What if deku was reborn as Yamikumo (Mikumo Akatani), his first design

 

The ash tasted like copper and broken promises, but as it settled over the ruined earth, Izuku Midoriya could only feel peace.

 

The sky above the wasteland of what used to be Jaku City was a bruised, apocalyptic purple, choked with dust and the lingering smoke of a thousand decaying fires. The silence that followed the final impact was deafening. It was a vacuum, a hollow void left behind after the roaring thunder of a century-long war had finally, abruptly, screamed its last.

 

Izuku lay flat on his back, his spine pressed into the shattered asphalt. He couldn't move. He didn't even want to try.

 

Every nerve ending in his body was singing a chorus of unimaginable agony, but it was fading. The pain was receding, like the tide pulling away from the shore, leaving a cold, numbing sensation in its wake. His right arm was a pulverized ruin, completely devoid of feeling, resting at an unnatural angle. His legs were entirely unresponsive. He could feel the blood pooling beneath him, a warm, sticky halo spreading across the crushed concrete.

 

A few yards away lay the broken form of Tomura Shigaraki. Or perhaps it was All For One. At the end, the lines between the two monsters had blurred into a singularity of hatred. But now, that hatred was extinguished. The grotesque amalgamation of stolen quirks and twisted flesh had been reduced to ash and silence by the final, blinding strike of One For All.

 

I did it, Izuku thought, his mind sluggish, the words echoing in the cavern of his skull. It’s over.

 

He took a breath, and his chest rattled with the wet, agonizing sound of failing lungs. He could feel the embers of One For All—the brilliant, multifaceted sun that had burned in his chest for what felt like a lifetime—flickering, dimming, dying. The vestiges were gone. Yoichi, Nana, Banjo, Danger Sense, Smokescreen... the comforting whispers of the past users had faded into the ether. They had poured their very souls into that final, cataclysmic strike, giving everything they had left to ensure tomorrow would come for everyone else.

 

They had passed on. And now, so was he.

 

Footsteps. Frantic, uneven footsteps echoed through the rubble.

 

"Deku! Deku!"

 

The voice was rough, tearing at the vocal cords, laced with a panic that Izuku had rarely ever heard. Kacchan.

 

A blurred figure dropped to its knees beside him, surrounded by sparks of dying explosions. Katsuki Bakugo’s face swam into Izuku’s failing vision. His mask was torn, his face painted in ash and blood, his crimson eyes wide with a terror that broke Izuku’s heart.

 

Behind Katsuki, other shapes were forming in the smoke. Uraraka, weeping openly, her hands covering her mouth. Todoroki, his dual-colored hair matted with debris, his stoic face cracked with grief. Aizawa, leaning heavily against Present Mic, his one good eye wide.

 

"Hey, nerd," Bakugo choked out, his hands hovering over Izuku’s ruined chest, unsure where to press, unsure how to stop the inevitable. "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare close your eyes, you hear me? We won. You won. You don't get to check out now, you selfish bastard."

 

Izuku wanted to speak. He wanted to tell Katsuki that it was okay. He wanted to tell Uraraka thank you for always lifting him up. He wanted to tell Mr. Aizawa he was sorry for being a problem child one last time.

 

But his lips wouldn't move. His throat was filled with blood.

 

So, he did the only thing he could do. The only thing his mentor had taught him to do when the world was watching, when the darkness was closing in, when the fear was trying to swallow him whole.

 

Izuku Midoriya smiled.

 

It was a weak, trembling thing, but it reached his dulling green eyes. It was a smile that said, I am here. And you are safe.

 

Bakugo saw it, and a choked sob tore from his throat. "Stop it," the explosive hero begged, his tears finally carving clean lines through the dirt on his cheeks. "Stop smiling, Izuku, please..."

 

The light in the sky began to fade. The sounds of his friends—their cries, their desperate pleas—grew muffled, as if he were sinking underwater. The world dissolved into a wash of gray, then charcoal, and finally, a deep, comforting black.

 

The spark of One For All went out completely.

 

And Izuku Midoriya fell into the dark.

 

 

 

There was no sense of time in the void.

 

There was no up, no down, no heat, no cold. It was an endless, tranquil sea of nothingness. Izuku felt as though he were floating, adrift in a sensory deprivation tank of the cosmos. He felt no pain. The agonizing ruin of his arms, the crushed bones, the failing organs—all of it was gone.

 

Was this the afterlife? Was he supposed to see a bright light? Was All Might waiting for him? Or Nighteye? Or his mom?

 

Mom. A pang of sorrow rippled through his formless consciousness. He had left her behind. He had broken his promise to come back home. But he knew, deep down, that she would understand. She was the mother of a hero. She would mourn, but she would live in a world free of All For One's shadow.

 

He waited. He waited to fade completely, to become one with whatever energy governed the universe.

 

But the fading never came.

 

Instead, a strange sensation began to prickle at the edges of his consciousness. It wasn't the warm, familiar, comforting hum of One For All. It was cold. Sharp. A mechanical sort of static, like the buzzing of a broken television set or a loose wire sparking against wet pavement.

 

The static grew louder, vibrating through the emptiness. It felt like a hook had been firmly planted behind his navel, and suddenly, violently, it yanked.

 

Izuku was pulled through the void at a terrifying speed. The tranquility shattered. The nothingness was replaced by a rushing, roaring wind, a kaleidoscope of blurred colors, and the sudden, overwhelming return of physical sensation.

 

GASP!

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open.

 

His body jerked upright violently, his lungs expanding with a desperate, tearing heave. He sucked in air like a drowning man breaking the surface, coughing and sputtering.

 

But the air... the air was wrong.

 

It didn't smell like the ozone and ash of a battlefield. It smelled stale. It smelled of dust, burnt coffee, and the sharp, metallic tang of melting solder.

 

He clutched his chest, hacking violently, his eyes watering. As his vision cleared, he expected to see the sterile white ceiling of a hospital room, or the grim, concerned face of Recovery Girl.

 

Instead, he saw a ceiling plastered with peeling, glow-in-the-dark stars and haphazardly taped schematics.

 

"Wh... what...?" Izuku rasped. His voice sounded wrong. It lacked the deep, battle-hardened timber he had developed over the war. It was slightly higher, raspier, unused.

 

He scrambled backward, his back hitting a cold, plaster wall. He was sitting on a bed. A very messy bed, tangled in dark gray sheets.

 

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his veins. His combat instincts, honed through months of warfare against the most dangerous villains in history, flared to life. He instantly reached for the well of One For All within him to activate Full Cowling, ready to defend himself from whatever villain had trapped him in this illusion.

 

One For All: Full Cowling—Five Percent!

 

He focused, waiting for the familiar surge of red veins and green lightning, the comforting warmth of the stockpiled power washing over his muscles.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Izuku froze.

 

He tried again, reaching deeper into himself, searching for the core of the power. Ten percent! Anything! Blackwhip! Danger Sense!

 

Nothing. No green sparks. No dark tendrils bursting from his skin. The well inside him wasn't just empty; the well did not exist. There was an absolute, terrifying absence where the power of the gods had resided for the last three years.

 

"No..." Izuku whispered, his breathing growing erratic. "No, no, no. AFO... did he steal it? No, he's dead. I killed him. I felt it die."

 

He looked down at his hands, preparing to inspect the damage, to see if his arms were broken or bound.

 

When he saw his hands, the breath died in his throat.

 

These were not his hands.

 

Izuku Midoriya’s hands were a roadmap of his journey as a hero. They were heavily calloused, thick with muscle, and covered in a terrifying network of jagged, white, lightning-shaped scars from where he had repeatedly shattered his own bones using 1,000,000% against Muscular, Todoroki, and Shigaraki. His knuckles were permanently enlarged, his skin tanned from endless days training in the sun.

 

The hands staring back at him right now were entirely different.

 

They were pale. Almost ghostly white, completely devoid of sun exposure. The fingers were long, thin, and delicate. There were calluses, yes, but not on the knuckles or the palms from punching and lifting. The calluses were on the tips of the thumb and index finger, and along the side of the middle finger—the calluses of someone who spent all day gripping a pen, a screwdriver, or a soldering iron.

 

And they were completely, flawlessly unscarred.

 

"What is this?" he breathed, bringing his strange, pale hands up to his face. He touched his cheeks. There was no roundness, no baby fat, but there were also no rough patches from battle debris. His skin felt sunken, sharp.

 

He threw the covers off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As his bare feet hit the floor, a sharp pain shot up his foot. He looked down. He had stepped on a loose gear.

 

His feet were bare. Where were his red iron soles? Where was his hero costume? He was wearing a baggy, faded black t-shirt with a cracked skull on it, and loose gray sweatpants.

 

He tried to stand, and his knees instantly buckled. He crashed to the floor, taking a pile of papers and empty energy drink cans down with him.

 

Clatter! Crash!

 

"Ow..." he groaned, rubbing his hip.

 

His center of gravity was entirely wrong. He felt incredibly light, as if gravity had lessened its hold on him, but simultaneously, he felt profoundly weak. The thick cords of muscle he had built scrubbing the Dagobah Municipal Beach, the dense core he had forged under Endeavor's agency, the physical mass required to withstand the backlash of One For All—it was all gone. His body felt frail, underdeveloped, like a glass sculpture ready to shatter.

 

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, ignoring the mess on the floor, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

 

Think, Izuku, think, his mind raced, the analytical side of him desperately trying to compartmentalize the panic. Illusion quirk? Unlikely, physical sensations are too real. Time travel? No, the body is completely different. Reincarnation? Body swapping?

 

He needed a mirror. He needed to know what was happening.

 

The room was dim, illuminated only by the sickly blue glow of a dual-monitor computer setup on a cluttered desk in the corner. Izuku stumbled to his feet, using the wall for support. His legs trembled violently, unaccustomed to even this minimal weight.

 

He scanned the room. It was a disaster area. Stacks of notebooks—not the familiar burnt, water-logged "Hero Analysis for the Future" notebooks, but thick, black, leather-bound journals with silver clasps—were piled high on every surface. Tools, wires, circuit boards, and half-assembled mechanical braces littered the floor. It looked like the U.A. Support Course had exploded inside a teenager's bedroom.

 

Through a half-open door on the left, he saw the dull gleam of a bathroom mirror.

 

Izuku lurched toward it, his pale, unscarred hands gripping the doorframe. He fumbled in the dark for the light switch and flicked it on. The harsh, fluorescent bulb buzzed to life, flooding the small bathroom with unforgiving light.

 

Izuku looked into the glass.

 

And stopped breathing.

 

Staring back at him was a ghost. Or a phantom. Or a stranger.

 

The boy in the mirror looked to be about fifteen, maybe sixteen. He had the same jawline as Izuku, the same basic facial structure, but that was where the similarities violently ended.

 

Instead of a messy mop of bright green curls, the boy’s hair was a dark, bruised, almost black shade of purple. It was shaggy, unkempt, and desperately needed a cut. The bangs were long, hanging heavily over the right side of his face, completely obscuring his right eye.

 

Izuku raised a trembling hand and brushed the purple hair out of his face.

 

His eyes. They weren't the wide, bright, emerald green pools of Izuku Midoriya. They were a dull, muted, exhausted shade of dark crimson. They looked like dying embers. And surrounding those eyes were the darkest, heaviest bags Izuku had ever seen outside of Mr. Aizawa. The dark circles bruised the pale skin beneath his eyes, painting a picture of severe, chronic insomnia, depression, or both.

 

There were no freckles dusting his cheeks. Not a single one.

 

"Who... who are you?" Izuku whispered to the reflection. The boy in the mirror moved his pale lips in perfect synchronization.

 

Izuku gripped the edges of the sink, his knuckles turning white. This wasn't an illusion. He pinched his arm, hard. He felt the sharp sting of pain. He ran cold water and splashed it on his face, the freezing temperature shocking his system.

 

He looked back up. The tired, emo, purple-haired teenager was still there.

 

I died, Izuku realized, the truth washing over him like a bucket of ice water. I died fighting Shigaraki. One For All is gone. I am... I am in a different body.

 

But whose body? And where?

 

He backed out of the bathroom, his mind operating at a million miles an hour. He needed information. He was dropped into an unknown territory, a complete unknown. He needed intel.

 

He moved back into the bedroom, ignoring the weakness in his limbs, and began tearing through the room.

 

He rushed to the desk, shoving aside a half-eaten cup of instant ramen and a soldering iron. He booted up the computer, hoping there wasn't a password. Fortunately, the screen flickered to life, already logged in.

