what if neglected and abused deku became a mercenary with a futuristic version of the berserk armor

 

The alarm clock buzzed at precisely 6:00 AM, a harsh, mechanical grating sound that violently tore Izuku Midoriya from the only sanctuary he had left: his dreams. 

In his dreams, he was towering, golden, and smiling. He possessed a power that shook the earth and parted the clouds, and when he arrived, people wept with relief instead of sneering in disgust. But the buzzing of the cheap plastic clock was a guillotine dropping on those fantasies, severing them and leaving him in the cold, gray reality of his bedroom. 

Izuku opened his eyes. The ceiling was familiar, yet it felt heavier today. He reached over with a trembling hand, his knuckles bruised a mottled purple and yellow, and slammed the snooze button. With a groan that sounded entirely too old for a fourteen-year-old boy, he pushed himself up. 

His body was a map of his failures. As he pulled off his oversized All Might t-shirt, he avoided looking in the mirror, but he didn’t need sight to know what was there. The starburst burn mark on his left shoulder from yesterday was weeping clear fluid, sticking painfully to the fabric. There was a dark, thumb-shaped bruise on his collarbone where one of Bakugo’s lackeys had pinned him against the lockers. His ribs ached with a dull, throbbing rhythm, the result of a "training exercise" in gym class where the teacher had conveniently looked the other way while Izuku was used as a punching bag. 

He moved to his small bathroom, running the tap until the water was ice cold. He splashed it over his freckled face, watching the water drip down his chin like tears. He wasn't crying. He hadn't cried from the physical pain in years. It was the other pain—the deep, hollow aching in his chest—that was becoming unbearable. 

"Get it together," he whispered to his reflection. His voice sounded thin, frail. "Just ten more months until graduation. Then you can take the UA entrance exam. You just have to hold on."

It was a mantra he had repeated thousands of times, but today, the words tasted like ash. 

Izuku dressed in his black Aldera Junior High gakuran, carefully adjusting the stiff collar to hide the bruises on his neck. He packed his yellow backpack, sliding in the freshly minted Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13 notebook. The feel of the paper beneath his fingertips provided a fleeting spark of comfort. It was his life's work, his proof that even without a Quirk, he had a mind that could belong in the hero world. 

He walked down the narrow hallway of the apartment. The lights were off. His mother, Inko, was already awake, sitting at the small kitchen table with a cup of black coffee. 

"Morning, Mom," Izuku said softly, his voice carrying the inherent apology it always did when addressing her. 

Inko Midoriya didn't look up. Her eyes remained fixed on the digital screen of her tablet, scrolling through news articles. She was a woman who had been slowly hollowed out by disappointment. When Izuku was four and diagnosed as Quirkless, it hadn't just broken his heart; it had broken her spirit. To Inko, Quirklessness wasn't just a biological anomaly; it was a tragedy, a terminal illness that had infected her household. She couldn't look at her son without seeing a ghost of the boy she thought he would become. 

"There's rice in the cooker," she said, her voice completely devoid of inflection. It was the voice of a nurse speaking to a patient she knew wasn't going to make it. "Don't be late. And try not to cause any trouble today, Izuku. I don't want another call from the principal about you provoking the other students."

Izuku’s jaw tightened. Provoking them. That was what the school called it when he bled on the floor after being attacked. 

"I won't," he murmured. He bypassed the rice cooker entirely. He didn't have an appetite. "I'm leaving now."

"Mhm. Have a good day." She still didn't look at him. 

Izuku stepped out of the apartment and closed the door behind him. The metallic click of the lock felt uncomfortably final. As he walked down the external stairs of the complex, the morning sun broke through the smog of Mustafu, casting long, distorted shadows across the pavement. 

The walk to school was usually his time to analyze heroes. Normally, he would eagerly scan the skyline for the flash of Kamui Woods swinging through the trees, or the thunderous footfalls of Mt. Lady breaking up a morning robbery. But today, his eyes stayed glued to the cracked asphalt. His mind felt like a tangled ball of wire, buzzing with an anxiety he couldn't pinpoint. It felt like the air pressure was dropping, signaling a storm.

Aldera Junior High was a prison masquerading as an educational institution. The moment Izuku stepped through the front gates, the atmosphere shifted. The other students parted around him not out of respect, but out of a superstitious fear of contagion. Whispers followed him like flies. 

“There’s the Quirkless kid…”

“I heard he tried to apply to UA. What a joke.”

“Think Bakugo is gonna roast him again today?”

Izuku kept his head down, clutching the straps of his yellow backpack so tightly his knuckles turned white. He slid into his seat at the back of the classroom, making himself as small as physically possible. 

The day dragged on in a blur of monotonous lectures and thinly veiled hostility. The teachers ignored him when he raised his hand, grading him harshly on subjective assignments, perpetuating the unspoken rule of Aldera: Izuku Midoriya did not matter. He was a statistical error, a biological dead end.

Then came the end of the day, and the beginning of the end of his life as he knew it. 

The homeroom teacher stood at the podium, slapping a stack of career aptitude papers against the wood. "You guys are all third-years now," the teacher said, a lazy grin spreading across his face. "It's time to start thinking seriously about your futures! I would hand out these career forms, but... who am I kidding? You're all aiming for the hero track, aren't you?"

The classroom erupted into cheers as students flared their Quirks. Small fires, extending limbs, floating objects—a chaotic symphony of genetic superiority. 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher chuckled. "But no using them in school."

"Hey, teach!" a loud, arrogant voice cut through the noise, silencing the room instantly. "Don't lump me in with these background characters. I'm not going to be stuck at the bottom of the barrel with these rejects."

Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his feet resting casually on his desk. His crimson eyes swept across the room, daring anyone to challenge him. The scent of burnt caramel—the byproduct of his nitroglycerin sweat—began to permeate the classroom. 

"Ah, Bakugo. You're going for UA High, aren't you?" the teacher asked, genuine respect in his tone. 

The class gasped. UA High. The national academy. The acceptance rate was abysmally low. 

"I aced all the mock tests!" Bakugo declared, jumping onto his desk, his fists sparking with small, terrifying explosions. "I'm the only one at this crappy school who stands a chance! I'll surpass All Might and become the top hero out there! My name will be carved into the history books!"

Izuku shrank further into his seat, trying to become invisible. 

"Oh, right," the teacher added, casually glancing at his clipboard. "Midoriya, you're applying for UA too, right?"

The room went dead silent. The air grew perfectly still. And then, the classroom exploded into deafening, mocking laughter. 

"Deku? You're kidding, right?!"

"There's no rule against it, but come on! He'd die in the entrance exam!"

"A Quirkless loser like him? UA?"

Izuku stood up, his face burning red, his hands trembling as he gripped his desk. "T-They got rid of that rule! I could be the first one! I just have to try, and maybe—"

SMASH.

A heavily calloused hand slammed onto Izuku’s desk, accompanied by a blast of heat and concussive force that threw Izuku backward. He crashed into the floor, his elbows taking the brunt of the impact. Smoke cleared to reveal Bakugo standing over him, his eyes alight with a predatory, furious gleam. 

"Listen up, Deku," Bakugo snarled, the heat from his palms radiating against Izuku’s face. "You're worse than the rest of these rejects. You're completely Quirkless. You really think you can rub shoulders with me? You think you can stand in the same arena as me?"

"No! No, Kacchan, it's not like that!" Izuku scrambled backward like a frightened crab, his back hitting the wall. "I'm not trying to compete with you! I swear! It's just... it's been my dream since I was little. And there's no harm in trying, right?"

"Try? What can you do?" Bakugo spat the words like venom. 

The bell rang, signaling the end of the day. The rest of the students filed out quickly, none of them wanting to be caught in the crossfire of Bakugo’s wrath. The teacher had already left, ignoring the assault entirely. Within moments, Izuku was alone with Bakugo and two of his lackeys. 

Izuku shakily pulled himself up and went to pack his bag. He reached for his notebook, but a hand snatched it away before he could. 

"What's this?" Bakugo asked, holding the notebook up by the corner. " 'Hero Analysis for the Future'?" He let out a harsh, barking laugh. "Are you delusional?"

"Give it back, Kacchan. Please," Izuku begged, extending a trembling hand. 

Bakugo stared at him, his expression dropping into one of absolute disgust. He clamped his hands around the notebook. BOOM.

Izuku let out a choked gasp as a localized explosion tore through the book. The covers blackened, the pages curling and singeing, the meticulous notes he had spent months writing turned to ash in a fraction of a second. 

Bakugo didn't stop there. He casually tossed the smoldering remains out the open third-story window. 

Izuku stared at the empty space where his notebook had been, his mind blank, a cold numbness spreading through his chest. 

"Most top-tier heroes have stories about their school days," Bakugo said, stepping into Izuku’s personal space, grabbing him by the shoulder of his uniform. The fabric began to smoke. "Their legends start with them being the only one from their mediocre junior high to make it. I'm going to be the only one from Aldera. That's my origin story. You're just a pebble in my path, Deku."

Bakugo leaned in, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm whisper. "So forget about UA. Don't even think about applying."

Bakugo let go, turning to walk away with his lackeys. As he reached the door, he stopped, looking over his shoulder. The afternoon light caught his face, casting half of it in deep shadow. 

"You know, if you really want to be a hero that badly, there's actually a really good way to do it," Bakugo said casually, as if remarking on the weather. "Just pray that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life... and take a swan dive off the roof of the building."

The words hung in the air. 

Take a swan dive off the roof.

Izuku froze. His breath hitched in his throat. He looked at Bakugo, expecting to see a joke, a sneer, something to indicate he didn't mean it. But Bakugo just stared back, his palms sparking in a silent threat. Say something, the sparks said. Challenge me.

But Izuku had nothing left. The sheer cruelty of the statement had shattered something fragile inside of him. The first string snapped. 

Bakugo scoffed and walked out, the heavy door clicking shut behind him. 

Izuku stood alone in the empty classroom for a long time. The silence was deafening. He felt a phantom heat on his shoulder where Bakugo had grabbed him, but deeper inside, he felt freezing cold. He didn't cry. He just picked up his yellow backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out of the room.

Outside, he found his notebook. It had landed in the school's koi pond, the burnt pages now bloated and soaked with muddy water. Several fish were nibbling on the edges. 

