you dead, Midoriya. But U.A. High School operates with a certain degree of autonomy. All Might and I have brokered a deal with the Commission. A suspension of your sentence, under very strict conditions."

 

Izuku stopped crying, his eyes wide as he looked at the animal principal. "A... deal?"

 

"Sukuna has twenty fingers," Nezu explained, holding up a paw. "Currently, nineteen are still scattered across Japan, hidden or lost. Sooner or later, someone else might find them. A villain might consume them, or a weaker vessel might be possessed, unleashing fractions of his power into the world. You are a unique radar, Midoriya. As a vessel, you can sense the other fragments."

 

Nezu lowered his paw, his expression hardening.

 

"The deal is this: You will enroll at U.A. High School. You will be trained to harness the Cursed Energy you have now inherited. Under our supervision, you will hunt down and consume the remaining nineteen fingers. Once you have absorbed the entirety of Sukuna's soul into your body... you will be executed."

 

The words hit the room with the force of a physical blow.

 

Executed. The end result was exactly the same. The only difference was the timeline.

 

"We are offering you a delay of execution," Eraserhead said bluntly, pulling no punches. "In exchange, you become a sponge for a toxic plague. You will take all of Sukuna's evil down with you when you die. It is a suicide mission. But it saves the world from him."

 

Izuku stared at his lap. Hunt down the fingers. Eat them. And then die. It was a macabre, horrific destiny. A far cry from the glittering, smiling hero he had always dreamed of being.

 

"And if I refuse?" Izuku asked quietly.

 

"Then the Commission kills you tonight," Aizawa replied evenly. "And the remaining nineteen fingers remain a ticking time bomb for society."

 

All Might looked pained, his fists clenched at his sides. "I know it is a cruel burden, young man. A burden no child should bear. But you have been given a terrible, unique power."

 

Izuku closed his eyes. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. The presence of Sukuna was still a dark stain on his soul. But beneath the fear, beneath the despair, something else began to ignite.

 

I can still save people.

 

He wouldn't be the Symbol of Peace. He wouldn't get a long, happy life as a Pro Hero. But he could be a shield. He could take this ancient evil into himself and carry it to the grave, ensuring no one else ever had to face it. It was a tragic, ugly kind of heroism. But it was heroism nonetheless.

 

"There's one more condition," Eraserhead said, breaking the silence. He stepped up to the chair and leaned down, his face inches from Izuku’s. The underground hero's eyes flared a brilliant, glowing red, his hair levitating as his Quirk activated. "If you lose control. If you let that thing take the wheel for even a second and threaten civilian lives... I won't wait for all twenty fingers. I will erase your ability to channel that energy, and I will sever your head from your shoulders myself. Do you understand me?"

 

It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.

 

Izuku looked into Eraserhead's glowing red eyes. He didn't flinch. The tears had stopped.

 

"I understand," Izuku said, his voice remarkably steady.

 

He looked at Nezu, then at All Might.

 

"I'll do it," Izuku declared, his green eyes burning with a fierce, unbreakable resolve that made even Eraserhead pause. "I'll eat the fingers. I'll take him with me. I accept the deal."

 

Inside the bloody shrine of his mind, Sukuna’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, before he let out a low, echoing laugh. "Oh, this will be entertaining. Let us see how long this fragile martyrdom lasts, boy."

 

Nezu smiled, a genuine, albeit melancholy, expression. "Very well, Izuku Midoriya. Welcome to U.A. High School."

 

Aizawa deactivated his Quirk, his hair falling back to his shoulders. He reached into his coat and produced a small key, unlocking the heavy cuffs binding Izuku to the chair.

 

Izuku rubbed his raw wrists, standing up on shaky legs. He felt different. He felt a hum of dark, thrumming energy beneath his skin, completely alien to his body, yet inextricably bound to it.

 

"Come with me, kid," Aizawa said, turning toward the heavy steel door. "Your mother has been informed that you were caught in the villain attack and sustained a unique Quirk awakening. We told her you're being held at a U.A. medical facility for observation. You'll stay here tonight. Tomorrow, your real training begins."

 

 

 

The following morning, Izuku found himself standing in a subterranean training gymnasium deep beneath the U.A. campus. The walls were lined with reinforced steel plates, scarred and dented from years of rigorous Quirk testing.

 

He was dressed in a standard U.A. physical education uniform, the dark blue track suit with white lines feeling slightly too big for his scrawny frame.

 

Standing across from him was Shouta Aizawa, looking as exhausted as ever, a clipboard in his hand.

 

"Let's get one thing straight, Midoriya," Aizawa said, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. "I am an Underground Hero. My Quirk, Erasure, works by shutting down the Quirk Factors in a person's DNA. Last night, we ran blood tests on you."

 

Aizawa tossed a medical file onto a nearby bench.

 

"Your DNA has mutated. The finger you ate didn't just give you a parasite; it fundamentally altered your biology to make you a suitable vessel. You are no longer Quirkless, but you don't have a Quirk, either. You have a physiology that mirrors the ancient Sorcerers."

 

Izuku tilted his head. "What does that mean for me?"

