What If Deku Had an Overpowered Velociraptor Quirk With Insane Speed

 

The world is not born equal. That was a truth Izuku Midoriya learned not through the crushing despair of being Quirkless, as so many late-bloomers did, but through the terrifying, blood-pounding thrill of apex superiority.

 

In this superhuman society, power was the ultimate currency. Some possessed Quirks that allowed them to levitate pencils, while others could summon thunderstorms with a breath. But beneath the flashing lights of flashy Emitter Quirks and the robust durability of Transformation Quirks, there lay a primal hierarchy. It was a hierarchy older than humanity itself, written into the very DNA of the earth: the hunters, and the hunted.

 

Izuku Midoriya was born a hunter.

 

 

 

 

The cicadas were screaming in the humid, stagnant air of a Musutafu summer afternoon. Four-year-old Izuku scampered through the dense woods behind his neighborhood, his small, dirt-smudged hands pushing aside fern fronds. Ahead of him, moving with the careless, arrogant swagger of a boy who had recently discovered he could make fire pop from his palms, was Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"Hurry up, Izuku!" Katsuki shouted, not bothering to look back. Small sparks snapped like tiny firecrackers from his hands, leaving the faint, sweet-and-sour scent of burnt caramel in the air. "If you fall behind, I’m leaving you to the monster bugs!"

 

"I'm coming, Kacchan!" Izuku chirped, his bright green eyes wide with excitement. He scrambled over a mossy rock, his little sneakers slipping slightly on the damp surface.

 

At four years old, Izuku was a soft, round-faced child with a mop of unruly green curls. He was gentle, prone to crying, and worshipped the ground heroes walked on—especially All Might. But a quiet anxiety had been gnawing at him lately. Katsuki had already manifested his Quirk. Most of the kids in preschool had. Izuku’s toes had been x-rayed, revealing the lack of a second joint—a surefire sign he would get a Quirk—but it remained stubbornly dormant.

 

The boys approached a ravine. It wasn't particularly deep—maybe ten feet down to a trickling creek bed—but to a four-year-old, it looked like a canyon. A single, thick, fallen log spanned the gap.

 

Katsuki crossed it with practiced ease, balancing on the rotting bark, his hands in his pockets. He hopped off the other side and turned around, a smirk playing on his face. "Come on. Don't tell me you're scared."

 

"I'm not scared," Izuku lied, his voice trembling just a fraction.

 

He stepped onto the log. The wood was slick with recent rain and coated in a treacherous layer of green moss. He kept his arms out like an airplane, taking one agonizingly slow step after another. He was halfway across when a sudden, loud crack echoed through the woods. A dead branch from the canopy above had snapped, plummeting downward.

 

Izuku looked up. The branch was huge, hurtling straight toward him.

 

He scrambled backward, panicking. His left sneaker found no traction on the moss. His foot slipped into empty air. Izuku let out a sharp cry as gravity seized him, dragging him backward off the log, toward the rocky creek bed below.

 

Katsuki’s smirk vanished, replaced by wide-eyed horror. "Izuku!" he screamed, reaching out a hand, though he was far too far away.

 

Time seemed to dilate. For Izuku, the rushing wind in his ears suddenly ground to a halt. A strange, burning sensation ignited in the center of his chest, a primal spark that flared into an inferno, rushing through his veins like liquid electricity. The fear vanished. The panic evaporated. In its place rose something ancient, cold, and calculated.

 

Survive.

 

His body answered the command before his conscious mind could comprehend it.

 

Snap. Crack. Shift.

 

Izuku’s physiology underwent a violent, instantaneous metamorphosis. His bones elongated and fortified, thickening with a density foreign to human anatomy. The soft skin of his forearms, shins, and back erupted into sleek, aerodynamic, emerald-green micro-scales. His face extended, jaw pushing forward into a subtle snout as his flat human teeth sharpened into rows of serrated canines. A heavy, incredibly muscular tail burst from the base of his spine, whipping out to act as a flawless counterweight.

 

But the most drastic change was in his legs. They shifted into a digitigrade structure, the heel pulling up, forcing him onto the balls of his feet. And from the second toe of each foot, a vicious, five-inch, sickle-shaped claw clicked out like a switchblade.

 

Mid-air, falling backward, Izuku’s gold-irised eyes dilated into thin, vertical black slits.

 

The world around him was moving in slow motion. He could see the individual droplets of water suspended above the creek. He could trace the exact trajectory of the falling branch above him. His brain was processing kinetic data at a speed that defied logic.

 

With a feral hiss, Izuku torqued his waist. His new tail whipped through the air, completely reversing his momentum in the blink of an eye. His digitigrade legs coiled against the empty air, and then, he kicked.

 

He didn't just hit the trunk of a nearby oak tree; he hit it with the force of a localized cannon blast. The bark exploded outward into splinters. Izuku’s leg muscles, built like biological shock absorbers and pneumatic pistons, compressed and then fired.

 

BOOM.

 

A miniature shockwave rippled through the ravine, blowing the leaves off the surrounding bushes. Katsuki was thrown backward onto his butt, crying out as a gust of wind slammed into him.

 

Izuku shot upward as a blur of emerald green. He was moving so fast he was invisible to the naked eye. In a fraction of a millisecond, he intercepted the massive, falling branch. He didn't punch it. He merely spun, executing a flawless, crescent kick. The sickle-claw on his right foot met the thick, solid wood.

 

There was no resistance. The adamantium-hard keratin of his claw, propelled by sheer kinetic velocity, sheared through the heavy oak branch like a hot razor blade through warm butter.

 

The branch cleaved into two perfect, cleanly severed halves. They tumbled harmlessly past the log bridge, crashing into the creek below.

 

Izuku landed.

 

He didn't stumble. He landed lightly on the opposite side of the ravine, crouching on all fours. His tail swayed slowly, deliberately behind him. His chest heaved, pulling in massive amounts of oxygen to fuel his radically accelerated metabolism. The ground beneath his feet was scorched, small tendrils of smoke rising where his toes had dug into the dirt to arrest his momentum.

 

Silence descended on the woods, broken only by the settling of dust and the ragged, heavy breathing of the two boys.

 

Katsuki sat on the dirt, staring at the cleanly severed branch in the ravine, and then slowly looked up at his friend.

 

Izuku was panting, his slit pupils slowly widening back to round circles as the adrenaline began to ebb. The scales retracted into his skin, his snout flattened back into a cute button nose, and his tail dissolved into a green mist that vanished into his body. Within seconds, a normal, albeit naked and extremely dirty, four-year-old boy was sitting in the dirt. His clothes had been torn to shreds by the explosive muscle expansion of his transformation.

 

Izuku looked down at his hands, then at the smoking footprints he had left in the earth. He looked back at Katsuki.

 

Katsuki wasn't looking at Izuku with the condescending pity he reserved for the weak. He was staring at him with wide, trembling eyes, his small hands clenching into fists. It was the look of a king who had just realized there was a dragon in his kingdom. It was fear, masked instantly by fierce, burning competitiveness.

 

"What... what was that?" Katsuki demanded, his voice cracking.

 

Izuku looked up. The soft, gentle green eyes were back, but deep within them, a new, untamed fire danced. A massive, toothy grin spread across the boy's face.

 

"I have a Quirk, Kacchan," Izuku breathed, his voice filled with absolute awe. "I'm gonna be a hero."

 

 

 

 

 

Ten years is a long time for a predator to hone its instincts.

 

By the time Izuku Midoriya reached his final year at Aldera Junior High, he was no longer the soft, round-faced crybaby of his youth. He was a force of nature carefully contained in a school uniform.

 

Izuku’s base appearance had permanently altered over the years as his Quirk, registered under the name Apex Raptor, settled into his genetics. He was tall for his age, built like an Olympic sprinter—lean, wiry, with muscles entirely composed of fast-twitch fibers tightly coiled like steel springs. Patches of dark green, iridescent micro-scales ran up the sides of his neck, across his forearms, and down his shins, acting as natural armor. His teeth were permanently sharp, a row of subtle predators' canines, and his eyes were a striking, luminescent amber with vertical slits for pupils.

 

To most people, he looked intimidating. A mutant-type hybrid. The kind of person people crossed the street to avoid. But Izuku had never lost his kind heart, even if his body was designed for slaughter.

 

"So, as third-year students, it's time to start thinking seriously about your futures!" the homeroom teacher announced, slapping a stack of career aptitude tests against his desk. "I would hand out these forms, but..." The teacher grinned, throwing the papers into the air. "I know you all want to go to the Hero Course!"

 

The classroom erupted into cheers, students showing off their Quirks—stretching limbs, glowing hands, minor telekinesis.

 

Izuku simply sat at his desk, eating from a colossal bento box. Because his Quirk demanded an absurd caloric intake to fuel his hyper-metabolism, he was essentially allowed to eat during class. He casually bit into a large chunk of rare steak, chewing methodically. His hearing, vastly superior to a normal human's, picked out the heartbeat of every person in the room.