"Stupid fish," Izuku muttered, his voice hollow. "It's not fish food. It's my notebook."

He pulled it out of the water, the sodden mess dripping onto his shoes. He held it in his hands. It looked like garbage. It looked like how he felt. 

He didn't go straight home. He couldn't go back to the quiet, suffocating apartment and face his mother’s apathetic gaze. Instead, he took a detour, walking mindlessly through the city. His feet dragged, his gaze fixed on the pavement. 

A swan dive off the roof. 

The words echoed in his skull, bouncing around like a trapped bird. Why did Bakugo say that? Why did he have to be so cruel? Izuku had never done anything to him. He had only ever admired him. But in this world, admiration without power was just an insult. To be weak was the only true sin. 

Izuku walked through an underpass. The concrete tunnel was dark and smelled of damp earth and rust. It was quiet here, away from the bustling streets. 

Then, he heard it. 

A squelching, wet sound. Like mud sliding down a drain, but massive. 

Izuku stopped, looking over his shoulder. From a manhole cover a few yards away, a thick, vile, dark-green sludge was oozing upward. It didn't just pool on the ground; it defied gravity, piling up on itself, forming a massive, shifting blob. Two large, yellow eyes snapped open within the muck, followed by a jagged, chaotic maw of teeth. 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," a gurgling, wet voice echoed through the tunnel. "Perfect."

Izuku’s blood ran cold. His instincts screamed at him to run, but his legs wouldn't move. The fear was paralyzing, locking his joints in place. Before he could even draw a breath to scream, the Sludge Villain lunged. 

A wave of fetid, sewage-smelling slime crashed over him. The impact knocked Izuku to the ground, but he didn't hit the concrete. He was enveloped. Thick, viscous fluid forced its way up his nose and down his throat. 

"Don't worry," the villain purred, the voice vibrating through the sludge directly into Izuku’s ears. "I'm just taking over your body. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then, it'll all be over."

Izuku thrashed wildly. He clawed at the sludge covering his face, his fingernails digging into the muck, but there was nothing solid to grasp. It was like trying to fight an ocean. His lungs burned, screaming for oxygen. He could feel the slime slithering down his trachea, filling him up from the inside out. 

I'm dying, Izuku realized, panic giving way to a sheer, primal terror. I'm going to die here. In a dirty tunnel. And no one will care.

His vision began to darken at the edges. Black spots danced across his eyes. His thrashing weakened. He reached out a hand, a desperate, final plea to a world that had never listened to him. 

Somebody... help...

And then, a booming voice shattered the darkness. 

"FEAR NOT, YOUNG MAN! FOR I AM HERE!"

The manhole cover clattered away. Izuku couldn't see clearly through the fading light of his vision, but he saw a silhouette. Massive. Imposing. 

"TEXAS... SMASH!"

The air pressure in the tunnel changed instantaneously. A shockwave of pure, unadulterated physical force ripped through the confined space. The sludge holding Izuku was blown apart violently, splattering against the concrete walls. Izuku was thrown to the ground, coughing and hacking, pulling desperate, ragged breaths into his burning lungs. 

He forced his eyes open. Standing over him, illuminated by the flickering fluorescent lights of the tunnel, was the man himself. 

All Might. The Symbol of Peace. The Number One Hero. 

He was even larger in person. His golden hair stood up in its signature V-shape, and his blinding white smile was plastered across his face. He was stuffing the scattered remains of the Sludge Villain into two large plastic soda bottles with impossible speed. 

"T-Thank goodness!" All Might boomed, turning to Izuku. "I'm glad you're safe! I apologize for getting you caught up in my villain hunt. Mistakes were made! But thanks to you, I've captured him!"

Izuku was entirely starstruck. The pain in his throat, the trauma of nearly dying, the memory of Bakugo’s cruel words—all of it vanished, wiped away by the radiant presence of his idol. 

"A-All Might! You're really him!" Izuku scrambled to his feet, pulling his sodden notebook from his bag. "M-My notebook! Could you sign it? Please!"

He flipped it open to a two-page spread, only to find an oversized, sprawling signature already taking up both pages. 

"HE ALREADY DID IT!" Izuku bowed repeatedly, his voice cracking. "Thank you! I'll treasure it forever! It'll be a family heirloom!"

"Well, I must be off!" All Might said, patting the pockets of his cargo pants where the soda bottles were stashed. "I need to get this guy to the police! Stay out of trouble, young man!"

All Might crouched, the muscles in his enormous legs tensing like coiled steel springs. 

Wait, Izuku thought, panic rising again. Wait, I have to ask him. I have to know.

"Wait! I have a question!" Izuku yelled, but All Might was already launching himself into the air. 

Without thinking, driven by a decade of desperate, unanswered prayers, Izuku leaped forward. He grabbed ahold of All Might’s thick pant leg just as the hero took off. 

The wind hit Izuku like a physical blow. The ground dropped away instantly, the city of Mustafu shrinking beneath them into a patchwork of rooftops and streets. 

"Hey, hey, hey!" All Might shouted, looking down in shock. "Let go! Your fanaticism is too much! We're in the air!"

"If I let go now, I'll die!" Izuku screamed over the roaring wind, his eyes squeezed shut, his knuckles white as he clung for dear life. 

"Oh, right!" All Might grunted. "Hold on tight! I'll find a place to land!"

A minute later, they crashed down onto the roof of a tall office building. Izuku collapsed onto the hard roof, trembling uncontrollably, gasping for air. 

"Good grief," All Might sighed, wiping his brow. "If you talk to the people downstairs, they can help you out. Now, I really must be going—"

"Wait!" Izuku scrambled to his feet, reaching a hand out toward the retreating hero. "Just one question. Please!"

All Might stopped. He didn't turn around, but he didn't leap away. 

Izuku looked at the broad, muscular back of the Symbol of Peace. This was it. The moment of truth. He closed his eyes, remembering the jeers of his classmates, the cold disappointment of his mother, the fiery contempt of Bakugo. 

"Even if I don't have a Quirk..." Izuku's voice trembled, but he forced the words out. "Can I still become a hero? Can someone without a Quirk be like you?!"

The wind whipped across the rooftop, carrying the distant sounds of the city below. Izuku opened his eyes, staring desperately at All Might, waiting for the words that would validate his entire existence. 

Instead, a thick cloud of steam erupted from All Might’s body, accompanied by a wet, hacking cough. 

Izuku recoiled. When the steam cleared, the towering god of muscle was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with sunken, shadowed eyes, wearing clothes that hung off his gaunt frame like a scarecrow. Blood trickled from his chin. 

"W-What? You're deflating!" Izuku stammered, his mind short-circuiting. "Are you a fake? An imposter?"

The skeletal man wiped the blood from his mouth and let out a long, weary sigh. "I am All Might." He sat down heavily against the rooftop railing, pulling up his oversized shirt. 

Izuku gasped. The left side of All Might’s chest and stomach was a horrifying mass of twisted, purple scar tissue. It looked like a crater had been blown into his torso. 

"Five years ago, a villain did this to me," All Might said, his voice quiet, stripped of all its booming bravado. "My respiratory system is nearly destroyed. I lost my whole stomach. All the surgeries have worn me down. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day."

Izuku stared in horror. The invincible Symbol of Peace was broken. 

"I smile to show the pressure of heroes, and to trick the fear inside of me," All Might continued, his sunken blue eyes fixing on Izuku with a piercing, somber intensity. "Pros are always risking their lives. So, you're asking if you can be a hero without a Quirk?"

Izuku held his breath. 

"No. I don't think you can."

The words weren't spoken with malice. They were spoken with cold, hard practicality. But to Izuku, they felt like a physical knife sliding between his ribs. 

"If you want to help people, become a police officer," All Might said, standing up and walking toward the door leading inside the building. "They get a lot of crap because the heroes capture all the villains, but it's a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you have to consider what's realistic."

The heavy metal door opened, then closed with a resounding clang. 

Izuku was left alone on the rooftop. 

The wind howled around him. He stood perfectly still, his eyes wide and vacant. The world had gone completely silent in his head. The second string—the strongest one, the one tied directly to his idol—snapped violently. 

He didn't cry. The sadness had been burned away, replaced by an expansive, chilling emptiness. All Might, the man who preached that anyone could be a hero, the man who smiled through adversity... was just a man. A hypocrite holding up a fragile lie to keep the masses pacified. 

Consider what's realistic.

Izuku looked down at his trembling hands. Realistic. Realistic meant that power dictated worth. Realistic meant that people like Bakugo got to be heroes because they won the genetic lottery, regardless of how rotten their souls were. Realistic meant that Izuku was nothing. 

Slowly, mechanically, Izuku walked toward the edge of the roof. He looked down at the streets far below. The cars looked like toys. The people looked like ants. 

Take a swan dive off the roof.

He gripped the railing. It would be so easy. One step, a few seconds of falling, and the pain would stop. He wouldn't be a burden to his mother anymore. He wouldn't be a punching bag for Bakugo. He would just be a memory, fading away into the concrete. 

He lifted one leg over the railing. 

BOOM.

A massive explosion echoed in the distance, shaking the glass of the nearby buildings. A plume of thick black smoke rose into the sky a few blocks away. 

Izuku stopped. His foot hovered over the abyss. He looked toward the smoke. Old habits die hard. His body, trained by years of chasing villain fights, pulled him back from the ledge. He climbed back over the railing and mechanically walked toward the stairwell. 

He descended the stairs like a ghost, his mind detached from his body. When he hit the street level, he followed the sound of sirens and explosions. 

He arrived at the Tatooin Shopping District. A massive crowd had gathered behind police barricades. Fires raged through the alleyway, shattering storefront windows and sending plumes of noxious smoke into the air. 

Izuku squeezed his way to the front of the crowd, his eyes deadened. He looked at the chaos. 

There, in the center of the fiery wreckage, was the Sludge Villain. 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. The bottle. It must have dropped when I grabbed him.

But that wasn't what paralyzed Izuku. It was who the villain had captured. 

Struggling violently within the thick, suffocating mass of sludge, setting off frantic, massive explosions that only fueled the surrounding fires, was Katsuki Bakugo. 

Izuku watched as Bakugo’s eyes, wide with pure, unadulterated terror, scanned the crowd. He was suffocating. He was dying in the exact same way Izuku had been an hour ago. 