 

"It means," Aizawa sighed, "that I can erase your ability to externalize Cursed Energy, but I cannot erase the physical enhancements your body has undergone. You are, at a baseline, superhumanly strong, fast, and durable now. Like a permanent, low-level mutation Quirk."

 

Izuku looked down at his hands, clenching them into fists. He had felt it. The lightness in his limbs. The absence of pain from his previously broken ribs.

 

"But raw strength won't be enough to hunt down Special Grade Curses," Aizawa continued, dropping his clipboard and walking towards a heavy, reinforced striking dummy bolted to the floor. "You need to learn how to actively harness the Cursed Energy sleeping inside you. Principal Nezu provided me with the ancient texts U.A. keeps in its archives regarding Jujutsu. To use Cursed Energy, you must draw on negative emotion."

 

Aizawa stopped next to the dummy. "Anger. Fear. Grief. Regret. These are the fuel sources for a Sorcerer. You have to isolate a negative emotion in your gut, let it boil, and then channel it through your limbs like electricity."

 

Izuku grimaced. "Negative emotion? But... heroes are supposed to smile. Like All Might. They're supposed to be beacons of hope."

 

"You aren't a traditional hero anymore, kid," Aizawa said coldly. "You are an exterminator. Hope doesn't kill curses. Violence does. Now, try it. Punch the dummy. Channel your energy."

 

Izuku took a deep breath. He stepped up to the dummy, planting his feet. He closed his eyes and tried to find a negative emotion.

 

Fear.

 

He thought about the Sludge Villain. He thought about the suffocating feeling of being helpless. He thought about the terrifying, ancient monster sitting in his subconscious, waiting for him to slip.

 

A spark of dark, reddish-black energy flickered around his right fist, crackling like static electricity.

 

Yes! Izuku thought, pulling his arm back.

 

But the moment he felt the energy, another sensation accompanied it. A cold, sadistic whisper in his ear.

 

"Yes, boy. Hate them. Hate the weakness. Let it out. Give it to me."

 

Izuku gasped, his concentration shattering. The energy vanished instantly. He stumbled back, clutching his head. "N-No!"

 

Aizawa frowned, his eyes narrowing. "What happened?"

 

"He's there," Izuku panted, looking at his trembling hands. "When I draw on the negative feelings... it feels like I'm opening a door for him. If I pull too much, he's going to slip through."

 

Aizawa crossed his arms. This was the fundamental paradox of the boy's existence. To fight, he needed the very energy that empowered his possessor. If he repressed his emotions to keep Sukuna at bay, he was useless in combat. If he unleashed his emotions to fight, he risked losing control of his body.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa said softly, walking over and placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "You cannot be afraid of your own shadow. You tamed him once in the alleyway. You are the master of this body. The energy is yours to command. You just have to synthesize the emotion without letting it consume your rationality."

 

Izuku looked up at his teacher. Aizawa wasn't smiling, but there was a fierce, demanding belief in his eyes. He wasn't looking at Izuku like a monster; he was looking at him like a student who needed to pass a test.

 

"Think of a different negative emotion," Aizawa suggested. "Not fear. Not hatred. Those are chaotic. Think of something precise."

 

Izuku took a deep breath, centering himself.

 

Not fear. Not hatred for the villain.

 

Regret.

 

He thought about the ten years he had spent apologizing to his mother for being Quirkless. He thought about the notebook he had desperately clung to, the pathetic delusion that he could be a hero without making sacrifices. He thought about the fact that he was going to die, and he would never get to be the Number One Hero.

 

A profound, quiet sorrow settled in his gut. It wasn't explosive like anger. It was dense. Heavy.

 

He didn't hear Sukuna's voice this time. The curse thrived on chaos and malice, not on quiet, focused melancholy.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were completely devoid of panic.

 

He channeled that heavy, dense regret, pulling it up from his stomach, through his chest, and down his right arm.

 

The Cursed Energy flared to life. It was brilliant, a swirling aura of deep red and black that crackled around his knuckles like localized lightning. The air in the room grew heavy, the pressure causing Aizawa to subconsciously step back.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He stepped into a textbook martial arts stance—one he had analyzed and copied from a hundred pro-hero fights on YouTube—and threw a straight punch at the reinforced dummy.

 

SMASH.

 

The physical impact of Izuku’s fist hit first. The boy's newly mutated superhuman strength dented the heavy steel plate of the dummy with a deafening clang.

 

But that wasn't all.

 

A split second later, the dark energy swirling around his fist exploded forward. It was a delayed reaction, like a secondary detonation.

 

BOOM.

 

The secondary impact of the Cursed Energy hit the exact same spot. The reinforced steel buckled completely, tearing off its hinges and flying backward, embedding itself deep into the concrete wall of the gymnasium with a shower of dust and debris.

 

Silence descended on the training room as the dust settled.

 

Izuku stood frozen, his fist still extended, staring at the crater in the wall. The dark energy dissipated from his hand. He hadn't broken a single bone. His arm felt perfectly fine.

 

Aizawa stared at the embedded dummy, his eyes wide.

 

"Did you... do that on purpose?" Aizawa asked, his voice betraying a hint of awe.

 

Izuku blinked, shaking his head. "N-No. I just tried to punch it. But... the energy felt like it was lagging behind my body. Like my fist hit it, and then the energy caught up a second later."

