What if deku failed to save Ochaco Uraraka

 

 

The air in fake City B tasted like copper, concrete dust, and failure.

 

Izuku Midoriya sprinted through the artificial streets, his lungs burning as if he had swallowed hot coals. His legs, burning with lactic acid, pumped desperately against the cracked pavement. Explosions echoed in the distance, followed by the metallic shrieks of faux villains being dismantled. With every crunch of metal, another student was securing their future. Another student was proving they belonged here.

 

Zero points.

 

The numbers blinked in Izuku’s mind like a neon sign in a dark, empty room. Zero points. Zero points. Zero points.

 

There were only a few minutes left on the clock. He had spent the entire exam paralyzed by his own inadequacy, running from the very targets he was supposed to destroy. Even with the power of One For All dormant in his veins—a power entrusted to him by his idol, the greatest hero in the world—Izuku was still just a quirkless kid from Aldera Junior High. He was still the boy who flinched when shadows moved too fast.

 

"Six minutes and two seconds!" Present Mic’s voice boomed over the intercom, echoing off the towering synthetic skyscrapers. The cheerful, electric tone of the Pro Hero felt like a physical blow to Izuku’s chest.

 

I need just one, Izuku thought frantically, his green eyes darting down an alleyway, searching for the familiar olive-green chassis of a One-Pointer. Just one point. Please. I can't let him down. I can't let All Might down after everything he did for me. Ten months of hell. Swallowing that hair. The beach. The sunrises. All of it, wasted.

 

He rounded a corner, skidding on a pile of shattered concrete. Ahead of him, a group of examinees—including the tall boy with engines in his calves—were effortlessly dispatching a cluster of Three-Pointers. The engine boy moved with mechanical precision, his kicks shattering the robots' optical sensors in terrifyingly efficient strikes.

 

Izuku stumbled backward, out of breath, out of time, and out of hope. The disparity was suffocating. These people were warriors. They had spent their entire lives cultivating their quirks, integrating their superhuman abilities into their very identities. Izuku had possessed his quirk for roughly three hours.

 

He didn't even know how to turn it on.

 

It’s over, a small, treacherous voice whispered in the back of his mind. It sounded remarkably like Kacchan. You’re a Deku. You’ll always be a Deku. A useless, quirkless nobody playing dress-up.

 

Before the despair could fully anchor itself in his heart, the ground shuddered.

 

It wasn't a subtle tremor. It was a violent, catastrophic upheaval that knocked Izuku off his feet. He fell hard, scraping his palms and knees against the asphalt. The faux city seemed to groan, the artificial buildings swaying on their foundations.

 

An earthquake? Izuku wondered, his heart hammering against his ribs as he scrambled to his feet.

 

But it wasn't an earthquake.

 

At the far end of the main avenue, the buildings were being pushed apart. Not destroyed, but shoved aside like children's building blocks. A shadow fell over the street, extinguishing the afternoon sun. Izuku slowly lifted his head, his breath catching in his throat.

 

Rising from the dust and debris was a machine of incomprehensible scale. It dwarfed the skyscrapers, its massive, cyclopean red eye glowing with a malevolent, artificial heat. Its treads chewed through the pavement, tearing up city blocks with agonizing ease.

 

The Zero Pointer. The exam's designated obstacle.

 

"Less than two minutes remaining!" Present Mic announced, his voice momentarily drowned out by the deafening roar of the behemoth's engines.

 

Panic, absolute and unfiltered, erupted among the examinees. The unspoken rule of the obstacle was immediately understood by everyone present: Run. There was no honor, no points, no victory to be found in fighting a moving skyscraper.

 

"Are they insane?!" one examinee screamed, sprinting past Izuku, his face pale with terror.

 

"Get out of the way! It's gonna crush us!"

 

The crowd of teenagers turned into a stampede, a tidal wave of terrified bodies fleeing toward the safety of the starting gates. Izuku found himself caught in the current, his instincts screaming at him to run, to survive. His legs moved of their own accord, carrying him backward.

 

This is it, Izuku thought, his vision blurring with tears of frustration and terror. I failed. I'm running away again. Just like with the sludge villain. I'm running away.

 

He turned his back on the monster. He prepared to join the retreat, to accept his fate as a civilian, to hand the power of One For All back to All Might and apologize for being a weak vessel.

 

"Ow..."

 

It was a small sound. Barely a whisper beneath the grinding of tank treads and the screaming of fleeing students. But Izuku’s ears, always tuned to the sounds of distress, caught it.

 

He stopped. The fleeing crowd parted around him like a river around a stone.

 

Izuku turned his head. Through the thick, choking cloud of pulverized concrete, he saw her.

 

The nice girl. The girl with the bobbed brown hair and the permanent blush on her cheeks. The one who had saved him from falling flat on his face at the entrance gates. She was on the ground, struggling frantically. A massive slab of debris, easily weighing several hundred pounds, had pinned her right leg.

 

She pushed against the rock, her fingers desperately scraping against the unforgiving concrete. She looked up, her wide, terrified brown eyes locking onto the colossal treads of the Zero Pointer that were slowly, inevitably advancing toward her.

 

She was going to be crushed.

 

Izuku looked around. The other students were gone. Even the boy with the engines was sprinting away, prioritizing his own survival. No one was looking back. No one saw her.

 

Except him.

 

Time seemed to fracture, slowing down to a crawl. The roar of the robot faded into a dull, underwater hum. Izuku couldn't hear the sirens. He couldn't hear Present Mic. He could only hear the frantic, rhythmic pounding of his own heart.

 

There’s no time, his brain calculated. The robot is too close. The debris is too heavy. You have no points. You don't know how to use your quirk. If you go back there, you will die.

 

But Izuku Midoriya’s body had a fundamental, fatal flaw. It moved before he could think.

 

Just like that day in the alleyway with Kacchan, his legs fired like pistons. He wasn't running away anymore. He was sprinting directly toward the shadow of death.

 

What am I doing?! his mind shrieked, even as his boots pounded against the cracked asphalt. I’m gonna die! I’m actually gonna die!

 

But as he ran, the paralyzing fear began to burn away, replaced by a searing, impossible heat radiating from the core of his chest. It felt like swallowing a miniature sun. The energy, dormant for the last three hours, suddenly recognized the desperate, selfless intent of its host.

 

“Clench your buttocks,” All Might’s voice echoed in his memory, a bizarre but anchoring mantra, “and yell SMASH!”

 

The energy exploded outward, coursing through Izuku's veins like liquid fire. Red, glowing lines etched themselves across his skin, illuminating the dust around him. He felt his muscles tear and instantly knit back together, pushed far beyond their biological limits. The sheer pressure of the quirk was agonizing, but it was also intoxicating. He felt light. He felt unstoppable.

 

He reached the rubble where the girl was trapped. He didn't stop. He didn't try to lift the rock. The robot was looming directly overhead, its massive metal fist pulling back to demolish the street.

 

Izuku planted his right foot. The concrete beneath his sneaker instantly vaporized into a crater of spider-webbing cracks.

 

He leaped.

 

The force of the jump shattered the pavement for a ten-meter radius, kicking up a hurricane of dust and debris. Izuku launched into the sky like a ballistic missile. The G-force pressed the skin against his face, his eyes watering, his teeth bared in a snarl of exertion and pain.

 

He soared higher and higher, dwarfing the surrounding buildings, until he was suddenly eye-level with the cyclopean red sensor of the Zero Pointer.

 

The machine seemed to freeze, its crude artificial intelligence unable to process the sudden appearance of a human suspended in the air before it.

 

Izuku pulled his right arm back. The energy of One For All pooled into his fist, glowing with a blinding, iridescent light. It felt as though his arm was going to explode from the pressure, his bones groaning under the unimaginable strain.

 

This is it! Izuku roared in his mind. Everything I have! Everything I am!

 

"SMASH!"

 

He threw the punch.

 

The impact was cataclysmic.

 

The moment Izuku’s fist connected with the thick, reinforced steel plating of the robot’s face, a shockwave of compressed air detonated outward. The concussive blast shattered the glass of every building within a three-block radius. The clouds above fake City B were literally parted, a massive ring of clear blue sky opening up from the sheer atmospheric displacement.

 

The sensation in Izuku’s arm was horrific.

 

It didn't just break; it pulverized. The bones in his right arm, wrist, and fingers shattered into dozens of jagged fragments. The muscles tore, turning his limb into a limp, bruised, useless mass of agonizing flesh. The backlash of the power rippled down into his legs from the jump, shattering both of his femurs and snapping his ankles.

 

But it worked.

 

The front of the Zero Pointer’s head caved in entirely, the thick armor crumpling like a discarded soda can. Sparks showered into the air as internal circuitry violently short-circuited. The massive machine’s momentum was entirely halted, violently reversed by the kinetic energy of a single, quirk-enhanced teenager.

 

The robot began to tilt backward, groaning under its own failing weight.

 

Suspended in the air, his body screaming in agony, Izuku felt a fleeting, euphoric surge of triumph. I did it, he thought, the wind whipping through his green curls. I stopped it. I saved her.

 

But physics is a cruel, unforgiving master.

 

The Zero Pointer was not a solid object. It was millions of interconnected parts, plates, pistons, and gears. And Izuku Midoriya had just applied the equivalent force of a localized meteor strike to its upper chassis, while gravity still pulled on its lower half.

 

The robot tilted backward, but the structural integrity of its neck and shoulders had been utterly annihilated by the shockwave of the Smash. The metal groaned, shrieked, and then, with a sound like a screaming titan, it snapped.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened in horror.

 

Time, which had been moving at a hyper-accelerated pace, suddenly slammed on the brakes.

 

The robot wasn't just falling backward. It was disintegrating.