Izuku looked around. The pro heroes were there. Death Arms, Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady, Backdraft. They were standing on the sidelines, shouting orders at the police, making excuses. 

"I don't have the right Quirk for this!" Kamui Woods yelled. 

"I need a two-lane road to get in there!" Mt. Lady complained. 

"We just have to wait for someone with a suitable Quirk!" Death Arms shouted, holding back the crowd. 

They're doing nothing, Izuku realized, a sickening wave of revulsion washing over him. They're just watching a kid die because it's inconvenient. Because it's dangerous.

Izuku looked back at Bakugo. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. Bakugo was pleading. The arrogant, untouchable boy who had told him to kill himself was begging for salvation. 

In any traditional hero story, this would be the moment. This would be where the Quirkless boy's legs moved on their own. Where he dashed past the barricades, risking his life to save his tormentor, proving his heroic heart. 

Izuku Midoriya stood perfectly still. 

He looked at Bakugo, and for the first time in his life, he didn't see a childhood friend. He didn't see a future hero. He saw a monster being eaten by a bigger monster. 

Why should I save you? a dark, venomous voice whispered in the back of Izuku’s mind. You told me to die. You burned my dreams. You made my life hell. Why should I move a muscle?

Izuku didn't step forward. He watched. He analyzed the situation with the cold, calculating mind he had honed for years. He noted the Sludge Villain's fluid dynamics, how Bakugo's explosions were only thinning the oxygen in the area, accelerating his own asphyxiation. He noted the structural integrity of the burning buildings. 

He analyzed, and he did absolutely nothing. 

The crowd gasped as a large figure suddenly burst through them. It was All Might, in his muscle form, coughing up a fine mist of blood as he forced his broken body to act. He leaped into the fray, grabbing Bakugo and unleashing a Detroit Smash that changed the weather, blowing the villain apart and putting out the fires in a single, catastrophic punch. 

The crowd erupted into deafening cheers. It began to rain. 

The heroes immediately swarmed All Might, praising him. Once the police had gathered the sludge into bags, the heroes turned their attention to Bakugo, who was sitting on the ground, coughing and gasping. 

"You were amazing, kid!" Death Arms praised, patting Bakugo on the back. "That Quirk of yours is incredible! You held out so long!"

"When you go pro, come to my agency!" Kamui Woods offered. 

Izuku watched the scene unfold with a sense of profound disgust. 

Bakugo had used his Quirk illegally. He had endangered civilians by setting the alley on fire with his panicked explosions. He had been a victim, completely helpless. And yet, the heroes were praising him. They were rewarding him for having a strong Quirk. 

The system is a joke, Izuku thought. The third and final string snapped. The scaffolding holding up his worldview collapsed into dust. 

Heroes weren't saviors. They were celebrities obsessed with ratings, compatibility, and flashy Quirks. They were cowards who waited for the perfect conditions to do their jobs. And the people they protected were sheep, blindly cheering for the wolves in capes. 

Izuku turned his back on the alleyway, on All Might, on Bakugo. He walked away from the crowd, slipping into the shadows of the evening. 

He didn't go home. He couldn't go back to that sterile apartment and play the role of the tragic, Quirkless son anymore. Deku was dead. The boy who cried and mumbled and took the beatings had died on that rooftop with All Might's rejection, and his ghost had withered away watching the heroes stand by in that alley. 

He walked for hours, crossing out of the affluent, clean sectors of Mustafu and descending into the industrial slums. The air here smelled of ozone, rust, and poverty. The streetlights flickered, casting erratic shadows over the crumbling factories and abandoned warehouses. 

He found a vacant, weed-choked lot nestled between two condemned buildings. In the center of the lot sat a rusted metal oil drum. 

Izuku stopped in front of it. He took off his yellow backpack. He opened it and pulled out his spare notebooks, his pencil case, his school textbooks. He dumped them all into the drum. Finally, he pulled out the soggy, ruined remains of Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13. He stared at All Might’s sprawling signature for a long moment. 

Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap plastic lighter he had found on the street earlier. 

He flicked it. The small flame illuminated his face. His emerald eyes, once bright and wide with innocent hope, were now narrowed, cold, and dead. 

He set the flame to the edge of the notebook. The waterlogged paper resisted at first, but soon, the dry pages beneath caught. The fire spread rapidly, consuming All Might's signature, consuming the notes on Kamui Woods, consuming a decade of pathetic, foolish dreams. 

Izuku dropped the burning book into the drum. The dry textbooks and paper inside caught immediately. A small, roaring fire illuminated the abandoned lot, casting dancing, demonic shadows against the brick walls. 

Izuku took off his yellow backpack, the defining symbol of his childhood innocence, and tossed it into the flames. The nylon melted and blackened, releasing a foul, toxic smell. 

He stood there for a long time, watching the fire burn until there was nothing left but glowing red embers and gray ash. The heat warmed his bruised skin, but it couldn't penetrate the ice that had formed around his heart. 

He had no Quirk. He had no heroes. He had no home. 

But as he looked out into the darkness of the slums, for the first time in his life, Izuku Midoriya felt a strange, terrifying sense of freedom. If the world was going to treat him like dirt, he would no longer play by its rules. If power was the only currency this world respected, then he would find power. No matter the cost. 

He turned away from the embers, shoving his hands into his pockets, and walked deeper into the black heart of the city, unaware that beneath the concrete, a rusted iron pod was waiting for him, housing a beast that was starving for a soul just as broken as his own.

The sky above Mustafu had bruised to a deep, sickly purple before it finally broke, unleashing a torrential downpour that felt less like weather and more like a punishment. The rain fell in heavy, freezing sheets, turning the neon-lit streets of the affluent districts into a blurred canvas of watercolor light. But down here, in the neglected underbelly of the city’s industrial sector, there was no neon to reflect. There was only rust, rotting concrete, and the suffocating darkness of forgotten places. 

It had been four days since Izuku Midoriya walked away from his burning past. 

Four days of surviving on the razor’s edge of starvation. Four days of hiding in alleyways, sleeping in damp cardboard boxes behind convenience stores, and learning just how invisible a Quirkless runaway truly was in a society obsessed with the extraordinary. No heroes patrolled these streets. The people who lived here were the dregs of the Quirk era—those with mutations too grotesque for polite society, those with powers too weak to be marketable, and the predators who fed on them both. 

Izuku huddled beneath the rusted awning of a shuttered pachinko parlor, shivering violently. His black gakuran uniform was soaked through, clinging to his bony frame like a second skin. He had lost his shoes two days ago to an opportunistic thief while he slept, and his socks were now shredded, his bare feet scraped and bleeding from the unforgiving asphalt. 

His stomach twisted into a painful knot, emitting a hollow, aching growl. He squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his arms around his knees to preserve whatever meager body heat he had left. 

Consider what’s realistic, All Might’s voice echoed in the cavern of his mind, cold and distant. 

Take a swan dive off the roof, Bakugo’s voice chimed in, a venomous counter-melody. 

Izuku clenched his jaw until his teeth ground together. He forced the voices away. Anger—hot, bitter, and unfamiliar—simmered beneath his ribs. It was the only thing keeping him warm. The sadness was gone, burned away in the oil drum along with his notebooks. What remained was a hardened shell of survival instinct. He just had to make it through the night. Tomorrow, he would find food. He had to. 

"Well, well. Look what washed up in our gutter."

The voice cut through the drumming of the rain, grating and malicious. Izuku’s head snapped up. 

Three figures stepped out of the gloom, their silhouettes illuminated by the erratic flashing of a broken streetlamp. They were street-level predators, the kind of bottom-feeders that thrived in the shadows of hero society. The leader was tall and gangly, with skin that looked like hardened gray cement and fingers that ended in sharp, rocky points. To his left was a heavyset man with the head of a feral boar, steam whistling from his snout. To his right, a scrawny woman whose arms were covered in shimmering, toxic-looking scales. 

"Looks like a stray dog," the stone-skinned leader sneered, stepping closer. "And a young one, too. You lost, kid?"

Izuku didn't answer. His analytical mind, trained for years to assess threats, kicked into overdrive. Three targets. Mutant and emitter classes. Stone-skin probably has enhanced durability and blunt-force lethality. Boar-head is a charger, high physical strength but poor turn radius. Scale-woman... unknown, possibly venomous or acidic.

Against any one of them, a Quirkless fourteen-year-old had a zero percent chance of survival. Against three, it was an execution. 

"Hey, I'm talking to you," the leader barked. He lunged forward, grabbing Izuku by the collar of his soaked uniform and hauling him to his feet. The sheer strength of the mutant lifted Izuku off the ground. "Empty your pockets. Now."

"I... I don't have anything," Izuku croaked, his throat dry despite the rain. 

The boar-headed man laughed, a wet, snorting sound. "He ain't lying, boss. Look at his feet. Kid's a beggar."

The leader scowled, his rocky features grinding together. "Useless. What kind of Quirk do you have, brat? You got a healing factor? We could harvest a kidney, sell it to the chop-docs in Otheon."

"I... I don't have a Quirk," Izuku breathed, the shameful confession slipping out before he could stop it. 

The three villains froze. Then, the woman burst into a shrieking laugh. "Quirkless?! Oh, that's rich! A baseline human! Haven't seen one of those in years. They're practically extinct!"

"Extinct, huh?" The leader’s eyes darkened with a sadistic glint. "Let's help finish the job. Boys, have some fun."

The leader threw Izuku backward. Izuku hit the wet pavement hard, the breath exploding from his lungs. Before he could recover, the boar-headed man charged. 

Adrenaline, pure and unadulterated, flooded Izuku’s system. He rolled to the right just as the boar-man’s heavy boots cracked the pavement where his head had been a fraction of a second prior. Izuku scrambled to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his scraped soles, and bolted. 

"Get him!" the leader roared. 

Izuku ran. He didn't run like a hero rushing toward danger; he ran like prey. He darted into a narrow, trash-filled alleyway, his bare feet splashing through puddles of fetid water. The sounds of heavy pursuit echoed behind him, a terrifying drumbeat of impending violence. 

He vaulted over a toppled dumpster, using his momentum to propel himself over a chain-link fence. The chain-link bit into his palms, but he didn't care. He dropped into an abandoned construction site, the skeletal steel frames of unfinished buildings looming in the dark like the ribs of dead leviathans. 