 

Aizawa walked over to the crater, inspecting the torn metal.

 

"Fascinating," Aizawa muttered. "Your baseline physical speed and strength have increased so drastically that your conscious mind hasn't adapted to channeling the energy at the same speed. You're physically moving faster than your Cursed Energy can flow."

 

Aizawa turned back to Izuku, a feral, predatory grin pulling at the corner of his mouth—a look that meant Eraserhead saw potential.

 

"In the martial arts world, a delayed strike is considered a flaw," Aizawa said, walking back toward Izuku. "But with this kind of raw, destructive power? A double-impact could shatter an opponent's guard. The physical punch stuns them, and the delayed energy obliterates them from the inside out."

 

Aizawa picked up his clipboard, tapping it against his leg.

 

"We're going to refine this, Midoriya. This will be your signature technique until you can control the flow perfectly. We'll call it the Divergent Fist."

 

Izuku looked down at his right hand, opening and closing his fingers. The power was terrifying. It was dark, it was born of sorrow, and it carried the taint of a demon king.

 

But it was his.

 

"The U.A. Entrance Exam is in ten months," Aizawa stated, his tone shifting back to the strict instructor. "The Commission expects you to fail. They expect you to lose control, so they have an excuse to terminate you before the school year even begins. We are not going to give them that satisfaction. For the next ten months, I am going to break you down and rebuild you into a weapon that can control this curse."

 

Aizawa pointed a finger at Izuku's chest.

 

"You are going to learn hand-to-hand combat. You are going to learn how to walk, breathe, and bleed Cursed Energy. And you are going to pass that exam."

 

Izuku Midoriya stood up straight, his green eyes locking onto Aizawa’s dark gaze. The timid, stuttering fanboy was gone, burned away in the alleyway fire and replaced by something forged in necessity.

 

"Yes, Sensei," Izuku said firmly.

 

Deep within the abyss of his soul, Ryomen Sukuna watched the exchange from his throne of skulls. The King of Curses rested his chin on his hand, a wide, serrated smile stretching across his face.

 

"Grow strong, little vessel," Sukuna whispered into the dark. "Fatten yourself on power and hope. It will make it all the sweeter when I tear it away."

 

The countdown had begun. Ten months until the Entrance Exam. Ten months to master the demon within, or die trying.

 

Izuku clenched his fist, the faint scent of ash and ozone lingering in the air. He was ready.

 

 

 

The alarm clock didn't even have the chance to ring.

 

At 4:00 AM, Izuku Midoriya was already awake, suspended upside down from the reinforced pull-up bar he had installed in his bedroom doorway. Sweat dripped from his brow, pooling on the floor beneath him as he executed his four-hundredth inverted crunch. His breath came in steady, rhythmic exhales, a stark contrast to the frantic, panicked hyperventilation that used to define his life ten months ago.

 

Four hundred and one. Four hundred and two.

 

He dropped from the bar, landing on his feet with the silent, predatory grace of a feline. He stood up straight, rolling his shoulders, and walked over to the full-length mirror leaning against his closet.

 

The boy looking back at him was almost unrecognizable from the timid, scrawny middle schooler who had stood on a rooftop and asked All Might if a Quirkless nobody could be a hero. Ten months of relentless, agonizing, bone-breaking training under the draconian tutelage of Shouta Aizawa had completely overhauled his physique. His shoulders were broad, his arms packed with dense, coiled muscle. His torso was a tapestry of lean, hard angles, marred by a few faint, silvery scars—souvenirs from when he hadn't dodged Aizawa's capture weapon fast enough.

 

But the physical changes were nothing compared to the fundamental shift in his biology. He wasn't just 'fit'. He was a biological anomaly. The mummified finger of Ryomen Sukuna had rewritten his cellular structure, optimizing him to serve as a vessel for the King of Curses. His bones were denser than steel. His muscle fibers possessed the tensile strength of industrial cables.

 

Izuku stared into his own emerald eyes in the mirror. For a fleeting fraction of a second, the reflection blinked, and a second pair of blood-red eyes flashed open on his cheekbones.

 

"Nervous, brat?" the ancient, grating voice echoed in the cavern of his mind. "You reek of anxiety. It’s pathetic. Let me take the wheel for the exam. I’ll reduce their little testing ground to a crater of ash and twisted metal. It will take less than a minute."

 

Izuku didn't flinch. Ten months ago, that voice would have sent him into a spiral of panic. Now, it was just an annoying, homicidal roommate.

 

"Shut up," Izuku whispered, his voice calm and entirely devoid of fear. He grabbed a towel, wiping the sweat from his neck. "I told you, you're not getting out."

 

"We shall see," Sukuna chuckled, a low, rumbling vibration that made Izuku's teeth ache before the presence receded back into the dark depths of his subconscious.

 

Izuku let out a long breath, splashing cold water on his face at the bathroom sink. Today was the day. The U.A. High School Entrance Exam. The Hero Public Safety Commission was watching. The Pro Heroes were watching. If he failed, if he showed even a sliver of instability, the Commission’s snipers, who would undoubtedly be stationed on the perimeter of the testing grounds, would have the green light to put a bullet through his brain.