 

"Hey, teach! Don't lump me in with these rejects!"

 

The loud, arrogant voice cut through the celebration. Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, feet propped on his desk, an explosive smirk on his face. "They'd be lucky to end up as sidekicks to some busted D-lister. I'm the real deal."

 

The class groaned, muttering insults, but no one dared challenge him. Bakugo’s Explosion Quirk was as powerful as his ego.

 

"Ah, yes, Bakugo," the teacher noted, looking at his clipboard. "You're aiming for U.A. High School, aren't you?"

 

A hushed awe fell over the room. U.A. The national academy. The top hero school in the country.

 

Bakugo stood up on his desk, relishing the attention. "That's right! I aced the mock tests! I'm the only one at this crappy school who stands a chance! I'll surpass All Might and become the top hero!"

 

"Oh, Midoriya, you're going for U.A. too, right?" the teacher asked casually.

 

The room went dead silent. All eyes shifted to the back corner.

 

Izuku swallowed his bite of steak. He closed his bento box, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and leaned his chin on his knuckles. His slit eyes locked onto Bakugo.

 

There was no bullying in this dynamic. In another universe, where Izuku was Quirkless, Bakugo might have terrorized him, burned his notebooks, and told him to take a swan dive off the roof. But in this universe, you don't bully an apex predator.

 

Bakugo’s eye twitched. His hands began to smoke. "Deku," he growled, using the childhood nickname not as an insult for being useless, but as a challenge. "You think you can compete with me?"

 

"I don't think, Kacchan. I know," Izuku replied, his voice calm, smooth, but carrying a subtle, vibrating purr that set the hair on the back of the other students' necks on edge. "Your explosions are powerful. Destructive. But they take exactly 0.4 seconds to ignite from the moment you sweat." Izuku tapped his temple. "In 0.4 seconds, I can cross this room, take the lint out of your pocket, and sit back down before you even realize I moved."

 

"Wanna bet, scale-face?!" Bakugo roared, leaping off his desk. He lunged across the aisle, his right palm sparking violently as he aimed a blast straight at Izuku's desk. "DIE!"

 

The explosion detonated with a deafening CRACK, shattering Izuku’s desk into splinters and filling the back of the room with thick black smoke. The students screamed, ducking for cover.

 

"Bakugo! Stop using your Quirk in class!" the teacher yelled, waving the smoke away.

 

Bakugo stood in the smoke, panting, a manic grin on his face. But as the smoke cleared, his grin vanished.

 

Izuku wasn't there.

 

"Looking for me?"

 

Bakugo spun around. Izuku was sitting casually on the windowsill on the complete opposite side of the classroom, thirty feet away, balancing perfectly on the thin ledge. He was holding Bakugo’s mechanical pencil, twirling it between his scaled fingers.

 

"You dropped this," Izuku said, tossing the pencil back to Bakugo.

 

No one had seen him move. There was no blur, no gust of wind. He was simply at his desk one millisecond, and at the window the next.

 

Bakugo caught the pencil, his teeth grinding so hard they threatened to crack. "You fast bastard," he hissed. "You just run away. When the Entrance Exam comes, we'll see who racks up the most villain points. Speed means nothing if you can't hit hard!"

 

Izuku hopped down from the windowsill, landing without making a single sound. "Kinetic energy equals one-half mass times velocity squared, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, walking back to his ruined desk to pick up his unbroken bento box. "Speed is power. See you at U.A."

 

The bell rang, saving the school from what would have inevitably become a localized warzone. Izuku grabbed his yellow backpack, slinging it over his shoulder, and walked out of the classroom, leaving Bakugo vibrating with absolute rage.

 

Izuku’s hero notebook was tucked safely in his bag. It wasn't just filled with fanboy observations anymore; it was a tactical manual. Hero Analysis for the Future: Vol 13. It contained sketches of every pro hero, along with detailed diagrams of biomechanics, fluid dynamics, and physics equations. If he was going to wield a Quirk that pushed his body past the sound barrier, he needed to understand the science behind it, lest he tear his own limbs off by turning too sharply.

 

His Quirk was incredible, but it had devastating drawbacks. Moving at Mach speeds placed extreme G-forces on his internal organs. Turning at that speed could snap a normal person's spine like a twig. He had spent ten years reinforcing his skeleton through brutal micro-fracture training, striking trees and rocks to make his bones denser, just so he could survive his own velocity.

 

And then there was the Predator Drive.

 

Izuku frowned as he walked down the stairs and out of the school gates. The Predator Drive was a psychological side-effect of his mutation. When his adrenaline spiked past a certain threshold, the human, rational side of his brain began to shut down, giving way to the reptilian hindbrain. In that state, he didn't see people; he saw prey. He saw vectors of attack. He saw vital organs. It was a cold, brutal, killing instinct. He had to keep it leashed. A hero saved people; a hero didn't tear villains to shreds.

 

"I need to clear my head," Izuku muttered, deciding to take the long way home, avoiding the crowded streets where the smells of a thousand different people overwhelmed his sensitive nose. He turned down a quiet street, heading toward a dark, graffiti-covered underpass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The underpass was cool and damp. Water dripped from the concrete ceiling, echoing in the tunnel. Izuku walked with his hands in his pockets, his tail hidden neatly beneath his modified, extra-large jacket.

 

Suddenly, his ears twitched.

 

It wasn't a sound, but a change in the air pressure. A foul smell hit his nostrils—a horrific concoction of rotting sewage, stagnant mud, and something metallic, like old blood.

 

Izuku stopped dead in his tracks. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

 

From the manhole cover a few feet away, a grotesque, bubbling mass of dark green sludge began to ooze outward. It piled up, expanding rapidly, before two massive, bulbous eyes and a jagged, gaping mouth formed in the muck.

 

"A medium-sized meat shield," the Sludge Villain gurgled, its voice wet and echoing. "Perfect. I need a place to hide for a while. Don't fight it, kid. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds."

 

The villain lunged, a tidal wave of liquid filth crashing down toward Izuku.

 

A normal kid would have screamed. A normal kid would have been engulfed instantly, suffocating in the dark slime.

 

Izuku's amber eyes snapped wide. His pupils instantly collapsed into razor-thin slits. The adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, and the Predator Drive kicked the door of his consciousness wide open.

 

Threat detected. Engage.

 

Izuku didn't just step back; he vanished.

 

CRACK.

 

The concrete where he had been standing shattered into a spiderweb of fissures as his legs kicked off. He reappeared twenty feet down the tunnel, breathing heavily.

 

The Sludge Villain blinked, confused. Its sludge hit the empty pavement. "What the—? You're a fast little brat, aren't you?"

 

Izuku’s jacket tore open at the back. His physiology was shifting, unable to remain in his base form under this level of threat. The transformation was instantaneous, violent, and fluid.

 

His body grew taller, muscle mass expanding rapidly. His emerald scales rippled over his skin, acting as a lightweight, impenetrable armor. His face elongated into the distinct, terrifying visage of a dromaeosaurid—a velociraptor. His heavy, muscular tail slammed into the concrete behind him, anchoring his balance. His digitigrade legs flexed, the massive, lethal sickle-claws sliding out from his toes, gleaming sharply in the dim light of the underpass.

 

He dropped onto all fours, adopting a low, primal hunting stance. A low, vibrating growl ripped from his throat, echoing off the walls.

 

"A mutant, huh?" the Sludge Villain sneered, extending several whip-like tentacles of slime. "Doesn't matter how scary you look. You can't punch liquid, kid. You have a solid body. I'm going to flow right down your throat!"

 

The villain lashed out with six whips of sludge simultaneously, blocking the exit and the entrance of the tunnel. There was nowhere to run.

 

Inside Izuku’s mind, the human logic merged flawlessly with the predator's tactical computer. Enemy state: Liquid. Conventional physical attacks: Ineffective. Blunt force will be absorbed. Slashing will reform. Goal: Dispersal through extreme aerodynamic pressure.

 

Izuku didn't run away. He charged straight at the villain.

 

"Idiot!" the villain laughed, opening wide to swallow him whole.

 

Izuku’s leg muscles coiled. When he was just ten feet away, he leaped, but not at the villain. He leaped onto the curved wall of the tunnel.

 

His sickle claws dug deep into the reinforced concrete, sparking as they found purchase. With a burst of explosive acceleration, he ran straight up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side, moving so fast he became a continuous, unbroken ring of green light circling the tunnel.

 

The Sludge Villain tried to track him, spinning its eyes wildly. "Where—what are you doing?!"

 

Izuku accelerated. Mach 0.5. Mach 0.8.