"You can't run, little piggy!" the boar-man bellowed, crashing straight through the chain-link fence as if it were made of paper. 

Izuku pushed his burning legs faster. His lungs screamed for oxygen. He dodged between concrete pillars, his eyes frantically scanning for a way out, a place to hide. The rain was blinding, mixing with the sweat and tears of exertion on his face. 

He turned a corner and skidded to a halt. Dead end. 

The ground before him had collapsed, revealing a massive, gaping sinkhole that plummeted into the subterranean depths of the city. Jagged rebar and broken concrete jutted out over the precipice. Behind him, the heavy footsteps of his pursuers grew louder, accompanied by the hissing of the scale-woman. 

Izuku looked down into the black abyss. It was an old subway tunnel, or perhaps something deeper. A sudden, vivid memory of Bakugo’s mocking face flashed in his mind’s eye. Take a swan dive.

"There he is!" the stone-skinned leader shouted, stepping out from behind a pillar. The three of them fanned out, blocking the only exit. "End of the line, Quirkless. Should've just stayed still. Now I'm gonna make it hurt."

Izuku looked at the villains. Then, he looked down at the sinkhole. 

He refused to die at the hands of these scavengers. He refused to let his life end as a pathetic statistic in a world that had rejected him. 

Without a word, Izuku turned, took a running leap, and threw himself into the abyss. 

He heard the villains shout in surprise as he vanished into the dark. The wind rushed past his ears. He fell for what felt like an eternity, bracing for the bone-shattering impact. 

CRASH.

Izuku slammed into a steep, slanted surface of loose earth and rusted metal. The angle saved his life, transforming his lethal fall into a violent, uncontrolled slide. He tumbled through the dark, debris tearing at his clothes and skin. He slammed into something hard and metallic, crying out as a sharp pain flared in his left shoulder. 

He rolled to a stop on a cold, hard floor. 

For a long time, he just lay there in the absolute darkness, gasping for air. Every inch of his body throbbed with agonizing pain. He tasted copper in his mouth. Slowly, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. 

"Hello?" he whispered, his voice trembling. The word echoed infinitely, bouncing off solid, metallic walls. 

He reached into his soaked pocket and pulled out the cheap plastic lighter he had used to burn his notebooks. His thumb flicked the spark wheel. A tiny, flickering orange flame burst to life, pushing back the oppressive darkness. 

Izuku held his breath. 

He was not in a subway tunnel. 

He was standing in a massive, cavernous corridor constructed of reinforced, brushed steel. The architecture was utilitarian, brutalist, and archaic. Thick, dust-covered cables ran along the ceiling like the veins of a mechanical beast. The air was incredibly stale, smelling of ozone, ancient dust, and a faint, chemical sterility. 

To his left, the tunnel was completely caved in by the rubble he had just slid down. To his right, the corridor stretched into darkness, ending in a massive, circular blast door that looked like it belonged on a nuclear submarine. 

Izuku stumbled toward the wall, holding the lighter up. Faded, peeling stencils were painted onto the steel. He squinted to read the faded English letters and kanji. 

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE - BLACK SITE 04

RESTRICTED ACCESS: PROJECT E.C.L.I.P.S.E.

WARNING: NEURAL-SYNC PROTOCOLS BEYOND THIS POINT.

Izuku’s brow furrowed. Department of Defense? The military hadn't operated domestic black sites since before the Dawn of Quirks, nearly two hundred years ago. When Quirks appeared, conventional military arms races had ground to a halt, replaced by the hero-villain dynamic. This place was a relic, a tomb from a bygone era of human history. 

Suddenly, a shower of pebbles and dirt cascaded down the rubble pile behind him. 

"Little bastard went down here!" a muffled, grating voice echoed from above. 

Izuku’s blood ran cold. The villains were following him down the sinkhole. 

Panic seized him. He couldn't go back up. He turned and sprinted toward the massive blast door at the end of the corridor. As he approached, he saw that the door was slightly ajar, the locking mechanism jammed by centuries of rust and a massive, fallen concrete support beam. The gap was just wide enough for a scrawny teenager to slip through. 

Izuku squeezed his body into the gap. The jagged metal edges tore at his uniform, biting into his skin, but he pushed through the pain, popping out on the other side just as the heavy thud of boots landing on the rubble echoed in the corridor behind him. 

He found himself in a vast, circular laboratory. 

The lighter’s pathetic flame could barely illuminate the immense space. Overturned tables, shattered glass vats, and rusted computer mainframes littered the floor. Skeletal remains, still clad in decaying, pre-Quirk hazmat suits and military fatigues, lay scattered across the room, frozen in final poses of agony or desperate flight. Whatever had happened here, it had been a massacre. 

But Izuku’s eyes were drawn to the center of the room. 

Resting on a raised, octagonal dais was a machine that defied explanation. It looked like a cross between a medical stasis pod and a medieval iron maiden. It was constructed of a matte-black, light-absorbing metal, covered in sharp, brutalist angles. Thick, segmented cables connected the pod to the surrounding mainframes, pulsing with a faint, dying, crimson bioluminescence. 

The object exuded an aura of pure, concentrated malice. It felt less like a piece of technology and more like a caged apex predator. 

Izuku took a step back, every instinct screaming at him to flee. The air around the pod felt unnaturally cold, heavy with a static charge that made the hairs on his arms stand up. 

CRANG.

The sound of metal groaning echoed through the chamber. Izuku spun around. Through the gap in the blast door, a massive, rocky hand thrust through, grabbing the edge of the steel. 

"Found you," the stone-skinned leader growled. The concrete beam blocking the door began to crack under the mutant's immense, Quirk-enhanced strength. With a deafening roar of tearing metal, the leader wrenched the blast door open a few more inches, allowing the boar-headed man and the scale-woman to slip through. 

Izuku backed away, his lighter trembling in his hand. He bumped into the raised dais at the center of the room. 

"Nowhere left to run, Quirkless," the scale-woman hissed, flicking her wrists. Drops of glowing green acid splattered against the floor, hissing as they ate through the concrete. 

"You made us work for this," the boar-man snorted, cracking his knuckles. "I'm gonna break your legs first."

Izuku was trapped. He looked at the skeletons littering the floor. He looked at the cold, black pod behind him. He looked at the three monsters closing in on him. 

He was going to die here. Alone, forgotten, in the dark. Just a pathetic, Quirkless Deku. 

Is this it? Izuku thought, his breathing growing ragged. Is this how my story ends? Just a victim?

He closed his eyes. He expected to feel fear. He expected to feel the familiar urge to cry, to beg for a hero to swoop in from the ceiling and save him. 

But no tears came. 

Instead, a profound, terrifying heat blossomed in his chest. It started as a spark, fueled by the memory of his mother’s averted eyes. It grew into a flame, fed by All Might’s crushing words on the rooftop. It erupted into a raging inferno, sustained by a decade of Bakugo’s explosive abuse and the jeers of a society that had deemed him worthless. 

It was Rage. Pure, unadulterated, blinding hatred. 

Why should he die? Why did these monsters get to live, breathing the air, just because they were born with a freakish genetic mutation? Why did the world worship power while trampling the powerless? 

It’s not fair, Izuku’s mind screamed. IT’S NOT FAIR!

"I won't let you," Izuku snarled, his eyes snapping open. They didn't hold fear anymore. They held a feral, desperate defiance. He dropped his lighter and grabbed a heavy, rusted metal pipe from the floor, holding it up like a club. "I won't let you kill me!"

The villains stopped, blinking in surprise. Then, the stone-skinned leader laughed. 

"Look at this! The little lamb has teeth!" The leader stepped forward. "Let me show you the difference between a pebble and a mountain, kid."

The leader lunged. He moved with a speed that defied his rocky bulk. Before Izuku could even swing the pipe, the mutant’s fist slammed into Izuku’s chest. 

The sound of cracking ribs echoed through the chamber like gunshots. 

Izuku’s vision flashed white. The force of the blow lifted him entirely off his feet, sending him flying backward through the air. He crashed directly onto the slanted, upper surface of the black pod on the dais. 

He slid down the matte-black metal, coughing violently. Blood sprayed from his lips, painting the pristine, ancient technology in crimson. His body went entirely numb. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were punctured, his sternum shattered. 

He collapsed against the base of the pod, his vision swimming with dark spots. 

"Told you," the leader mocked, stepping up onto the dais, his rocky fist covered in Izuku’s blood. "Useless."

As the villain raised his foot to crush Izuku’s skull, the blood that Izuku had coughed onto the pod began to move. It seeped into microscopic grooves in the metal, acting as a biological key. 

Deep within the bowels of the black-site, machinery that had slept for two centuries hummed to life. 

[WARNING.]

A synthetic, deeply distorted voice echoed through the chamber, seemingly originating from the walls themselves. 

[BIOMETRIC ANOMALY DETECTED. CRITICAL TRAUMA IMMINENT. PROSPECT SUBJECT ACQUIRED.]

The stone-skinned leader paused, looking around in confusion. "What the hell is that?"

Behind Izuku, the heavy, coffin-like lid of the black pod suddenly split open with a hiss of pressurized gas. A blinding crimson light spilled from the interior. 

[INITIATING PROJECT E.C.L.I.P.S.E. EMERGENCY NEURAL-BONDING PROTOCOL. ENGAGING B.E.A.S.T. SYSTEM.]

Dozens of thick, articulated, snake-like cables shot out from the interior of the pod. They moved with terrifying speed and precision. Before the villains or Izuku could react, the cables latched onto Izuku’s broken body. 

"Hey! Get him out of there!" the scale-woman yelled, sensing something terribly wrong. 

The leader reached down to grab Izuku, but a massive surge of red electricity arced from the pod, blasting the mutant backward off the dais. 

The cables hoisted Izuku into the air, suspending his limp, bleeding body inside the gaping maw of the iron coffin. 

Izuku couldn't scream. He could only watch in horror as millions of microscopic, silver particles—nanites—poured from the cables, swarming over his skin like a metallic plague. 

[ANALYZING HOST PARAMETERS... QUIRK FACTOR: ZERO. COMPATIBILITY: 100%.]

[WARNING: HOST NERVOUS SYSTEM TRAUMA AT 89%. INITIATING FORCED CELLULAR RECONSTRUCTION AND NEURAL-LINK.]