 

He opened the browser. The date in the bottom right corner read: April 4th, 22XX.

 

Izuku paused. April? Middle of the spring? Wait, the year... it's exactly the same year I started at U.A.

 

He minimized the browser and looked at the desktop. There were folders named 'Support Tech Specs,' 'Servo Calibration,' and 'Trash.' Nothing immediately identifiable.

 

He turned away from the screen and began rummaging through the desk drawers. In the second drawer down, beneath a tangle of copper wire, he found a wallet. It was worn, black leather. He flipped it open.

 

Inside was a middle school student ID card.

 

The face on the card was the same one he had just seen in the mirror, looking equally miserable, with the purple hair covering the right eye.

 

The name on the card read in bold, black characters:

 

AKATANI MIKUMO.

 

Akatani Mikumo, Izuku sounded out in his head. Not Midoriya Izuku.

 

He looked at the school listed.

 

Aldera Junior High.

 

Izuku felt the floor drop out from under him. Aldera? My middle school? But... I was the only quirkless kid at Aldera. I knew everyone. I've never heard of an Akatani Mikumo.

 

Unless... he wasn't just in a different body. He was in a different world. A parallel timeline. A universe where Izuku Midoriya never existed, and instead, Akatani Mikumo was born.

 

His eyes darted back to the ID.

 

Quirk Status: None Registered (Quirkless).

 

The word hit Izuku like a physical blow to the chest. Quirkless.

 

He was Quirkless again.

 

A sudden, fierce phantom ache echoed in his arms, the ghost of One For All crying out for a vessel that was no longer there. He had spent his entire childhood praying for a Quirk, crying over a computer screen watching All Might save people with a fearless smile. He had been given a miracle, a chance to hold the sun in his hands, to become the world's greatest hero. He had wielded the power of the gods, shattered mountains with the flick of a finger, and soared through the sky on whips of black energy.

 

And now, it was gone. He was back to square one. He was just a frail, quirkless teenager with bad posture and heavy eye bags.

 

For a moment, a wave of profound grief threatened to drown him. He sank to his knees amidst the clutter of the bedroom, clutching the ID card to his chest. He missed the power, yes, but more than that, he missed what it represented. He missed All Might. He missed the vestiges. He missed the connection to the legacy he had sworn to uphold.

 

He sat there in the dark for what felt like hours, letting the tears fall. They weren't waterfalls of comedic anime tears; they were silent, heavy drops that stained the knees of his sweatpants. He mourned Izuku Midoriya. He mourned One For All.

 

But as the tears dried, a different feeling began to take root in his chest.

 

It wasn't despair. It was something harder. Something forged in the fires of a hundred life-or-death battles.

 

He wiped his eyes with the back of his pale, unscarred hand.

 

I didn't die for nothing, Izuku thought, his crimson eyes hardening in the dim light of the monitor. I saved them. My world is safe. And now... I've been given a second chance. A different life.

 

He looked down at the ID card. Akatani Mikumo.

 

Who was this boy? Why was his room so dark? Why was he surrounded by support gear instead of hero merch?

 

Izuku crawled over to the bed and reached for one of the black, leather-bound notebooks sitting on the nightstand. He flipped it open. The handwriting was cramped, messy, and frantic—very different from Izuku’s neat, organized analysis.

 

The title page read: Project: Apathy. Idea 45.

 

Izuku turned the page. His eyes widened.

 

It wasn't hero analysis. It was a highly complex, incredibly advanced schematic for a localized electromagnetic pulse grenade. The math scrawled in the margins was college-level, maybe higher. The diagrams were meticulous, detailing the exact payload, the blast radius, and the required housing materials.

 

He flipped to the next page.

 

Pneumatic Bracers - Prototype 3.

 

Flaw: The recoil on the wrist joint is too severe. Bone fracture imminent at 400 PSI. Need to implement a shock-absorbing gel lining or divert kinetic energy backward. Why bother? The materials cost too much, and mom can't afford it. U.A. doesn't allow support items in the practical exam for general course students anyway. The system is rigged. A quirkless loser can't beat a robot.

 

Izuku’s heart ached as he read the notes. He could feel the frustration, the deep-seated depression bleeding through the ink.

 

He grabbed another notebook. Journal - December.

 

Got shoved into the lockers again today by Gougo. He said he was just 'messing around,' but his palms were sweating. My shoulder is burned. He told me to just give up on the hero track and aim for general studies so I don't get myself killed. The worst part is, he doesn't even hate me. He just pities me. He looks at me like I'm a three-legged dog. I hate it. I hate his pity more than I would hate his fists. I'm going to stop trying. There's no point. I'll just stay in my room. The metal doesn't pity me. The circuits make sense.

 

Izuku closed the notebook, his chest tight.

 

Gougo. The name was unfamiliar, but the behavior... the explosive sweat, the bullying wrapped in a warped sense of superiority. It sounded exactly like Katsuki. But this version—this Gougo—didn't seem to have the burning, aggressive rivalry Katsuki had. He had something far more insidious to a fragile ego: condescending pity.

 

Mikumo Akatani was Izuku Midoriya, if Izuku had never met All Might. If Izuku had never possessed an indomitable, foolishly optimistic spirit. Mikumo was a genius, an absolute prodigy with mechanics, but the world had beaten him down until he simply stopped fighting. He had retreated into the dark, hiding behind his purple bangs and his computer screens, letting his dreams of heroics die a slow, agonizing death.

 

"You gave up," Izuku whispered to the empty room.

 

He looked at the blueprints again. The EMP grenades. The pneumatic bracers. The capture tools.

 

Mikumo had the brain of a genius, but the heart of a defeatist.

 

Izuku stood up. The weakness in his legs was still there, but he ignored it. His mind was already shifting gears, locking into the tactical, analytical overdrive that had kept him alive against the League of Villains.

 

He didn't have One For All anymore. He couldn't smash a building with a single punch. He couldn't move faster than the speed of sound.

 

But he had something else.

 

He had the memories of three years of brutal warfare. He had the combat experience of a seasoned Pro Hero. He knew the principles of Full Cowling—the footwork, the kinetic energy transfer, the parkour, the hyper-awareness of his surroundings. He knew how villains thought. He knew how to read an opponent's center of gravity, how to exploit a quirk's weakness, how to fight through pain that would render a normal man unconscious.

 

And now, thanks to Akatani Mikumo, he had the blueprints to level the playing field.

 

Izuku walked back to the bathroom. He stood before the mirror, looking at the tired, pale, purple-haired boy.

 

He raised his hand and pushed the dark purple bangs away from his right eye. Both crimson eyes stared back at him. They were dull, lifeless.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He engaged his core, straightening his posture. He imagined the weight of One For All, the feeling of determination that always preceded a battle.

 

Slowly, the crimson eyes in the mirror seemed to catch the light. A spark ignited within them. The jaw set. The posture transformed the frail boy from a depressed shut-in into a coiled spring, a soldier standing at attention.

 

"I don't know why I was sent here," Izuku spoke to his reflection, his raspy voice gaining a fraction of its old steel. "I don't know how I got your body, Akatani. And I am so sorry for whatever happened to you to make you give up."

 

He leaned closer to the mirror, his eyes narrowing with a fierce, burning resolve.

 

"But I promise you this. Your brain, your designs... they aren't trash. You are brilliant. You had the tools to save people all along, you just didn't have the spirit to use them."

 

Izuku grabbed a pair of scissors sitting on the edge of the sink. He didn't hack away the purple hair—it was part of who he was now—but he snipped away the heavy, emo bangs that obscured his right eye. He wanted to see clearly. He needed peripheral vision if he was going to fight.

 

The hair fell into the sink. The boy in the mirror looked slightly more alert now, both crimson eyes visible, burning with a quiet intensity.

 

"I'm going to finish what you started," Izuku vowed, gripping the edges of the sink. "I will get into U.A. I will use your blueprints. I will become a hero. Not a symbol of peace with super strength... but a symbol of hope for everyone who was told they couldn't."

 

He turned away from the mirror and walked back into the messy bedroom.

 

The date was April 4th. If this timeline mirrored his own, the U.A. Entrance Exam was exactly ten months away.

 

Ten months.

 

In his past life, ten months was how long he had spent hauling trash across a beach to inherit a god-like power.

 

This time, there was no beach. There was no All Might. There was no magic hair to eat.

 

There was only a dark room, scrap metal, and a mind forged in the fires of war.

 

Izuku walked over to the desk. He picked up the pencil, opened a fresh, blank page in Mikumo's journal, and began to write.

 

Phase 1: Physical Conditioning.

Phase 2: Tech Fabrication and Prototype Testing.

Phase 3: U.A. Entrance Exam.

 

He was no longer Deku, the successor of All Might. He was Akatani Mikumo.

 

But as he sketched out the designs for a specialized capture scarf and a set of electrified gauntlets, a new name echoed in his mind. A name fitting for a hero who would fight from the shadows, relying on gadgets, grit, and ghosts.

 

Yamikumo.

 

The dark cloud.

 

Izuku smiled, a sharp, dangerous smirk that looked entirely foreign on Mikumo's pale face.

 

Ten months to build a hero from scratch.

 

"Let's get to work."

 

 

The morning sun did not stream gently into Mikumo Akatani’s bedroom; it bled through the gaps in the heavy blackout curtains like a harsh, unwelcome intruder, casting sharp, jagged lines of light across the disaster zone of a floor.

 

Izuku blinked his eyes open. For a fleeting, merciful second, his brain was suspended in the soft ignorance of sleep, expecting the familiar white ceiling of the U.A. dorms or the sterile walls of a field hospital.

 

Then, the dull ache in his back registered, followed by the metallic smell of burnt copper wire, and reality crashed down on him like a collapsing building.

 

He was still here. He was still in the prototype timeline. He was still Akatani Mikumo.

 

Izuku groaned, rolling onto his back. He threw his forearm over his eyes, shielding them from the sliver of sunlight. His body felt terribly, incredibly wrong. It wasn't just the lack of muscle mass; it was the sheer absence of the humming, boundless energy that One For All had constantly provided. For three years, his veins had pulsed with the combined willpower and kinetic storage of eight previous heroes. He had grown so accustomed to the feeling of containing a miniature sun within his chest that its absence left him feeling hollowed out, as if his internal organs had been replaced with cold air.

 

He sat up slowly, his joints popping in protest. Mikumo’s body was stiff, plagued by the terrible posture of a boy who spent eighteen hours a day hunched over a dual-monitor setup.

 

"Okay," Izuku whispered, his raspy voice breaking the silence. "Day one."

 

He pushed himself out of bed and navigated the minefield of scrap metal and discarded blueprints on the floor. He caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror leaning against the wall.

 

Even with the heavy, emo bangs snipped away from his right eye, he looked like a ghost. His skin was translucent, tracing pale blue veins down his forearms. The dark purple hair was a messy, untamable bird's nest. His crimson eyes, though slightly more alert than the dead, apathetic gaze he had seen last night, were still shadowed by deep, bruised bags of exhaustion.

 

He moved to the closet and pulled open the sliding door. Inside hung a row of identical middle school uniforms. Black gakuran jackets with stiff collars, white button-down shirts, and dark trousers. Aldera Junior High.

 

As he pulled the uniform off the hanger and slipped it on, he couldn't help but sigh. The clothes hung off him like hand-me-downs. The shoulders of the jacket were too wide, the trousers required a belt cinched to its tightest notch, and the collar felt like it was swallowing his neck. Mikumo had clearly lost weight since the uniform was purchased, shrinking into himself both metaphorically and physically.

 

Izuku rolled up the sleeves slightly, adjusting the fit as best he could. He grabbed his yellow backpack—a small, comforting familiarity, even if this one was stained with grease rather than dirt—and headed for the bedroom door.

 

He paused with his hand on the doorknob.

 

Beyond this door was his mother. Not his mother, exactly, but the woman who had birthed Akatani Mikumo. He remembered Inko Midoriya—her soft features, her constant, anxious tears, the way she would hover over him, cooking his favorite katsudon to soothe his bruised ego. She was a woman overflowing with so much love and worry that it physically pained her.

 

Taking a deep breath to steady his racing heart, Izuku turned the knob and stepped into the hallway.

 

The apartment was small, cramped, and smelled faintly of stale coffee and laundry detergent. As he walked into the kitchen/living area, he saw her.