 

The sound of his footfalls vanished, replaced by a deafening, continuous roar of displaced air. He was a blur of kinetic energy, running a perfect 360-degree loop around the inside of the underpass, using the centrifugal force to keep himself pinned to the walls and ceiling.

 

Mach 1.

 

A sonic boom detonated inside the confined space of the tunnel. The shockwave shattered every lightbulb in the underpass, plunging it into darkness, illuminated only by the sparks of Izuku’s claws tearing through the concrete.

 

The sheer speed of his movement created a localized, hyper-pressurized vacuum. A miniature cyclone erupted inside the underpass.

 

The Sludge Villain began to scream as the wind pressure tore at its body. "Stop! What is this?! I can't hold my shape!"

 

Izuku pushed harder. The G-force was immense. He could feel the blood vessels in his nose threatening to burst. His leg muscles screamed in protest, the lactic acid building up like liquid fire. But the predator wouldn't stop until the threat was neutralized.

 

The cyclone achieved hurricane-force winds. The Sludge Villain was lifted off the ground, its liquid body stretching, distorting, and finally, tearing apart.

 

With a deafening shriek, the villain exploded into a thousand droplets of sludge, splattering against the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, completely neutralized by the violent wind pressure.

 

Izuku maintained his speed for another two seconds before abruptly snapping his tail down, acting as a massive air brake. He skidded along the ground on his feet and hands, leaving four deep trenches in the concrete as he decelerated.

 

He came to a halt, panting violently. Smoke steamed off his scales from the sheer friction of his movement. He coughed, a small trickle of blood running from his nostril. He wiped it away with the back of his scaled hand, his chest heaving.

 

The threat was gone. The underpass was a disaster zone, looking as though a bomb had gone off inside a tornado. The Sludge Villain was completely incapacitated, separated into harmless puddles of goo that quivered pathetically.

 

Izuku closed his eyes, forcing his breathing to slow. In... out. You're a human. You're Izuku Midoriya. Let it go.

 

Slowly, the scales retracted. His tail vanished. His legs shifted back, the sickle-claws sliding away. He dropped to his knees in his ruined school uniform, entirely human once more, though still gasping for air.

 

"Well," a loud, booming voice echoed from the entrance of the tunnel. "That saves me a bit of trouble, doesn't it?"

 

 

 

 

 

Izuku’s head snapped up.

 

Standing at the edge of the underpass, silhouetted against the afternoon sun, was a mountain of a man. He wore a white t-shirt and green cargo pants, carrying two plastic grocery bags. Despite his casual attire, his presence was undeniable. The massive, bulging muscles, the golden hair swept up into two prominent V-shaped bangs, the impossibly wide, radiant smile.

 

"Fear not, young man!" the booming voice echoed, carrying a weight that seemed to vibrate in Izuku’s chest. "For I am here!"

 

Izuku’s jaw dropped. All the air left his lungs. "A-All... All Might?"

 

The Number One Hero stepped into the wrecked underpass, looking around with a mix of awe and bewilderment. He looked at the deep claw marks gouged in circles across the walls and ceiling. He looked at the scattered, defeated remains of the Sludge Villain. Finally, his bright blue eyes landed on the skinny, trembling boy on his knees.

 

All Might had been chasing this villain for blocks. He had been preparing to unleash a Texas Smash down the manhole to blow the villain out into the open. But as he had arrived, he heard the sonic boom. He had felt the earth shake.

 

"Young man," All Might said, his smile softening into a look of genuine astonishment. "Did you do this?"

 

Izuku scrambled to his feet, his face flushing crimson. "I-I-I'm so sorry! I know we aren't supposed to use our Quirks in public without a license! But he attacked me, and my instincts just took over, and I didn't mean to destroy the tunnel, I just needed to create an aerodynamic vacuum to disperse his fluid structure because physical attacks wouldn't work, and—"

 

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, my boy!" All Might laughed, holding up a massive hand. He walked over, setting his groceries down, and began scooping the puddles of the Sludge Villain into an empty two-liter soda bottle he pulled from his pocket.

 

"To assess a villain's weakness and formulate a counter-attack in a fraction of a second... and to possess the sheer physical power to execute a cyclone with pure speed?" All Might capped the bottle tightly, holding it up to the light. "That is no small feat. You saved your own life today. Your reflexes are astounding."

 

Izuku was vibrating. All Might. All Might is complementing my speed. All Might is right in front of me.

 

Frantically, Izuku dropped to the floor, rummaging through his shredded backpack. He pulled out Hero Analysis for the Future: Vol 13. Miraculously, it had survived the cyclone.

 

"A-All Might, sir! C-Could you sign my notebook? Please!" Izuku bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle, thrusting the notebook forward.

 

All Might laughed heartily. "Of course, young fan!" He took the notebook, producing a massive marker, and scrawled his signature across a two-page spread. He handed it back. "There you go! Keep training that Quirk of yours. You have the raw power of a Pro Hero already."

 

All Might turned to leave, his massive legs flexing. "Now, I must get this villain to the police! Stay out of trouble!"

 

"Wait!"

 

The word tore from Izuku’s throat before he could stop it.

 

All Might paused, glancing back over his shoulder.

 

Izuku stood trembling. This was the question that had haunted him for ten years. Yes, Katsuki respected his power. Yes, his teachers were afraid of him. But deep down, Izuku knew what people saw when they looked at his transformed state. They didn't see a hero. They saw a monster. A dinosaur. A relic of a brutal, bloodthirsty past.

 

"Can someone like me..." Izuku started, his voice cracking, his fists clenching at his sides. "Can someone with a mutant Quirk... a Quirk that makes them look like a monster... a Quirk that has feral instincts that make me want to rip things apart... can someone like that really become a Symbol of Peace? Can I be a hero like you?!"

 

The silence in the tunnel was profound. The dripping water seemed to pause.

 

All Might turned around fully. The ever-present, boisterous smile on his face faded, replaced by an expression of deep, solemn understanding. He looked at Izuku. He saw the ruined uniform. He saw the dried blood under the boy's nose. He saw the desperate, burning light in his green eyes.

 

All Might knew the burden of power. He knew what it was like to wield a force that could destroy just as easily as it could save. He stepped forward, bridging the gap between them, and placed a massive, heavy hand on Izuku’s shoulder.

 

"Pro heroes are always risking their lives," All Might said quietly, his voice devoid of his usual theatricality. "Some heroes have flashy powers that people love. Some have powers that frighten civilians. I've known heroes with Quirks that resemble villains. Gang Orca. Hound Dog. Ectoplasm."

 

All Might knelt slightly, bringing his eyes level with Izuku’s.

 

"A hero is not defined by the shape of their body, or the ferocity of their power," All Might said, his blue eyes piercing straight into Izuku’s soul. "A hero is defined by the heart that wields that power. When this villain attacked, you didn't freeze. You didn't give up. You fought back, and you controlled your power to defeat him without taking his life."

 

Tears pricked the corners of Izuku’s eyes.

 

"You are fighting your own instincts every day to be a good person," All Might said softly. "That is the mark of a true hero. So, yes, young man."

 

All Might stood back to his full, towering height, the radiant smile returning to his face, brighter than the sun outside the tunnel.

 

"You can become a hero."

 

The tears finally spilled over. Izuku fell to his knees, clutching his notebook to his chest, sobbing violently. All the years of holding back, of fearing his own shadow, of wondering if he was destined to be a villain because of the bloodlust coded into his DNA—it all washed away in the wake of those six words.

 

The greatest hero in the world had looked at the monster, and seen a savior.

 

All Might watched the boy cry for a moment, a profound sense of respect filling his chest. He didn't know this boy's name, but he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the world was going to know it soon.

 

"Train hard, young man!" All Might called out, crouching down. "The world needs heroes with your strength!"

 

With a blast of air pressure, All Might leaped into the sky, soaring away toward the police station.

 

Izuku stayed in the tunnel for a long time, the cool air drying the tears on his face. When he finally stood up, his legs were still shaky, his body aching from the G-force of his cyclone, but his heart felt lighter than it had in a decade.

 

He looked down at his hands. He willed the shift.

 

Instantly, the emerald scales rippled over his skin. The sharp claws extended from his fingertips. He looked at them, not with fear, but with absolute resolve.

 

He didn't need to be given a Quirk. He didn't need a miracle. He was the Apex Predator. He was Izuku Midoriya. And he was going to be the fastest, strongest hero the world had ever seen.

 

He let the scales retract, slung his ruined backpack over his shoulder, and walked out into the sunlight. The U.A. Entrance Exam was ten months away, and he had a lot of eating to do.

 

The human body was not designed to travel at the speed of sound.

 

At Mach 1—roughly 767 miles per hour—the air itself ceases to behave like a gas and instead acts like a solid wall of kinetic resistance. Moving through it without aerodynamic shielding can strip the flesh from a person's bones, collapse their lungs from the pressure differential, and snap their cervical spine from the sheer G-force of sudden acceleration.