PAIN.

That was the only word. It was a pain that transcended human understanding. The nanites didn't just heal him; they brutalized him. They burrowed into his flesh, shredding muscle and tissue to violently pin his shattered ribs back together with microscopic metallic spikes. They drilled into his spine, physically splicing themselves into his nervous system. 

Izuku’s back arched violently as a silent scream tore his throat raw. His eyes rolled back into his head, and the physical world vanished, replaced by a dark, endless void. 

Welcome.

The voice in his head wasn't the synthetic computer voice. It was deep, guttural, and dripping with malicious hunger. 

Izuku floated in the dark void. Slowly, a pair of gigantic, glowing crimson eyes materialized in front of him. A massive, shadowy figure emerged from the abyss. It took the shape of a colossal, cybernetic hellhound. Its body was composed of jagged metal plates, pulsing hard-light veins, and dripping shadows. Its jaws were lined with razors, and it emanated an aura of pure, predatory bloodlust. 

I am the Battle Engagement & Assault System Tracker, the hound growled, circling Izuku’s soul. But you can call me B.E.A.S.T. I have slept for a very long time, little host. Waiting for a vessel empty enough to hold me.

"What... what are you?" Izuku whispered in the void. 

I am the weapon your ancestors built to kill gods, the hound sneered, its massive face inches from Izuku’s. And you are broken. I can taste it. The neglect. The abuse. The sheer, intoxicating hatred.

Suddenly, the hound’s eyes flashed, and visions erupted around Izuku. 

He saw his mother turning her back on him. 

He saw Bakugo blowing up his notebook. 

He saw the Sludge Villain suffocating him. 

He saw All Might telling him he was worthless. 

He saw the heroes watching Bakugo die. 

Look at them, B.E.A.S.T. whispered, a seductive purr underneath the growl. Look at the world that threw you away. They call themselves heroes, but they are just arrogant, fat sheep. They hurt you. They broke you. And now, these scavengers outside want to end you.

The hound lowered its massive head, its glowing eyes locking onto Izuku’s. 

I can fix you. I can knit your flesh with iron and fuel your muscles with star-fire. I can make you a nightmare to the monsters. I can give you the power to tear this hypocritical world to pieces. The hound bared its teeth in a wicked grin. All you have to do... is let me off the leash. Feed me your rage, Izuku Midoriya. Let us bite back.

Izuku looked at the visions. He looked at the pain of his past. He looked at the hound. 

He didn't want to be a victim anymore. He didn't want to be Deku. 

"Give it to me," Izuku said, his voice echoing in the void, shedding its tremble, hardening into cold steel. "Give me the power."

The hellhound roared, a sound of absolute, joyous malice, and lunged forward, sinking its massive jaws directly into Izuku’s chest. 

In the physical world, the black-site laboratory erupted in blinding crimson light. 

The three villains shielded their eyes as a shockwave of localized gravity blew the dust and debris away from the dais. The pod snapped shut with a resounding clang, sealing Izuku inside. 

"What the hell is happening?!" the boar-man yelled, his knees buckling under the oppressive, heavy atmosphere filling the room. 

The pod began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched whine that set their teeth on edge. Then, the metal of the pod began to shift. It wasn't opening; it was dismantling itself, folding and reshaping around the body of the boy inside like a liquid origami of death. 

With a blast of superheated air, the transformation was complete. 

Where the broken, bleeding boy had been, a nightmare now stood. 

Izuku was clad entirely in an armor of matte-black, ultra-dense carbon-metal. It clung to him like a second skin, augmenting his frame, adding inches to his height and broadness to his shoulders. Beneath the black plating, exposed "muscles" of glowing, crimson hard-light pulsed with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like intensity. The gauntlets ended in sharp, rending claws. 

But the most terrifying feature was the helmet. It was shaped like the skull of a demonic wolf. The jaw was elongated and filled with jagged metallic teeth. Where the eyes should be, two thin slits burned with a furious, blood-red light. 

[NEURAL-LINK ESTABLISHED. PAIN INHIBITORS AT 0%. BERSERKER PROTOCOL ENGAGED.]

Izuku didn't just stand; he crouched like a coiled spring, his armored claws scraping against the metal floor. He breathed in, and the sound was amplified through a vocoder, escaping the helmet’s jaws as a low, rumbling, mechanical growl that vibrated the very air. 

He couldn't feel the broken ribs. He couldn't feel the cold. He only felt an endless, volcanic eruption of rage, guided by the predatory instincts of the B.E.A.S.T. AI directly injected into his cerebral cortex. 

"Kill it!" the stone-skinned leader screamed, a note of genuine terror finally cracking his voice. 

The scale-woman acted first. She unleashed a torrent of glowing green acid directly at Izuku. 

The Black Hound didn't dodge. He moved. 

He crossed the twenty feet between the dais and the villains in a microsecond. The ground beneath his feet shattered from the sheer kinetic force of his launch. He moved so fast he left a crimson afterimage of hard-light in his wake. 

Before the acid even hit the floor, Izuku was in front of the woman. 

He didn't use technique. He used raw, unbridled savagery. His armored hand shot out, grabbing the woman by the throat. The metal fingers easily bypassed her toxic scales, lifting her off the ground. 

She choked, clawing at his armored arm, but it was like trying to scratch a tank. 

Through the helmet, Izuku’s vision was bathed in red tactical overlays. The B.E.A.S.T. AI highlighted her vitals, whispering in his ear. Crush.

With a sickening crunch that echoed loudly in the cavernous room, Izuku squeezed. The woman went limp, her neck snapped instantly. He casually tossed her body aside like a broken doll. 

"You bastard!" the boar-man roared, charging forward, steam pouring from his snout, his massive fists reared back for a devastating blow. 

Izuku turned his head, the red slits of his helmet locking onto the charging mutant. He didn't flinch. As the boar-man swung a fist that could shatter a car block, Izuku simply raised his left arm. 

The massive fist collided with Izuku’s forearm guard. 

CLANG.

Izuku didn't move an inch. The kinetic dampeners in the armor absorbed the impact perfectly, converting the kinetic energy into the hard-light reserves. The boar-man’s eyes widened in horror, realizing his wrist had shattered upon impact with the indestructible black metal. 

Before the mutant could scream, Izuku retaliated. 

He lunged forward, burying his right armored fist deep into the boar-man’s gut. The crimson hard-light musculature flared brightly on Izuku’s arm, multiplying his physical strength a hundredfold. The punch completely caved in the villain’s stomach, lifting him off his feet and sending him rocketing backward. The boar-man flew through the air, crashing violently into one of the rusted mainframes, his spine snapping against the machinery. He slid to the floor, dead. 

Two targets down in less than five seconds. 

Izuku slowly turned his wolf-like helmet toward the final villain. 

The stone-skinned leader, a man who had terrorized the underbelly of Mustafu for years, took a step back, trembling uncontrollably. His Quirk made him physically impenetrable to most attacks, but looking at the demonic, crimson-eyed entity before him, he knew his stone skin was nothing but paper. 

"What... what are you?!" the leader stammered, raising his hands in a desperate, futile guard. 

Izuku didn't speak. He didn't have the words. He only had the growl. 

He stalked forward, his heavy metal boots thudding against the floor with deliberate, terrifying slowness. 

"Stay back!" the leader screamed, pulling a heavy, high-caliber handgun from a holster at his waist. He emptied the magazine, the gunshots deafening in the enclosed space. 

The bullets struck Izuku’s chest and helmet, sparking harmlessly off the carbon-metal plating, leaving not even a scratch. Izuku didn't even break his stride. 

The leader threw the empty gun and turned to run for the gap in the blast door. 

Izuku pounced. 

He leaped through the air, landing squarely on the mutant’s back, driving him to the concrete floor. The sheer weight of the armor cracked the leader’s stone skin. 

Tear him apart, the B.E.A.S.T. AI commanded, its voice echoing in the blood-soaked chambers of Izuku’s mind. Make him suffer.

Izuku straddled the villain's back. He grabbed the mutant's arms, pinning them. Then, with a guttural, mechanical roar, Izuku began to pummel the back of the leader’s head. 

SMASH.

The stone skin cracked. 

SMASH.

Chunks of gray rocky flesh flew into the air. 

SMASH.

Blood began to pool on the floor. 

Izuku lost himself in the rhythm of the violence. It was intoxicating. For fourteen years, he had been the one on the ground. He had been the one bleeding, begging, crying. Now, he was the god of this dark place. He was the one dealing the pain. The rage that had poisoned him for so long was finally being exorcised through his bloody fists. 

He kept hitting long after the mutant stopped moving. He kept hitting until the concrete floor beneath the villain’s head gave way, cratering under the immense, mechanized force of the armor. 

Suddenly, the red tactical overlay in his vision flickered. 

[THREAT NEUTRALIZED. BERSERKER PROTOCOL DISENGAGING. HOST VITALS CRITICAL.]

The crimson glow of the hard-light muscles dimmed. The heavy, metallic jaws of the wolf helmet unlatched and smoothly retracted, sliding back into the collar of the suit, exposing Izuku’s face to the stale air of the bunker. 

Izuku gasped, taking a massive, desperate breath of air. 

The adrenaline and the AI’s influence vanished in an instant, leaving behind the crushing reality of what he had just done. 

He was sitting on a corpse. His armored hands were coated in thick, dark blood. The remains of the stone-skinned leader were a horrific, unrecognizable mess of pulverized rock and flesh. To his left, the broken bodies of the other two villains lay motionless in the dust. 

The sheer, visceral horror of the scene slammed into Izuku’s brain. 

He scrambled backward, crawling away from the body on his hands and knees. The heavy armor clanked clumsily against the floor. He reached the edge of the dais, ripped off the rest of his ruined school uniform top, and vomited violently onto the rusted steel floor. 

He coughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his armored wrist, only to smear blood across his freckled cheek. 

He looked at his hands. The black metal gauntlets glinted in the dim light of his dropped lighter. He traced the lines of the armor up his arms, feeling the rigid carbon-plating and the soft, synthetic undersuit that had physically grafted itself to his skin. 

He tried to take the gauntlet off. He pulled at it, but a sharp, localized spike of agony shot up his arm. It wasn't clothing. It was a part of him now. The nanites had fused the suit to his nervous system. 