 

The concussive force of Izuku's punch had shattered the welding on the robot's lower jaw and chest plates. As the head violently whipped back, a massive, jagged slab of reinforced steel—the entire left quadrant of the robot's chest armor, weighing upwards of four tons—sheared off from the main body.

 

It didn't fall backward with the rest of the machine. The kinetic energy propelled it slightly forward, into the air, before gravity viciously took hold.

 

Izuku, paralyzed in mid-air with four broken limbs, watched the steel plate arc through the sky.

 

He traced its trajectory. Down. Down. Down.

 

Directly toward the spot where the brown-haired girl was trapped under the rubble.

 

"No," Izuku whispered, the sound ripped away by the howling wind. "No, no, no, no."

 

The girl was looking up. Izuku could see her perfectly. He could see the dust on her cheeks. He could see the terror etched into every line of her face. She was staring at the falling sky of jagged metal. She raised her hands, a futile, instinctive gesture to protect herself, to use her quirk, to do anything.

 

But four tons of steel moving at terminal velocity does not care about a gravity quirk activated a second too late.

 

The impact was deafening.

 

It wasn't a crash. It was a sickening, catastrophic crunch. The steel plate slammed into the concrete where the girl was lying, embedding itself three feet deep into the artificial street. A massive geyser of pulverized asphalt, dust, and smoke erupted upward, instantly swallowing the area in an impenetrable gray cloud.

 

The ground shook again, harder than before, sending violent tremors through the remaining buildings.

 

Up in the air, the euphoria in Izuku's heart turned to absolute, freezing ash.

 

"NO!" he screamed, his voice tearing his vocal cords, raw and feral and desperate. "NO! HEY! HEY!"

 

He thrashed in the air, forgetting the shattered bones in his arms and legs. Agony lanced through his body, blinding white hot pain that made his vision flicker, but he didn't care. He couldn't care.

 

She's fine, his panicked brain tried to rationalize, moving a million miles a minute. She has a quirk! She made it float! She's a hero, she's strong, she made it float away!

 

The massive, headless body of the Zero Pointer finally slammed into the ground behind the fake city, shaking the earth a third time.

 

Izuku reached the apex of his jump. For a split second, he hung weightless in the sky, staring down at the jagged tombstone of steel jutting from the street. There was no movement. There was no glow of a quirk. There was only the settling dust and a silence that felt heavier than the robot itself.

 

Then, gravity remembered Izuku Midoriya.

 

He began to fall.

 

The wind rushed past his ears, turning from a triumphant roar into a death knell. He plummeted toward the earth, the ground rushing up to meet him at a terrifying speed.

 

I'm falling, Izuku realized, his rational mind fighting through the panic. My legs are broken. My arm is broken. I can't break my fall. I'm going to die.

 

He looked down at the dust cloud, at the steel plate. She was supposed to be there. I saved her. I was supposed to land, and we were supposed to be okay.

 

He waited for a miracle. He waited for a soft, gentle slap across his face. He waited for the sudden, nauseating feeling of weightlessness. He waited for the cheerful, blushing girl to catch him and say, 'Release.'

 

He waited.

 

The ground was fifty feet away.

 

Thirty feet.

 

Twenty feet.

 

Nothing happened.

 

No one caught him.

 

Izuku closed his eyes, a single tear escaping his lashes, ripped away by the wind. He failed. He failed her, and now he was going to fail All Might.

 

"YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

 

A localized, concentrated wave of solid sound erupted from the observation tower. The sonic boom hit Izuku ten feet above the pavement, a wall of compressed audio frequencies that felt like slamming into a massive, invisible mattress.

 

It arrested his terminal velocity just enough to stop him from turning into paste on the asphalt, but it wasn't a soft landing.

 

Izuku crashed into the pavement, tumbling like a ragdoll. His broken arm smacked against the concrete, the shattered bones grinding together. His head whipped back, slamming into the ground. A blinding flash of light exploded behind his eyes, followed instantly by absolute, suffocating darkness.

 

His last conscious thought, as the pain dragged him down into the black, was a desperate prayer.

 

Please... please let her be alive.

 

 

 

The first thing Izuku registered was the smell.

 

Sterile. Antiseptic. The sharp, chemical tang of a hospital room, meant to erase the scent of blood and sickness, but only ever succeeding in amplifying it.

 

The second thing was the steady, rhythmic beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor. It was slow. Too slow. It matched the heavy, sluggish thumping in his own chest.

 

Izuku’s eyelids felt like they were lined with lead. He struggled to open them, fighting through a haze of heavy medication and lingering exhaustion. When his eyes finally parted, the harsh fluorescent lights above made him wince, forcing him to squint.

 

He was staring at a white ceiling.

 

He tried to move his right arm to shield his eyes. Pain, sharp and electric, shot from his fingertips to his shoulder, forcing a dry gasp from his throat. He looked down. His entire right arm, from the bicep to the tips of his fingers, was encased in a thick, heavy cast. His legs felt equally immobilized, wrapped tightly in bandages and splints beneath the thin hospital sheet.

 

I'm alive, he thought, a wave of profound confusion washing over him. I survived the fall.

 

He slowly turned his head to the left, the muscles in his neck protesting the movement.

 

Sitting in a hard plastic chair beside the bed was a figure draped in shadows. It was a man, impossibly skeletal, with sharp, angular features and a mess of blonde hair that hung limply over hollow, sunken eyes. He wore an ill-fitting yellow suit that hung off his emaciated frame like a scarecrow's rags.

 

Toshinori Yagi. All Might.

 

The Number One Hero sat slumped forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped tightly together. He was staring at the floor. He looked older. He looked incredibly, terribly tired. There was no trademark smile. There was no booming aura of safety. There was only a quiet, crushing sorrow radiating from the man.

 

"All... Might?" Izuku rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper. It hurt to speak.

 

Toshinori’s head snapped up. His sunken blue eyes widened slightly, and he immediately stood, moving to the edge of the bed.

 

"Young Midoriya," Toshinori said, his voice quiet, lacking its usual theatrical resonance. "You're awake. Don't try to move. You've sustained catastrophic damage to your limbs. Recovery Girl has healed you as much as she safely can for one day, but your stamina was completely depleted. If she did any more, the fatigue would have killed you."

 

Izuku blinked, trying to process the words. Catastrophic damage. He remembered the jump. He remembered the feeling of his bones turning to dust. He remembered the blinding light of the Smash.

 

"The exam..." Izuku mumbled, his memory fragmented, piecing itself together like a shattered mirror. "I... I hit the robot. I used it. I used One For All."

 

Toshinori offered a sad, thin smile. It didn't reach his eyes. "You did, my boy. You channeled the power. It was... it was a sight to behold. You destroyed the Zero Pointer with a single blow."

 

Izuku felt a faint, fluttering sense of pride in his chest. He did it. He proved he could be a vessel.

 

But then, the rest of the mirror snapped into place.

 

The shattering metal.

 

The falling steel plate.

 

The deafening crunch.

 

The empty sky as he fell.

 

Izuku’s heart rate spiked. The monitor beside his bed began to beep faster, the rhythmic sound turning into a frantic, high-pitched staccato. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

 

"The girl," Izuku gasped, his chest suddenly feeling tight, as if invisible hands were wrapping around his throat. "All Might. The nice girl. The one with the brown hair. She... she was under the rubble."

 

Toshinori froze. The thin smile vanished from his face, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated anguish. He looked away, his skeletal hands gripping the metal railing of the hospital bed so tightly his knuckles turned white.

 

"All Might?" Izuku’s voice hitched, pitching upward in panic. "Where is she? Is she in the next room? Did Recovery Girl heal her? I... I need to thank her. I need to apologize for not pulling her out sooner. Is she okay?"

 

Toshinori closed his eyes. A long, shuddering breath escaped his lips. When he opened his eyes again, they were wet.

 

"Young Midoriya..." Toshinori started, his voice cracking. The sound sent a spike of pure ice through Izuku’s veins. All Might didn't cry. The Symbol of Peace didn't look like a man leading a lamb to the slaughter.

 

"Tell me she's okay," Izuku demanded, a desperate, irrational anger bleeding into his tone. He tried to sit up, but his broken body screamed in protest, forcing him back against the pillows. "Please. Tell me she's okay."

 

Toshinori slowly sank back into the plastic chair, as if his legs could no longer support his weight.

 

"The entrance exam is monitored by dozens of cameras," Toshinori began, his voice hollow, robotic, as if he was reciting a police report to distance himself from the horror. "We see everything. The teachers, the principal... we were in the observation room. We saw the Zero Pointer deploy. We saw you run back."

 

"I hit it," Izuku interrupted, his breathing turning shallow and rapid. "I stopped it."

 

"You did," Toshinori agreed softly. "But... a quirk as powerful as One For All... when wielded without regulation... the kinetic transfer is violently unpredictable. You struck the upper chassis. The force... the shockwave..." Toshinori stopped, swallowing hard.

 

"What?" Izuku whispered. The room was spinning. The edges of his vision were going dark.

 

"The shockwave of your attack shattered the structural integrity of the machine," Toshinori forced the words out, looking directly into Izuku’s terrified green eyes. "A section of the chest plating was dislodged. It was propelled by the force of your punch. It fell."

 

"No," Izuku said. Just one word. A denial of reality.

 

"The debris... the debris she was trapped under was heavy, but the teachers were preparing to intervene," Toshinori continued, tears now silently tracking down his gaunt cheeks. "Cementoss was already moving to secure the area. But the falling plate... it fell too fast. It was too heavy."

 

"Stop," Izuku begged, his hands trembling violently.

 

"She was killed instantly on impact, Young Midoriya."

 

Silence.

 

The beeping of the heart monitor seemed to stop. The hum of the air conditioner faded away. The world outside the hospital window ceased to exist.