 

Izuku Midoriya knew this. He had spent his entire life studying the brutal, unforgiving physics of his own body. His Quirk, Apex Raptor, gifted him with the biological hardware of a god-tier speedster, but the software—the durability and stamina required to survive wielding it—had to be forged through blood, sweat, and a frankly horrifying amount of raw meat.

 

 

 

 

The ten months leading up to the U.A. Entrance Exam were not spent clearing trash off a beach, nor were they spent doing standard push-ups and sit-ups. Standard exercise was useless to a boy whose baseline muscle density was already closer to a hydraulic press than human tissue.

 

Instead, Izuku transformed the abandoned Dagobah Municipal Beach into a high-speed collision testing ground.

 

It was 4:00 AM on a freezing December morning. The sky above the beach was the color of bruised iron. Izuku stood shirtless on the sand, his breath pluming in white clouds. His body had already shifted into his partial raptor form. Emerald-green micro-scales armored his forearms, shins, and the back of his neck. His legs had broken their human plantigrade structure, shifting into the aggressive, digitigrade arch of a predator, ending in heavy, scaled feet with five-inch, sickle-shaped keratin claws tapping against the sand. His heavy, muscular tail swept back and forth, carving deep grooves into the beach.

 

"Distance: four hundred meters," Izuku muttered to himself, his amber, slit-pupil eyes locked onto a rusted, hollowed-out city bus resting at the edge of the water. "Target: structural penetration. Desired velocity: Mach 0.8."

 

He crouched low, his hands resting lightly on the sand.

 

Breathe in. He pulled oxygen deep into his oversized lungs, his chest expanding massively. His hyper-metabolism roared to life like a furnace. Breathe out.

 

Go.

 

The sand beneath him exploded, creating a crater ten feet wide as his legs fired. Izuku didn't run; he fired himself like a railgun projectile. The world blurred into a continuous streak of gray and brown.

 

The wind shrieked, tearing at his hair and stinging his eyes, but the nictitating membranes—a secondary, translucent set of eyelids gifted by his mutation—slid into place, protecting his vision.

 

Fifty meters. One hundred. Two hundred.

 

His leg muscles, layered with fast-twitch fibers and natural shock absorbers, pumped with piston-like ferocity. He was moving so fast the loose trash on the beach was sucked into the vacuum of his wake, creating a swirling tunnel of debris behind him.

 

Three hundred.

 

The rusted bus loomed. Izuku didn't slow down. He torqued his waist, his tail whipping to the left to perfectly counter-balance his sudden shift in momentum. He leaped.

 

Mid-air, he spun, bringing his right leg around in a devastating crescent kick. The sickle-claw extended, locking into place with an audible click of bone against bone.

 

CRASH.

 

The impact was thunderous. Izuku’s claw struck the reinforced steel frame of the bus. Driven by the immense kinetic energy of a body moving at over five hundred miles per hour, the adamantium-hard keratin didn't just dent the steel; it sheared through it instantly.

 

Izuku blasted straight through the side of the bus and out the other side, landing flawlessly on the sand and skidding to a halt. Behind him, the top half of the bus slowly groaned, slid off its chassis, and collapsed into the sand with a deafening metallic screech. A perfectly clean, curved cut separated the top from the bottom.

 

Izuku stood up, panting, his chest heaving as he stared at his work. The claw on his right foot was glowing dull red from the friction, giving off a faint smell of burnt ozone.

 

"Velocity was good," Izuku analyzed aloud, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead. "But cornering speed is still dangerous. The lateral G-forces during that spin put too much strain on my lumbar spine. I need denser bones. I need more calcium. More protein."

 

Protein was the single greatest hurdle of his Quirk. Moving at Mach speeds burned tens of thousands of calories in minutes. If he didn't eat enough, his body would begin to cannibalize its own muscle tissue to fuel his engine.

 

Later that evening, the Midoriya household dining table looked like a competitive eating arena.

 

"Izuku, honey, please chew," Inko Midoriya said, watching with a mixture of immense maternal pride and mild horror as her son devoured his twelfth T-bone steak.

 

"I am chewing, Mom," Izuku replied, swallowing the meat almost whole. His canines made quick work of the bone, cracking the femur open to suck out the marrow—a vital source of fats and stem cells required for his continuous micro-fracture healing.

 

Inko smiled warmly, sliding a colossal bowl of rice and a dozen boiled eggs toward him. "You’ve worked so hard these past ten months. You’ve gotten so big."

 

It was true. At fifteen, Izuku had grown to a solid five-foot-nine, but his physique was what truly set him apart. He was built like an apex predator—lean, broad-shouldered, and tightly coiled. He no longer looked like the fragile boy who had cried over computer videos of All Might. He looked like someone who could fight alongside him.

 

"The exam is tomorrow," Izuku said, washing the steak down with a liter of whole milk. "I’m ready. I have the speed. I have the durability. Now... I just have to control the Drive."

 

Inko’s smile faltered slightly. She knew about the Predator Drive. She had seen the feral, cold look that sometimes overtook her son’s eyes when he was startled or pushed too far. "Just... promise me you'll remember you're taking a test, Izuku. You're a hero, not a hunter."

 

Izuku looked down at his hands, watching the green scales ripple slightly under the skin. "I promise, Mom."

 

 

 

 

The gates of U.A. High School towered over the incoming examinees like the entrance to a fortress. Thousands of students poured onto the campus, chatting nervously, showing off subtle Quirk manifestations, and psyching themselves up.

 

Izuku walked among them, an island of calm in a sea of anxiety. He wore a custom-tailored tracksuit designed with reinforced, tear-away seams around the legs and lower back to accommodate his transformation. He walked with a smooth, almost liquid grace—every step perfectly balanced, silent despite the heavy crowds.

 

"Outta my way, extras!"

 

The familiar, explosive roar echoed from behind him. Katsuki Bakugo stomped through the crowd, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a permanent scowl etched onto his face. The crowd naturally parted for him, intimidated by his fierce aura.

 

Izuku didn't move. He simply turned his head, his golden, slit-pupil eyes locking onto Bakugo.

 

Bakugo stopped. The two boys stared at each other. The air between them felt instantly pressurized, thick with ten years of intense, unspoken rivalry.

 

"Kacchan," Izuku said smoothly, his voice carrying that low, resonating purr that always set people on edge.

 

"Deku," Bakugo growled back, his crimson eyes narrowing. "Don't think just because you got faster you're gonna beat me today. Robots don't bleed. Let's see how your claws handle solid armor."

 

"Armor is just mass, Kacchan. Mass breaks when hit with enough velocity," Izuku replied evenly, a tiny smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "Try to keep up."

 

Bakugo scoffed, small pops of nitroglycerin sparking from his palms. "I'm gonna crush you." He marched past Izuku, purposefully bumping his shoulder, though Izuku didn't budge an inch.

 

Izuku continued toward the auditorium, but his highly sensitive ears picked up a sharp gasp, followed by the sound of scuffling shoes.

 

"Whoa!"

 

A girl with a round face and short brown hair had tripped over her own feet, pitching forward toward the concrete pavement.

 

In less time than it takes a human eye to blink, Izuku’s leg muscles twitched. He didn't fully transform, but he drew on a fraction of his Quirk.

 

Zip.

 

The air cracked lightly.

 

Ochaco Uraraka braced for the harsh impact of the concrete, squeezing her eyes shut. But the impact never came. Instead, she found herself suspended mid-air, a strong, scaled hand gripping the back of her jacket, and a thick, heavy green tail gently wrapped around her waist to stabilize her.

 

She opened her eyes, gasping. Standing beside her, having seemingly teleported from ten feet away, was a tall boy with unruly green hair and startling amber eyes.

 

"Careful," Izuku said softly, setting her back on her feet. The scales on his arm and the tail seamlessly retracted back into his body. "The pavement here is pretty uneven."

 

Uraraka stared at him, her face flushing bright pink. "W-Whoa! How did you move so fast?! I didn't even see you! Thank you!"

 

Izuku smiled, a genuine, soft expression that entirely contrasted with his intimidating features. "No problem. Good luck on the exam."

 

Before she could ask his name, Izuku turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd, leaving Uraraka thoroughly bewildered.

 

An hour later, the examinees were gathered outside the massive, towering walls of Battle Center B. Present Mic had given his high-octane presentation inside the auditorium, explaining the point system: 1-Pointers, 2-Pointers, 3-Pointers, and the massive, 0-Point obstacle.

 

The students stretched, bouncing on their heels, muttering strategies. A tall boy with engines in his calves—Tenya Iida—was lecturing anyone who would listen about proper form and the prestige of U.A.

 

Izuku stood at the absolute front of the pack, right at the massive steel doors.

 

He closed his eyes. The time for holding back was over. He needed to show U.A. exactly what he was capable of.

 

He let the shift take him.