 

The woman sitting at the small dining table was undeniably Inko, but the differences were stark and heartbreaking. She was thinner than Izuku’s mother, her frame sharp and weary. Her hair, a dark, muted shade of green that almost bordered on black, was pulled back into a tight, messy bun, held together by a single pencil. She wore faded medical scrubs, suggesting she either worked the night shift at a hospital or a care facility.

 

She wasn't crying. She wasn't fussing over a hot stove. She was staring blankly at a stack of bills, a cold cup of black coffee cradled in one hand and a red pen in the other, aggressively crossing out numbers on a budget sheet.

 

"Mom?" Izuku said softly.

 

The woman jumped slightly, her pen skidding across the paper. She turned around, her eyes widening in genuine shock. She looked at the clock on the microwave, which read 6:45 AM, and then back at Izuku.

 

"Mikumo?" Her voice was slightly deeper, raspy with exhaustion. "You're... you're awake. And dressed."

 

Izuku felt a pang of profound sadness. The fact that he was simply awake and dressed for school before noon was a shock to her. It painted a grim picture of how deep Mikumo's depression had run, how many mornings she must have spent pleading through his bedroom door just to get him to go to class.

 

"Yeah," Izuku said, trying to infuse a bit of warmth into his voice, though it felt unnatural in this raspy pitch. "I set an alarm."

 

Inko stared at him for a long moment, her eyes scanning his face. She frowned, standing up from the table. "What happened to your hair?"

 

Izuku reached up and touched the jagged edges of his newly cut bangs. "Oh. I, um... I cut it. It was getting in my eyes. I couldn't see my screen properly."

 

She didn't smile, but the tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction. She walked over to the kitchen counter, rubbing her temples. "Right. Well. Don't leave the clippings in the sink. The landlord still hasn't fixed the plumbing."

 

She wasn't warm. She wasn't overflowing with affection. But as Izuku watched her, he didn't see coldness; he saw a woman drowning in the crushing reality of a harsh world. She was a single mother working grueling hours to support a brilliant but severely depressed son in a society that labeled him medically obsolete before he even hit puberty. She had no energy left for tears. She had traded her softness for a brittle, defensive shell just to survive.

 

"Are you going to eat?" she asked, not looking at him as she opened a cabinet. "There's a leftover rice ball in the fridge. I don't have time to make eggs, my shift starts in forty minutes."

 

"That's okay, I'll grab it," Izuku said, moving to the refrigerator.

 

He took out the cold rice ball, unpeeling the plastic wrapper. He stood at the counter, eating in silence while Inko went back to furiously scribbling on her budget sheet.

 

We don't talk, Izuku realized. Mikumo and his mother are roommates sharing a space, separated by a wall of mutual exhaustion.

 

He swallowed his bite of rice and looked at her hunched back. In his previous life, his mother had been his rock. When the world told him no, she had cried with him, apologized to him, and eventually, supported him. He owed her everything. And looking at this hollowed-out version of her, Izuku felt a familiar, burning desire flare up in his chest—the desire to save.

 

He didn't need to punch a villain to save someone. Sometimes, saving someone just meant lifting the weight off their shoulders.

 

"Mom," Izuku said, his voice firm, projecting the quiet confidence of a seasoned Pro Hero.

 

Inko stopped writing. She didn't turn around, but her posture stiffened. "What is it, Mikumo? Did the school call again? I told you, if you skip P.E. one more time—"

 

"No, it's not that," Izuku interrupted gently. He walked over and placed his hand on the back of her chair. "I just... I wanted to say thank you."

 

She froze. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him, her dark, tired eyes searching his pale face for a punchline. "Thank you? For what?"

 

"For working so hard," Izuku said, holding her gaze, refusing to look away or mumble like Mikumo usually did. "For keeping the lights on. For letting me buy the scrap metal and computer parts even when money is tight. I know I haven't been... the easiest person to deal with lately. I've been stuck in my own head. But I'm going to do better. I'm going to start taking things seriously."

 

Inko stared at him, completely speechless. Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. For a brief, heartbreaking second, Izuku saw the glassy sheen of unshed tears pooling in her eyes, a glimmer of the Inko he used to know.

 

But she blinked them away quickly, clearing her throat and turning back to her papers.

 

"Are you running a fever?" she muttered, though her voice was noticeably softer, lacking its previous sharp edge. "Just... don't be late for school, Mikumo. I don't have the energy to fight with the principal today."

 

"I won't be late. Have a good shift," Izuku said.

 

He grabbed his yellow backpack, bowed his head slightly, and walked out of the apartment. As the door clicked shut behind him, he let out a long exhale. He had a lot of work to do, not just on his body and his gear, but on mending the fractured life this boy had left behind.

 

 

 

The air outside was crisp, carrying the scent of cherry blossoms and city exhaust. Izuku walked down the familiar, yet subtly altered streets of his neighborhood.

 

The geography was the same. The route to Aldera Junior High was etched into his muscle memory. But as his veteran eyes scanned the environment, the differences in this prototype timeline became glaringly obvious.

 

The hero billboards that plastered the sides of commercial buildings featured faces he recognized, but their roles were shifted. He saw a massive digital ad for a hero named "Snipe"—but instead of a U.A. teacher in a cowboy hat, this Snipe was unmasked, wearing a sleek, high-tech visor, posing as a top ten frontline hero. On another screen, a giant woman with horns and an infectious smile—Mt. Lady's prototype, Yuu Takeyama, whom Mikumo's notes identified as a rising star in the hero course applicants—was doing a commercial for a local gym.

 

As he walked, Izuku couldn't turn off his ingrained tactical analysis. That bank on the corner has a blind spot in its security camera coverage, his mind instantly cataloged. The overpass ahead is structurally sound, but the support pillars are exposed. A villain with a vibration quirk could bring it down in seconds. The pedestrian traffic is bottlenecking at the crosswalk; terrible evacuation route.

 

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. For three years, he had operated with Danger Sense, a quirk that physically spiked his brain with static whenever malice was nearby. Now, the quirk was gone, but the paranoia remained. He felt naked, vulnerable, like a soldier walking through a minefield without a metal detector.

 

"Yo! Mikumo! Wait up!"

 

The voice cut through the morning traffic like a crack of thunder.

 

Izuku stopped, his spine instantly going rigid. He knew that voice. It was a pitch higher, lacking the feral, gravelly growl of his lifelong rival, but the cadence, the sheer volume, was unmistakable.

 

He turned around slowly.

 

Jogging toward him down the sidewalk was Katsuki Bakugo. Or, rather, the boy Mikumo's journal called "Gougo."

 

Izuku had braced himself for this encounter, but seeing the boy in the flesh still sent a shockwave through his system. Gougo was slightly taller than Izuku, with the same spiky, ash-blond hair, though it was styled less like a chaotic explosion and more like a deliberate, swept-back wave. His uniform was impeccable—buttoned to the collar, perfectly pressed. There was no loose tie, no slouch, no permanent scowl etching lines into his forehead.

 

Instead, Gougo was smiling. A bright, confident, genuinely friendly smile.

 

"Hey man, I didn't think I'd catch you," Gougo said, coming to a halt and clapping a hand onto Izuku’s shoulder.

 

The impact wasn't meant to be hard, but to Mikumo's frail, unconditioned body, it felt like being struck by a textbook. Izuku winced, his knees buckling slightly before he caught himself.

 

"Whoa, easy there," Gougo laughed, his grip tightening supportively. He smelled like ozone, burnt sugar, and expensive cologne. "You're looking paler than usual, Miku. You actually sleeping at night, or are you still up playing with those little circuit boards of yours?"

 

Izuku stared into the ash-blond boy's eyes. They were a bright, clear red, entirely devoid of the simmering hatred and violent superiority complex that Katsuki had carried in middle school. Gougo wasn't glaring at him like a bug to be squashed.

 

He was looking at him like a fragile, porcelain doll.

 

"I'm fine, Gougo," Izuku said, carefully stepping out of the boy's grip. He maintained a neutral expression, suppressing the intense wave of disorientation. "Just thinking about the future."

 

"The future, huh?" Gougo fell into step beside him as they continued walking toward the school. He tucked his hands into his pockets, exuding a casual confidence that drew the eyes of passing girls in their school uniforms. "Yeah, I guess it's that time of year. Career counseling forms are due today. You finally figure out what vocational track you're taking?"

 

"Vocational track?" Izuku asked, his tone carefully measured.

 

"Well, yeah," Gougo said, looking at him sideways. "I mean, I know you were talking about U.A. a few years ago, but... come on. We both know that was just kid stuff."

 

Izuku stopped walking. He turned to face Gougo fully, the morning foot traffic flowing around them like a river around two stones.

 

"I'm applying to U.A., Gougo," Izuku said quietly. "For the Hero Course."

 

Gougo stopped, his confident smile faltering. A look of genuine, unfiltered concern washed over his face. He looked around, as if checking to see if anyone had heard Izuku's delusional statement.

 

He stepped closer to Izuku, lowering his voice, adopting the tone of a patient older brother speaking to a toddler who wanted to fly by jumping off the roof.

 

"Mikumo," Gougo said softly, his brow furrowing. He reached out and grasped Izuku’s shoulder again, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Buddy, we've talked about this. You're... you're quirkless. I know you're smart. You're the smartest guy I know when it comes to computers and machines. But the hero course?"

 

Gougo let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head. "It's not a comic book, man. Villains out there are monsters. They punch through concrete. They melt steel. If you go into an entrance exam with nothing but a wrench and a bad attitude, you're not going to fail. You're going to get yourself killed."

 

Izuku stood perfectly still.

 

In his past life, when he had told Katsuki he was applying to U.A., Katsuki had slammed his hand onto Izuku's desk, unleashing an explosion that burned his notebook, and screamed at him to take a swan dive off the roof. Katsuki's bullying had been violent, terrifying, and deeply traumatic.

 

But as Izuku looked into Gougo's deeply sympathetic, pitying eyes, he realized something horrifying.

 

This is worse.

 

Katsuki had bullied Izuku because, subconsciously, Katsuki was terrified of him. Katsuki saw the indomitable heroic spirit inside the quirkless boy, recognized it as a threat to his own superiority, and tried to violently stomp it out. Katsuki's rage was a twisted acknowledgment of Izuku's potential.

 

Gougo felt no such threat. Gougo looked at Izuku and saw absolutely zero potential. There was no anger because there was no competition. Gougo was being 'nice' because he fundamentally believed Izuku was a helpless, broken creature incapable of agency.

 

It was a suffocating, insidious kind of cruelty. It was systemic ableism wrapped in the warm, suffocating blanket of friendship. It was the exact reason Mikumo Akatani had given up on himself and retreated into the dark.

 

Izuku felt a cold, hard knot of resolve solidify in his chest. He reached up, grasped Gougo's wrist with his pale, unscarred hand, and firmly removed the boy's hand from his shoulder.

 

"I appreciate your concern, Gougo," Izuku said. His voice wasn't raised. It didn't tremble. It was pitched with the absolute, unyielding authority of a hero who had stared down the God of Evil and won. "But my safety is my own responsibility. I am applying to U.A. And I am going to pass."

 

Gougo’s red eyes widened. He looked down at his wrist, where Izuku had grabbed him, as if shocked that the frail boy even had the muscle to move his arm. The gentle, pitying mask slipped for a second, replaced by a flash of profound confusion.

 

"Mikumo, I'm just trying to look out for you—"

 

"I know," Izuku interrupted smoothly. "But I don't need looking out for. I'll see you in class."

 

Without waiting for a response, Izuku turned on his heel and walked away, his posture straight, his strides purposeful. Behind him, Gougo stood frozen on the sidewalk, the cheerful, condescending older-brother act shattered by the sheer, imposing presence that suddenly radiated from the town's resident shut-in.

 

 

 

Aldera Junior High was exactly as Izuku remembered it, yet entirely different in its atmosphere.

 

When Izuku Midoriya walked these halls, he was a target. He was the subject of whispered insults, tripped in the hallways, and subjected to the casual cruelty of teachers who looked the other way.

 

Mikumo Akatani, however, was not a target. He was a ghost.

 

As Izuku navigated the crowded corridors, he noticed that no one looked at him. No one sneered. Students simply parted around him like water around a buoy, their eyes sliding right past his dark purple hair and slouched frame. He was utterly invisible.

 

He found his classroom—Class 3-C—and took his seat near the back. He unpacked his bag, setting a blank notebook and a pen on the desk.