 

There was only the stark, sterile room, and the words hanging in the air like a guillotine blade that had finally dropped.

 

Killed instantly.

 

Izuku stared at All Might. He looked for a tell. He looked for a sign that this was a cruel test, a psychological evaluation for U.A. He looked for the punchline.

 

Toshinori just sat there, weeping silently for a girl he didn't know, and for the boy whose soul he was watching fracture in real-time.

 

"I..." Izuku stammered, his mind short-circuiting. "I saved her. I punched the robot. It stopped."

 

"Izuku," Toshinori said gently, reaching out a bony hand to touch the boy's uninjured shoulder.

 

Izuku violently flinched away from the touch as if burned.

 

"I saved her!" Izuku screamed, the denial morphing into hysteria. "I stopped the robot! She was supposed to float! I saw her! I saw her looking up!"

 

"There was nothing she could do," Toshinori said, his voice breaking. "There was nothing you could do once the attack was launched. It was a tragic, catastrophic accident."

 

"An accident?" Izuku’s eyes widened, the pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

 

The realization hit him. It didn't wash over him like a wave; it crashed down on him like the very steel plate he had dislodged.

 

He didn't just fail to save her.

 

If he had done nothing... if he had just kept running like everyone else... the teachers would have stepped in. Cementoss would have stopped the treads. Present Mic would have shattered the sensors.

 

By turning back... by using a power he couldn't control... by trying to play hero...

 

"I killed her," Izuku whispered, the sound devoid of all humanity. It sounded like a ghost.

 

"No!" Toshinori said sharply, leaning forward. "No, Young Midoriya, do not put that on yourself. The exam environment is chaotic. The fault lies with U.A. for utilizing such dangerous obstacles, for not intervening sooner. You acted on the purest instinct of a hero. You moved to save a life."

 

"I killed her!" Izuku shrieked, his voice tearing through the quiet hospital ward.

 

He grabbed his hair with his uninjured left hand, pulling at the green curls so hard he ripped strands from his scalp. The heart monitor flat-lined into a continuous, deafening screech as his heart rate exceeded its readable limits.

 

Hyperventilation.

 

Izuku couldn't breathe. His lungs were expanding, but no oxygen was reaching his brain. He saw her face. He saw her wide, terrified brown eyes looking up at the sky. He heard the crunch.

 

I did that. My punch did that. I killed her. I murdered her.

 

"Izuku, breathe!" Toshinori commanded, standing up, his hands hovering over the boy, unsure of how to restrain him without breaking his already shattered bones.

 

"She's dead!" Izuku sobbed, violently thrashing on the bed, his right arm banging against the railing. He didn't feel the pain. He only felt the crushing weight of the rubble pressing down on his own chest, suffocating him. "I'm a murderer! I'm a fake! Take it back!"

 

Izuku clawed at his own chest, tearing at the hospital gown, dragging his fingernails across his skin, leaving red, bloody welts. He was trying to dig the quirk out of his body. He was trying to rip One For All out of his very soul.

 

"Take it back! Take it back! I don't want it! I killed her! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

 

"Nurses!" Toshinori bellowed, turning toward the door. "Recovery Girl! Get in here!"

 

The door burst open. Recovery Girl, accompanied by two nurses, rushed in. They took one look at Izuku, who was currently convulsing in a full-blown panic attack, vomiting bile onto his sheets as he choked on his own screams, and immediately sprang into action.

 

"Hold him down, Yagi!" Recovery Girl ordered, drawing a syringe from her pocket. "His heart is going to give out! He's going into shock!"

 

Toshinori, his face a mask of tragedy, leaned over the bed. He used his long, skeletal arms to gently but firmly pin Izuku’s thrashing shoulders to the mattress.

 

"I'm sorry," Izuku choked out, looking up at Toshinori through tear-blinded, bloodshot eyes. "I'm sorry, All Might. I ruined it. I ruined everything. She's dead."

 

Toshinori felt a piece of his own heart die. He looked down at his successor, the boy he had chosen for his boundless empathy and indomitable spirit, and saw only a broken, shattered child drowning in a sea of guilt.

 

"I know, my boy," Toshinori whispered, tears dripping from his chin onto Izuku's hospital gown. "I know. I'm here."

 

Recovery Girl plunged the syringe into Izuku’s IV line. The heavy sedative hit his bloodstream almost instantly.

 

Izuku’s thrashing began to slow. The feral screams turned into broken, hitching sobs. The edges of his vision grew dark once more, the heavy chemical blanket pulling him back down into the abyss.

 

But as his eyes fluttered shut, the image didn't fade.

 

The falling steel.

 

The dust.

 

The silence.

 

I'm a hero, Izuku thought bitterly, as the darkness finally consumed him. And my very first act was murder.

 

 

 

Outside the hospital room, standing in the sterile white hallway, a small, rodent-like creature in a suit stood quietly. Principal Nezu held a tablet in his paws. On the screen was the paused, posthumous footage of a young girl with brown hair, standing in front of Present Mic's podium.

 

"Um, excuse me!" the frozen image of Ochaco Uraraka seemed to say. "The boy with the messy green hair... he looked really scared. But he saved me from falling! Can I give him some of my points?"

 

Nezu lowered the tablet, listening to the muffled, agonizing sobs dying out in the room ahead.

 

He closed his eyes, a heavy sigh escaping his snout.

 

The Hero Commission would want a cover-up. The media would want a scandal. The parents would want a scapegoat.

 

But Nezu only looked at the door to Izuku Midoriya's room.

 

A hero is not forged in the light, Nezu thought grimly. They are forged in the crucible of their failures.

 

U.A. High School was about to begin a new semester. But for the boy with green hair, the academic year would not be a journey of self-discovery or youthful triumph.

 

It would be a funeral march.

 

And the ghosts had already begun to gather.

 

 

The posters had to come down.

 

That was the first thing Izuku Midoriya did when he returned home from the hospital. His bedroom, once a vibrant, colorful shrine dedicated to the Number One Hero, now felt like a suffocating mausoleum. The blinding reds, blues, and yellows of All Might’s Golden Age costume mocked him from every wall. The towering figures with their molded plastic smiles seemed to glare down at him, their painted blue eyes judging the boy who lay trembling in his bed.

 

You failed, the posters seemed to whisper. You had his power, and you used it to kill.

 

So, with his left arm still wrapped in a sling and his legs aching with every agonizing step, Izuku had meticulously stripped the walls. He took down the limited-edition tapestries. He boxed up the action figures, wrapping them in old newspaper so he wouldn't have to look at their faces. He took down the Bronze Age commemorative clock.

 

When he was finished, his room was stripped to the bare drywall. It was empty, gray, and quiet.

 

It matched exactly how he felt inside.

 

A month had passed since the U.A. Entrance Exam. Thirty days of oppressive, unbroken silence. Spring was beginning to thaw the winter chill across Musutafu, bringing with it the scent of cherry blossoms and the promise of new beginnings, but in the Midoriya household, time had frozen completely.

 

Izuku hadn't stepped outside since the day he was discharged. He barely ate, pushing his mother’s lovingly prepared katsudon around his bowl until the sauce congealed. He barely spoke, his responses to his mother's terrified, hovering inquiries reduced to single, hoarse syllables.

 

He didn't sleep. Or, rather, his body refused to let him rest. Every time he closed his eyes, the reel began to play.

 

It was always the same. He was suspended in the air. The blinding light of One For All faded from his fist. The massive steel chassis of the Zero Pointer fractured in slow motion. The four-ton plate of reinforced armor detached, arcing through the air with terrifying grace. And then, he would look down. He would see her wide, terrified brown eyes. He would see her open her mouth to scream.

 

Then came the crunch.

 

Izuku would wake up gasping, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, his sheets soaked in cold sweat, bile rising in the back of his throat.

 

His mother, Inko, was a ghost herself, haunting the hallway outside his door. She didn't know the full truth. U.A. had kept the specifics of the incident classified, releasing a sterile public statement about a "tragic structural collapse during the practical exam resulting in one civilian casualty." They had protected Izuku’s name. Inko only knew that her son had been severely injured, and that someone had died near him. She tried to hold him, tried to comb her fingers through his untamable green hair and tell him it wasn't his fault, that he was just a boy.

 

But Izuku would just stare blankly at the wall, his eyes devoid of the spark that had defined him since childhood. He knew the truth.

 

He was a murderer.

 

A soft knock on his bedroom door pulled Izuku from his catatonic staring contest with the blank drywall. He didn't answer, but the door creaked open anyway.

 

"Izuku, sweetie?" Inko's voice was thin, trembling on the edge of tears as it had been for a month. "You have a visitor."

 

Izuku didn't turn his head. He pulled his knees tighter against his chest, wrapping his good arm around his legs.

 

Heavy, hesitant footsteps entered the room. The door clicked shut, sealing out Inko's muffled sobs. Izuku finally turned his head.

 

Toshinori Yagi stood in the center of the stripped bedroom. The skeletal hero looked around, his sunken blue eyes taking in the barren walls, the stacks of cardboard boxes in the corner, and finally, the hollow, broken boy sitting on the bed. Toshinori looked worse than usual. The dark circles under his eyes were bruised and heavy, and his oversized clothes seemed to swallow him whole.

 

"Young Midoriya," Toshinori said, his voice barely above a whisper. It was devoid of the theatrical bravado of All Might. It was just the voice of an old, tired man.

 

Izuku didn't greet him. He uncoiled from his fetal position and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His right arm was mostly healed thanks to Recovery Girl’s subsequent visits, but deep, jagged scars crawled up his forearm like lightning strikes, a permanent physical reminder of the power he couldn't control.

 

Izuku reached up with his right hand. His fingers trembled as he gripped a thick lock of his own green hair. With a sharp yank, he plucked a strand from his scalp.