 

The transformation was silent but awe-inspiring. His body elongated, muscles swelling with coiled power. The emerald scales erupted across his skin, forming an aerodynamic, armored plating. His jaw extended into a subtle, predatory snout, revealing rows of serrated teeth. A massive, heavy tail burst from his lower back, thumping heavily against the concrete.

 

But the most drastic change was his stance. Izuku dropped down onto all fours. His legs snapped into their digitigrade, reverse-jointed structure. He kicked off his specialized, loose-fitting shoes, revealing the massive, terrifying sickle-claws on his toes that clicked sharply against the pavement.

 

He looked like a monster. He looked like an apex predator coiled to strike.

 

The students around him took several steps back in sheer terror.

 

"H-Hey!" Iida called out, chopping his arm indignantly. "What is the meaning of this posture? Are you trying to intimidate the other examinees? If you cannot stand properly like a hero—!"

 

"Quiet," Izuku hissed. His voice was no longer entirely human; it was layered with a guttural, vibrating resonance. His slit eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the gates. "He's about to call it."

 

"Call what?" Iida demanded. "There's no countdown yet—!"

 

High above them, in the observation tower, Present Mic keyed his microphone. "AND... START!!"

 

Iida and the rest of the students were waiting for a countdown. They were waiting for a 3... 2... 1.

 

Izuku didn't wait.

 

The instant the "S" in "START" left the speakers, Izuku’s hindbrain processed the auditory signal, converted it to an electrical impulse, and fired his leg muscles at maximum output.

 

BOOOOOOOOM!

 

It was as if a bomb had detonated at the starting line.

 

The concrete beneath Izuku’s feet literally exploded, sending chunks of pavement and a massive shockwave backward into the crowd of students. Iida, Uraraka, and dozens of others were instantly knocked off their feet by the sheer force of the displaced air.

 

A deafening, thunderous crack echoed across the entire Battle Center as Izuku shattered the sound barrier from a dead stop.

 

By the time the heavy steel doors had opened just five feet, Izuku was already gone. He had squeezed through the gap as a blur of green light, leaving behind nothing but a swirling tornado of dust and the smell of scorched earth.

 

Present Mic’s voice boomed over the speakers, laughing manicly. "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU LOT?! THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL BATTLES! LOOK AT EXAMINEE 7114! HE'S ALREADY TEARING THE PLACE APART! RUN! RUN! RUN!"

 

The students scrambled to their feet, staring in absolute shock at the massive crater left at the starting line, before frantically charging through the gates.

 

 

 

Inside the mock cityscape, Izuku was in a state of absolute euphoria.

 

The Predator Drive was active, but he was holding the reins. The city was a maze of concrete, steel, and glass. To a normal person, it was a complex environment. To Izuku, moving at Mach 1.2, it was a playground of geometry and vectors.

 

His brain processed information in microseconds.

Target acquired. 3-Pointer. Two hundred meters ahead. Vector: straight line.

 

A massive, tank-like robot with heavy treads and missile launchers rounded the corner, its red optical sensors scanning for targets. "TARGET ACQUIRED," it droned mechanically.

 

It never even had the chance to raise its weapons.

 

Izuku didn't slow down. He accelerated. The world around him was eerily silent, as he was moving faster than the sound he was creating. He closed the two-hundred-meter gap in less than a single second.

 

He didn't punch. He didn't stop to fight.

 

Izuku leaped slightly, raising his right leg. His five-inch keratin sickle-claw caught the sunlight for a fraction of a millisecond.

 

SLASH.

 

Izuku sprinted right past the robot, his claws sparking violently against the pavement as he turned a sharp right corner, bouncing off the side of a building to maintain his velocity.

 

For a full second, the 3-Pointer just sat there. Then, a massive sonic boom ripped down the street, shattering the windows of the surrounding buildings.

 

The robot’s head slowly slid off its shoulders, followed by its left arm, and the entire right chassis. Izuku hadn't just hit it; he had run past it at Mach 1.2 with his claw extended, cleanly bisecting the heavy armor plating through sheer kinetic velocity. The robot exploded into a massive fireball.

 

Three points.

 

Izuku kept moving. He was a force of nature.

 

He bounded up the side of a building, running vertically up the glass windows, his claws finding purchase in the concrete pillars. He reached the roof in two seconds, his eyes scanning the city below.

 

He saw a cluster of five 2-Pointers and three 1-Pointers cornering a group of examinees.

 

Izuku dropped from the five-story building. Gravity was too slow, so he kicked off the wall, accelerating his descent. He hit the ground dead center of the robotic group with the force of a meteor.

 

The impact cratered the street, launching the robots into the air. Before they could fall back down, Izuku became a localized tornado of green scales and flashing claws. He bounced from falling robot to falling robot like a pinball.

 

Slash. Kick. Tear. Sever.

 

By the time Izuku landed gracefully on his feet, his tail swishing behind him, the eight robots hit the ground as perfectly diced chunks of scrap metal. The examinees who had been cornered just stared, their jaws on the pavement, completely unable to comprehend what had just happened.

 

"T-Thirteen points," Izuku muttered to himself, his chest heaving slightly, the thrill of the hunt burning hot in his veins. He grinned, revealing his terrifying, blood-curdling teeth. "Not enough."

 

Crack.

 

He broke the sound barrier again, vanishing down an alleyway.

 

 

 

High above, in the darkened control room, the teachers of U.A. sat in stunned silence.

 

The massive wall of monitors displayed dozens of camera feeds, but all eyes were drawn to the center screen, tracking Battle Center B. Or, rather, trying to track it.

 

"Good lord," muttered Snipe, adjusting his mask. "The cameras can barely capture his frames. We’re getting blurs."

 

"Examinee 7114. Izuku Midoriya," Principal Nedzu said, his paws resting on the console, his black eyes gleaming with intense fascination. "Quirk: Apex Raptor. A mutant-type transformation with physiological enhancements. But this... this is beyond standard enhancement. He's generating kinetic energy on par with a cruise missile."

 

"Look at his point counter," Midnight breathed, her eyes wide.

 

The digital counter above Izuku’s name was spinning like a slot machine.

34... 47... 62... 80.

 

"Eighty points," Present Mic whispered, pulling down his sunglasses. "In three minutes. He hasn't stopped moving. He's just... running through them."

 

Sitting in the darkest corner of the room, wrapped in his capturing scarf, Shota Aizawa watched the monitor with a critical, intense glare.

 

Most heroes would see a powerhouse. Aizawa saw a terrifyingly lethal weapon.

 

"His control is impeccable," Aizawa noted, his raspy voice cutting through the chatter. "He's moving at supersonic speeds, yet he hasn't caused a single piece of collateral damage that would harm another examinee. Look at his trajectory. He's purposefully angling his sonic booms away from the other students. He's calculating his attacks so the shrapnel falls inward, not outward."

 

Aizawa leaned forward. "He has the raw, untamed speed of a feral beast, but the tactical mind of a seasoned pro. If he were a villain... he would be an uncatchable assassin. He could decapitate a target and be three miles away before the blood hit the floor."

 

Beside Nedzu, a skeletal blonde man clutched his stomach, his heart swelling with immense pride. Toshinori Yagi—All Might—watched the green blur tear through the city. You've mastered it, young Midoriya. You took the power of a monster and forged it into a sword of justice.

 

"Well," Nedzu chuckled, pressing a massive red button on his console. "He's handled the small fry with ease. Let's see how the Apex Predator handles a true titan."

 

 

 

 

 

Izuku skidded to a halt in the middle of a wide intersection. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. He had taken down over thirty robots. His point total was easily over eighty. He had secured his spot.

 

His claws were practically smoking. The nictitating membranes over his eyes slid back, letting him see the city clearly. He took a deep breath, preparing to let his transformation drop and rest for the remaining time.

 

Then, the ground trembled.

 

It wasn't a small tremor. It was an earthquake.

 

Izuku’s ears pinned flat against his head. The water in a nearby puddle began to vibrate violently. A shadow fell over the intersection, blotting out the sun.

 

At the end of the street, the buildings literally exploded outward as the Zero Pointer emerged.

 

It was an engineering nightmare—a colossal, bipedal tank the size of a skyscraper. Its massive treads crushed entire buildings to dust, and its singular, glowing red eye swept across the panic-stricken examinees below.

 

"IT'S THE ZERO POINTER!" someone screamed. "RUN!"

 

The examinees fled in absolute terror. The robot raised a massive, hydraulic fist and brought it down on a building, shattering it into rubble. A massive cloud of dust and debris swept down the street.

 

Izuku stood his ground, the wind whipping his hair. His logical brain told him to run. There were no points to be gained here. It was a gimmick. An obstacle meant to be avoided.

 

He turned to leave.

 

“Ow! My leg!”

 

Izuku froze.