"Oh god," Izuku whispered, his voice cracking, sounding impossibly small in the massive, bloody tomb. "What have I done? What did I do?"

You survived, the B.E.A.S.T. whispered in the back of his mind. It was no longer a booming roar, but a dark, comfortable purr, like a satisfied predator curled up in the corner of his brain. You stopped being prey.

Izuku looked back at the carnage. He had killed three people. They were monsters, villains who would have undoubtedly killed him and countless others, but he had slaughtered them with his bare hands. He had crossed a line that no hero would ever cross. 

He thought of All Might’s shining smile. He thought of the unyielding, bright morality of the heroes on the news. 

He belonged in the dark now. He was a murderer. A monster. 

Izuku closed his eyes, waiting for the guilt to crush him. He waited for the familiar urge to apologize for his existence, to feel remorse for stepping out of line. 

But as he sat there, surrounded by death, wrapped in an iron coffin that had become his own skin... the guilt didn't come. 

Instead, he felt his broken ribs knit tightly together, held securely by microscopic spikes. He felt the raw, thrumming power of the armor humming in his veins. He looked at the blood on his hands, and beneath the horror, beneath the shock, he found a terrifying truth. 

He felt safe. 

For the first time in his entire life, Izuku Midoriya was not afraid of the dark. The dark belonged to him now. 

He slowly pushed himself to his feet. The armor supported his weight effortlessly, correcting his posture, making him stand tall. He didn't look like a scared boy anymore. He looked like a warlord born of shadow and steel. 

Izuku walked over to his dropped lighter. He picked it up and flicked the flame back to life. He walked past the bodies without looking down at them again. He stepped through the ruined blast door, his heavy boots echoing through the corridor, leaving the forgotten black-site behind. 

He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know how to survive in this new world he had forged in blood. But as he began the long, dark climb back up to the surface of Mustafu, one thing was absolutely certain. 

Deku was dead. 

The Black Hound had slipped its leash. And the city was going to learn to fear the dark.

The rain in Mustafu always smelled like rusted iron and chemical exhaust, but to Izuku Midoriya, it didn't smell like much of anything anymore. 

He sat on the edge of a sagging mattress in a windowless, concrete room located somewhere in the labyrinthine bowels of the red-light district. A single, naked incandescent bulb dangled from the ceiling by a frayed wire, casting harsh, jaundiced light over his pale skin. He was staring at the wall, but he wasn’t seeing the peeling wallpaper or the water stains. He was watching the tactical overlay that permanently hovered in his peripheral vision—a ghostly red heads-up display projected directly onto his optic nerves by the microscopic machines living in his bloodstream.

VITALS: STABLE.

NANITE SATURATION: 82.4%.

CORTEX SYNCHRONIZATION: OPTIMAL.

Izuku blinked, the red text flickering before fading into the background. He reached for a foil-wrapped protein bar resting on a nearby milk crate. He peeled the wrapper back and took a bite. He chewed methodically, his jaw working the dense, chalky material. 

It tasted like wet cardboard. Actually, that was a generous description; it tasted like absolutely nothing. 

He swallowed the lump, feeling it travel down his throat, but the sensation of flavor was entirely absent. It had been this way for six months. The E.C.L.I.P.S.E. armor’s nanites were incredibly efficient at keeping him alive, prioritizing critical bodily functions and combat readiness above all else. But that efficiency came with a terrifying cost. The machines didn’t understand the concept of luxury or comfort. To the B.E.A.S.T. AI, the sensory receptors responsible for taste, smell, and gentle touch were non-essential data streams. Slowly, methodically, the system was pruning them to optimize his nervous system for faster reaction times and pain tolerance. 

He was losing his humanity, piece by microscopic piece. 

Izuku stood up, tossing the half-eaten bar aside. He walked over to a cracked mirror propped up against the far wall. 

Two years had passed since he threw himself into that sinkhole as a frightened, Quirkless boy. The person staring back at him now was a stranger. 

At sixteen, Izuku had grown significantly. The malnourished, bony frame of his youth had been replaced by dense, corded muscle. But his physique wasn't natural; it was the result of the nanites constantly tearing his muscle fibers and rebuilding them stronger, denser, forcing his biology to withstand the extreme gravitational and kinetic forces of the armor. His skin was a tapestry of scars. Some were jagged, traditional marks from blades and bullets that had bypassed his guard. But the worst ones were the silver, perfectly straight, geometric lines that spiderwebbed across his spine, ribs, and shoulders—the places where the armor physically bolted into his skeleton when it manifested. 

His eyes, once large and shining with bright emerald hope, were now sunken, shadowed, and cold. They were the eyes of a veteran of a war nobody else knew was happening. A war fought in the alleys, the warehouses, and the forgotten basements of the city. 

You look tired, little host, a voice purred. It reverberated not in the room, but inside his skull. It sounded like grinding metal and the low growl of a starved wolf. 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the edges of the sink. "Shut up," he muttered. 

Why resist? the B.E.A.S.T. whispered, an oily, seductive presence slithering through his thoughts. You feed me scraps. Thugs. Pickpockets. It is not enough. Let me take the reins tonight. Let us hunt something worthy. Let us paint the streets.

"I am the one in control," Izuku stated, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely resembled the boy he used to be. "You are a tool. A machine. You only come out when I say so."

The AI chuckled, a sound that sent a phantom shiver down Izuku’s metallic spine. For now. But you feel the ache, don't you? The itching in your marrow? The nanites are restless. We are a weapon, Izuku. Weapons are meant to be fired.

Izuku turned away from the mirror. He pulled on a plain black t-shirt and a heavy, dark canvas jacket. He strapped a thick leather belt around his waist, checking the magnetic holsters and utility pouches. He didn't carry firearms—they were useless against most high-tier mutants and emitters, and the armor itself was a far deadlier weapon—but he carried tools: breaching charges, smoke grenades, and a encrypted comms-link. 

He stepped out of the room, pulling his hood up to obscure his face, and melted into the neon-soaked rain of the Mustafu underworld. 

The bar was called The Rusty Nail, a subterranean dive that catered exclusively to the worst elements of hero society. The air was thick with cheap cigarette smoke, the sour stench of spilled beer, and the palpable tension of two dozen heavily armed criminals eyeing each other with paranoid suspicion. 

No heroes ever came down here. The police turned a blind eye so long as the violence didn't spill over into the upper districts. It was a perfectly contained ecosystem of rot. 

Izuku pushed through the heavy wooden door, the bell above it ringing with a dull, flat tone. The low murmur of conversation in the bar dipped momentarily as eyes snapped to the entrance. 

Despite his youth, Izuku carried himself with an aura of heavy, unnatural stillness that commanded immediate wariness. He didn't swagger, and he didn't cower. He moved with the precise, deliberate economy of a coiled spring. In the underworld, they didn't know his real name. They only knew the urban legend. 

The Black Hound. Stray. The Iron Demon.

He walked past a table where two massive mutant thugs were arm-wrestling, neither of them daring to make eye contact with the hooded teenager. Izuku approached a circular booth in the darkest corner of the bar. 

Sitting in the booth was a man in a garish purple suit, casually puffing on a cigarette. Giran, the underworld's premier information broker and black-market fixer. He had a lazy grin on his face, but his eyes were sharp, calculating, always assessing the exact monetary value of the person standing in front of him. 

"Ah, the Stray returns," Giran purred, blowing a ring of smoke toward the ceiling. He gestured to the empty seat across from him. "Have a seat, kid. You're right on time. Can I get you a drink? A soda, perhaps?"

"I don't drink," Izuku said, his voice flat. He slid into the booth, keeping his back to the wall, his eyes scanning the room out of sheer habit. "You said you had a contract. High priority. No details on the encrypted channel."

"Right to business. I love that about you," Giran chuckled, tapping ash onto the scarred wooden table. "Most of the punks in this town want to posture, tell me how great their Quirks are, how they're the next big villain. But you? You're a professional. A genuine ghost. You go in, people die, you come out, and nobody knows how you did it." 

Giran leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The market is changing, kid. Ever since the Hero Killer started making waves in Hosu, the streets are restless. The League of Villains is hoarding talent. But this job? This is old school."

Giran slid a manila folder across the table. Izuku didn't touch it immediately. He let his HUD scan the exterior for chemical traps or tracking isotopes before he reached out and flipped it open. 

Inside were grainy, surveillance-style photographs of a heavily fortified warehouse compound on the edge of the shipping docks. There were also headshots of several men in sharp suits, many bearing intricate irezumi tattoos creeping up their necks. 

"Yakuza," Izuku noted, his eyes scanning the data. 

"Specifically, a splinter cell of the Hassaikai," Giran corrected. "The old boss is in a coma, and the new guy, Overhaul, is keeping things tight. But this particular group? They went rogue. Decided they didn't want to play by Overhaul's new rules. They've holed up in that warehouse and are sitting on a massive stockpile of illegal, military-grade support gear and a new synthesized narcotic that drastically amplifies Quirks before burning the user out."

"Trigger?" Izuku asked. 

"Something stronger," Giran said, his grin fading. "It's highly volatile. The problem is, they're stepping on the toes of some very wealthy, very powerful people who prefer the drug trade to remain... regulated. My clients want this rogue cell liquidated. All of them. And they want the merchandise destroyed. Total scorched earth."

Izuku stared at the photos. "How many hostiles?"

"Thirty, maybe forty," Giran said casually. "All armed. Most have combat-oriented Quirks. They're dug in like ticks. A frontal assault by any normal gang would be suicide. But you're not normal, are you, Hound?"

"Why not hire a hero?" Izuku asked cynically, closing the folder. "Let the pros handle it. It's their job, isn't it?"

Giran laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "Heroes require warrants, kid. They require due process. My clients don't want these guys arrested and singing to the police about where they got their funding. They want them erased. You're the best eraser in the city."

Izuku sat in silence. In the back of his mind, the B.E.A.S.T. let out a low, eager rumble. Forty souls. Armed and aggressive. Yes. Yes, this is a hunt. 

Izuku ignored the AI. He calculated the risks. He needed the money. The repairs to the E.C.L.I.P.S.E. system required rare earth metals, cooling fluids, and specialized tech that cost a fortune on the black market. Surviving was expensive. 