 

He held it out toward Toshinori.

 

Toshinori stared at the single strand of hair pinched between Izuku’s scarred fingers. The air in the room grew heavy.

 

"Take it back," Izuku said. His voice was raspy, unused, and terrifyingly flat. "Please."

 

Toshinori didn't move to take it. He remained frozen, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his baggy khaki pants. "Izuku..."

 

"I don't want it," Izuku interrupted, his voice gaining a frantic, jagged edge. "I shouldn't have it. You made a mistake, All Might. You were wrong about me."

 

"I was not wrong," Toshinori said firmly, though his voice shook.

 

"You were!" Izuku shouted, the sudden volume startling even himself. He stood up, his legs shaking slightly. "You told me I could be a hero! You told me I had the heart of a hero! But a hero doesn't do what I did!"

 

Izuku took a step forward, shoving the strand of hair toward the man’s chest. "I ran away for the whole exam! I didn't save anyone! And when I finally tried, I couldn't control the power. I hit the robot, and I killed her. I killed Ochaco Uraraka."

 

He spoke her name like a prayer and a curse. He had searched the news every day, finding the small, devastating obituaries. Ochaco Uraraka. Age 15. Survived by her loving parents.

 

"If I hadn't been there, she would be alive," Izuku choked out, tears finally spilling over his dark, bruised eyelids. "If I had just stayed quirkless... if I had just stayed useless Deku... she would have gone home to her parents. She would be going to U.A. I took her life. I took her future. I am a murderer, All Might! So take this cursed quirk back before I hurt anyone else!"

 

Izuku fell to his knees, his arm still outstretched, offering the hair, offering the greatest power in the world back to its rightful owner. He bowed his head, his tears splashing onto the cheap wooden floorboards.

 

Silence descended on the room. It stretched for an eternity, punctuated only by Izuku's broken, hitching breaths.

 

Then, Izuku felt a hand on his head.

 

It wasn't a forceful grip. It was gentle. Trembling. Large, bony fingers ran through his messy green curls.

 

"I cannot take it back," Toshinori said softly.

 

Izuku looked up, his vision blurred with tears. Toshinori was kneeling in front of him, his gaunt face inches away.

 

"Not because the transfer requires intent," Toshinori continued, his blue eyes locking onto Izuku's with an intense, sorrowful gravity. "But because you are exactly where every true hero eventually finds themselves, Izuku. You are standing in the graveyard."

 

Izuku sniffled, confused and angry. "What... what are you talking about?"

 

Toshinori sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand lifetimes. He withdrew his hand and sat back on his heels.

 

"The public sees the smiling faces. They see the flashy ultimate moves, the action figures, the posters that used to hang on your walls," Toshinori gestured to the blank room. "They see the Symbol of Peace. But they do not see the cost. They do not see the foundations of that peace."

 

Toshinori looked down at his own skeletal, scarred hands.

 

"When I was eighteen," Toshinori began, his voice distant, lost in a memory from decades ago. "I had just received One For All from my master, Nana Shimura. I was arrogant. I was powerful. I felt invincible. During one of my first patrols in America, a villain with a seismic quirk took a hostage on a suspension bridge."

 

Izuku held his breath, watching the Number One Hero’s face contort in pain.

 

"I didn't assess the structural integrity of the bridge," Toshinori whispered. "I didn't calculate the collateral damage. I just saw the villain, and I saw my own power. I used a Texas Smash. I subdued the villain instantly." Toshinori’s hands clenched into fists. "But the wind pressure snapped the suspension cables. The bridge collapsed. Three cars plummeted into the river below. A family of four... and a young couple... drowned because I wanted to punch a villain."

 

Izuku stared, horrified. The flawless, infallible All Might. The man who saved hundreds of people with a laugh.

 

"Seven people died that day," Toshinori said, a single tear cutting through the dust on his cheek. "Because of my quirk. Because of my recklessness. I locked myself away, just like you are doing now. I tried to give the quirk back to my master. I told her I was a monster."

 

"What... what did she do?" Izuku whispered.

 

"She struck me," Toshinori said, a sad smile touching his lips. "She hit me harder than any villain ever has. And then she told me something I will never forget. She said, 'Toshinori, a hero's cape is not woven from glory. It is woven from the ghosts of the people we couldn't save.'"

 

Toshinori reached out and grasped Izuku’s scarred right arm, his thumb tracing the jagged white lines of tissue.

 

"You killed no one, Izuku," Toshinori said fiercely, his voice finally regaining a fraction of its former power. "It was an accident born of a chaotic system and a power you have yet to master. But her death... her ghost... it will follow you. It will haunt you. It will sit on your shoulders every time you put on a costume."

 

Toshinori leaned in, pressing his forehead against Izuku’s.

 

"The choice you have to make now is not whether to be a hero or not. The choice is what you do with her ghost. Do you let the weight of her death crush you into dust? Or do you carry her with you? Do you use that agonizing, soul-crushing guilt to ensure that you never make a mistake like that again? Do you become a hero so vigilant, so relentlessly disciplined, that no one ever dies in your presence again?"

 

Izuku sobbed, the sound ripping from his chest. "It hurts. It hurts so much."

 

"I know," Toshinori whispered, closing his eyes. "And it will never stop hurting. That is the true burden of One For All. It is not the power to smash buildings. It is the strength to bear the sins of your failures, and keep fighting anyway."

 

Izuku looked down at the strand of green hair still clutched in his left hand. He thought of the brown-haired girl. He thought of her parents, who were probably weeping in a house not far from here. He thought of the empty, agonizing void her absence left in the world.

 

If he gave up now, her death meant nothing. It was just a tragedy.

 

But if he carried it...

 

Izuku slowly opened his hand. He let the strand of hair fall to the floor.

 

He didn't feel inspired. He didn't feel the burning, optimistic fire of heroism that had driven him to clean Takoba Municipal Beach. The innocent, starry-eyed fanboy who had worshipped All Might was dead, crushed beneath a four-ton plate of steel in fake City B.

 

What remained was something colder. Something hardened, forged under unimaginable pressure.

 

"I will carry it," Izuku whispered into the quiet room. "I will carry her."

 

Toshinori squeezed his shoulder, his own tears falling freely. "Then you are already a greater hero than I was at your age."

 

 

 

Three days later, the letter arrived.

 

Inko had slid it under his door, too terrified of his reaction to hand it to him directly. Izuku sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the wax-sealed envelope resting on the floorboards. It bore the prestigious emblem of U.A. High School.

 

He knew what it was. It was a formal rejection. It was the final, bureaucratic nail in the coffin. They were probably writing to inform him that he was permanently banned from the premises, a liability, a danger to society.

 

With numb, mechanical movements, Izuku picked up the envelope and tore the seal.

 

A small, metallic disk fell out, clattering onto his desk. Instantly, a holographic projection sprang to life, illuminating the dim room in a harsh blue light.

 

Izuku expected Present Mic. He expected All Might.

 

Instead, a small, white animal in a tailored suit appeared on the projection. Principal Nezu. His beady black eyes stared directly into the camera, lacking the usual cheerful glint they held in public appearances.

 

"Greetings, Izuku Midoriya," Nezu’s voice was crisp and strictly professional. "I am Nezu, the Principal of U.A. High School. I am communicating with you directly due to the highly classified and tragic nature of your entrance examination."

 

Izuku swallowed hard, his hands balling into fists on his lap. Here it comes.

 

"Let us address your scores," Nezu continued, pulling up a digital scoreboard beside his head. "In the practical exam, you destroyed a single obstacle—the Zero Pointer. As such, your combat score is exactly zero."

 

Izuku stared at the zero. It felt right. It felt justified.

 

"However," Nezu’s tone softened by a fraction of a degree. "The practical exam is not merely a test of destructive capability. We are not evaluating soldiers; we are evaluating heroes. And a hero's true worth is often revealed in moments of absolute terror."

 

The scoreboard shifted. A new column appeared. Rescue Points.

 

"You leaped into the path of inevitable destruction to save a fellow examinee. You acted when everyone else ran. For this, the judging panel awarded you sixty Rescue Points."

 

Izuku felt a wave of nausea crash over him. Rescue points. They gave him points for a rescue he failed to execute. It was a sick joke. It was blood money.

 

Nezu seemed to anticipate the reaction. He folded his paws in front of him. "I know what you are thinking, Midoriya. You are thinking you do not deserve these points, because the outcome was catastrophic. But the points are awarded for the intent, the self-sacrifice, and the action taken before the tragedy occurred."

 

Nezu paused, his expression turning somber.

 

"But that alone would not have been enough to secure your placement, given the immense liability your uncontrollable quirk presents. Your acceptance hung in the balance of a faculty vote."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. Acceptance?

 

"Before making our final decision," Nezu said softly, "We reviewed all surveillance footage from the morning of the exam. Including interactions before the gates opened."

 

The hologram of Nezu vanished. The blue light flickered, and a new piece of footage began to play.

 

It was taken from a security camera near the starting gates of City B. The time stamp in the corner read 8:45 AM, fifteen minutes before the exam began.

 

The audio was slightly muffled by the background chatter of hundreds of students, but Izuku could hear it clearly enough.

 

Present Mic was standing near a railing, looking over a clipboard, when a girl nervously approached him.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

It was her. Ochaco Uraraka. She was wearing her pink track jacket, nervously twisting her fingers together, a heavy blush on her round cheeks.

 

"Um, excuse me!" Ochaco’s voice echoed in Izuku’s silent bedroom, lively, sweet, and agonizingly alive.

 

"Yeah, little listener? What's the word?" Present Mic replied cheerfully.

 

"I... I have a question about the scoring," Ochaco stammered, looking down at her boots before looking back up with earnest determination. "There's this boy. He has messy green hair and freckles. I saw him looking really nervous earlier. But he saved me from tripping at the gates!"