 

His enhanced hearing cut through the deafening roar of the collapsing buildings and the screaming students. It was faint, but unmistakable.

 

He whipped his head around, his slit-eyes piercing through the thick dust cloud. There, pinned under a massive slab of concrete from the destroyed building, was the brown-haired girl he had caught earlier. Uraraka.

 

She was struggling frantically to push the debris off her leg, tears streaming down her face, looking up in horror as the colossal tracks of the Zero Pointer rolled inexorably toward her. It was going to crush her in less than ten seconds.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

And then, it restarted, beating with a furious, primal tempo.

 

Boom. Boom. Boom.

 

The Predator Drive didn't just activate; it completely took over. But this time, it wasn't a cold, calculating desire to hunt. It was a raging, protective instinct. The massive machine before him was no longer an obstacle. It was an apex rival intruding on his territory, threatening one of his flock.

 

Izuku dropped lower than he ever had, his chest practically scraping the pavement. His tail whipped violently, acting as a rudder. His jaw unhinged slightly, a terrifying, prehistoric roar ripping from his throat—a sound so loud and fierce it made the fleeing examinees stop dead in their tracks, freezing their blood.

 

He had to go faster. Faster than the beach. Faster than Mach 1.2.

 

He closed his eyes. He routed every single ounce of kinetic energy, every calorie, every spark of electricity in his nervous system down into his digitigrade legs.

 

Snap.

 

The tendons in his calves strained to the absolute limit.

 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were glowing, luminous gold.

 

MACH 2.

 

When Izuku launched, the shockwave didn't just crack the street—it annihilated it. A massive crater, fifty feet wide, blew out in all directions. The asphalt liquefied under the sheer pressure of his takeoff.

 

He didn't run toward the robot on the ground. The debris would slow him down.

 

Instead, Izuku bolted directly toward a towering, glass-fronted office building adjacent to the Zero Pointer.

 

"What is he doing?!" Iida gasped, shielding his eyes from the dust, watching the green blur shoot toward the building.

 

Izuku didn't stop at the wall. He ran up it.

 

Moving at over 1,500 miles per hour, gravity was a mild suggestion. He sprinted vertically up the glass skyscraper, his sickle claws punching perfectly placed holes into the reinforced glass with every step. He was a streak of lightning climbing into the heavens, leaving a trail of shattered glass raining down behind him like diamonds.

 

The G-force was monstrous. Izuku’s vision began to tunnel. Blood burst from his nose, painting his muzzle crimson. His leg muscles tore slightly, micro-fractures splintering his shin bones, but his hyper-metabolism held his body together by a thread.

 

He reached the top of the eighty-story building in three seconds.

 

The Zero Pointer’s massive head was right parallel to him.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He pushed off the lip of the roof, launching himself horizontally into the empty air, directly at the titan's neck.

 

Time dilated.

 

For the examinees below, for the teachers in the control room, the world seemed to hold its breath.

 

Mid-air, suspended against the blue sky, Izuku tucked his body. He spun, turning himself into a localized buzzsaw of kinetic energy. His tail whipped around, generating maximum torque. His right leg extended flawlessly, the five-inch sickle-claw locking into position, glowing a blinding, incandescent white from the friction of the air.

 

IMPACT.

 

Izuku’s claw struck the primary neck joint of the Zero Pointer.

 

The robot’s armor was designed to withstand a direct hit from a tank battalion. It was meant to be indestructible.

 

But physics was an absolute master. A razor-sharp adamantium edge, propelled by the mass of a hundred-and-sixty-pound boy, moving at Mach 2...

 

There was no explosion. There was no resistance.

 

There was only a blinding flash of light, followed a microsecond later by a catastrophic, ear-shattering SONIC BOOM that blew out the windows of every single building in the Battle Center.

 

Izuku sliced clean through the titan's neck.

 

He shot out the other side, a blur of green, continuing his arc through the sky until he twisted mid-air, deployed his claws, and slammed into the side of a building across the street, sliding down the concrete to bleed off his momentum before landing heavily on the ground.

 

Silence fell over the city.

 

The Zero Pointer stood frozen. The red light in its singular eye flickered, and then died.

 

With a groan of agonizingly slow, grinding metal, the top third of the colossal robot—its entire head and shoulder assembly—slowly slid off its neck along a perfectly smooth, red-hot diagonal cut.

 

The head fell, crashing into the street behind the robot with a seismic thud that rattled the fillings in the examinees' teeth.

 

The headless torso stood for a moment, sparks showering from the severed wires, before the massive machine tipped backward, collapsing away from Uraraka and crashing into a ruined plaza, sending a plume of smoke hundreds of feet into the air.

 

Down on the street, Uraraka sat frozen, staring at the decapitated titan in front of her. She slowly turned her head.

 

Fifty yards away, Izuku Midoriya was crouched on the pavement.

 

He was breathing in ragged, heavy gasps. Steam was rolling off his scaled body in thick waves. The sickle-claw on his right foot was glowing bright orange, melting the asphalt beneath it. Blood dripped from his nose and chin, sizzling as it hit the hot ground.

 

Slowly, the golden light in his slit eyes faded. The scales retracted into his skin. His snout flattened back into a human face. His tail dissolved into mist. The sickle-claws slid away.

 

Izuku collapsed onto his hands and knees, entirely human, completely exhausted, and shivering from the sudden loss of adrenaline.

 

He looked up, his green eyes meeting Uraraka’s, and managed a weak, shaky smile. "Are... are you okay?"

 

Before she could answer, a loud buzzer echoed across the city.

 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic’s voice echoed, completely devoid of his usual hype, sounding genuinely stunned.

 

No one cheered. No one moved. The examinees simply stared at the ruined street, the decapitated robot, and the skinny green-haired boy on his hands and knees.

 

 

 

In the control room, you could have heard a pin drop.

 

Nedzu’s paw hovered over the console, completely still. Midnight had a hand over her mouth. Snipe had pushed his hat back, staring at the monitor with wide eyes.

 

All Might was shaking, a massive, uncontainable grin stretching across his face, a single tear of pride leaking from his eye.

 

Aizawa stood up. He didn't say a word. He didn't need to. He simply looked at the monitors, staring at the boy who had just defied the laws of physics, severed a steel titan, and saved a girl, all without a second thought.

 

He's not a monster, Aizawa thought, a grim smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He's a goddamn force of nature.

 

The entrance exam was over. But Izuku Midoriya had just put the entire hero society on notice. The Apex had arrived, and no one was going to be able to catch him.

 

The letter from U.A. High School had not been a surprise, but the holographic projection of All Might inside the small metal disc had still brought Inko Midoriya to tears. Izuku had scored a staggering eighty points from villain takedowns and a jaw-dropping sixty rescue points for obliterating the Zero Pointer to save Ochaco Uraraka. One hundred and forty points. It was the highest score in the history of the academy, surpassing even All Might’s own record.

 

But Izuku didn't rest on his laurels. For the remaining weeks before school began, he ate, he healed, and he ran. The micro-fractures in his shin bones from his Mach 2 stunt had healed denser and thicker, thanks to his hyper-metabolism and a diet that practically kept the local butcher in business.

 

By the time he stepped through the towering doors of Class 1-A on his first day, he was fully calibrated.

 

The classroom was already noisy. Tenya Iida, the tall boy with the Engine Quirk, was strictly lecturing Katsuki Bakugo about keeping his feet off the desk. Bakugo was sneering, small sparks popping from his palms, looking thoroughly ready to blow the bespectacled boy to ash.

 

When Izuku slid the massive door open, the room’s dynamic shifted instantly.

 

Bakugo’s crimson eyes snapped to the doorway. His jaw tightened, the explosions in his palms dying out. Iida stopped mid-chop, recognizing the boy who had shattered the sound barrier and decapitated a steel titan. Uraraka, sitting a few rows back, beamed brightly.

 

Izuku walked in silently. His posture was perfectly straight, his footsteps making absolutely no sound on the tile. He wore the standard U.A. uniform, but his mere presence carried a heavy, invisible gravity. The faint, emerald-green scales on his forearms and the side of his neck caught the fluorescent light. He gave a small, polite nod to Uraraka, completely ignoring Bakugo’s burning glare, and took his seat.

 

Before anyone could approach him, a bright yellow sleeping bag shuffled into the room.

 

"If you're just here to make friends, you can pack up your things and leave," a tired, raspy voice announced.

 

Shota Aizawa unzipped his sleeping bag and stepped out, looking like he hadn't slept since the previous decade. "I’m your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. It took you all eight seconds to quiet down. Time is limited. You kids are not rational enough." He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue gym uniforms. "Put these on and head out to the P.E. grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

 

 

 

 

The P.E. grounds were vast, stretching out under a clear, crisp spring sky. The twenty students of Class 1-A stood on the dirt track, shifting uncomfortably.

 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?!" the class echoed in unison.