 

He dried his face, threw on his middle school uniform, and walked into the kitchen.

 

His mother, Inko, was already awake, humming quietly as she packed a bento box. She looked up, offering a warm, albeit slightly strained, smile. "Morning, Izuku. You're up early."

 

"Couldn't sleep," Izuku replied, taking a seat at the table.

 

Inko placed a plate of grilled fish and rice in front of him. She lingered for a moment, her eyes tracing the new breadth of his shoulders, the quiet, intense confidence in his posture. "I still can't believe it," she murmured, wiping a stray tear from her eye. "A late-blooming energy Quirk. And a physical mutation to handle it. The doctors said it was a one-in-a-billion chance."

 

Izuku felt a familiar, heavy pang of guilt in his chest. Regret. It was the negative emotion he had learned to rely on most. He hated lying to her. He hated that she thought he had finally been blessed by genetics, when in reality, he was carrying a ticking time bomb of ancient evil in his gut. But telling her the truth—that he was a vessel marked for execution—would destroy her.

 

"Yeah, Mom," Izuku said softly, offering her a reassuring smile. "One in a billion."

 

"Just... be careful today," Inko pleaded, gripping his shoulder. "Don't push yourself too hard. Even with your new Quirk, those robots are dangerous."

 

Izuku placed his hand over hers. His grip was gentle, suppressing the monstrous strength that could easily crush a boulder. "I'll be careful. I promise."

 

 

 

The towering gates of U.A. High School were a monument to the grandeur of modern heroics. Thousands of students milled about, their faces painted with a mixture of excitement and sheer terror.

 

Izuku walked through the gates with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his posture relaxed but his senses dialed up to an agonizing degree. Since consuming the finger, his sensory input had skyrocketed. He could hear the rapid heartbeats of the students around him. He could smell the ozone from a boy practicing a minor electricity Quirk fifty yards away.

 

"Out of my way, Deku!"

 

Izuku didn't need to turn around to recognize the explosive, furious voice. Katsuki Bakugo stomped up behind him, his crimson eyes narrowed into furious slits.

 

Ten months ago, at the Sludge Villain incident, Bakugo had seen Izuku unleash the Cursed Energy. He had seen the black tattoos. The school administration had officially covered it up, claiming Izuku had experienced a violent, traumatic Quirk awakening. But Bakugo wasn't an idiot. He knew something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with the power Izuku had displayed that day. And worse, he knew Izuku had saved his life.

 

Izuku stopped and turned, looking at his childhood tormentor. He didn't cower. He didn't stutter. He just looked at him with an infuriating, calm blankness.

 

"Morning, Kacchan," Izuku said evenly.

 

Bakugo marched right up to him, grabbing the collar of Izuku’s uniform. But the moment his hand clamped down, Bakugo paused. Izuku’s neck muscles felt like solid iron under his fingers.

 

"Don't give me that calm crap," Bakugo snarled, lowering his voice so the passing students couldn't hear. "I don't know what the hell kind of freakish power you manifested in that alleyway, but if you think it makes you better than me, you're dead wrong. I'm going to crush this exam, and I'm going to crush you."

 

Izuku didn't break eye contact. He gently reached up, gripped Bakugo’s wrist, and squeezed. Not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough that Bakugo's eyes widened in sudden, sharp pain, forcing him to let go of the collar.

 

"Good luck on the exam, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice quiet, steady, and terrifyingly cold.

 

He let go of Bakugo's wrist and turned, continuing his walk toward the auditorium. Bakugo stood frozen, rubbing his wrist, a knot of absolute bewilderment and rage twisting in his stomach. What the hell is he?

 

As Izuku approached the main doors, a girl with a round face and short brown hair suddenly tripped over her own feet just ahead of him. She let out a yelp, bracing for the impact of the concrete pavement.

 

In a fraction of a second, Izuku's body moved on pure instinct.

 

He didn't just catch her. He practically teleported. One moment he was ten feet away, and the next, his arm was securely wrapped around her waist, suspending her inches from the ground. He had moved so fast he had displaced the air, kicking up a small gust of wind that rustled the skirts of nearby students.

 

The girl gasped, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. "W-Woah! That was fast!"

 

Izuku pulled her upright, instantly stepping back to give her space. "Sorry. Are you okay?"

 

"Yeah!" She beamed, rubbing the back of her head. "Thanks! I'm Ochako Uraraka. I was so nervous I completely lost my footing. It's a good thing your Quirk is super speed, huh?"

 

Izuku offered a small, polite nod. "Something like that. Good luck, Uraraka."

 

He walked into the building, leaving Uraraka blinking in confusion. She hadn't felt any machinery, hadn't seen any glowing energy. He had just moved.

 

 

 

The orientation auditorium was vast and dimly lit, save for the massive screens illuminating the stage where the Voice Hero, Present Mic, was screaming into a microphone.

 

"CAN I GET A HEYYYYY?!" Mic bellowed.

 

Dead silence from the thousands of examinees.