 

The morning passed in a blur of tedious, rudimentary academics. For a boy who had spent evenings studying advanced hero law, quirk physics with Hatsume, and tactical strategy with Aizawa, the middle school curriculum was painfully slow. Izuku tuned out the teacher's drone about historical eras he already knew by heart, opting instead to open his notebook and begin sketching.

 

He couldn't rely on brute strength. If he tried to replicate Shoot Style with Mikumo's current bone density, he would snap his femurs in half on the first kick. He needed a combat style based on evasion, misdirection, and debilitating strikes.

 

Item 1: Capture Weapon, Izuku wrote, his pen flying across the page. Aizawa-sensei's binding cloth is woven with carbon fiber and a special metal alloy that responds to his quirk. I don't have Erasure to manipulate it. I need a mechanical alternative.

 

He sketched a gauntlet mechanism, pulling heavily from Mikumo's abandoned 'Pneumatic Bracers' design. If I mount a high-tensile wire spool on the wrist, powered by a compressed CO2 cartridge, I can fire a weighted capture line. Retraction can be handled by a high-torque micro-motor.

 

Item 2: Mobility. He drew a pair of heavy-duty boots. Need to reinforce the soles with shock-absorbing gel. If I use localized kinetic dampeners—similar to what Uraraka's boots used to reduce nausea—I can mitigate the impact on my joints when falling from heights or performing parkour.

 

"Alright, settle down," the homeroom teacher's voice finally cut through Izuku's intense focus.

 

Izuku looked up. The teacher, a balding man with a bored expression, was tapping a stack of papers against his desk.

 

"As you all know, you're in your third year now. It's time to start thinking seriously about your futures. I'll be passing out printouts of your career aspiration forms today."

 

The class erupted into a low murmur of excitement. Students began quietly manifesting their quirks—a glowing hand here, a stretching neck there.

 

"Now, I know most of you are planning on applying to hero courses," the teacher continued, a wry smile crossing his face. "But remember to be realistic. The top schools are highly competitive. Speaking of which..."

 

The teacher picked up a piece of paper. "Bakugo. You're aiming for U.A. High, correct?"

 

All eyes turned to Gougo, who was sitting near the front. He leaned back in his chair, flashing a confident, easy grin. "Yeah, teach. Only the best. I've been acing the mock exams, and my quirk's output has increased by twenty percent since last year. I'm going to breeze through the practical."

 

The class broke into applause and cheers.

 

"That's our Gougo!"

"He's totally going to make it!"

"Don't forget us when you're a top pro!"

 

Izuku watched the display with a neutral expression. In the original timeline, this was the moment the teacher had outed Izuku, mockingly revealing that he, too, was applying to U.A., which led to the entire class erupting in cruel, mocking laughter.

 

Izuku braced himself for the humiliation. He waited for the teacher's eyes to find him in the back row.

 

The teacher looked at his list. His eyes scanned down the names. They briefly paused on Akatani.

 

And then, he simply moved on.

 

"Right, well, good luck to you, Bakugo. Now, for the rest of you, I've brought pamphlets from several local technical colleges and business schools. Please come up and take one that fits your aptitudes."

 

Izuku froze.

 

The teacher hadn't mocked him. The teacher hadn't outed him. The teacher had simply looked at the quirkless boy's file and unilaterally decided that his dream wasn't even worth mentioning. It was so impossibly out of the realm of reality that bringing it up would be a waste of breath.

 

Mikumo wasn't a joke to them. He was a non-entity.

 

A cold, icy anger—sharper and more focused than anything he had felt on the battlefield—bloomed in Izuku's chest. He didn't care about his own pride. But he cared deeply about the brilliant, broken boy whose body he was inhabiting. He cared about the thousands of quirkless people in this world who were systematically erased and ignored by a society obsessed with flashy powers.

 

Izuku stood up.

 

The scrape of his chair against the linoleum floor was loud in the suddenly quiet classroom.

 

Fifty pairs of eyes, including the teacher's and Gougo's, swiveled to the back of the room. They stared at the pale boy with the dark purple hair, looking at him as if a piece of furniture had suddenly sprouted legs and spoken.

 

"Sensei," Izuku said, his raspy voice carrying clearly across the room. "You skipped my application."

 

The teacher blinked, looking genuinely perplexed. "Akatani? Sit down. I haven't skipped anyone. Your mother filed a preliminary form stating you were looking into software development academies. I have the pamphlets for—"

 

"I changed my mind," Izuku interrupted, his tone perfectly polite, yet laced with an immovable authority. "I am applying for the U.A. High School Hero Course."

 

Silence descended on the classroom. It wasn't the silence of anticipation. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of immense, collective awkwardness. A few students exchanged uncomfortable glances. No one laughed. They just looked profoundly uncomfortable.

 

Gougo twisted around in his seat, his face a mask of panicked pity. "Mikumo, man, what are you doing? Sit down, you're embarrassing yourself."

 

Izuku ignored him. He kept his crimson eyes locked on the teacher.

 

"U.A. removed the rule banning quirkless applicants from the Hero Course exam several years ago," Izuku stated, reciting the bylaws he had memorized in his past life. "Therefore, I am legally entitled to apply, and the school is legally obligated to submit my transcripts for consideration."

 

The teacher sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Akatani, listen to me. I know you've been having a... difficult time lately. We all know you're smart. But the hero course isn't about passing a written test. The practical exam involves fighting. You don't have a quirk. You are physically incapable of participating safely."

 

"U.A. allows support gear for applicants who request handicap accommodations in advance," Izuku countered without missing a beat. "I will be submitting a portfolio of my own designs to the U.A. Support Department for approval to use in the practical exam. I have already drafted the schematics."

 

The teacher stared at him. Gougo stared at him. The entire class stared at him.

 

The slouched, depressed, mute boy in the back of the room had vanished, replaced by someone who spoke with the chilling, calculated precision of a military commander.

 

"I'm not asking for your permission, Sensei," Izuku finished quietly, his gaze piercing. "I am informing you of my academic trajectory. Please ensure my forms are prepared."

 

With that, Izuku sat back down, picked up his pen, and went back to sketching the micro-motor for his capture gauntlet.

 

The silence lingered for another ten seconds, heavy and palpable, before the teacher awkwardly cleared his throat and moved on, his voice slightly higher than before. Gougo kept looking back at Izuku, his red eyes filled with a mixture of shock, confusion, and a burgeoning, protective anxiety.

 

Izuku didn't look up. He had drawn his line in the sand.

 

 

 

The final bell rang, and Izuku was out the door before anyone could approach him. He didn't want to hear Gougo's lectures, and he certainly didn't want to deal with the pitying stares of his classmates.

 

He had ten months. Every hour counted.

 

He didn't go home. Instead, he pulled up a map on Mikumo's phone. He was looking for something specific. Dagobah Municipal Beach was on the other side of the city, and from what he remembered, it had been cleaned up by a public works project in this timeline years ago. He needed a new training ground, a place where he could scavenge materials and build his new body in secret.

 

After twenty minutes of searching the industrial zoning maps, he found it: the Tatooin Industrial Yard. It was an abandoned shipping logistics center on the edge of the city, a sprawling wasteland of rusted shipping containers, discarded heavy machinery, and mountains of industrial scrap. It was a haven of raw materials, completely ignored by the public.

 

It took him an hour to walk there, his frail legs burning by the time he slipped through a gap in the rusted chain-link fence.

 

The yard was vast and silent, smelling of iron oxide and saltwater from the nearby bay. Mountains of twisted steel and crushed cars loomed like metal monuments against the late afternoon sky.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the clearing, dropping his yellow backpack to the dirt.

 

He took off his gakuran jacket, folding it neatly, and set it on top of his bag. He was left in his white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, exposing his thin, pale, unscarred arms.

 

He looked at his hands. He thought of the phantom aches in his bones. He thought of All Might, of One For All, of the legacy he had died to protect.

 

I am not Deku anymore, he thought, letting the cool evening breeze wash over him. Deku was a boy who broke himself to be a symbol. Deku had the power of the gods.

 

He looked around the graveyard of rusted metal.

 

I am Yamikumo. I am going to build myself out of scraps and shadows. I am going to prove that a hero isn't defined by the quirk they were born with, but by the will they choose to forge.

 

Izuku dropped to the dirt. He placed his pale hands flat against the rough, gravelly earth. He straightened his back, kicked his legs out, and aligned his core into a perfect plank position.

 

He took a deep breath, filling his weak lungs.

 

And slowly, agonizingly, he lowered himself toward the ground.

 

His triceps screamed instantly. His shoulders trembled violently. His core, entirely devoid of muscle tone, felt like it was tearing. Gravity, which had once felt like a mere suggestion when he had One For All, now felt like a crushing physical weight pressing down on his spine.

 

He reached the bottom of the push-up. His nose hovered an inch above the dirt.

 

Up, he commanded his body.

 

He pushed.

 

His arms shook so violently he nearly collapsed. Sweat instantly beaded on his forehead. Every muscle fiber in his chest and arms fired, protesting the sudden, shocking demand placed upon them. He gritted his teeth, a low, raspy groan escaping his lips as he fought against the weakness.

 

Inch by inch, fighting for every millimeter, he locked his elbows out.

 

One.

 

He didn't pause. He took another breath and lowered himself again.

 

Two.

 

He would do this until he collapsed. And then he would get up, scavenge for parts, go home, refine his blueprints, and do it all again tomorrow.

 

Ten months.

 

In the abandoned scrapyard, bathed in the orange light of the setting sun, the first Quirkless hero began to forge his weapons. And the strongest weapon in Yamikumo's arsenal wouldn't be his gadgets, or his capture scarf, or his boots.

 

It would be his mind.

 

 

The human body is a machine of profound adaptability. It can learn to endure blistering heat, freezing cold, and the crushing weight of physical exertion. It can be broken down to its base components and rebuilt, fiber by tearing fiber, into something stronger.

 

But muscle memory is a stubborn, unforgiving ghost. And when that muscle memory belongs to a boy who once held the power to shatter mountains, adapting to a frail, powerless frame is a daily exercise in psychological torture.

 

Month One: The Phantom Limb

 

Izuku Midoriya—now Akatani Mikumo—spent the first thirty days of his ten-month deadline fighting a war against his own instincts.

 

The Tatooin Industrial Yard became his sanctuary and his purgatory. Every day after school, he would slip through the rusted chain-link fence, drop his yellow backpack on the hood of a crushed sedan, and begin to break himself down.

 

It started with the absolute basics. Push-ups. Sit-ups. Squats. Running laps around the perimeter of the sprawling, miles-wide scrapyard. To a normal teenager, it would have been a grueling, albeit standard, workout regimen. To Izuku, who had once carried washing machines with one hand and sprinted fast enough to break the sound barrier, it felt like moving through wet concrete.

 

The physical pain was immediate and blinding. Mikumo’s body was starved of protein, heavily atrophied from years of sedentary isolation, and entirely unaccustomed to cardiovascular strain. After a single mile of jogging, Izuku’s lungs would seize, burning with the taste of copper, and he would collapse into the dirt, violently dry-heaving.

 

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the psychological whiplash.

 

It happened during his second week in the yard. He was attempting to lift a rusted axle from a truck to use as a makeshift barbell. He planted his feet, bent his knees, and gripped the cold, flaking iron. Subconsciously, effortlessly, his brain sent the command to activate One For All: Full Cowling - 5%.

 

He expected the familiar, comforting surge of warmth in his chest. He expected the hum of raw power to flood his veins, the red lines to crackle across his skin, and the emerald lightning to spark from his pores. He expected the axle to feel as light as a PVC pipe.

 

He pulled.

 

Nothing happened.

 

The axle didn't budge. Instead, a sharp, searing pain shot through his lower back, and his pale, uncalloused hands tore open against the jagged rust, leaving smears of bright red blood on the iron.

 

Izuku stumbled backward, falling onto his hands and knees in the dirt. He gasped, clutching his bleeding palms to his chest.

 

For a terrifying, suffocating moment, the void where One For All used to be roared to life. It was a phantom ache, a sensory hallucination so intense that it made his vision swim. His arms throbbed with the ghostly memory of shattering bones. His chest ached for the warmth of the vestiges. He felt entirely, profoundly hollowed out.

 

"Dammit," Izuku choked out, his raspy voice cracking. "Dammit!"

 

He slammed his fist into the dirt, ignoring the sting in his torn skin. He was weak. He was so incredibly, pathetically weak. A single villain with a minor strength quirk could snap him in half right now. Shigaraki would have dusted him just by breathing on him.