"Ten million yen," Izuku said, his tone leaving absolutely no room for negotiation. "Half up front, wired to the usual offshore proxy. The other half upon confirmation of the warehouse's destruction."

Giran whistled. "You're getting expensive, kid. But considering the body count... it's a bargain. Done."

Izuku stood up, slipping the folder into his jacket. "I'll do it tonight."

"A word of advice, Stray," Giran called out as Izuku turned to leave. Izuku paused, looking over his shoulder. Giran’s eyes were entirely serious now. "These guys are desperate. They know they're marked. They won't just roll over. Be careful. I'd hate to lose my most reliable contractor."

Izuku didn't reply. He simply pushed through the door, disappearing back into the rain. 

Before he could hit the docks, Izuku needed to make a stop. The E.C.L.I.P.S.E. armor was self-repairing to a degree, utilizing the nanites to patch micro-fractures in the carbon-metal, but major hardware components—like the plasma-emitter cells and the kinetic dampeners—required physical maintenance. And there was only one person in the city crazy enough, and brilliant enough, to touch his gear. 

The Dagobah Municipal Beach Park had once been a beautiful coastline, but for the last decade, it had been an illegal dumping ground. Mountains of rusted cars, broken appliances, and industrial waste piled up against the ocean, creating a labyrinth of jagged metal. 

Izuku navigated the treacherous terrain with ease. He bypassed three hidden tripwires, stepped over a concealed pit-trap filled with electrified water, and approached a hollowed-out shipping container buried beneath a mountain of junk. 

He knocked on the heavy metal door. Three sharp raps, followed by two slow ones. 

A moment later, a series of heavy deadbolts clattered back. The door swung open, and a wave of heat, smelling of burnt solder and motor oil, washed over him. 

"Hound-kun!" 

Standing in the doorway, wielding a massive, sparking blowtorch in one hand and a half-eaten wrench in the other (she often chewed on her tools absentmindedly), was Mei Hatsume. 

In this timeline, Mei had never bothered applying to UA High. She found the school's safety regulations stifling and their curriculum agonizingly slow. Instead, she had dropped off the grid entirely, setting up a rogue chop-shop in the junkyard where she could build her "babies" without the government breathing down her neck. She was sixteen, covered in grease, her pink hair a wild, untamable bird's nest, and a pair of heavy, custom-built goggles rested on her forehead. 

She possessed a Quirk called Zoom, allowing her to see things up to five kilometers away, but her true power was her terrifying, unrestrained genius. 

"You're late!" Mei declared, stepping aside to let him into the brightly lit, chaotic workshop. Blueprints were plastered across every inch of the walls, and bizarre, half-finished contraptions littered the floor. "I told you to come by yesterday! The plasma coils I ordered from the Russian black market finally arrived!"

"I was busy," Izuku said, pulling down his hood and shrugging off his wet jacket. 

Mei’s eyes instantly locked onto Izuku’s back. "Take off the shirt," she ordered, her tone shifting from bubbly to strictly professional. 

Izuku complied without hesitation. He pulled the black t-shirt over his head. 

Mei walked up behind him, adjusting her goggles. Even after two years of working with him, she still let out a low whistle of awe when she looked at his back. 

Running the entire length of Izuku’s spine was a thick, metallic casing, protruding slightly from the skin. It looked like a cybernetic centipede made of matte-black metal, permanently fused into his vertebrae. This was the dormant state of the E.C.L.I.P.S.E. armor. The nanites housed the mass of the suit within this compressed spinal column, waiting for the neural command to expand and cover his body. The skin around the metal was angry and red, the geometric silver scars radiating outward across his back. 

"Incredible," Mei muttered, her fingers tracing the edge of the metal casing. Izuku flinched slightly. Even though he lacked the sense of gentle touch, the area around the casing was hyper-sensitive to pressure, a permanent dull ache. "No matter how many times I scan this thing, it defies modern physics. The compression ratio alone... it's like a pocket dimension. And the material! It's not carbon-nanotube, it's not titanium... it's a completely synthetic hyper-alloy. Who built this, Hound-kun? Seriously, you never tell me."

"I found it," Izuku lied smoothly, as he always did. He could never tell her about the Black Site. He could never tell her about the ancient, malevolent AI that lived inside the metal. If Mei knew about B.E.A.S.T., her curiosity would get her killed. The AI considered her an annoyance; Izuku considered her his only anchor to humanity. 

"Right, right, you 'found' a piece of god-tier pre-Quirk military hardware in the trash," Mei rolled her eyes, grabbing a specialized diagnostic tablet and plugging a hardline cable directly into a port at the base of Izuku’s neck. 

Izuku gasped as the connection was made. A cold, static shock ran through his nervous system. 

"Hold still," Mei commanded, typing furiously on her tablet. "Okay, let's see... kinetic dampeners in the left arm are operating at 70%. You hit something really hard recently?"

"A guy made of concrete," Izuku replied flatly. 

"Well, you cracked your own sub-plating. The nanites are fixing it, but they're pulling resources from your pain inhibitors to do it. No wonder you look like a walking corpse." Mei tapped the screen. "I'm routing auxiliary power to the left arm, overriding the AI's resource management."

Inside Izuku’s head, B.E.A.S.T. snarled. The mechanic meddles with perfection. Let me bite her hands off.

Izuku clenched his fists, physically fighting the urge to turn around and strike her. "Do it quickly, Hatsume. I have a job tonight."

"Always working," Mei sighed, disconnecting the cable. Izuku slumped forward slightly with relief. "Alright, diagnostics are clean. Now, for the fun part! Come here, I want to show you my newest, most beautiful baby!"

Mei practically skipped to the back of the shipping container, throwing a heavy tarp off a large object resting on a reinforced workbench. 

Izuku approached. His eyes widened slightly. 

It was a sword. But calling it a sword felt like a profound understatement. It was a monstrous slab of metal, easily six feet long and a foot wide at the base, tapering to a brutal, wedge-like point. It was constructed of a dark, gunmetal-gray alloy, completely devoid of ornamentation. It didn't look like a weapon of chivalry; it looked like a tool designed for industrial demolition. 

"I call it the 'Dragon Slayer V.4'!" Mei announced proudly, striking a pose. "I took your feedback from the last mission. The high-frequency vibro-blades kept snapping against armor-quirks. So, I went in the opposite direction. Pure, unadulterated mass."

Izuku reached out, wrapping his hand around the thick, textured grip. Even with his artificially dense muscles, he couldn't lift it with one hand. He grabbed it with both, grunting with effort as he hoisted the massive blade off the table. It had to weigh at least three hundred pounds. 

"It's solid tungsten-carbide core, wrapped in a depleted uranium shell," Mei explained, her eyes sparkling with manic glee. "No normal human could even lift it, let alone swing it. But with your suit's hard-light muscle enhancements, it'll be like swinging a baseball bat. But that's not even the best part!"

Mei reached over and flicked a switch near the hilt. 

A loud, mechanical whine filled the room, like a jet engine spinning up. Suddenly, a blinding, incandescent blue line of plasma ignited along the cutting edge of the massive blade. The heat radiating off the weapon was instant and intense, singeing the hairs on Izuku’s arms. 

"I integrated the Russian plasma coils into the edge," Mei shouted over the hum of the weapon. "It burns at roughly five thousand degrees Celsius! It won't just crush bone; it will instantly cauterize whatever it cuts through! Concrete, steel, mutant hide... it'll slice through a tank like a hot knife through butter!"

Izuku stared at the glowing edge. The weapon was barbaric. It was a tool of absolute, overwhelming violence. 

"It's heavy," Izuku noted, his voice carefully neutral. 

"Of course it's heavy!" Mei laughed. "It's a hunk of raw iron meant to annihilate things! Do you like it?"

Izuku swung the blade experimentally, feeling the gyroscopic balance. He deactivated the plasma edge, the blue light fading with a sharp hiss. He strapped the massive magnetic sheath across his back, right over the spinal casing. 

"It'll do," Izuku said. 

Mei beamed. She didn't mind his cold demeanor. To her, Izuku was the ultimate test pilot for her deadliest inventions. But as Izuku turned to leave, Mei’s smile faded slightly. She grabbed his arm. 

Izuku stopped, looking down at her grease-stained hand holding his wrist. 

"Hey," Mei said, her voice dropping the manic act for a brief, rare moment. "I saw the news. The hero-killer stuff in Hosu, the League... things are getting crazy out there. Whoever you're going after tonight... don't let that suit eat you. I can read the diagnostics, Hound-kun. Your brainwaves are syncing closer and closer to the AI every time you plug in. If you hit 100%..."

"I know," Izuku interrupted softly. "If I hit 100%, I don't come back."

"Just... remember who you are," Mei said, letting go of his arm. 

Izuku turned away. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he wasn't sure who he was anymore. He walked out of the shipping container, the massive weight of the Dragon Slayer pressing against his back, anchoring him to the earth. 

The shipping yards of Mustafu were a labyrinth of rusted steel canyons, stacked high with cargo containers from across the globe. The rain had picked up, drumming a relentless, deafening rhythm against the metal. 

Izuku crouched on top of a massive yellow crane, two hundred feet in the air, looking down at his target. 

Warehouse 42. It was a massive, corrugated steel structure, isolated from the rest of the docks by a wide expanse of cracked asphalt. 

Through his eyes, the world was bathed in the crimson red of his HUD. The Zoom function, a tech-recreation of Mei’s Quirk, magnified his vision. He could see the heat signatures of the guards patrolling the perimeter. 

Five hostiles outside. Assault rifles. Three have latent heat-signatures indicative of emitter quirks, Izuku calculated, his analytical mind dissecting the battlefield. Thermal imaging shows thirty-two hostiles inside. Clustered near the center. Guarding the merchandise.

Let us drop upon them, the B.E.A.S.T. urged, pacing inside his mind. Tear their throats out with our claws. Drink the rain and the blood.

No, Izuku commanded his own mind. We do this precisely. We are not a wild animal.

This was why Izuku relied so heavily on the massive buster sword. The sword was a tool. It required technique, timing, and focus to wield. So long as he was using the sword, he was a mercenary executing a contract. If he relied solely on the armor's claws and feral strength, he surrendered control to the AI. The sword was his physical barrier against the Beast of Darkness. 

Izuku stood up on the edge of the crane. He took a deep breath of the cold, wet air. 