 

Izuku sat in the middle rows, his eyes closed. He wasn't ignoring the presentation; his enhanced hearing picked up every syllable. Instead, he was meditating. He was mentally reinforcing the walls of his innate domain, ensuring the iron gates keeping Sukuna locked away were secure. The sheer volume of anxious, nervous energy radiating from the teenagers in the room was a buffet of negative emotion. It was causing the Cursed Energy in Izuku's gut to stir restlessly.

 

"...There are three types of faux villains in every battle center!" Present Mic explained, pointing to the screen showing the 1-Pointer, 2-Pointer, and 3-Pointer robots. "You earn points based on their difficulty! Use your Quirks to disable them and rack up that high score!"

 

Suddenly, a tall, severe-looking boy with glasses stood up rigidly, pointing a stiff arm at the stage. "Excuse me! Sir! The printout lists four types of villains! If this is a misprint, U.A., the premier academy of Japan, should be ashamed of this foolish mistake!"

 

The boy then whipped around, pointing directly at Izuku, who was still sitting with his eyes closed. "And you! With the green hair! You have been sitting there with your eyes closed, ignoring the presentation entirely! If you are not taking this seriously, then leave! You are distracting the rest of us who are here to become heroes!"

 

The auditorium went silent. Hundreds of eyes shifted to Izuku. Bakugo, sitting a few seats down, sneered, waiting for the old Deku to stammer and apologize.

 

Izuku slowly opened his eyes. They were devoid of any intimidation, but they were remarkably sharp. He looked at the boy with glasses.

 

"The fourth villain is the Zero Pointer," Izuku said, his voice carrying perfectly across the silent room without him needing to shout. "It's an obstacle. It yields no points. It's meant to be avoided. Present Mic was about to explain it before you interrupted him."

 

The boy with glasses froze, his jaw dropping slightly.

 

"And I have my eyes closed," Izuku continued, his tone perfectly flat, "because I am practicing breathing exercises to regulate my heart rate and adrenaline levels before a combat scenario. A standard procedure for Pro Heroes. If my silence is distracting you, perhaps you should work on your own focus."

 

A collective murmur rippled through the crowd. The boy with glasses flushed bright red, bowed stiffly, and sat back down. "I... I apologize! You are remarkably perceptive!"

 

Present Mic cleared his throat, slightly unnerved by the heavy aura radiating from the green-haired kid. "Y-Yeah! What the listener said! The Zero Pointer is a gimmick! Just run away from it! Now, head to your assigned Battle Centers!"

 

 

 

Battle Center B.

 

Izuku stood in front of the towering gates of the mock city. He had swapped his middle school uniform for a simple black tracksuit and red running shoes. He didn't have a flashy costume or support gear. He just had his fists, and the demon in his soul.

 

He cracked his knuckles, the sound like snapping pistol fire in the tense silence of the crowd.

 

To his left, he noticed the brown-haired girl, Uraraka, taking deep breaths. To his right, the boy with glasses, Iida, was stretching his calves, engine pipes protruding from his legs.

 

"Alright, let's go!" Present Mic’s voice boomed from the loudspeakers.

 

The other students hesitated, waiting for a countdown.

 

Izuku didn't. He knew there were no countdowns in real fights.

 

His red shoes hit the pavement with the force of a mortar shell. The concrete beneath his feet spider-webbed, and he vanished.

 

"Hey! There are no countdowns in real life! Run, run, run!" Mic screamed.

 

The other students scrambled into the city, but Izuku was already three blocks deep.

 

He rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a 1-Pointer and a 2-Pointer. The machines whirred to life, their red optical sensors locking onto him.

 

"Target acquired," the 2-Pointer droned, raising a massive pneumatic cannon.

 

Izuku didn't break his sprint. He didn't even bother activating his Cursed Energy. He just relied on his vessel-enhanced biology.

 

As the 2-Pointer fired, Izuku ducked under the projectile, entirely bypassing the machine's targeting software. He closed the distance in a millisecond, leaped into the air, and delivered a devastating, spinning roundhouse kick directly to the 2-Pointer's optical sensor.

 

The sheer kinetic force of the blow decapitated the robot. The heavy metal head tore off its neck-mount and went flying down the street, crashing through the window of a faux-office building.

 

Izuku landed, pivoted on his heel, and grabbed the remaining 1-Pointer by its treads. With a primal grunt, he hoisted the two-ton machine over his head like it was a sack of flour and hurled it directly into a brick wall, shattering it into scrap metal.

 

Three points, Izuku calculated, his breathing perfectly even.

 

He didn't stop. He broke into a sprint again, scaling the side of a fire escape in three massive leaps, taking the high ground to spot his next targets.

 

 

 

High above the mock cities, in a darkened observation room packed with monitors, the faculty of U.A. High School watched the carnage unfold.

 

"We have a promising crop this year," Midnight purred, watching a monitor where a boy with explosions was leveling a city block. "That Bakugo kid is ferocious."

 

"Look at the Todoroki boy," Snipe added, pointing to another screen where a student had instantly frozen an entire avenue of robots. "Absolute control."

 

But sitting in the center of the room, Principal Nezu, Eraserhead, and a gaunt, sickly-looking Toshinori Yagi were entirely focused on a different monitor.