 

He sat there in the dirt for a long time, the shadows of the scrap piles lengthening as the sun dipped below the horizon. The silence of the yard pressed in on him.

 

You are not him anymore, Izuku told himself, squeezing his eyes shut until he saw stars. You are not the Symbol of Peace. You are Yamikumo. Act like it.

 

He forced himself to his feet. He walked over to his yellow backpack, pulled out a roll of athletic tape, and meticulously wrapped his bleeding palms. He didn't have a healing factor. He didn't have Recovery Girl. He had to be smarter. He couldn't afford to injure himself through stupid, nostalgic mistakes.

 

He walked back to the axle. He didn't try to lift it. Instead, he studied it. He analyzed its pivot point. He found a sturdy steel pipe, jammed it under the center of the axle, placed a cinderblock underneath the pipe as a fulcrum, and threw his body weight onto the end of the lever.

 

With a loud screech of grinding metal, the heavy axle lifted into the air and rolled away.

 

Physics. Leverage. Mechanics. That was his quirk now.

 

He didn't sleep that night. He went home, washed the grease from his face, and sat at Mikumo’s cluttered desk. He opened the black, leather-bound notebooks and began to study the genius he had inherited. Mikumo’s understanding of engineering was terrifying. Izuku had always been brilliant at analyzing quirks, but Mikumo analyzed the physical world. Where Izuku saw a hero’s potential, Mikumo saw voltage, kinetic transference, tensile strength, and structural integrity.

 

Izuku began to merge the two.

 

Month Three: The Forge of Shadows

 

By the time the sakura blossoms fell and the humid Japanese summer began to creep in, a change had taken hold of Mikumo’s body.

 

The pale, sickly translucence of his skin was replaced by a healthy, albeit still fair, complexion. The severe, sunken hollows of his cheeks had filled out, giving his jawline a sharp, defined edge. His dark purple hair, which he refused to cut short, had grown into a shaggy, untamed mane that he now tied back into a small, practical tail at the nape of his neck, keeping it out of his crimson eyes.

 

The heavy bags under his eyes hadn't vanished—they were a permanent fixture of his biology, it seemed—but the eyes themselves were no longer dead. They burned with a quiet, analytical intensity that unnerved anyone who made eye contact with him.

 

At Aldera Junior High, he remained a ghost. Gougo had tried a few more times to dissuade him from his "suicidal" U.A. application, offering condescending advice hidden behind a veneer of friendly concern.

 

"Look, Miku, I just don't want to see you get crushed when the rejection letter comes," Gougo had said one afternoon, leaning against Izuku’s desk. "There are good tech schools. You could fix my support gear when I go pro."

 

Izuku hadn't even looked up from his notebook, where he was currently calculating the optimal chemical ratio for a localized smokescreen. "I appreciate the offer, Gougo. But I won't be fixing your gear. I'll be designing my own."

 

Gougo had scoffed, shaking his head in pity, and walked away. Let him pity. Pity was a blind spot. And Yamikumo would live in the blind spots.

 

Back at the apartment, Inko was noticing the changes. She noticed that the grocery bill had doubled, as Izuku was consuming massive amounts of protein—chicken, tofu, eggs, whatever they could afford. She noticed the smell of ozone, grease, and sweat that permeated his clothes. She noticed that he was awake before her, and asleep after her.

 

One evening in late June, Izuku was sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by disemboweled microwaves, old car batteries he had hauled from the scrapyard, and miles of copper wiring. He was wearing thick rubber gloves and a pair of tinted safety goggles.

 

He was building his primary offensive weapon: The Stun-Gauntlets.

 

He couldn't rely on brute force to knock out villains. He needed something that bypassed physical durability. Electricity was the universal equalizer.

 

Using Mikumo’s schematics, Izuku was wiring a series of high-capacity capacitors into a pair of heavily modified tactical gloves. The idea was to create a circuit that would draw power from a lithium-ion battery pack on his belt, travel up insulated wires beneath his jacket, and terminate at the knuckles of the gloves.

 

"Mikumo?"

 

Izuku flinched, pulling his soldering iron away from the circuit board just in time to avoid burning a hole through his desk. He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and looked over his shoulder.

 

Inko was standing in the doorway, holding a plate of sliced apples. She looked at the chaotic mess of electronics on the floor, her tired eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and mild alarm.

 

"Hey, Mom," Izuku said, his voice raspy but steady.

 

She walked over slowly, navigating the sea of wires, and set the plate on a clear spot on his desk. She looked at his arms. Because he was in a tank top, the new muscle was visible. It wasn't the bulky, terrifying mass of his past life, but it was dense, lean, and coiled tight like steel cables.

 

"You've been... very focused lately," Inko said carefully, her hands nervously wringing the fabric of her scrub top. "You're eating more. You're exercising. And... whatever this is." She gestured to the sparking gauntlet.

 

"It's for the U.A. entrance exam," Izuku said simply. "They allow support items for applicants who file for handicap accommodations. I submitted my blueprints to the board last week. They approved them for testing."

 

Inko’s breath hitched. She looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time in months. "Mikumo. U.A.? You're... you're really serious about this. I thought the school was just... letting you humor yourself."

 

"I'm serious, Mom." Izuku set down the soldering iron. He looked at her with his piercing crimson eyes. "I know I don't have a quirk. I know the statistics. But I can't just sit in the dark anymore. I have to try."

 

Inko stared at him. For a moment, the hardened, cynical shell she had built to survive the crushing reality of their lives seemed to crack. Her lips trembled. She reached out, her fingers hovering over his shoulder before gently resting on his skin.

 

"Please," she whispered, her voice cracking with the agonizing fear of a mother who loved her child too much. "Please, just... don't get yourself killed. If you get hurt... if you break, I don't know what I'll do."

 

Izuku reached up and gently squeezed her hand. "I won't break. I promise."

 

That night, Izuku finalized the Stun-Gauntlets. He strapped the heavy battery pack to his waist, ran the wires up his arms, and slipped the reinforced gloves on. He grabbed a rusted iron pipe he had brought from the yard.

 

He flicked the activation switch by curling his thumb against his index finger.

 

BZZZZT!

 

A brilliant arc of blue electricity violently snapped across the knuckles of the gloves. The smell of ozone instantly filled the room. Izuku slammed his fist into the iron pipe. The current surged through the metal, superheating it in a fraction of a second. The voltage was enough to instantly paralyze the central nervous system of a grown man, effectively turning any villain into a twitching statue.

 

Izuku smiled in the blue light. Offensive capability: acquired.

 

Month Five: The Physics of Cowling

 

Strength was irrelevant if he couldn't hit his target, or worse, if his target hit him.

 

Izuku Midoriya had been a brawler. Even with Shoot Style, his fighting method relied heavily on overwhelming force and blinding speed provided by One For All. He would take a hit to give a stronger hit.

 

Yamikumo could not take a hit. If an explosion from Gougo hit him flush, or if a robot stepped on him, his journey would end immediately in a hospital bed—or a morgue.

 

He had to unlearn how to fight like a god, and learn how to fight like a ghost.

 

It was August. The Tatooin Industrial Yard was a sweltering oven. The rusted metal burned to the touch, and the air was thick with humidity.

 

Izuku stood at the base of a towering, chaotic stack of shipping containers. He was wearing his finalized mobility boots—heavy-duty combat boots with thick, shock-absorbing gel soles he had synthesized in his kitchen, reinforced with carbon-fiber shins to protect his legs from impact.

 

He looked up at the containers, fifty feet in the air.

 

When I used Full Cowling, Izuku analyzed, pacing back and forth, the power flowed through my body like water. It enhanced my kinetic output, but the footwork... the footwork was just physics. Gran Torino taught me how to bounce off walls, how to constantly change my trajectory to confuse the enemy. I didn't need super strength to do the footwork. I just needed momentum, spatial awareness, and a perfect center of gravity.

 

He closed his eyes. He imagined the green lightning. He felt the phantom hum in his veins. He mapped the kinetic pathways in his mind—the angle of the ankle, the bend of the knee, the twist of the hips.

 

He opened his crimson eyes. They narrowed into razor-thin slits.

 

He bolted forward.

 

Without the speed of a quirk, it felt agonizingly slow. But his form was absolutely flawless. He hit the side of a rusted sedan, using the hood as a springboard. He launched himself into the air, twisting his body mid-flight.

 

He slammed feet-first against the vertical side of a red shipping container. The shock-absorbing boots took the brunt of the impact. Before gravity could rip him down, he pushed off, his leg muscles screaming in protest. He vaulted across a ten-foot gap, caught the edge of an iron beam, and swung himself upward, using the momentum to launch himself onto a higher platform.

 

He didn't stop. He became a blur of dark purple and black against the rust. He bounced between the narrow alleyways of stacked containers, chaining wall-runs, vaults, and backflips in a seamless, fluid dance. It wasn't the supersonic ricocheting of Deku, but it was incredibly fast, eerily silent, and utterly unpredictable.

 

He reached the top of the fifty-foot stack, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down his pale face.

 

He looked down at the yard. He had scaled it in under twelve seconds. Without a quirk.

 

I don't need to be stronger than them, Izuku realized, a fierce, triumphant grin spreading across his face. I just need to be exactly where they aren't.

 

Month Seven: The Instinct Problem

 

But unlearning was harder than learning.

 

In late October, the autumn chill swept through the city. Izuku had moved on to combat simulation. He had spent a week rigging the scrapyard with rudimentary traps—swinging heavy tires, trip-wires that triggered falling debris, and spring-loaded wooden beams. It was a chaotic, dangerous obstacle course designed to mimic the unpredictable nature of a villain fight.

 

He stood in the center of the kill-zone, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and measured.

 

He pulled the trigger wire in his hand.

 

The yard exploded into motion. A massive, steel-belted tractor tire swung down from a crane directly at his head.

 

Izuku's eyes snapped open. He ducked, the heavy rubber missing his hair by millimeters. He rolled beneath a falling sheet of corrugated iron, popping up on his feet just as a wooden beam swung toward his ribs.

 

He parried the beam with his reinforced forearm, absorbing the shock, and spun around to face a concrete block that was sliding down a ramp directly toward him.

 

And then, his brain short-circuited.

 

For a fraction of a millisecond, the muscle memory of the war took over. Izuku saw a heavy projectile flying at him. His body, trained by years of fighting Nomu and supervillains, bypassed his conscious thought. He didn't dive out of the way. He didn't use a gadget.

 

He planted his feet, pulled his right arm back, and instinctively attempted a Detroit Smash on the 500-pound block of solid concrete.

 

SMASH!

 

The sound that echoed through the yard wasn't the booming shockwave of displaced air. It was the sickening, wet CRACK of human bone meeting immovable stone.

 

"AGGGHHHH!"

 

Izuku screamed, stumbling backward, clutching his right hand to his chest. The concrete block thudded harmlessly to the dirt, completely unbroken.

 

Izuku fell to his knees, his vision whiting out from the sheer, agonizing pain. His right hand was a mangled mess. The knuckles were instantly swelling, blooming in horrific shades of purple and black. Two of his fingers were bent at unnatural angles. He had shattered his hand.

 

Tears of agony and intense frustration streamed down his face. He rocked back and forth in the dirt, hyperventilating.

 

Stupid! Stupid! STUPID! he screamed at himself in his mind.

 

He wasn't Deku. He couldn't smash things. He couldn't punch through armor. If he punched a robot in the entrance exam like that, he would lose his arm.

 

He forced himself to stop crying. He dragged himself to his backpack with his good hand. He pulled out a splint and a roll of bandages. Biting down on his leather belt to stifle his screams, he grabbed his broken fingers and violently snapped them back into place.

 

He bound his hand tightly, his whole body shaking with cold sweat.

 

He sat in the dirt, cradling his broken hand, looking up at the gray sky. He had to sever the connection completely. Deku was dead. If he fought like Deku, Yamikumo would die too.

 

From that day forward, Izuku stopped throwing punches. He rewired his entire combat philosophy. If an object was coming at him, he dodged. If an opponent was open, he didn't strike with his fists; he struck with his batons, his taser-gloves, or his environment.

 

He became a ghost of evasion.

 

Month Nine: The Yamikumo Protocol

 

By January, the snow had begun to fall, dusting the Tatooin Industrial Yard in a layer of pristine white.

 

Izuku’s body was a weapon forged from pure grit. He was still lean, but his muscles were dense and incredibly agile. He could hold a one-armed plank for twenty minutes. He could scale a three-story building using only drain pipes and window ledges in under thirty seconds. His broken hand had healed, thanks to meticulous self-care and an ungodly pain tolerance, leaving the first scars on Mikumo’s once-pristine skin.