 

Izuku clamped a hand over his mouth, suppressing a violent sob.

 

"He seems like a really good person," Ochaco continued, her face breaking into a bright, blinding smile. "If... if he's too scared to get points, or if he's struggling... can I give him some of mine? I want to share my points with him! He deserves to be here!"

 

Present Mic in the video chuckled softly, patting her head. "That's mighty heroic of you, listener. But you can't transfer points. Don't worry about him, worry about yourself! Now get to the gate!"

 

"Okay! Thank you!" Ochaco bowed deeply and jogged away, disappearing into the crowd of students. Disappearing forever.

 

The footage cut to black.

 

Principal Nezu reappeared on the screen.

 

"Miss Uraraka scored twenty-eight combat points and forty-five rescue points before her untimely death," Nezu stated quietly. "She easily passed the exam. She had earned her seat in Class 1-A."

 

Nezu looked directly into the camera, his black eyes piercing through the digital void.

 

"U.A. faculty unanimously agreed that we cannot bring her back. But we can honor her final wish. She believed in your heroism, Midoriya, before you ever threw a punch. She wanted you to have a place here."

 

The screen flashed.

 

IZUKU MIDORIYA: ACCEPTED. RANK 7.

 

"Welcome to your Hero Academia," Nezu said.

 

The hologram fizzled and died, plunging the room back into shadows.

 

Izuku sat perfectly still for five seconds.

 

Then, he violently threw himself off the bed, scrambled down the hallway, threw open the bathroom door, and violently emptied his stomach into the toilet.

 

He heaved until his throat bled, tears streaming down his face, his fingernails digging into the porcelain.

 

He was accepted. He was going to U.A.

 

But he hadn't earned it. He had stolen it. He was sitting in a seat purchased with a dead girl's blood, mandated by a final wish she made before he brutally cut her life short.

 

He rested his forehead against the cold rim of the toilet, gasping for air.

 

I will carry her, he reminded himself, the mantra tasting like ash on his tongue. I will carry her. I will carry her.

 

 

 

The second week of April brought the start of the U.A. semester.

 

Izuku stood in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at the stranger reflecting back at him.

 

He was wearing the prestigious gray blazer, the crisp white shirt, and the red tie of U.A. High School. It was the uniform he had dreamed of wearing since he was a toddler. He used to sketch himself wearing it in his notebooks. He used to imagine the swelling pride he would feel knotting the tie.

 

But the tie felt like a hangman's noose.

 

The boy in the mirror looked ten years older than the boy who had trained on the beach. Izuku’s vibrant, unruly green hair seemed slightly duller. His face had lost its baby fat, his jawline sharp and rigid with chronic tension. But it was his eyes that were the most jarring.

 

They were dead.

 

The bright, emerald glimmer of fanboy optimism was gone, replaced by a dark, flat, haunted gaze. Heavy, bruised bags hung under his eyes from a month of chronic insomnia. He looked like a veteran returning from a gruesome war, not a teenager starting high school.

 

"Izuku?" Inko called out from the entryway. "You're going to be late, sweetie."

 

Izuku walked out of the bathroom. He picked up his bright yellow backpack—a jarring splash of color against his bleak aura—and slung it over his shoulder.

 

Inko stood by the door, wringing her hands. She looked him up and down, a tragic mixture of intense pride and agonizing worry warring on her face. She reached out, adjusting his collar, her fingers lingering against his lapel.

 

"You look so handsome," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Are you... are you sure you're ready for this, Izuku?"

 

"Yes," Izuku replied. His voice was flat. Monotone.

 

"Okay," Inko smiled weakly. "Have a good first day. I love you."

 

"Love you too," Izuku muttered, stepping past her and out the door.

 

The walk to U.A. was a sensory overload that Izuku deliberately tuned out. The sun was shining. Cherry blossoms drifted through the air, catching on the morning breeze. Students in various school uniforms laughed and chatted as they walked in groups. It was a perfect, picturesque spring morning.

 

Izuku walked alone, a dark storm cloud navigating a sea of sunshine.

 

When the massive, imposing gates of U.A. High School loomed into view, Izuku’s steps slowed. He stopped at the exact spot where he had tripped on the morning of the exam. The spot where a soft hand had touched his back, rendering him weightless.

 

“It’s my quirk! Sorry I used it without asking, but it’d be bad luck if you fell, right?”

 

Her voice echoed in his head, so loud he actually flinched. He looked down at the pristine concrete, half expecting to see a bloodstain. He felt a phantom weight on his shoulders, pressing down, threatening to crack his spine.

 

Breathe, Izuku told himself, closing his eyes and digging his fingernails into his palms until they drew blood. Carry it. Don't let it break you. You don't have the right to break.

 

He opened his eyes, clamped down his emotions behind a wall of titanium, and walked through the gates.

 

Navigating the sprawling, labyrinthine corridors of U.A. was a chore, but Izuku eventually found it. A massive door, easily twenty feet tall, painted with the bold red letters: 1-A.

 

Izuku stood before it. The last time he was near these people, they were fleeing for their lives, and he was shattering a giant robot. Would they recognize him? Would they know what he did? Did the school tell them?

 

He placed his hand on the handle and slid the heavy door open.

 

Chaos immediately assaulted his ears.

 

"Don't put your feet on the desk!" a loud, authoritative voice was booming. Izuku recognized the tall boy with the engines in his legs, chopping his arms like a robot.

 

"Hah?! Who the hell are you to tell me what to do, four-eyes?!" Katsuki Bakugo roared back, leaning back in his chair with his feet firmly planted on the wood, an arrogant, explosive sneer on his face.

 

"I am Tenya Iida, from Somei Private Academy! And you are disrespecting the legacy of the upperclassmen who used these desks before us!"

 

"Somei? So you're a damn elite! I'm gonna have fun crushing you!" Bakugo cackled.

 

The rest of the class was milling about in small groups, chatting animatedly. A boy with red spiky hair was talking to a girl with pink skin. A boy with half-white, half-red hair sat silently in the back. It was exactly what a high school classroom should look like.

 

Then, Bakugo’s red eyes drifted toward the open door.

 

He saw a familiar mop of green hair.

 

"Deku?" Bakugo barked, his sneer faltering for a fraction of a second. "What the hell are you doing here? This is the hero course! They didn't let a quirkless loser like you in!"

 

The classroom went silent. Everyone turned to look at the boy standing in the doorway.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't stutter. He didn't throw his hands up in a panic and squeak out an apology.

 

He just stared at Bakugo.

 

His eyes were incredibly cold. They were the eyes of a predator that had already accepted death, devoid of the nervous prey mentality that had defined Izuku his entire life.

 

Bakugo actually stopped leaning back in his chair. The explosive blonde felt a bizarre, unnatural shiver run down his spine. This wasn't the trembling nerd he had shoved into a wall ten months ago. The aura rolling off Izuku was suffocatingly heavy. It smelled like iron and ozone.

 

Izuku broke eye contact with Bakugo and stepped into the room. He didn't say a word. He didn't introduce himself. He just scanned the layout of the desks, looking for the seating chart projected on the front board.

 

Seat 18.

 

Izuku walked down the aisle, his footsteps silent on the linoleum floor. The other students watched him, an uneasy tension settling over the room.

 

As Izuku walked toward the back row, his eyes dragged across the room. He passed Seat 1. Seat 2. Seat 3. Seat 4.

 

He stopped at Seat 5.

 

It was located in the second row, near the window.

 

The desk was empty.

 

There was no one sitting there. In fact, Izuku quickly did a headcount of the room. Nineteen. There were only nineteen students in Class 1-A. U.A. classes were strictly composed of twenty students.

 

The administration had kept her seat open. A silent, haunting tribute to a student who never got to walk through the doors.

 

Izuku stared at the empty wooden chair. The phantom weight on his shoulders suddenly doubled. He felt his throat tighten, the urge to vomit returning with a vengeance. He had to force himself to look away, shuffling quickly to the back of the room and dropping into Seat 18, right behind Bakugo.

 

He set his bag down, folded his hands on his desk, and stared straight ahead, a statue carved from grief.

 

"Um, excuse me."

 

Izuku blinked, his gaze snapping upward.

 

Tenya Iida was standing beside his desk. The tall, imposing boy looked rigid, his face devoid of his previous comical strictness. He looked intensely serious, and... deeply ashamed.

 

"You are the boy from the entrance exam," Iida said. He spoke quietly, ensuring the rest of the whispering class couldn't hear.

 

Izuku’s muscles tensed, ready for the accusations. You killer. You liability. You monster.

 

"Yes," Izuku said softly.

 

To Izuku's absolute shock, Iida bowed. It wasn't a standard greeting; it was a deep, ninety-degree bow of profound apology, his torso parallel to the floor.

 

"I owe you my deepest apologies," Iida said, his voice trembling with a mixture of reverence and guilt.

 

Izuku stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

 

Iida slowly rose, his glasses catching the fluorescent light. "During the practical exam... when the colossal villain appeared... I ran. My instincts told me it was a distraction, an impossible obstacle, and that the rational choice was retreat to preserve my own life."

 

Iida’s hands balled into fists at his sides.

 

"I did not see her. I did not see the trapped civilian." Iida’s voice cracked slightly. "But you did. You, who had scored zero points, who had everything to lose... you threw yourself into the maw of death without a moment's hesitation. You executed a spectacular feat of power to stop the threat. You acted as a true hero, while I acted as a coward."

 

Iida looked down, shame radiating from him. "I heard the news. About the structural collapse. About her passing. I cannot imagine the burden you carry, having been the only one brave enough to try."

 

Izuku sat paralyzed.

 

He doesn't know, Izuku realized. U.A. covered it up. They think it was just a collapse. They think I'm a hero who tried and failed, not a reckless idiot who caused her death.