 

Standing behind them, wearing a sharp, immaculate grey suit, was a man with slicked-back hair and cold, reptilian eyes. He was Yokumiru Mera, a high-ranking executive from the Hero Public Safety Commission. He had been sent specifically to oversee the execution of the Vessel, provided the boy showed the slightest sign of losing control.

 

On the screen, Izuku Midoriya was tearing through robots with his bare hands. He wasn't using energy. He was just a blur of horrifying, raw physical violence. He punched through steel chassis. He ripped wiring harnesses out with his bare fingers. He leaped off walls, using momentum to crush 3-Pointers under his feet.

 

"This is... unsettling," Mera muttered, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his forehead. "He fights like a feral beast. There's no elegance. No restraint. He's just dismantling them."

 

"He's efficient," Eraserhead corrected, his voice flat and unapologetic. "He is utilizing his mutated physiology to conserve stamina. He hasn't tapped into the anomalous energy once. He's entirely in control."

 

"For now," Mera countered sharply. "But raw strength will only get him so far. Let's see what happens when he gets tired. That's when the parasite will strike."

 

All Might gripped the armrest of his chair, his knuckles turning white. Hold on, young Midoriya. Show them the strength of your heart.

 

 

 

Down in Battle Center B, Izuku was indeed beginning to feel the strain.

 

He had just destroyed his fifteenth robot, putting his score well over forty points. But he was panting now. The physical exertion was catching up to him, and the metallic chassis of the 3-Pointers were starting to bruise his knuckles, even with his superhuman durability.

 

He skidded to a halt in the center of a wide plaza.

 

From all four surrounding streets, a swarm of robots emerged. Five 2-Pointers and three massive 3-Pointers. They boxed him in, their targeting lasers painting red dots all over his chest.

 

I can't smash through all of them with just physical strength before they fire, Izuku analyzed rapidly. I need to end this instantly. I have to use it.

 

Izuku closed his eyes for a split second. He reached deep into his gut. He bypassed the fear of the robots. He bypassed the anger at his situation. He found the cold, dense core of his regret. The sorrow of a boy who had to die to save the world.

 

He pulled it forward.

 

Dark, reddish-black energy violently erupted from his body, flaring upward like a geyser of shadowy fire. The air pressure in the plaza instantly dropped. The sheer density of the negative energy caused the concrete beneath his feet to groan and splinter.

 

In the observation room, alarms briefly flashed red. Mera jumped back. "He's lost it! The Curse is out! Abort the exam, call the snipers!"

 

"Sit down, Mera," Eraserhead commanded, his eyes flashing red behind his goggles, ready to erase the power if necessary. "Look closely. The tattoos aren't there. His eyes are green. He's in the driver's seat."

 

In the plaza, Izuku opened his eyes. The Cursed Energy swirled around him, answering his call, subservient to his will.

 

He locked onto the largest 3-Pointer in the group.

 

He lunged. The Cursed Energy reinforced his leg muscles, propelling him forward so fast he broke the sound barrier, leaving a thunderous crack in his wake.

 

He appeared directly in front of the 3-Pointer, pulling back his right fist. The reddish-black energy coiled tightly around his knuckles, vibrating with lethal intent.

 

Focus. Channel the sorrow. Don't let him slip through.

 

Izuku threw the punch, aiming directly for the thickest part of the robot's armored torso.

 

He felt the physical impact first. His knuckles slammed into the steel plate. The force was immense, buckling the armor inward, shattering the outer casing.

 

But Izuku was moving too fast. His physical body was a fraction of a second ahead of the dense, heavy Cursed Energy he was generating.

 

A millisecond after his fist connected, the Cursed Energy caught up.

 

It was a phenomenon Aizawa had diagnosed. A flaw in his flow. But Izuku wasn't trying to fix the flaw today; he was weaponizing it.

 

DIVERGENT FIST.

 

The secondary impact hit. It didn't strike the outer armor; because Izuku's physical fist had already penetrated the casing, the Cursed Energy detonated inside the robot.

 

A localized, violent explosion of dark red energy blew outward from within the machine. The 3-Pointer didn't just break; it expanded and ruptured. Shrapnel, gears, and wiring were blown violently outward in every direction as the robot was hollowed out by the secondary impact.

 

Izuku didn't pause to admire his work. The shockwave of the blast propelled him backward. He used the momentum to flip through the air, landing on the hood of a rusted car prop. He launched himself off it, rocketing toward the next 2-Pointer.

 

Physical hit. The robot staggered.

 

Lag.

 

Cursed Energy detonation. The robot's head blew entirely off its shoulders in a shower of black sparks.

 

He became a whirlwind of destruction. He wasn't using flashy martial arts. It was brutal, terrifying brawling. Every punch he landed carried a devastating, delayed explosive payload. He moved with the ferocity of a wild animal, his Cursed Energy leaving trails of red-black light in the air, mapping his chaotic, untethered trajectory through the swarm.

 

Within forty seconds, all eight robots were reduced to smoldering, hollowed-out scrap.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the wreckage, his chest heaving, the dark energy slowly dissipating from his hands. He wiped a streak of grease from his cheek.

 

"Sloppy," Sukuna critiqued in his mind, sounding bored. "You waste too much energy. And that delayed strike? It’s a parlor trick. Any real Sorcerer would read that lag and sever your arm before the second impact."