 

But agility and electricity weren't enough. He needed range. He needed a way to control the battlefield, to bind villains before they could even use their quirks.

 

He needed Aizawa’s scarf.

 

But Aizawa’s capture weapon was a closely guarded secret, heavily reliant on the Erasure hero’s quirk to manipulate the carbon fiber. Izuku had to build his own from scratch.

 

He spent three weeks locked in his bedroom, sleeping two hours a night, surrounded by discarded fabrics, Kevlar weaves, and micro-pneumatics.

 

The final result was a masterpiece of underground engineering.

 

It didn't look like Aizawa’s long, flowing cloth. Izuku’s capture weapon—which he dubbed the Shadow-Weave—was a thick, tactical collar worn around the neck and shoulders. Hidden within the fire-resistant, dark gray fabric were four spooling mechanisms, powered by highly compressed CO2 cartridges. The "scarf" was actually composed of four lengths of high-tensile, weighted, razor-thin steel-weaved cables, encased in padded Kevlar to prevent slicing the target.

 

By utilizing micro-switches wired into the fingertips of his Stun-Gauntlets, Izuku could fire the weighted cables from his collar with the speed of a bullet. The weights on the end of the cables would wrap violently around a target’s limbs, and the high-torque motors in the collar would instantly retract, binding the target securely to whatever anchor point Izuku chose.

 

It was brilliant. It was deadly. And it was incredibly difficult to master.

 

He spent the entirety of Month Nine in the snowy scrapyard, practicing with the Shadow-Weave.

 

At first, it was a disaster. He fired a cable at a rusted car door, missed, and the cable wrapped around a steel beam above him, yanking him violently off his feet and leaving him dangling upside down for twenty minutes until he could cut himself free.

 

But Izuku was nothing if not persistent. He mapped the trajectory, calculated the air resistance, and learned the exact millisecond to trigger the retraction motors.

 

By the end of the month, he was a demon in the snow.

 

He set up six mannequins made of scrap wood and tires across the yard. He stood in the center, breathing out plumes of white vapor into the freezing air.

 

Go.

 

He fired two cables simultaneously. They shot out with a sharp THWIP sound, wrapping instantly around the legs of two mannequins fifty feet away. With a flick of his wrists, the motors screamed, and the mannequins were yanked off their feet, crashing into each other.

 

Izuku sprinted forward, activating the Stun-Gauntlets. He didn't punch the third mannequin; he delivered a precise, open-palm strike to its center mass, discharging 50,000 volts. He vaulted over the falling dummy, fired a third cable into the air, caught a crane hook, and swung himself in a massive arc over the yard.

 

Mid-swing, he detached three spherical grenades from his tactical belt. He had spent weeks synthesizing the chemical compounds from Mikumo’s notes. He pulled the pins with his teeth and dropped them.

 

POP! POP! POP!

 

Thick, billowing clouds of dark purple smoke erupted below him, completely obscuring the final three mannequins.

 

Izuku dropped from the sky into the smoke. He didn't need to see. He knew the layout of the yard by heart, and his spatial awareness was perfect.

 

Within three seconds, the distinct THWIP of the capture cables echoed through the smoke, followed by the heavy thud of the mannequins being bound and dragged.

 

The smoke began to clear in the winter breeze.

 

Izuku stood in the center of the carnage. All six targets were neutralized, bound tight in dark gray Kevlar cables, smoking from electrical burns.

 

Izuku retracted the cables. They slithered back into the heavy collar around his neck with a mechanical hum. He stood up straight, brushing the snow from his dark tactical pants.

 

The integration was complete.

 

Month Ten: The Eve of the Exam

 

February 25th. The night before the U.A. Entrance Exam.

 

Izuku stood in his bedroom. It looked vastly different from the depressed, chaotic dungeon he had woken up in ten months ago. The trash was gone. The floors were clean. The desk was meticulously organized, acting as a highly efficient workstation for maintaining his gear.

 

He stood before the full-length mirror.

 

He didn't look like Izuku Midoriya. He didn't look like the Symbol of Peace.

 

He looked like a nightmare for the criminal underworld.

 

He was wearing his finalized hero costume, painstakingly assembled from modified military surplus and his own fabricated gear. It was sleek, completely devoid of the bright, flashy colors most heroes favored.

 

He wore a dark, charcoal-gray tactical combat suit made of breathable, tear-resistant canvas. His heavy, shock-absorbing boots were reinforced with black steel plating. Around his waist was a heavy utility belt, bristling with EMP grenades, flashbangs, and his custom purple-smoke canisters.

 

On his arms were the Stun-Gauntlets, thick and imposing, with the blue electrical nodes resting over his knuckles.

 

And around his neck, obscuring his lower face like a dark cowl, was the heavy, imposing collar of the Shadow-Weave capture weapon.

 

His dark purple hair was tied back, leaving his sharp, pale face exposed. The permanent dark bags under his crimson eyes no longer looked like signs of exhaustion; they looked like war paint. They made him look predatory, unblinking, and entirely unbothered by the darkness.

 

"Yamikumo," Izuku whispered into the quiet room. The name fit perfectly.

 

The door creaked open.

 

Izuku turned. Inko stood in the doorway. She was wearing her scrubs, having just gotten off a double shift. She looked exhausted, but as her eyes fell on her son, she stopped dead in her tracks.

 

She stared at the combat suit. She stared at the mechanical gauntlets. She stared at the sharp, hardened muscle, and the intense, burning fire in his crimson eyes.

 

This wasn't her frail, broken boy hiding from the world. This was a soldier preparing for deployment.

 

"Mikumo," Inko breathed, her hand flying to her mouth.

 

Izuku turned to face her fully. He didn't slouch. He stood tall, projecting an aura of quiet, immovable strength.

 

"Mom," Izuku said, his raspy voice gentle. "I'm ready."

 

Inko walked slowly into the room. She reached out with trembling hands, her fingers gently touching the thick canvas of his combat suit, tracing the heavy metal of his gauntlets. She looked up into his eyes, searching for the boy who used to cry when Gougo looked at him the wrong way.

 

That boy was gone. In his place was something entirely new.

 

To Izuku's shock, Inko didn't cry. She didn't beg him not to go. Instead, she took a deep breath, her spine straightening, and a look of fierce, maternal pride washed over her tired features.

 

She reached up and gently adjusted the heavy collar around his neck.

 

"You built all of this," she whispered, awe in her voice. "With your own two hands."

 

"I did."

 

"They're going to laugh at you," Inko warned, her voice thick with emotion but devoid of pity. "They're going to see a quirkless boy, and they're going to expect you to fail."

 

Izuku smiled. It wasn't the wide, blinding, reassuring smile of Deku. It was a sharp, dangerous smirk.

 

"Let them laugh," Izuku said softly. "The robots don't care if I have a quirk. And neither will I, when I tear them apart."

 

Inko stepped back. She nodded once, a definitive, resolute motion. "Go to sleep, Mikumo. You have a test to pass tomorrow."

 

She turned and walked out of the room, leaving the door cracked.

 

Izuku turned back to the mirror. He pulled a black, tactical half-mask up over his nose and mouth, completing the ensemble. Only his crimson eyes were visible, glowing with terrifying resolve.

 

Ten months of agony. Ten months of unlearning his past life, breaking his bones, and burning his hands. He had built a new body, a new arsenal, and a new identity.

 

One For All was gone. The Symbol of Peace was dead.

 

But tomorrow, the world would learn that true power didn't come from a quirk. It came from a blueprint, a ghost, and the unbreakable will to survive.

 

Yamikumo was ready for war.

 

The air on the morning of February 26th was bone-chillingly crisp, carrying the metallic scent of impending snow and the nervous sweat of a thousand hopeful teenagers.

 

For Izuku, who was now unequivocally and entirely Akatani Mikumo, the cold was an afterthought. The heavy, dark gray canvas of his tactical suit trapped his body heat perfectly, and the adrenaline steadily pooling in his veins kept his heart beating at a slow, rhythmic, highly optimized pace.

 

He stood a block away from the towering, gold-accented gates of U.A. High School.

 

To conceal the heavy, militaristic nature of his gear—and to avoid drawing the attention of any overzealous police officers on the train ride over—Izuku had draped himself in an oversized, faded black trench coat. It reached past his knees, billowing slightly in the winter breeze. His dark purple hair was tied back, save for a few stray strands that framed his pale face, and his permanent, bruised eye bags made him look as though he hadn't slept since the previous decade.

 

He took a slow, deep breath, feeling the chill fill his lungs, and exhaled a plume of white vapor.

 

Three years ago, in another life, I stood here and tripped over my own feet, Izuku thought, his crimson eyes narrowing as he stared up at the glass H-shaped towers of the main building. I was terrified. I was holding a power I couldn't control, praying for a miracle.

 

He reached beneath the coat, his pale fingers brushing the cold metal of his Stun-Gauntlets, and traced the heavy Kevlar weave of the Shadow-Weave collar resting securely around his neck.

 

No miracles today. Just math, physics, and a lot of voltage.

 

He stepped forward, joining the river of applicants flowing through the massive archway.

 

The atmosphere was electric. Teenagers were chatting excitedly, some subtly flexing their quirks, others reciting last-minute formulas for the written exam. Izuku moved through them like a ghost, his shock-absorbing boots completely silencing his footsteps. He kept his head down, not out of shyness, but out of tactical habit, constantly scanning the crowd for threats, evaluating the physical builds of his competitors.

 

Most of them were relying on flashy emitter quirks. He could tell by their posture—they carried themselves with an arrogant looseness, expecting their biology to do the heavy lifting. They were untrained. Sloppy.

 

"Hey! Out of the way, extra!"

 

The voice was loud, abrasive, and unmistakably familiar.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He simply shifted his weight by a fraction of an inch, allowing a burly applicant with rock-covered skin to stumble past him, pushed out of the way by none other than Gougo.

 

Katsuki Bakugo’s prototype strutted through the crowd with supreme confidence. He wore his Aldera uniform sharply, his ash-blond hair swept back meticulously. He looked every bit the top-tier applicant, radiating a charismatic, albeit highly arrogant, energy.

 

Gougo’s red eyes scanned the crowd, soaking in the intimidated whispers of the other students, before his gaze snapped onto a figure in a black trench coat.

 

Gougo froze. His confident smirk vanished, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated disbelief.

 

He abandoned his path toward the main building and marched directly over to Izuku.

 

"Mikumo?" Gougo hissed, looking around nervously as if Izuku's mere presence was an embarrassment by proxy. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were just talking big to mess with the teacher. You actually showed up?"

 

Izuku stopped walking. He turned his head slowly, his deadpan crimson eyes locking onto Gougo's panicked red ones.

 

"I submitted my application. U.A. accepted it," Izuku replied, his raspy voice completely devoid of emotion. "Therefore, I am here."

 

"Are you insane?" Gougo stepped closer, lowering his voice, slipping back into that infuriating, condescending 'older brother' tone. "Miku, look around. These guys are monsters. They have quirks that can level buildings. You're wearing a coat that's two sizes too big and you look like you're going to pass out from anemia. Go home. Before you get hurt."

 

Izuku stared at him. He didn't feel the paralyzing, suffocating fear that Katsuki used to instill in him. He just felt... exhausted by the sheer arrogance of the boy's ignorance.

 

"Gougo," Izuku said, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a chilling, absolute finality. "My safety is not your concern. Focus on your own exam. From this point forward, we are competitors. Act like it."

 

Without waiting for a response, Izuku turned and continued walking toward the main building, leaving Gougo standing frozen on the pavement, his mouth slightly open, completely derailed by the cold, immovable wall that the town's resident shut-in had suddenly become.

 

Izuku walked up the main pathway, his eyes locked on the front doors.

 

Suddenly, his peripheral vision caught a blur of movement. A girl to his left, distracted by the sheer scale of the U.A. building, had tripped over a slightly raised paving stone. She was pitching forward, her arms flailing, heading face-first for the concrete.

 

In his past life, Izuku would have panicked, yelled out, and perhaps activated a fraction of One For All to catch her, or he would have been the one tripping and getting caught by Uraraka.

 

Yamikumo simply reacted.

 

His hand shot out of his trench coat pocket with viper-like speed. He grabbed the back of the girl’s jacket by the collar, pivoted on his heel to absorb her downward momentum, and smoothly pulled her back up onto her feet in one fluid, silent motion.