 

"What about the entrance ceremony? The orientation?" Uraraka asked, clutching her uniform.

 

Aizawa turned his back to them, his dark eyes scanning the group. "U.A. is known for its unrestricted traditions. That means teachers get to run their classes however they see fit. You’ve been taking standardized tests your whole lives, strictly forbidding the use of your Quirks. It’s irrational. Today, we’re finding out what your absolute limits are."

 

Aizawa held up a small device. "Bakugo. You finished first in the practical exam—excluding rescue points. In junior high, what was your best result for the softball throw?"

 

"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugo muttered, his arms crossed.

 

"Try it with your Quirk." Aizawa tossed him a baseball.

 

Bakugo stepped into the throwing circle. He stretched his arms, a feral grin spreading across his face. He wound up, his right arm sparking violently. "DIE!" he roared, unleashing a massive explosion directly behind the ball.

 

The shockwave blasted dust over the class. The ball vanished into the sky. Aizawa held up his tracker. It beeped.

 

705.2 meters.

 

The class erupted into murmurs of awe. "Over seven hundred meters? That's insane!" a boy with yellow hair cheered. "This looks like fun!" a pink-skinned girl added.

 

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, glowing red for a fraction of a second. The temperature on the field seemed to plummet. "Fun? You think you have three years here to just have fun? Fine. Whoever ranks last in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential and will be expelled immediately."

 

Silence fell over the students like a lead weight. Expulsion. On the first day.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. His golden, slit-pupil eyes remained entirely focused on the track. His heart rate, normally resting at a cool forty beats per minute, didn't even spike. He was an apex predator; pressure was just an environmental factor to be calculated.

 

"Test one: 50-Meter Dash," Aizawa announced, leading them to the track lines.

 

Tenya Iida stepped up to the starting line alongside a girl with a frog-like mutation. Iida looked confident. He was built for this. His calves housed biological exhaust pipes, and his Quirk, Engine, made him a powerhouse of linear mobility. He dropped into a flawless sprinter's stance.

 

"Runners, on your marks," the robotic voice of the testing machine droned.

 

Bang.

 

Iida’s engines roared to life, shooting blue flames. He blasted down the track, a streak of blue and white. He crossed the finish line with a sharp, robotic beep.

 

3.04 seconds.

 

Iida stood up, adjusting his glasses with a satisfied smirk. "For fifty meters, I can only shift up to third gear," he muttered to himself, clearly pleased. The rest of the class stared in awe. Three seconds was incredibly fast. It was superhero speed.

 

Aizawa called the next pair. "Midoriya. Bakugo. You're up."

 

The air on the track instantly grew tense. The rest of the students exchanged nervous glances. They all remembered the starting gates of the Entrance Exam.

 

Bakugo stomped to the line. He didn't get into a standard running stance. He held his hands behind his back, palms facing backward, small sparks already popping. He was going to use his explosions to fly down the track.

 

Izuku stepped up to his lane. He closed his eyes.

 

Shift.

 

The transformation was subtle but profound. Izuku didn't fully morph his face or torso, but his legs cracked and popped, shifting violently into a reverse-jointed, digitigrade structure. His shoes, heavily modified for this exact purpose, tore open at the toes as five-inch, adamantium-hard sickle claws slid out, digging deep into the synthetic rubber of the track. A heavy, muscular, emerald-scaled tail burst from his tailbone, acting as a flawless aerodynamic counterweight.

 

Izuku dropped to all fours. He didn't look like a runner. He looked like a feral beast coiled to pounce on its prey. His golden eyes snapped open, locking onto the finish line fifty meters away.

 

Iida watched from the sidelines, analyzing Izuku’s posture. What an unorthodox stance. He’s placing all his weight on his hands and the balls of his feet. The biomechanics are completely foreign. Can he really beat my time with that posture?

 

Bakugo glared sideways at Izuku. "Don't think I'm gonna let you show me up, Deku."

 

Izuku didn't look at him. "Distance: fifty meters," Izuku whispered to himself. "Target velocity: Mach 0.4. Do not exceed, or the wind pressure will injure the other students."

 

"Runners, on your marks," the machine chimed.

 

Bakugo's hands began to glow fiercely.

 

Bang.

 

Bakugo fired, screaming furiously as twin explosions propelled him forward.

 

But Izuku was already gone.

 

The machine didn't capture a run. The human eye didn't register a sprint. There was simply a deafening CRACK like a whip made of thunder. The synthetic rubber of the track directly beneath Izuku’s feet vaporized into a cloud of burnt dust and melted plastic.

 

A localized gust of wind slammed into Bakugo, nearly throwing him off balance mid-air. The rest of the class had to shield their eyes as a dust cloud washed over them.

 

By the time the sound of the starting gun finished echoing across the field, Izuku was standing behind the finish line, completely motionless, his tail swaying gently behind him. He wasn't even breathing heavily.

 

The testing machine paused, seemingly struggling to process the data from its motion sensors. Finally, it emitted a high-pitched beep.

 

0.14 seconds.

 

A pin drop could have been heard on the field.

 

Bakugo crossed the finish line a full four seconds later, tumbling slightly, his eyes wide as he stared at the digital readout above Izuku’s lane. 0.14. It was a number that didn't make sense. It was impossible.

 

Iida took a step backward, his jaw hanging open, his glasses sliding down his nose. "Zero point... one four?" he whispered, his voice trembling. He looked down at his own legs, the engines suddenly feeling like cheap toys. "That's... that's over seven hundred miles per hour. From a dead stop. How did he not tear his own muscles off his bones?!"

 

Izuku let his legs shift back to their human plantigrade structure, the scales and tail melting away. He casually walked back to the group, offering Bakugo a small, polite nod as he passed.

 

Bakugo’s hands trembled. He ground his teeth so hard he tasted blood.

 

Aizawa looked at the smoking crater at the starting line, and then at Izuku. The teacher’s face remained entirely stoic, but inside, his analytical mind was racing. He held back. He calculated the exact amount of force needed to cross the distance in a fraction of a second without breaking the sound barrier and deafening his classmates. Absolute control over god-like power. Nedzu wasn't exaggerating.

 

"Next," Aizawa called out, snapping the class out of their stupor.

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of the physical tests were a massacre of standard metrics.

 

Grip strength? Izuku didn't just max out the machine; his scaled hand accidentally crushed the digital sensor into plastic dust when he squeezed too hard. (Score: Immeasurable).

 

Repeated Side Steps? Izuku moved so fast he created five distinct, solid afterimages, trapping the air between them into a miniature vortex that sent the testing equipment flying.

 

By the time they reached the final event—the softball throw—the hierarchy of Class 1-A had been irrevocably established. Bakugo was a powerhouse. Todoroki, the silent boy with ice powers, was a monster. But Izuku Midoriya was an anomaly. He was something entirely outside the realm of human competition.

 

"Midoriya. You're up," Aizawa said, tossing him a baseball.

 

Izuku caught it effortlessly. He walked into the throwing circle, kicking up a bit of dirt. Uraraka had just scored an 'Infinity' by making the ball weightless.

 

Izuku looked at the ball in his hand. My upper body strength is vastly superior to a normal human's, but it's not my primary weapon. My Quirk is centered in my core, my legs, and my tail. Throwing this with my arm will only yield about two or three hundred meters.

 

Izuku tossed the ball lightly in his hand. Then, he shifted.

 

But he didn't change his legs. He didn't armor his arms. Instead, he channeled the entirety of his Quirk's mass and energy into a single appendage.

 

From his lower back, his tail erupted. But it wasn't the sleek, aerodynamic tail he used for balancing at Mach speeds. This tail was massive—as thick as a telephone pole, layered with dense, interlocking, emerald-green scales that looked like dragon armor. It ended in a solid, club-like mass of pure bone and keratin.

 

The class watched in confusion.

 

"What is he doing?" Kirishima asked, leaning forward. "Is he not going to throw it?"

 

Izuku tossed the ball straight up into the air. He watched it rise. Ten feet. Fifteen feet.

 

As the ball reached its apex and began to fall, Izuku spun. He dropped his center of gravity, pivoting perfectly on his left heel. He channeled every ounce of fast-twitch muscle fiber in his core, whipping his massive, armored tail around like a biological baseball bat.

 

The speed of the swing was invisible. The impact, however, was apocalyptic.

 

KRA-OOOOOM!

 

It didn't sound like a hit; it sounded like a cannon firing. The solid bone club of his tail struck the small baseball dead center. A massive shockwave rippled out from the circle, flattening the grass for fifty yards.

 

The ball didn't just fly; it ignited. The sheer kinetic friction of the impact caused the air around the ball to compress and burn. A trail of white-hot plasma painted the sky as the ball broke the sound barrier instantly, vanishing over the horizon in a matter of milliseconds.