 

I'm not fighting Sorcerers, Izuku thought back, his mental voice sharp. I'm fighting scrap metal.

 

"For now," Sukuna purred.

 

Izuku pushed the voice away, forcing his heart rate to slow down. He checked the time on a nearby digital billboard. Two minutes left in the exam. He had more than enough points to pass. All he had to do was survive the remaining time without burning out his stamina. The Cursed Energy was incredibly taxing; it felt like he had been holding his breath underwater for an hour.

 

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet violently trembled.

 

It wasn't a localized tremor. The entire mock city shook. The glass in the windows of the faux buildings shattered simultaneously.

 

A shadow fell over the plaza, eclipsing the artificial sunlight.

 

Izuku looked up, and his emerald eyes widened.

 

At the far end of the main avenue, a behemoth rose from the streets. It was easily the size of a twenty-story skyscraper. Its massive, tank-like treads crushed entire buildings into powder. Its singular, glowing red optic laser swept across the panicked students scattering in the streets below.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

"Holy crap..." someone screamed. "Run! It's the Zero Pointer! It's too big!"

 

Izuku watched as the other examinees abandoned their fights and fled in terror. The logical part of his brain told him to do the same. He had his points. There was no benefit to engaging a machine that size. It was a test of threat assessment and evasion.

 

He turned on his heel to sprint away, but as he did, his enhanced hearing picked up a sound amidst the roaring engines of the behemoth.

 

A pained, desperate gasp.

 

Izuku snapped his head back. About a hundred yards away, directly in the path of the Zero Pointer’s massive treads, was Ochako Uraraka. A chunk of debris from a collapsed building had pinned her leg to the ground. She was frantically pushing at the concrete, tears streaming down her face, but she couldn't budge it.

 

The Zero Pointer raised a massive, hydraulic fist, preparing to punch the street to clear the rubble—a strike that would easily crush Uraraka into paste.

 

"Leave her," Sukuna’s voice hissed in Izuku’s mind, sudden and urgent. "She is dead weight. If you unleash enough power to destroy that monstrosity, you will drain your reserves. You will lose your grip on the cage. Let the insect be crushed."

 

Izuku stood completely still for a microsecond.

 

If he used his maximum output, he risked losing control. He risked letting Sukuna loose on an arena full of innocent teenagers. He risked the HPSC snipers taking his head.

 

But if he did nothing, the girl who had smiled at him at the gates would die.

 

What kind of hero lets someone die to save himself?

 

"Shut up," Izuku snarled aloud.

 

He didn't run away. He turned toward the behemoth, his eyes burning with an intense, emerald fire.

 

He reached deeper into his core than he ever had during training. He bypassed the surface regret. He reached into the darkest, deepest abyss of his soul—the absolute, terrorizing dread of what he had become, the sorrow of his impending execution, the heavy burden of carrying the King of Curses.

 

He pulled it all up at once.

 

A torrential aura of deep crimson and pitch-black energy exploded from Izuku’s body. It was a pillar of raw, negative power that shot straight up into the air, blowing the clouds apart. The asphalt beneath his feet instantly vaporized into dust.

 

In the observation room, the monitors tracking Battle Center B flared with static.

 

"His energy output just spiked by four hundred percent!" Eraserhead yelled, leaping out of his chair, his hand grabbing his capture weapon.

 

"Kill him!" Mera shrieked, slamming his fist on the console. "He's lost it! The Curse is out! Give the order to fire!"

 

"NO!" All Might roared, his voice shaking the entire room. He pointed a massive, trembling finger at the static-filled screen. "Look at him! Look at his face, you fool! That is not a curse!"

 

On the monitor, through the swirling maelstrom of dark energy, Izuku’s face was clearly visible. The tattoos were absent. His eyes were entirely human. He wasn't smiling a sadistic grin. His face was twisted in an expression of pure, desperate, heroic resolve.

 

Izuku dropped into a sprinter's crouch. The Cursed Energy concentrated entirely in his legs, glowing so brightly his muscles looked as though they were burning from the inside out.

 

BOOM.

 

He launched himself forward. The shockwave of his departure shattered every remaining window on the street.

 

He didn't run on the ground. He hit the side of a collapsing building and ran horizontally along the glass, defying gravity through sheer speed and Cursed Energy reinforcement. He bounded off the building, flying through the air like a bullet, and landed directly on the descending forearm of the Zero Pointer.

 

Uraraka, pinned to the ground, stopped struggling. She looked up, her breath catching in her throat, as she watched the boy in the black tracksuit sprint up the arm of the colossal machine. He looked like an ant scaling a mountain, but he moved with the force of a meteor.

 

The Zero Pointer’s sensors finally registered him. It tried to swat him away with its other hand.

 

Izuku didn't dodge. He leaped directly into the path of the incoming, bus-sized hand. He planted both feet squarely on the steel palm as it tried to crush him, using the machine's own kinetic energy as a springboard.

 

He pushed off with a massive burst of Cursed Energy, rocketing straight up into the sky, soaring higher than the Zero Pointer's head.

 

Time seemed to slow down.