 

The girl gasped, stumbling against him for a second before catching her balance.

 

"Whoa! Oh my gosh, thank you!" she blurted out, her hands flying to her cheeks.

 

Izuku let go of her collar and took a step back, maintaining a polite, professional distance.

 

He looked at her. She was a prototype, that much was obvious from his memory of his own timeline. She had bright, expressive purple eyes, long, flowing blonde hair, and—most notably—two small, curling, pale horns protruding from the sides of her head near her temples. It was Yuu Takeyama. The girl who would eventually become Mt. Lady, but here, she was just an anxious, middle-school applicant wearing a slightly oversized track jacket.

 

"Watch your footing," Izuku said softly, his raspy voice gentle. "The paving stones here are uneven."

 

Yuu blinked, looking up at him. She took in his pale skin, his heavy eye bags, his messy purple hair, and the dark trench coat. She seemed taken aback for a second, but then a bright, incredibly genuine smile broke across her face.

 

"Wow, you have fast reflexes! You totally saved my face from becoming a pancake," she laughed, though there was a tremor of nervous energy beneath her cheerfulness. "I'm Yuu Takeyama! Nice to meet you, um..."

 

"Akatani Mikumo," Izuku replied, giving a short, measured nod.

 

"Akatani-kun! Are you nervous? I'm totally freaking out," Yuu admitted, playing with the edge of her sleeve. "I mean, look at this place! It's massive. And my quirk... well, it's not exactly suited for delicate stuff. If I have to fight in a tight space, I'm going to end up crushing myself."

 

Izuku analyzed her instantly. Gigantification. An incredible asset for rescue and heavy assault, but she's right, indoors or in tight urban environments, it's a massive liability. She lacks control and confidence.

 

"The exam will likely be held in a simulated urban environment," Izuku said analytically, his eyes scanning the surrounding applicants. "But the streets in U.A.'s battle centers are designed to accommodate large-scale quirks. Stick to the main avenues. Avoid the alleyways. And if you have to use your quirk, focus your center of gravity on your heels to avoid collateral damage to the surrounding structures."

 

Yuu stared at him, her purple eyes wide. "Whoa. Are you... like, a tactical genius or something? That actually makes a lot of sense."

 

"Just observant," Izuku said, turning his gaze back to the main doors. "We should get inside. The written exam starts in fifteen minutes."

 

"Right! Oh, wait up!" Yuu scrambled to walk beside him. For some reason, the gloomy, gothic-looking boy with the raspy voice made her feel grounded. He wasn't radiating arrogant energy like the rest of the applicants; he was calm. Like a deep, dark, unbothered lake.

 

 

 

The written exam was a triviality.

 

Sitting in the massive lecture hall, Izuku tore through the paper in less than thirty minutes. Mikumo’s brain was heavily wired for mathematics, physics, and complex system analysis. Combined with Izuku's encyclopedic knowledge of hero law and historical quirk regulations, the test felt like a middle school pop quiz. He spent the remaining hour meticulously recalibrating the micro-switches in his gauntlets under the desk.

 

Following the written portion, the applicants were herded into an even larger auditorium for the practical exam orientation.

 

Izuku sat in his designated seat, enveloped in his trench coat. Yuu had been seated somewhere in the front, and Gougo was a few rows ahead of him.

 

The lights dimmed, and Pro Hero Present Mic stepped up to the podium, shouting his signature, "EVERYBODY SAY HEYYY!"

 

Silence. The exact same suffocating silence Izuku remembered from his previous life.

 

Mic powered through the awkwardness, explaining the mechanics of the practical exam. Three types of robots—one, two, and three-pointers—scattered across a massive, simulated cityscape. The goal was to accumulate points by destroying or immobilizing the robots.

 

"And remember, listeners!" Mic shouted, pointing at the screen. "There's a fourth type of villain in the arena! The Zero Pointer! It's an obstacle! A massive hurdle! My advice? If you see it, run the other way!"

 

Izuku narrowed his eyes. The Zero Pointer. The Rescue Point catalyst.

 

Suddenly, a tall, broad-shouldered boy in the front row stood up abruptly. His arm chopped through the air with rigid, mechanical precision.

 

It was Tenya Iida—or this world's version of him. He looked largely the same, perhaps with slightly sharper features and a slightly more militant posture.

 

"Excuse me, sir! I have a question!" Iida bellowed, his voice echoing through the hall.

 

"Hit me, examinee number 7111!" Mic pointed.

 

"On the printout, there are clearly four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the most prominent academy in Japan, should be ashamed of such a foolish mistake! We examinees are here in this place because we wish to be molded into exemplary heroes!"

 

Iida then turned around, his stern eyes sweeping over the crowd until they landed on the back row. He pointed a rigid finger directly at Izuku.

 

"And you! The applicant in the back row with the dark hair and the trench coat!"

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't tense. He simply raised his head, fixing Iida with a dead, unblinking crimson stare.

 

"You have been fiddling with something under your desk for the entire presentation," Iida scolded, entirely missing the lethal aura radiating from the boy he was addressing. "This is a prestigious institution, not a playground! Furthermore, wearing such an absurd, oversized coat is highly impractical and disrespectful to the severity of this exam! If you are not taking this seriously, please leave immediately!"

 

In the past timeline, Izuku had shrunk into his seat, covering his mouth as the entire auditorium laughed at him, murmuring about his muttering.

 

Yamikumo did not shrink.

 

He didn't apologize. He didn't look away.

 

Izuku simply stared at Iida. He channeled every ounce of the silent, predatory intensity he had used to stare down the League of Villains. His crimson eyes darkened, cutting through the distance between them like a physical blade. He didn't say a single word. He just maintained absolute, unwavering, terrifying eye contact.

 

The silence stretched. It was no longer the awkward silence of Present Mic's failed joke; it was a heavy, suffocating tension. The air around Izuku seemed to drop in temperature.

 

Iida’s rigid arm faltered slightly. The stern look on his face cracked, replaced by a flash of genuine, primal unease. He swallowed hard, the oppressive weight of Izuku's stare forcing him to realize he had just provoked something immensely dangerous.

 

"I... I apologize for my outburst," Iida stammered, abruptly bowing to Present Mic and taking his seat, his neck flushed red with embarrassment and unease.

 

The auditorium remained dead silent for a few more seconds.

 

"O-kay then!" Present Mic recovered, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead. "Like I was saying, the Zero Pointer is just an obstacle! Now, get ready to PLUS ULTRA!"

 

 

 

Battle Center B.

 

The massive, towering gates of the simulated city loomed over the crowd of examinees. The applicants were stretching, hyping themselves up, and transforming their bodies in preparation.

 

Izuku stood near the back of the pack. He looked up at the towering concrete walls.

 

It's time.

 

He reached up, grasped the collar of his heavy black trench coat, and pulled it off.

 

He folded the coat neatly and placed it against the perimeter wall. When he turned back around, the few applicants standing near him stopped their stretches, their eyes widening in shock.

 

The emo, fragile-looking boy in the oversized coat was gone.

 

Standing in his place was a tactical nightmare. The dark charcoal canvas of his combat suit clung tightly to his lean, highly defined musculature. The heavy, steel-reinforced shock-boots dug firmly into the pavement. Around his waist rested the utility belt, bristling with spherical grenades and cylindrical flashbangs. Covering his lower face was a black ballistic half-mask.

 

But the most imposing features were the massive, heavily modified Stun-Gauntlets on his forearms, the blue electrical nodes dormant but menacing, and the thick, heavy Kevlar collar of the Shadow-Weave resting around his neck and shoulders like a dark metallic serpent waiting to strike.

 

He didn't look like an applicant. He looked like an Underground Pro Hero.

 

Yuu Takeyama, who had been nervously stretching near the front, glanced back and her jaw dropped. Akatani-kun? Is that... is all that his quirk? No, it's gear! So much gear!

 

Izuku ignored the stares. He pulled a pair of tinted tactical goggles down from his forehead, snapping them over his eyes to protect against debris and the blinding flashes of his own equipment. He adjusted his gloves, rolling his shoulders, feeling the comforting weight of the battery packs on his hips.

 

Up in the observation tower, a dozen monitors lit up, showcasing the applicants at the various gates.

 

"Interesting crop this year," the sultry voice of Midnight purred. "Lots of flashy emitters."

 

"Look at gate B," Snipe noted, leaning forward in his chair. "Applicant 7112. Akatani Mikumo. Quirkless."

 

Eraserhead, slouched in his sleeping bag in the corner, cracked one eye open and looked at the screen. He saw the dark, tactical gear. He saw the heavy collar around the boy's neck. Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, instantly recognizing the mechanical principles of the capture weapon.

 

"He submitted a massive portfolio for support item dispensation," Principal Nezu squeaked, taking a sip of tea. "The support company board approved it. They said his designs were... frighteningly advanced."

 

"Gear breaks," Aizawa grunted, his tone cynical. "A Quirkless kid with heavy machinery is just a liability waiting to happen. If he relies on the tech to fight his battles, the robots will crush him."

 

"Let's see if he has the instinct to survive," Nezu smiled, pressing the large red button on his console.

 

"RIGHT, LET'S START!" Present Mic's voice blasted over the loudspeakers. "WHAT'S WRONG? THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL BATTLES! RUN, RUN, RUN!"

 

The massive gates began to grind open.

 

The applicants at Gate B hesitated for a split second, confused by the abrupt start.

 

Izuku did not hesitate.

 

Before the gates were even halfway open, he bolted. He didn't sprint like a track runner; his movements were terrifyingly efficient, his shock-boots propelling him forward with explosive, kinetic bursts.

 

He shot through the gap in the gates, leaving the rest of the applicants standing in shock.

 

Target acquisition, Izuku's mind instantly shifted into combat overdrive. Optical sensors are in the center of the head units. Mobility joints are exposed at the knees and neck.

 

He rounded the first corner and came face-to-face with a group of three 1-Pointers. The green, single-wheeled robots turned their optical lenses toward him.

 

"TARGET ACQUIRED," they buzzed in unison.

 

Izuku didn't break his sprint. He reached to his belt, unclipped a flashbang, pulled the pin with his teeth, and tossed it high into the air above the robots.

 

He shut his eyes behind his goggles and continued running forward.

 

BANG!

 

A blinding flash of white light and a deafening crack erupted in the street. The optical sensors of the 1-Pointers completely shorted out, their mechanical chassis staggering backward in temporary blindness.

 

Izuku slid to a halt directly in front of the center robot. He didn't punch. He brought his right hand up, thumb pressing the micro-switch on his index finger.

 

BZZZT!

 

The Stun-Gauntlet roared to life. Izuku slammed his open, sparking palm directly onto the robot's exposed neck joint. 50,000 volts of electricity surged directly into the motherboard. The robot spasmed violently, sparks blowing out of its exhaust ports, and collapsed into a smoking heap.

 

Without pausing, Izuku pivoted on his heel, dodging a wild, blind swing from the robot on his left.

 

He flicked his left wrist.

 

THWIP!

 

A weighted, razor-thin cable shot out from the collar of the Shadow-Weave. It wrapped securely around the left robot's single wheel. Izuku yanked his body weight backward, triggering the retraction motor. The robot’s wheel was forcefully yanked out from under it, sending it crashing face-first into the concrete, shattering its central lens.

 

The third robot finally recovered its optical sensors and raised its weaponized arm, aiming directly at Izuku's chest.

 

Izuku dropped to the ground in a fluid slide, pulling a heavy, collapsible carbon-fiber bo-staff from his lower back. As he slid beneath the robot's aim, he jammed the end of the staff directly into the gears of its wheel joint.

 

The sheer forward momentum of the robot, combined with the immovable staff, caused the gears to violently strip and shatter. The robot pitched forward, and Izuku used the leverage of the staff to launch the machine over his head, sending it crashing into the wall of a nearby building.

 

Three robots. Three points. Six seconds.

 

The rest of the applicants finally poured around the corner, expecting to find the first targets. Instead, they found Yamikumo standing amidst three smoking, destroyed chassis, calmly collapsing his bo-staff.

 

Izuku didn't look at them. He shot a grapple-cable from his Shadow-Weave to the roof of a three-story building, the retraction motor screaming as it yanked him violently into the air. He crested the edge of the roof, disappearing into the skyline like a phantom.

 

Down below, the applicants stared in open-mouthed shock.

 

"What... what was that?" a boy with a stretching quirk muttered.