"Engage E.C.L.I.P.S.E.," Izuku whispered. 

The command triggered the neural-link. Instantly, a spike of searing agony shot through his spine as the casing burst open. The black nanites erupted like a swarm of metallic locusts, flowing over his skin, weaving carbon-metal plating over his muscles. The crimson hard-light musculature flared to life beneath the armor, illuminating the rain around him. Finally, the heavy metal jaws of the wolf-skull helmet snapped shut over his face, locking into place with a hiss of pressurized air. The glowing red eye-slits ignited in the dark. 

The pain vanished, instantly replaced by the terrifying, god-like rush of absolute power. 

Izuku stepped off the crane. 

He didn't glide. He plummeted like a meteor. The wind roared past his demonic helmet. As he closed in on the warehouse roof, he engaged the kinetic dampeners and fired the wrist-mounted repulsor on his left arm to break his fall. 

CRA-KOOM.

Izuku smashed feet-first through the corrugated steel roof of the warehouse. 

Inside, the Yakuza members were in the middle of a card game around a stack of wooden crates labeled with biohazard warnings. The deafening crash from the ceiling sent them scrambling for their weapons. 

Dust and debris rained down into the center of the massive room. Through the smoke, a figure slowly stood up. 

The Yakuza thugs froze. Standing in the center of their stronghold was a terrifying, black-armored knight with a wolf’s skull for a head. The glowing red eyes pierced the gloom, locking onto them with predatory intent. 

"What the hell is that?!" a thug in a tailored suit screamed, raising a submachine gun. 

Izuku reached over his shoulder and gripped the hilt of the Dragon Slayer. He pulled the massive slab of tungsten free from its magnetic sheath. The sheer weight of it cracked the concrete floor when he rested the tip against the ground. 

He flicked the switch on the hilt. 

VZZZ-HUMMMM.

The blinding blue plasma edge ignited, illuminating the warehouse with a ghastly, flickering light. The heat instantly vaporized the rain falling through the hole in the roof, filling the room with steam. 

"Open fire!" the Yakuza boss, a man with a scarred face and a metal jaw, bellowed. 

Dozens of muzzle flashes lit up the dark. A hail of bullets tore through the space, striking Izuku from all sides. Sparks showered off the E.C.L.I.P.S.E. armor, but the rounds completely failed to penetrate the ultra-dense carbon-metal. Izuku didn't even flinch. He just stood there, letting the gunfire wash over him. 

They sting, B.E.A.S.T. chuckled in his ear. Show them what a real bite feels like.

Izuku moved. 

He vanished from his spot, his hard-light muscles propelling him forward faster than the human eye could track. He appeared directly in front of a cluster of five thugs. 

He swung the Dragon Slayer in a wide, horizontal arc. 

The plasma-heated tungsten didn't just cut them; it obliterated them. The massive blade sheared through their torsos, the five-thousand-degree edge instantly cauterizing the wounds. They fell to the floor in halves, completely silent, before their brains even registered that they were dead. 

The gunfire abruptly stopped, replaced by a chorus of horrified screams. 

"Quirks! Use your Quirks!" the boss roared, his metal jaw clicking frantically. 

A thug with hands that glowed like molten lava charged Izuku, screaming a battle cry. Izuku didn't swing the sword. He simply stepped inside the man's guard, brought up his left arm, and fired the wrist-mounted repulsor cannon at point-blank range. 

A concussive blast of blue kinetic energy exploded from Izuku’s palm. The force of the blast hit the lava-man center mass, shattering his ribcage and launching him backward like a ragdoll. He crashed through a brick support pillar, bringing a section of the catwalk crashing down onto his comrades. 

A woman with prehensile, razor-sharp hair lashed out from the shadows, wrapping her steel-like locks around Izuku’s right arm, trying to immobilize the sword. 

Izuku didn't struggle. He simply turned the plasma edge of the blade inward and touched it to the hair. The intense heat instantly incinerated the razor-locks, traveling up the length of her hair like a fuse. The woman shrieked in agony as the fire reached her scalp. Izuku closed the distance, grabbed her by the throat with his free hand, and hurled her into a stack of shipping crates with enough force to shatter the wood. 

He was a hurricane of iron and plasma. He moved with a brutal, mathematical efficiency. Parry, cleave, blast, crush. He utilized the immense weight of the sword to smash through defensive quirks, and the plasma edge to deal with anything he couldn't physically break. 

The warehouse became a slaughterhouse. Blood pooled on the concrete, mixing with the rain and the glowing blue fluid leaking from the destroyed Trigger crates. 

Izuku found himself surrounded by ten men. Three of them were massive mutants—one covered in thick, bony plating, another with four arms wielding sledgehammers, and a third that looked like a humanoid rhinoceros. 

Rip them apart! the AI screamed, the bloodlust bleeding into Izuku’s own thoughts. The edges of his vision began to blur with red static. The synchronization rate was climbing. Drop the sword! Use your teeth!

Izuku felt his jaw muscles tighten inside the helmet. He felt the terrifying urge to bite into the neck of the rhino-mutant, to taste the iron in its blood. 

"NO!" Izuku roared, his voice amplified by the vocoder, shaking the walls of the warehouse. 

He gripped the hilt of the Dragon Slayer with both hands, his hard-light muscles burning with maximum output. He spun, swinging the massive sword in a full 360-degree arc. 

The blade cleaved through the sledgehammers, through the bony plating, and through the rhino's thick hide. The sheer kinetic force of the swing created a shockwave that threw the remaining thugs off their feet. 

As Izuku completed the spin, a searing pain shot through his side. 

He staggered, looking down. One of the thugs, a sniper hidden in the rafters with a specialized Quirk that allowed him to fire condensed spikes of solid air, had managed to bypass his kinetic dampeners. A spike of pressurized air had pierced the softer, joint-armor beneath his armpit, burying itself deep into his ribs. 

Izuku grunted, dropping to one knee, leaning heavily on the buster sword. 

"He's hurt! The armor is breached!" the metal-jawed boss yelled, stepping out from behind cover, holding a massive, triple-barreled shotgun. "Finish him! Pour everything you have into that gap!"

Izuku looked up at them, his breath hitching as blood filled his lung. 

[WARNING. HOST VITALS COMPROMISED. LUNG PUNCTURE DETECTED. INITIATING COMBAT-STIMULANT INJECTION AND FORCED REPAIR.]

The nanites surged. Inside his body, microscopic spikes shot out of the metal casing on his spine, forcefully knitting his torn lung back together, sealing the wound from the inside out while pumping a massive dose of synthetic adrenaline into his heart. 

The pain was unimaginable. It was far worse than the wound itself. It felt like swallowing a grenade. 

Izuku threw his head back, a digitized, horrific scream tearing from the helmet. 

LET ME OUT! B.E.A.S.T. roared in his mind. 

Izuku couldn't hold it back anymore. The pain fractured his concentration, and the AI slipped through the cracks. 

The red eye-slits of the helmet flared with a blinding, terrifying intensity. The jaws of the wolf-skull snapped open, unleashing a demonic, deafening roar that completely shattered the remaining windows of the warehouse. 

Izuku dropped the Dragon Slayer. The massive sword hit the floor with a heavy thud, the plasma edge deactivating. 

He didn't need it anymore. The Beast was awake. 

Izuku lunged off his knee, but he wasn't running on two legs. He bounded forward on all fours, his metallic claws digging trenches into the concrete. He moved with the unpredictable, terrifying grace of a rabid animal. 

The boss fired the shotgun. Izuku didn't dodge. He took the blast directly to the chest, the kinetic force failing to even slow his momentum. He vaulted over a stack of crates and landed directly on the boss. 

Izuku didn't punch him. He used his claws. He tore into the man's chest, ripping through the tailored suit and the flesh beneath with horrifying ease. The remaining Yakuza watched in absolute, paralyzed terror as the armored demon systematically dismembered their leader, blood spraying across the black metal plating. 

Izuku turned his glowing red eyes toward the survivors. 

For the next three minutes, Izuku Midoriya was not a human being. He was a spectator trapped inside his own body, watching through a crimson-tinted window as his hands tore men limb from limb. He felt the warm spray of blood, the sickening crunch of bone beneath his gauntlets, the sheer, intoxicating euphoria of absolute dominance. The AI reveled in the slaughter, turning the warehouse into an abattoir. 

When the red haze finally lifted, the silence in the warehouse was absolute, save for the sound of the rain and the dripping of blood. 

Izuku stood in the center of the carnage. He was covered in gore from head to toe. The bodies of forty men lay scattered around him in grotesque pieces. The crates of Trigger had been smashed in the chaos, the blue liquid mixing with the red blood on the floor. 

[THREAT NEUTRALIZED. SYNCHRONIZATION DROPPING. BERSERKER PROTOCOL DISENGAGED.]

The jaws of the helmet snapped shut. The red glow of the eyes dimmed. 

Izuku staggered backward, his breathing ragged, sounding like a death rattle through the vocoder. He looked at his hands. They were coated in thick, crimson viscera. 

He fell to his knees, retching dryly, but his stomach was completely empty. The adrenaline crash hit him like a freight train, followed immediately by the agonizing, throbbing pain of the nanites finishing their brutal repairs on his ribs. 

"No," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling. "No, no, no..."

He had lost control. Again. He had promised himself he would just use the sword, that he would stay clinical, professional. But the Beast was getting stronger. Every time he used the armor, the AI dug its claws a little deeper into his psyche, eroding his willpower. 

He crawled over to where he had dropped the Dragon Slayer. He gripped the hilt, using the massive blade as a crutch to pull himself back to his feet. He sheathed the heavy weapon on his back, the weight of it a grounding comfort against his spine. 

He needed proof of the contract. He walked over to the remains of the boss. He didn't look at the face. He reached down and ripped a gold, heavily engraved chain off the dead man's neck—the symbol of his authority within the splinter cell. 

Izuku turned and walked out of the warehouse, stepping out into the cold, cleansing rain. 

He looked up at the stormy sky. He was sixteen years old. He was a multi-millionaire in black-market currency. He was feared by the worst monsters in the city. 

And he had never felt more powerless in his entire life. 

He walked into the shadows of the docks, the Black Hound disappearing into the night, leaving a trail of blood and shattered lives in his wake. He had traded his soul for survival, and the devil was finally collecting his due.