 

Izuku hung suspended in the air, perfectly silhouetted against the artificial sun. Below him, the massive, red optical sensor of the Zero Pointer whirred, tracking him.

 

He raised his right arm, pulling it back.

 

Everything I have, Izuku thought, his teeth gritted. Keep it focused. Don't let the flow leak. Condense it.

 

The swirling aura of dark energy vanished from his body, entirely coalescing around his right fist. It condensed, compressing tighter and tighter until it formed a singular, glowing sphere of hyper-dense, black-red matter. It hummed with a terrifying, destructive frequency.

 

He began to fall.

 

He aimed his fist directly at the glowing red eye of the Zero Pointer.

 

The machine raised its hands to block.

 

Izuku smashed through the steel hands like they were wet paper. He collided with the face of the behemoth.

 

"DIVERGENT... SMASH!" Izuku roared.

 

Impact One.

 

His fist struck the reinforced glass of the optical sensor. The superhuman physical strength buckled the machine’s head backward. The steel casing groaned, the thick neck pistons snapping under the immense pressure. The physical blow was devastating, enough to disable the robot on its own.

 

But then came the delay. The lag of his hyper-condensed Cursed Energy.

 

Impact Two.

 

The sphere of dark matter detonated inside the chassis of the Zero Pointer.

 

It wasn't a fiery explosion. It was a catastrophic expulsion of raw kinetic and cursed force. A shockwave of black and red lightning ripped outward from the center of the machine. The energy tore through the internal circuitry, traveling down the spine of the robot, vaporizing the internal supports.

 

From the outside, the students on the ground watched in absolute, paralyzed awe as the torso of the twenty-story robot suddenly bulged outward, before violently blowing apart from the inside out.

 

A deafening roar echoed across the facility as the upper half of the Zero Pointer was completely obliterated, raining a shower of harmless, scorched scrap metal down upon the mock city.

 

The lower half of the behemoth stood for a moment, smoking, before slowly tipping backward and crashing into the street, completely inert.

 

High in the air, Izuku felt the energy leave him. His stamina hit zero. The adrenaline evaporated, replaced by a crushing, agonizing exhaustion that seeped into his very marrow.

 

He began to free-fall, the ground rushing up to meet him fast.

 

I can't brace for the landing, he thought, his vision blurring. My legs... I can't feel them.

 

Suddenly, he felt a sharp slap on his cheek.

 

His downward momentum entirely ceased. He floated, entirely weightless, a few feet above the pavement.

 

He blinked his heavy eyes, turning his head. Uraraka was standing on one leg, leaning heavily against a piece of rubble, her hand outstretched. She had managed to free herself just enough to tap him before he hit the ground.

 

"Release," she panted, pressing her fingers together.

 

Izuku dropped the remaining three feet, landing with a soft thud on his back. He groaned, staring up at the blue sky. He couldn't move a single muscle. His body felt like it was made of lead.

 

But deep inside his mind, the shrine was quiet. Sukuna was silent. He hadn't slipped. He had held the cage shut.

 

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

 

A heavy silence fell over Battle Center B. The remaining students slowly emerged from their hiding spots, staring at the cratered street, the destroyed remains of the Zero Pointer, and the boy lying on his back in the center of the destruction.

 

No one cheered. No one spoke. The sheer scale of the violence they had just witnessed was incomprehensible. It didn't look like a Hero's Quirk. It looked like a natural disaster had been crammed into the fists of a teenager.

 

Footsteps approached. Uraraka limped over, looking down at Izuku. Her eyes were wide, a complex mix of immense gratitude and lingering, primal fear.

 

"Are you... are you okay?" she asked softly.

 

Izuku forced his mouth to form a weak, reassuring smile. "Yeah. I'm okay. You?"

 

"You saved me," she whispered, looking at the severed head of the Zero Pointer a block away. "Thank you."

 

 

 

In the observation room, the faculty was dead silent.

 

Mera, the HPSC executive, was pale. He slowly lowered his radio, having canceled the sniper order at the last possible second.

 

"He controlled it," All Might said, his voice quiet but echoing with immense pride. He turned to look at Mera, his blue eyes flashing with challenge. "He used the curse's power to save a life, and he maintained his humanity. He is not a monster. He is a hero."

 

Mera adjusted his tie, his expression hardening into a cold mask. "He survived today, All Might. But you saw the nature of that energy. It is violent. It is hateful. He fights like a demon. You may call him a hero now, but how long before that power corrupts him? Or worse, how long before the parasite decides it’s done playing games?"

 

"That is what U.A. is for," Nezu intervened, his tone leaving no room for argument. "We will teach him. The boy has passed the practical exam with flying colors."

 

Eraserhead didn't say anything. He just stared at the monitor, watching a small, elderly woman—Recovery Girl—walk out onto the field to treat Izuku.

 

You passed, kid, Aizawa thought, a very faint, almost imperceptible smirk touching his lips. But the real hell is just beginning.

 

Down on the pavement, Izuku closed his eyes, letting the exhaustion take him. He had taken his first step. He had proved to the world, to the Commission, and to the monster inside his soul, that his will was his own.

 

He was Izuku Midoriya. And he was going to U.A. High School.