 

"I realized that day," Iida continued, looking back up, his eyes shining with intense resolve, "That I am severely lacking. I came here on the coattails of my family's legacy, but I do not possess the instinctive heart of a hero. You do. I hope that, in our time here at U.A., I can learn from your example."

 

Iida extended a hand. "I am Tenya Iida."

 

Izuku stared at the offered hand. The urge to scream the truth clawed at his throat. He wanted to stand on the desk and yell that he wasn't a hero, that his power was the hammer that drove the nail into Ochaco Uraraka's coffin. He wanted to be hated, because he deserved to be hated.

 

But he remembered Toshinori's words.

 

Do you let the weight crush you, or do you carry it?

 

If he confessed, if he broke down here, he would be expelled. He would lose the chance to train. He would lose the chance to become the shield he swore to be. He had to accept the lie to fulfill the promise.

 

Izuku slowly reached out. His scarred right hand grasped Iida’s firm grip.

 

"Izuku Midoriya," he said, his voice devoid of warmth, sounding more like an oath than an introduction.

 

"I look forward to working with you, Midoriya," Iida said solemnly.

 

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

 

The gruff, deadpan voice cut through the murmur of the classroom like a scythe.

 

Everyone turned toward the front of the room. A man looking remarkably like a giant yellow caterpillar was lying on the floor in a bright yellow sleeping bag. He unzipped the cocoon and stood up, revealing a tall, disheveled man with messy black hair, a stubbly chin, and a pale, exhausted face. He wore a baggy black jumpsuit and long, gray scarves wrapped around his neck.

 

He pulled a juice pouch from his pocket and took a long sip.

 

"It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down. Time is a limited resource. You kids lack rationality."

 

The man walked behind the teacher's podium, his dark, calculating eyes scanning the room.

 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Nice to meet you."

 

The class collectively gasped. A homeroom teacher? He looked like a homeless man who had wandered off the street.

 

Aizawa reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue gym uniforms. "Put these on and head out to the training field. We're skipping orientation."

 

As the class scrambled to grab their uniforms, Aizawa’s eyes swept over the room, pausing on the empty desk at Seat 5. A micro-expression of profound sadness flickered across the pro hero's tired face, gone as quickly as it appeared.

 

Then, his gaze locked onto Izuku in the back row.

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. He had read the files. He had watched the unedited tapes. He knew exactly what had happened in fake City B, and he knew exactly whose power had sent that steel plate tumbling from the sky. He saw the scarred arm. He saw the dead eyes.

 

Aizawa didn't see a hero prodigy. He saw a deeply traumatized, highly volatile powder keg with enough destructive potential to level a city block, one who had already triggered a fatal incident before his first class.

 

Nezu and All Might are fools for letting him in here, Aizawa thought grimly, his capture weapon shifting slightly around his neck. He is broken. And if he snaps, he will take the rest of these kids down with him.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa's voice was a low growl that cut through the shuffling of the students.

 

Izuku paused halfway out of his seat, locking eyes with the intimidating teacher.

 

"Don't fall behind," Aizawa warned, his tone layered with a thinly veiled threat.

 

Izuku didn't nod. He didn't flinch. He just held the hero's gaze, his emerald eyes reflecting the infinite, heavy void he carried inside his chest.

 

"I won't," Izuku promised.

 

He turned and walked out of the classroom, leaving the empty desk behind, but taking the ghost with him.

 

 

The silence in Izuku Midoriya’s world had become a physical entity. It sat with him during lunch, when he ate alone on the school roof, staring blankly at the sprawling U.A. campus. It walked beside him in the hallways, a heavy shroud that caused the other students to instinctively give him a wide berth. Even during Shota Aizawa’s grueling physical assessments on the first day, the silence remained unbroken.

 

Izuku had scored dead last in the quirk apprehension test. He hadn't used One For All. He couldn't. The mere thought of summoning that fiery, world-shattering energy made his stomach heave with nausea and phantom concrete dust. He had thrown the softball with his own, unenhanced strength, running the fifty-meter dash with legs that still ached with the memory of shattered femurs.

 

Aizawa had threatened expulsion for the lowest score. When Izuku’s name appeared at the bottom of the holographic list, he hadn't reacted. He had simply stared at the board, accepting his fate, wondering if he should return his uniform on his way out.

 

But Aizawa had called it a logical ruse. The underground hero had stared directly into Izuku’s lifeless eyes as he said it, a clear, silent message passing between them: I am giving you enough rope to hang yourself. Don't slip.

 

Now, it was the fourth day of classes. Hero Basic Training.

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

The door to Classroom 1-A burst open, and Toshinori Yagi—in his fully muscled, Golden Age prime—strode through the threshold. "COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A HERO!"

 

The class erupted into cheers. Kirishima, Kaminari, and Ashido practically vibrated in their seats with excitement. Even Bakugo sat up straighter, a feral grin spreading across his face.

 

Izuku just stared at his desk. He saw the way All Might's smile strained at the corners when the Number One Hero’s eyes swept over the empty desk at Seat 5. He saw the brief, imperceptible flinch in the giant man’s posture when his blue eyes briefly locked with Izuku’s.

 

"Welcome to Hero Basic Training!" All Might boomed, marching to the podium. "The class that will put you through the wringer and build your foundation! Today, we are conducting Combat Training!"

 

Bakugo cracked his knuckles. "Combat."

 

"And to go with it..." All Might pointed a massive finger at the wall, which suddenly slid open in a grid of mechanical panels, revealing nineteen metal briefcases. "Costumes made based on your quirk registrations and requests! Go get suited up and meet me at Ground Beta!"

 

The locker room was a cacophony of teenage excitement. Zippers buzzed, armor plates clanked, and voices bounced off the tiled walls as the boys admired each other's designs. Iida’s armor was pristine and imposing. Bakugo’s grenadier bracers were massive and threatening.

 

Izuku dressed in silence in the far corner.

 

When he had submitted his costume request weeks ago—before the exam—he had designed a bright teal jumpsuit with a red utility belt, white gloves, and a metallic mask fashioned to look like All Might’s signature smile. It was the ultimate fanboy tribute.

 

Two days after he returned home from the hospital, he had logged back into the U.A. portal and deleted the file. He had submitted a revision.

 

When Izuku stepped out of the dark tunnel and into the sunlight of Ground Beta, the chatter among his classmates noticeably died down.

 

His new costume was a stark, jarring departure from the colorful hero aesthetic. The base was a specialized, reinforced combat suit, dyed a dark, muted forest-green that bordered on black. Heavy, matte-gray ballistic plating covered his shins, knees, chest, and shoulders—armor designed not to look flashy, but to absorb catastrophic blunt-force trauma. His gloves were thick, extending up to his forearms, reinforced with shock-absorbing foam.

 

But it was his face that unsettled everyone the most. The bunny-like "ears" he had originally drawn to mimic All Might's hair were gone. Instead, he wore a dark gray metallic face guard that clamped over his jaw and nose, completely obscuring his mouth. It wasn't a smile. It was a barricade. He looked less like a rescue hero and more like a riot-control operative.

 

All Might stood at the center of the street, taking in the students. His eyes fell on Izuku, and the pro hero felt a sharp pang in his chest. He removed the smile. Oh, my boy...

 

"They say the clothes make the man, young men and women!" All Might announced, forcing his booming voice to remain steady. "And you all look incredible! Now, let us begin the indoor battle trial!"

 

All Might explained the rules. A two-on-two scenario. Villains guard a nuclear payload indoors; heroes must infiltrate and touch the weapon or capture the villains.

 

"We will determine teams by drawing lots!" All Might held up a yellow box.

 

"Sir!" Iida raised his hand, his armor clanking. "Given that there are only nineteen of us, the math dictates an uneven distribution. How will the final team be structured?"

 

A heavy, uncomfortable silence descended on the class. The reality of the missing twentieth student always hung in the air, but naming the uneven number made it painfully tangible.

 

All Might cleared his throat, his smile faltering slightly. "An excellent observation, Young Iida. To maintain the integrity of the exercise, one team will consist of a single student acting as the Hero. They will face a two-person Villain team. The solo student will have a severe disadvantage, but villains rarely fight fair in the real world!"

 

Lots were drawn. Teams were assigned.

 

Izuku looked down at the slip of paper in his scarred hand. Team A.

 

"Alright! Let's see the matchups!" All Might drew two balls from his own boxes. "Team A will be the Heroes! Team D will be the Villains!"

 

Izuku looked up.

 

Team D was Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida.

 

"Since Team A is our solo student, Young Midoriya will infiltrate alone!" All Might declared.

 

Bakugo slowly turned his head. His crimson eyes locked onto Izuku, burning with a mixture of predatory anticipation and deep-seated fury. Ever since Izuku had walked into the classroom on the first day with those dead, empty eyes, Bakugo’s worldview had been tilting on its axis. The Deku he knew was a crying, trembling pebble in his path. This new Deku ignored him. Looked through him. It made Bakugo’s blood boil.

 

I'm gonna rip that stupid metal mask off his face, Bakugo thought, a feral grin pulling at his lips. I'm gonna make him squeal like the useless nerd he is, and prove he doesn't belong here.

 

Iida looked at Izuku with a mix of respect and apprehension. He knew what Midoriya was capable of. A one-on-two against the boy who obliterated the Zero Pointer? Iida knew he had to be on his highest guard.

 

"Villain team, head inside and prepare!" All Might instructed. "Hero, you have five minutes to plan your infiltration!"

 

As the class moved toward the monitor room, Izuku walked alone to the front of the mock-apartment building. He stood on the street, staring up at the concrete façade.

 

He closed his eyes, steadying his breathing.