 

"Was that a student or a pro?!"

 

Up in the observation room, Eraserhead leaned forward slightly, his one visible eye locked onto Izuku’s camera feed.

 

"He's not just relying on the gear," Aizawa noted, his voice losing its cynical edge. "His movements. There's no hesitation. He’s deliberately targeting structural weak points, avoiding direct impacts, and his kinetic transfer is flawless. He moves like a veteran."

 

"And look at his pathing!" Snipe pointed at the tactical map. "He's not staying on the streets. He's taking the high ground."

 

Izuku was a blur of dark charcoal on the rooftops. He bounded over alleyways, using his shock-boots to silently absorb the impact of his landings. From the high ground, he had a complete overview of the battlefield.

 

He spotted a cluster of 2-Pointers and 3-Pointers cornering a group of applicants two streets over.

 

Izuku dropped a purple smoke canister down an air vent connected to the alleyway below. Seconds later, thick, obscuring smoke flooded the street, blinding the robots.

 

Izuku plummeted from the roof, plummeting three stories down directly into the center of the smoke cloud.

 

The applicants coughed, stumbling blindly.

 

Izuku, protected by his mask and goggles, moved with lethal precision. He fired two cables from his Shadow-Weave, binding the legs of a 3-Pointer and ripping it to the ground. He vaulted off the falling machine, planted his shock-boots onto the chest of a 2-Pointer, and discharged both Stun-Gauntlets simultaneously into its chassis, completely frying its internal circuits.

 

He didn't stay to fight the rest. He used the momentum of his jump to grapple back up to a fire escape, disappearing before the smoke even cleared.

 

He was a ghost. He wasn't relying on raw destructive power like Katsuki or Todoroki; he was utilizing sabotage, misdirection, and surgical strikes.

 

Twenty-five points, Izuku counted internally as he ran across a billboard. Thirty-two. Forty.

 

He was moving faster than he ever had without a quirk. The physical conditioning, combined with the total lack of hesitation, made him a completely different beast than the nervous, self-destructive Deku of the past.

 

He spotted a 3-Pointer aiming its missile battery at a boy with a tail quirk.

 

Izuku unclipped his first EMP grenade. Mikumo's blueprints had been flawless, but Izuku had optimized the housing. He threw the small, black sphere like a baseball.

 

It landed directly on the 3-Pointer's head.

 

BZZZZT-POP!

 

A localized dome of blue electromagnetic energy expanded outward for a radius of ten feet. The 3-Pointer froze mid-motion, all of its lights dying instantly as its motherboard was completely wiped. It slumped forward, dead weight.

 

Forty-three points. That's enough to pass the practical.

 

Izuku landed on a streetlamp, perching in a crouch, his chest heaving slightly. The physical toll of the intense acrobatics was beginning to show. His muscles burned, and he could feel the cold sweat soaking the inside of his tactical suit. Mikumo's body was strong now, but it still lacked the sheer stamina of his old form.

 

Suddenly, the ground beneath the streetlamp trembled.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened behind his goggles. The tremor was deep, tectonic. It wasn't the stomping of a 3-Pointer.

 

RUMBLE.

 

A massive, deafening explosion rocked the center of the fake city, sending a cloud of concrete dust pluming hundreds of feet into the air. The windows of the surrounding buildings shattered outward from the shockwave.

 

From the dust cloud, it emerged.

 

The Zero Pointer.

 

It was a monstrosity of steel and gears, towering over the tallest buildings in the simulated city. It was the size of a skyscraper, its single, glowing red optical sensor burning like the eye of an angry god.

 

"LESS THAN TWO MINUTES REMAINING!" Present Mic's voice echoed over the panic.

 

Down in the streets, applicants were screaming, abandoning their fights, and sprinting frantically toward the exit gates.

 

"Run! Are they crazy?! That thing is massive!"

 

Izuku didn't run. He stood on the streetlamp, his cape-like coat gone, analyzing the beast.

 

In my old life, I smashed its face in with One For All. I completely destroyed it in a single blow to save Uraraka.

 

He looked down at his Stun-Gauntlets. 50,000 volts was a lot for a normal robot. For the Zero Pointer, it would be a static shock. His Shadow-Weave cables would snap like thread if he tried to bind it. He had one EMP grenade left, but its radius was ten feet; it wouldn't even dent the machine's primary systems unless it was detonated directly inside its central processing core.

 

I can't fight it, Izuku realized, the cold logic taking over. The smartest tactical move is to retreat.

 

He turned to grapple away.

 

"Ow! Help! My leg is stuck!"

 

The voice, shrill with pain and terror, cut through the mechanical roaring of the behemoth.

 

Izuku’s head snapped back around.

 

Down on the main avenue, directly in the path of the Zero Pointer's massive, crushing treads, a figure was trapped beneath a slab of fallen concrete from a shattered building.

 

It was Yuu Takeyama.

 

She was crying, desperately trying to push the rubble off her leg, but her gigantification quirk required space to activate. If she grew now, the jagged concrete would sheer her leg completely off.

 

The other applicants were running right past her, consumed by the panic of the ticking clock and the towering monster.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

There was no time to think. There was no tactical analysis. The heroic instinct that defined his very soul—the instinct that Katsuki, Aizawa, and All Might had recognized—override every logical safety protocol in his brain.

 

Yamikumo didn't hesitate. He dropped from the streetlamp and sprinted directly toward the Zero Pointer.

 

Up in the observation room, the teachers stood up.

 

"What is he doing?!" Midnight gasped. "He's quirkless! He can't even scratch that thing!"

 

"He's going for the trapped girl," Aizawa said, his hands gripping the edge of the console, his knuckles turning white. "But the rubble is too heavy. He doesn't have the strength to lift it."

 

Izuku knew he couldn't lift the concrete. He didn't even try to run toward Yuu.

 

Instead, he sprinted directly at the massive, descending tread of the Zero Pointer.

 

Yuu looked up, her tear-filled eyes widening in horror as she saw the boy in the dark tactical gear charging the behemoth. "Akatani! Stop! Run away!"

 

Izuku ignored her. He didn't need to destroy the robot. He just needed to stop it.

 

He ran at the massive metal chassis. As the Zero Pointer's colossal fist pulled back to smash the street, Izuku engaged the primary spools of his Shadow-Weave.

 

THWIP! THWIP!

 

Two heavy cables shot upward, the grappling weights wrapping tightly around the exposed hydraulic pistons of the robot's kneecap.

 

"Retract!" Izuku grunted, slamming his finger onto the trigger.

 

The high-torque motors screamed, smoking under the immense strain. Izuku was violently violently violently yanked off the pavement, rocketing fifty feet into the air, straight toward the metal knee of the beast.

 

He slammed against the chassis, his shock-boots taking the impact, though the force still rattled his teeth. He detached the cables and instantly fired them again, grappling higher up the robot's leg, then its hip, then its torso.

 

He was scaling the mechanical giant like an insect, utilizing his capture weapon as a high-speed traversal tool. The wind whipped past his face, his muscles screaming under the G-force of the rapid ascents.

 

"He's scaling it!" Snipe yelled in the observation room. "The madman is actually climbing the Zero Pointer!"

 

Izuku reached the chest plate. He was hundreds of feet in the air, the wind howling around him. He looked up. The massive, glowing red optical lens of the robot was just above him.

 

All U.A. robots have a manual override and maintenance port at the base of the cervical spine, Izuku remembered from his obsessive study of Mikumo's blueprints. I have to get behind the head.

 

He fired a cable, swinging wildly around the massive neck of the machine. He slammed onto the back of its head, his boots skidding against the slick metal.

 

He found it. A heavy, bolted maintenance hatch.

 

The robot continued to march forward, raising its fist to crush the street where Yuu lay trapped.

 

"Not today!" Izuku roared, his raspy voice tearing through the wind.

 

He pulled his collapsible carbon-fiber bo-staff, extending it fully. He jammed the reinforced tip into the seam of the maintenance hatch, using his entire body weight as a lever.

 

The metal groaned. Izuku pushed, his pale arms bulging, the newly formed muscle fibers tearing under the immense strain.

 

CLANG!

 

The heavy hatch popped open, revealing a glowing, incredibly complex network of motherboards, cooling tubes, and massive, thick power cables. This was the central nervous system of the Zero Pointer.

 

Izuku didn't have time to hack it. He had seconds before Yuu was crushed.

 

He reached to his belt and pulled free his final EMP grenade. He twisted the timer dial to zero, armed the explosive, and shoved it deep into the mass of wiring.

 

But it wasn't enough. The shielding on the core was too thick. He needed a conduit to ensure the blast fried the primary battery.

 

Izuku activated his Stun-Gauntlets, turning the voltage dial all the way past the redline.

 

"Eat this," Izuku snarled.

 

He plunged both of his sparking, electrified hands directly into the raw circuitry of the Zero Pointer, grabbing the main power cables with his bare gauntlets just as the EMP detonated.

 

KA-THOOOOOM!

 

A blinding sphere of blue electromagnetic energy erupted from the back of the robot's head, amplified a thousand times by the 50,000 volts Izuku was pumping directly into the system.

 

The feedback was catastrophic.

 

A massive electrical shockwave blasted Izuku backward. His gauntlets completely short-circuited and exploded, shattering the metal and sending shrapnel tearing through his sleeves. He was launched off the back of the robot, plummeting toward the street hundreds of feet below.

 

But his work was done.

 

The Zero Pointer froze mid-strike. Its glowing red eye flickered rapidly before dying completely. The deafening hum of its massive engines whined down into absolute silence. The hydraulic locks engaged automatically as the power failed, freezing the colossal machine in place like a rusted statue, its fist hovering mere feet above Yuu.

 

Izuku was falling.

 

He was entirely out of gadgets. His gauntlets were destroyed. He couldn't feel his arms; the electrical feedback had completely numbed his upper body. He was in freefall, the concrete street rushing up to meet him.

 

I'm going to die, he thought, a strange sense of calm washing over him. I did it again. I broke myself to save someone.

 

Suddenly, a massive shadow eclipsed the sun.

 

"I GOT YOU!"

 

A colossal hand, soft and warm, snatched Izuku out of the air fifty feet above the ground.

 

Izuku groaned, his vision swimming, as he was gently lowered to the pavement.

 

He blinked rapidly, the dark spots clearing from his vision.

 

Yuu Takeyama was looking down at him. She was in her giant form, towering sixty feet tall, having used the distraction of the robot's shutdown to push the rubble off her leg and activate her quirk.

 

She shrank down instantly, returning to her normal size, and collapsed onto her knees beside Izuku. She was covered in dust, her track jacket torn, but she was alive.

 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic's voice roared, signaling the end of the exam.

 

Izuku lay on his back on the cracked concrete. His tactical suit was scorched. His Stun-Gauntlets were smoking, shattered ruins on his forearms. His entire body ached with a bone-deep exhaustion he hadn't felt since his war days.

 

Yuu leaned over him, her purple eyes wide with absolute awe and terror.

 

"Akatani... you..." she breathed, completely loss for words. "You took down the Zero Pointer. You're... you're quirkless, and you stopped a skyscraper."

 

Izuku slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. He groaned, peeling the shattered remnants of his gauntlets off his arms and letting the smoking metal fall to the street. His pale forearms were covered in electrical burns, but his bones were entirely intact.

 

He looked at Yuu, his crimson eyes exhausted but burning with that quiet, unstoppable fire.

 

He reached up, pulled down his tactical mask, and flashed her a small, genuine smile.

 

"I told you," Izuku rasped. "Just a lot of math and physics."

 

Up in the observation room, there was dead silence.

 

The teachers stared at the monitor, watching the quirkless boy sit amidst the ruins of his gear beneath the frozen shadow of the behemoth he had slain.

 

Eraserhead slowly unzipped his sleeping bag and stood up. A rare, dangerous grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.

 

"Logical ruse or not," Aizawa said softly, his eye locked onto Izuku. "That kid is a hero."

 

Principal Nezu took a slow sip of his tea, his beady eyes gleaming. "Indeed, Shota. It seems this year's crop has a very interesting anomaly."

 

Down on the street, the gates opened, and Recovery Girl's medical bots began pouring in.

 

Izuku didn't wait for them. He slowly got to his feet, ignoring Yuu's protests that he needed medical attention. He picked up his folded black trench coat from where he had left it, draped it over his scorched shoulders, and began the long walk home.

 

He didn't have One For All. But he had passed.

 

Yamikumo had arrived.