 

You cannot use One For All, he told himself for the thousandth time that week. You do not have the control. The backlash will kill them. You have to win with your own body.

 

He opened his eyes. They were cold, analytical, and devoid of fear. He had studied Bakugo's fighting style for years. He knew the explosive blonde's tells, his right-hook dependency, his explosive mobility. And he knew Iida was fast, but linear.

 

"Begin!" All Might's voice blared over the intercom.

 

Izuku moved.

 

He didn't walk through the front door. He scaled the side of the building, his reinforced gloves finding purchase on the drainpipe. He moved silently, a ghost in the shadows, slipping through a third-floor window.

 

Inside, the building was a labyrinth of concrete corridors and empty rooms. It was dark, illuminated only by the shafts of sunlight slicing through the dusty windows.

 

Izuku crept down the hallway, his footsteps completely muffled by his combat boots. He reached into his utility belt and pulled out a spool of high-tensile capture tape.

 

He knew Bakugo wouldn't stay with the weapon. Bakugo's pride wouldn't allow him to play defense. He would hunt.

 

Three... two... one...

 

Footsteps echoed from the stairwell ahead. Heavy, aggressive, and impatient.

 

Izuku pressed his back against the concrete wall, blending into the shadows just before the intersection.

 

Katsuki Bakugo rounded the corner, his grenadier gauntlets scraping against the wall. He was stalking down the hall, his eyes darting into every open doorway.

 

"Where are you, you damn nerd?" Bakugo hissed to himself, little pops of caramel-scented explosions crackling in his palms. "Stop hiding."

 

Izuku held his breath. He waited until Bakugo took two steps past his hiding spot.

 

Then, Izuku lunged.

 

He didn't yell. He didn't announce his presence. He wrapped the capture tape around his left fist and aimed a brutal, un-quirked strike directly at the back of Bakugo's knee.

 

Bakugo’s combat instincts were phenomenal. He sensed the shift in the air and spun, swinging a right hook fueled by a blast of explosions.

 

But Izuku had already anticipated the counter. He dropped beneath the explosion, the heat singeing the top of his green hair. Reaching up, Izuku grabbed Bakugo’s right wrist, pivoted on his heel, and used Bakugo’s own momentum to throw the blonde violently over his shoulder.

 

Bakugo slammed onto the concrete floor with a heavy thud, the wind knocked out of him.

 

Izuku immediately moved to pin him and wrap the tape, but Bakugo roared in fury, blasting the floor with his free hand to propel himself backward, skidding down the hallway to put distance between them.

 

"You bastard!" Bakugo snarled, rubbing his back, his crimson eyes wide with shock. "You read my moves!"

 

Izuku stood up slowly. He adjusted his metal face guard, his eyes locked on Bakugo. He remained perfectly, maddeningly silent.

 

"Say something!" Bakugo yelled, his insecurity flaring into rage. "You think you're better than me now, Deku?! You think because you got into U.A. by some miracle, you can look down on me?!"

 

Izuku didn't respond. He simply shifted into a defensive stance, raising his fists.

 

In the monitor room, the rest of Class 1-A watched in stunned silence.

 

"Whoa... Midoriya didn't even use his quirk, but he totally countered Bakugo," Kirishima muttered.

 

"He's like a machine," Tsuyu Asui noted, tilting her head. "He hasn't blinked."

 

All Might leaned closer to the screens, gripping the microphone tightly. Excellent martial arts application, Young Midoriya. But Bakugo is not going to take that lightly.

 

In the hallway, Bakugo’s pride had been thoroughly wounded. The explosive teenager felt humiliated. Deku wasn't trembling. Deku wasn't crying. Deku had just put him on his ass without even speaking a word.

 

"Fine," Bakugo growled, his voice dropping an octave, losing its manic edge and adopting a terrifying, lethal calmness. "If you won't talk, I'll make you scream."

 

Bakugo lunged. He used sequential explosions behind him to propel himself forward like a bullet.

 

Izuku braced himself, but Bakugo was too fast. The blonde feinted a right hook, and when Izuku moved to block it, Bakugo detonated a blast from his left hand directly in Izuku’s face.

 

The shockwave threw Izuku backward. He crashed through a wooden door, tumbling into a dusty, abandoned office room. His ears rang, a high-pitched whine drowning out the sound of Bakugo walking through the splintered doorframe.

 

"Is that all you got?" Bakugo taunted, raising his massive right gauntlet. He gripped the metal pin located near his wrist. "You know, the design team at U.A. is pretty smart. These gauntlets aren't just for show. They store my sweat as I fight."

 

Izuku pushed himself up onto his knees, shaking his head to clear the ringing. He looked at the gauntlet. He recognized the design mechanism instantly from his years of notebook analysis.

 

It's a compression chamber, Izuku realized, his eyes widening slightly. If he pulls that pin...

 

"If they're full," Bakugo grinned, a terrifying, manic light in his eyes, "I can fire a blast with all the power I've saved up."

 

"Young Bakugo, stop!" All Might’s panicked voice crackled over the PA system. "Are you trying to kill him?! Do not use that inside!"

 

"He won't die if he dodges!" Bakugo roared, and yanked the pin.

 

Time seemed to freeze.

 

The blast didn't just exit the gauntlet; it erupted. A concentrated column of blinding white fire and compressed kinetic energy tore through the room.

 

Izuku threw himself to the left, diving behind a thick concrete support pillar just as the explosion devoured the space he had occupied a fraction of a second prior.

 

The sheer concussive force of the blast was apocalyptic. The heat vaporized the wooden furniture. The shockwave blew out every window on the floor, sending a storm of shattered glass raining down into the street below.

 

But it was the collateral damage to the building that sealed Izuku Midoriya's fate.

 

The concrete pillar Izuku hid behind took the brunt of the kinetic wave. It groaned, a deep, structural shriek of failing integrity. The ceiling above them buckled.

 

CRACK.

 

Chunks of drywall, plaster, and concrete began to rain down. The air was instantly atomized into a thick, choking cloud of gray dust and pulverized rock. The entire building swayed, the floor shuddering violently under Izuku’s boots.

 

The smell hit him first.

 

Copper. Concrete dust. Smoke.

 

Izuku gasped, coughing as the dust filled his lungs. He tried to stand, but a large chunk of plaster slammed into his shoulder, knocking him back to his knees.

 

He looked up.

 

Through the thick, impenetrable cloud of gray dust, the world began to warp.

 

The walls of the fake apartment building seemed to melt away, replaced by the towering, artificial skyscrapers of City B. The ringing in his ears twisted, morphing from the high-pitched whine of an explosion into the deafening, metallic roar of tank treads crushing asphalt.

 

The ground wasn't shaking from Bakugo's blast. It was shaking from the Zero Pointer.

 

Izuku’s breathing escalated into ragged, hyperventilating gasps. He scrambled backward, his hands slipping on the debris covering the floor.

 

No, Izuku whimpered, his mind fracturing, slipping effortlessly out of reality and plunging headfirst into his darkest, most traumatic memory. No, no, no.

 

He looked to his right.

 

In his hallucination, he didn't see an empty room. He saw her.

 

He saw Ochaco Uraraka lying on the ground, a massive slab of concrete pinning her leg. She was covered in dust. She was looking up, her wide, terrified brown eyes locked onto the sky.

 

“Ow...” the phantom voice echoed in his mind.

 

"I'm coming!" Izuku screamed, his voice tearing raw from his throat. "I'm coming! I'll save you!"

 

He tried to run to her, but a shadow fell over him.

 

Through the dust cloud, a silhouette emerged. It was Katsuki Bakugo, walking slowly through the debris, coughing, trying to wave the smoke away.

 

But Izuku didn't see Bakugo.

 

His traumatized mind mapped the threat. The towering shadow. The red glowing eyes. The engine of destruction causing the rubble to fall.

 

He saw the Zero Pointer.

 

And looking up, he saw the four-ton plate of reinforced steel breaking off, hanging in the air, right above the phantom girl.

 

I have to stop the rubble.

 

That was the only thought that remained in Izuku Midoriya’s shattered psyche. I have to destroy the threat before the rubble falls. I have to obliterate it completely so nothing breaks off.

 

In the monitor room, the screens were obscured by static and dust.

 

"Midoriya! Bakugo! Report!" All Might commanded into the mic, his heart hammering with anxiety.

 

The dust on the screen began to swirl.

 

Then, Kirishima took a step back, pointing at the monitor. "Uh... All Might? What is that?"

 

Through the gray haze, a light began to shine. It wasn't the fiery orange of Bakugo's explosions. It was a searing, blinding, iridescent white laced with violent arcs of red and green lightning.

 

All Might’s blood ran cold. He recognized that light.

 

It was the raw, unadulterated, unrestrained power of One For All. And it was pooling with catastrophic density.

 

"Young Midoriya!" All Might roared into the microphone, pure terror lacing his voice. "Power down! That's an order!"

 

Inside the ruined room, Izuku didn't hear the intercom. He didn't hear Bakugo asking what the hell that glow was.

 

He only heard the crunch of steel on bone.

 

Izuku stood up. The green lightning whipped around his body in a violent hurricane, tearing the sleeves of his reinforced costume to shreds. The air pressure in the room dropped instantly, a vacuum created by the sheer mass of energy coalescing in his right arm. The red, glowing lines of power etched themselves into his skin, burning through his flesh.

 

Bakugo froze. For the first time in his entire life, looking at Deku, Katsuki Bakugo felt the icy, paralyzing grip of mortal terror.

 

The boy standing across from him was not Deku. It was a force of nature. The green eyes glaring at him from above the metal face guard were devoid of humanity. They were feral, wide, and glowing with homicidal desperation.

 

"Die," Izuku whispered. But he wasn't talking to Bakugo. He was talking to the robot. He was talking to his own failure.

 

Izuku lunged.

 

He moved faster than the human eye could track. To Bakugo, Izuku didn't step; he simply vanished and reappeared directly in front of him.

 

Bakugo instinctively threw his arms up in a cross-guard, a desperate attempt to shield his head, igniting a blast to push Izuku away.

 

It was entirely useless.

 

Izuku didn't aim for Bakugo’s head or chest—a direct hit at this percentage would have turned the blonde boy into red mist. Subconsciously, some tiny fraction of Izuku's muscle memory aimed slightly off-center, targeting the massive grenadier gauntlet on Bakugo’s right arm.

 

"SMASH!"

 

It wasn't a heroic yell. It was a guttural, hysterical scream of pure agony.

 

Izuku’s fist collided with the heavy metal gauntlet.

 

The world went deaf.

 

The concussive shockwave that erupted from the point of impact defied physics. It didn't just blow the dust away; it obliterated the very air in the room.

 

The heavy metal gauntlet on Bakugo's arm didn't just break; it completely atomized, turning into shrapnel and dust in a microsecond. The kinetic force transferred into Bakugo’s arms. The bones in both of Bakugo’s forearms shattered instantly with a sickening, wet crunch, echoing the exact injuries Izuku had sustained weeks prior.

 

Bakugo’s eyes rolled back in his head as the sheer pressure of the shockwave hit his torso.

 

He was launched backward like a cannonball. He smashed through three solid concrete walls, tearing through the structural supports of the building as if they were made of wet tissue paper, before finally blasting out the side of the building and plummeting into the street below.

 

But the devastation didn't stop there.

 

Izuku’s punch hadn't just broken Bakugo. The residual kinetic energy, the raw wind pressure of a 100% Smash executed indoors, ripped outward.

 

The entire front half of the five-story concrete building simply ceased to exist.

 

The floors violently peeled upward. The support pillars disintegrated. A localized hurricane tore through Ground Beta, blowing the artificial clouds away and creating a massive crater that spanned the width of the street.

 

Up on the fifth floor, Tenya Iida had been standing next to the fake weapon. The floor beneath him suddenly lurched, then completely gave way.

 

"WAAAAAAAAAH!" Iida screamed, plummeting toward the ground as the building collapsed around him.

 

In the monitor room, the screens blew out in a shower of sparks. The observation deck, located nearly half a mile away, shuddered violently, throwing several students to the floor.

 

"What happened?!" Uraraka—no, she's not here.

 

"What the hell was that?!" Kaminari shrieked, clutching his head.

 

All Might was paralyzed. He stood gripping the podium, his knuckles white, his mouth hanging open in sheer horror. The dust cloud rising from Ground Beta looked like a bomb had gone off.

 

He lost control, All Might realized, a wave of profound guilt washing over him. The trauma... I put him in a combat scenario with collapsing buildings... I triggered him.

 

"Iida!" All Might shouted, snapping out of it. "Bakugo! Midoriya! Someone respond!"

 

Static.

 

Down in the wreckage of Ground Beta, the dust was slowly beginning to settle.

 

The apartment building was gone, reduced to a jagged, smoking pile of rubble.

 

Lying in a crater in the middle of the street was Katsuki Bakugo. His hero costume was shredded. Both of his arms were twisted at unnatural, horrifying angles, purple bruising already rapidly spreading across his skin. He was unconscious, bleeding from his nose and ears, his breathing shallow and rattling.

 

Fifty yards away, hanging upside down, his legs tangled in capture tape that had snagged on a fallen steel beam, was Tenya Iida. He was battered, his armor dented, but miraculously alive, saved by the debris forming a wedge over him.

 

And standing at the epicenter of the destruction, atop a pile of shattered concrete, was Izuku Midoriya.

 

His right arm was a gruesome sight. The bones had shattered again, reducing his limb to a swollen, purple, useless mass of flesh that hung limply at his side. His green sleeve was entirely burnt away.

 

But Izuku didn't feel the pain. He didn't feel anything.

 

He stood perfectly still, his chest heaving, his left hand gripping the side of his head as he stared down at the rubble.

 

The rubble is gone, his fractured mind noted. The robot is gone. The rubble didn't fall on her.

 

He looked toward the spot where he had seen the hallucination of Ochaco.

 

There was nothing there but dust.

 

"I saved her," Izuku whispered to himself, a hysterical, broken giggle escaping his throat. "I stopped it. I stopped it this time."

 

Suddenly, a blur of motion descended from the sky above the artificial buildings.

 

It wasn't All Might.

 

A long, gray cloth shot out from the shadows, wrapping violently around Izuku’s torso, pinning his good arm to his side. The cloth pulled taut, yanking Izuku off the pile of rubble and slamming him hard onto the cracked asphalt.

 

Izuku gasped, the impact jarring his senses. He thrashed, trying to summon the power again, trying to fight the new threat.

 

"Erase."

 

Izuku felt the spark of One For All in his chest suddenly sever, as if a switch had been flipped. The heat vanished. The power evaporated.

 

He looked up.

 

Standing over him, his black hair floating in the air, his eyes glowing a menacing, brilliant red, was Shota Aizawa. The underground hero’s capture weapon was drawn tight, his face a mask of cold, absolute fury.

 

Behind Aizawa, All Might was sprinting down the street at breakneck speed, kicking up dust in his wake.

 

"Midoriya!" All Might cried out, reaching the scene. He looked at the collapsed building. He looked at the unconscious, broken Bakugo in the crater.

 

All Might dropped to his knees beside Bakugo, his giant hands hovering over the boy's mangled arms. "Oh, god. Bakugo. Hang on, young man. I've got you." All Might carefully scooped Bakugo up, looking over his shoulder at Aizawa and Izuku with an expression of pure devastation.

 

Aizawa didn't look at All Might. He kept his glowing red eyes fixed on the boy wrapped in his bindings.

 

The suppression of the quirk, combined with the hard slam onto the pavement, finally shattered the hallucination.

 

The gray dust cleared from Izuku’s mind. The image of the Entrance Exam faded.

 

Izuku blinked. He looked around.

 

He saw the destroyed building. He saw Iida hanging from the wreckage. He saw All Might carrying Bakugo’s limp, bleeding body. He saw Bakugo’s arms, crushed and ruined.

 

The reality of what he had just done crashed down on him with the weight of a dying star.

 

I didn't hit a robot, Izuku realized, his eyes widening in absolute horror. I hit Kacchan. I used One For All... and I hit Kacchan.

 

He hadn't saved anyone. He had just created more casualties. He had become the very monster he promised he would shield people from.

 

Izuku began to hyperventilate. He looked at his own ruined right arm, and then up at Aizawa.

 

"I... I..." Izuku stammered, tears spilling over his metal face guard. "I didn't... the rubble... it was falling..."

 

Aizawa blinked, deactivating his quirk. His hair fell back to his shoulders, but his expression remained hardened steel. He crouched down, getting right in Izuku’s face.

 

"I warned you," Aizawa said, his voice a lethal, venomous hiss that only Izuku could hear. "I knew you were a liability. You had a PTSD flashback in the middle of a combat exercise. You lost grip on reality, and you unleashed a lethal attack on a classmate."

 

"I'm sorry," Izuku sobbed, thrashing weakly against the bindings. "I'm sorry, I thought it was the zero pointer, I thought she was there!"

 

"Sorry doesn't fix shattered bones," Aizawa snapped, tightening the bindings slightly. "Sorry doesn't rebuild a building. If Bakugo hadn't braced himself, if you had aimed three inches to the left, you would have blown his torso in half. You would have killed him, Midoriya."

 

Izuku choked on a sob, his head falling back against the asphalt. He wished Aizawa’s scarf would just wrap around his throat and end it. He was a curse. He was a plague on everyone around him.

 

Aizawa stood up, hauling Izuku to his feet by the scarf. The sudden movement sent a spike of white-hot agony through Izuku’s shattered arm, but he bit his tongue, refusing to scream. He deserved the pain.

 

All Might approached, holding Bakugo carefully against his chest. The Number One Hero looked incredibly old in that moment.

 

"Aizawa..." All Might started, his voice heavy with guilt. "This was my fault. I put them in an enclosed space. Bakugo used a lethal attack. It triggered him."

 

"Save the excuses for Nezu, Yagi," Aizawa interrupted coldly. "The boy is unstable. He is a danger to himself and every student in my class. The fact that he was allowed onto this campus after the exam is a colossal oversight."

 

"He needs guidance, Shota, not condemnation," All Might pleaded softly.

 

"He needs a psych ward," Aizawa shot back, his eyes narrowing. He turned to Izuku. "You are suspended from all combat training indefinitely. You will not wear this costume. You will not activate your quirk."

 

Aizawa pulled Izuku closer, his dark eyes boring into Izuku's soul.

 

"And starting tomorrow, you are remanded to mandatory, daily psychological conditioning with Hound Dog. If he evaluates that you are beyond rehabilitation... or if you so much as flinch aggressively in my classroom again... I will expel you myself, strip you of your provisional license track, and ensure you never step foot in a hero agency for the rest of your life. Do you understand me?"

 

Izuku looked at the ground. He looked at Bakugo’s blood dripping onto the pavement.

 

A hero's cape is woven from ghosts.

 

He had just added another phantom to his graveyard.

 

"I understand, Sensei," Izuku whispered, his voice hollow, dead, and utterly broken.

 

Aizawa dragged him away toward the infirmary, leaving All Might standing in the crater of his successor's trauma, holding the broken body of a student in his arms.

 

In the observation room, Class 1-A remained frozen in absolute, terrified silence.

 

They had wanted to see the explosive power of the kid who destroyed the Zero Pointer.

 

Now, they understood why the seat next to him was kept empty. Izuku Midoriya wasn't a hero prodigy.

 

He was a walking disaster.