 

Izuku slowly stood back up, his massive tail dissolving back into his body. He stretched his back, popping a few vertebrae, and looked at Aizawa.

 

Aizawa held up the digital tracker. He didn't say a word. He just turned the screen for the class to see.

 

943.8 meters.

 

"Nine hundred meters?!" Kaminari shrieked, grabbing his hair. "He just batted it out of the atmosphere with his tail! What kind of Quirk is that?!"

 

Bakugo was shaking. His entire body was vibrating with a rage so pure it was terrifying. Ever since they were four years old, Bakugo had promised himself he would surpass the monster. He had trained until his hands bled. He had created explosions that could level buildings. But no matter what he did, Izuku was always there, untouched, unfazed, and vastly, impossibly superior.

 

"DEKU!" Bakugo roared, completely losing his mind. He lunged forward, explosions roaring from both palms, aiming straight for Izuku’s back. "TELL ME HOW YOU DID THAT! WHAT KIND OF TRICK IS THIS?!"

 

Izuku didn't even turn around. His ears twitched. His slit-eyes tracked Bakugo's reflection in the window of the distant school building.

 

Before Bakugo could close the gap, Aizawa’s capturing weapon lashed out like a viper, wrapping tightly around Bakugo’s torso and arms. Aizawa’s hair stood on end, his eyes glowing a fierce crimson.

 

Bakugo’s explosions fizzled out instantly. He struggled against the binding, snarling like a rabid dog. "What the—?! Let me go!"

 

"Stop making me use my Quirk," Aizawa groaned, his eyes bloodshot. "It dries out my eyes. We're wasting time. Midoriya, step out of the circle."

 

Izuku turned around. He looked at Bakugo, trapped and raging in the cloth. There was no fear in Izuku’s eyes. There wasn't even anger. There was just a calm, terrifying pity. It was the look a lion gives a barking dog behind a fence.

 

"You rely too much on your ignition time, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, walking past the restrained boy. "In real combat, I would have broken your jaw before your sweat sparked. Calm down."

 

Bakugo stopped struggling. The sheer, cold truth in Izuku’s voice cut through his rage like ice. He glared at Izuku's back as Aizawa released him, his pride fractured into a thousand pieces.

 

The Quirk Apprehension Test concluded. Nobody was expelled. Aizawa called it a "rational deception," though Izuku’s sharp ears caught the teacher's heartbeat skipping slightly on the lie. Izuku placed first overall, an undisputed, untouchable number one. Bakugo took third, just behind Todoroki.

 

The hierarchy was set. Izuku Midoriya was the Apex.

 

 

 

 

The next day, Hero Basic Training commenced.

 

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

 

The class erupted into cheers, completely starstruck. Izuku couldn't help but smile, his tail instinctively wanting to wag beneath his uniform, though he forcefully suppressed it.

 

"Today, we are doing Combat Training!" All Might announced, striking a pose. "And to go with it... your Hero Costumes!"

 

The wall slid open, revealing numbered metal cases.

 

Ten minutes later, Ground Beta was filled with a colorful array of heroes. There was armor, capes, utility belts, and masks.

 

Izuku stepped out of the tunnel last.

 

His costume was a masterpiece of biomechanical engineering, requested specifically to accommodate his unique physiology. He wore a sleek, skin-tight, matte-black and emerald-green bodysuit made of a highly advanced, ultra-stretch polymer. It was designed to expand and contract instantly to accommodate the sudden addition of muscle mass, scales, and his tail. The lower back had a specialized opening.

 

He didn't wear shoes. Instead, his legs were wrapped in a durable, flexible mesh up to the knee, leaving his feet completely bare to allow his sickle-claws full deployment and traction. A dark green, aerodynamic half-mask covered the lower part of his face, filtering out overwhelming scents that might trigger his feral instincts, while leaving his glowing amber eyes exposed.

 

He looked like a shadow, a sleek, reptilian ninja built for one thing: the hunt.

 

"Whoa, Midoriya, your costume is intense!" Uraraka cheered, jogging over in her pink and black spacesuit. "It looks so cool! Kind of scary, but cool!"

 

"Thanks, Uraraka," Izuku replied, his voice slightly muffled by the mask. "Yours is very functional for a gravity-based Quirk."

 

"Alright, listen up!" All Might called out. "The situation is this! The villains have hidden a nuclear weapon in their hideout! The heroes must infiltrate and either secure the weapon or capture the villains! We will draw lots!"

 

Izuku watched as All Might pulled the letters.

 

"Team A: Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka! You are the Heroes!"

"Team D: Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida! You are the Villains!"

 

The air in the staging ground immediately grew heavy. Izuku looked across the crowd. Bakugo was staring right at him, a sadistic, desperate grin spreading across his face beneath his explosive grenade gauntlets.

 

Iida chopped his arm. "A fitting matchup! We will defend our fortress with honor, Bakugo!"

 

Bakugo ignored him. "I'm going to kill him," he muttered.

 

Ten minutes later, Bakugo and Iida were inside the building. Izuku and Uraraka stood outside, looking up at the multi-story structure.

 

"Midoriya," Uraraka said nervously, fiddling with her helmet. "Bakugo... he really hates you, doesn't he? He's going to come straight for us."

 

Izuku closed his eyes. The ambient noise of the fake city faded. He tuned his hearing, filtering through the wind and the hum of electronics. He heard it. Five stories up. The heavy, rhythmic thumping of Iida's boots pacing. And lower... second floor... the rapid, aggressive heartbeat of Katsuki Bakugo. He could smell the burnt caramel scent of nitroglycerin wafting through the open windows.

 

"He doesn't hate me, Uraraka," Izuku said, opening his slit-eyes. "He hates that he can't beat me. And you're right. He's not going to defend the weapon. He's going to hunt me."

 

Izuku turned to her, his posture shifting. He dropped low, his legs cracking as they shifted into their digitigrade, raptor form. The claws clicked against the pavement. The heavy green tail slid out from his suit, swaying methodically.

 

"Here is the plan," Izuku said, his voice dropping an octave, carrying the vibrating purr of the Predator Drive. "I am going to enter the building first. I will draw Kacchan away. He won't care about you or the bomb once he sees me. I will keep him occupied. You use your Quirk to float up the side of the building and enter through a window near the top floor. Locate Iida, secure the weapon."

 

"What about you?" Uraraka asked, slightly intimidated by his feral posture. "Can you handle Bakugo in a tight space? His explosions are huge."

 

Izuku’s mask hid his smile, but his glowing eyes curved in amusement. "Tight spaces are his domain, yes. But he’s playing a bomber’s game. I play a hunter’s game."

 

A buzzer echoed across the city. "BEGIN INOOR COMBAT TRAINING!" All Might announced.

 

 

 

 

 

The inside of the building was dark, lit only by shafts of sunlight piercing through the dusty windows. The corridors were a maze of concrete pillars and tight corners.

 

Bakugo stalked down the second-floor hallway, his gauntlets clanking against his forearms. He had completely abandoned the weapon, much to Iida’s furious protests over the earpiece.

 

I don't care about this stupid test, Bakugo thought, his teeth grinding. He made me look like a fool on the track. He made me look weak. He thinks he’s untouchable because he can run fast in a straight line. But in here? In these halls? There’s nowhere to run. I’m going to fill these corridors with fire and blast his scales off.

 

"DEKU!" Bakugo roared, his voice echoing through the empty building. "COME OUT! YOU CAN'T HIDE FOREVER!"

 

Silence.

 

Bakugo marched forward, turning a corner. The hallway was empty. He fired a small warning explosion, blasting a hole in the wall.

 

"Don't tell me you're scared!" Bakugo yelled.

 

High above, clinging to the ceiling in the shadows, Izuku watched him.

 

Izuku’s claws were dug deep into the concrete of the ceiling, suspending him completely upside down like a massive, reptilian spider. His breathing was so slow it was imperceptible. His dark suit blended perfectly with the shadows.

 

The Predator Drive was humming in his brain. It analyzed Bakugo’s gait, the tension in his shoulders, the sweat accumulating on his palms.

 

He's tense. Overextending. Looking only at eye level.

 

Bakugo walked directly beneath Izuku.

 

Izuku didn't make a sound. He simply unlatched his claws and let gravity pull him down.

 

He dropped silently behind Bakugo. As his feet hit the floor, his tail whipped out, lightly tapping the back of Bakugo’s left knee.

 

Bakugo flinched, spinning around instantly. "DIE!" he screamed, unleashing a massive, blinding explosion that engulfed the entire hallway in roaring flames.

 

The fire cleared, scorching the walls and ceiling black. Bakugo panted, grinning wildly. "Got you, you fast bastard."

 

"You missed."

 

The voice didn't come from the smoke. It came from directly above Bakugo’s head.

 

Bakugo looked up just in time to see Izuku. In the millisecond before the explosion had detonated, Izuku had leaped straight up, bouncing off the ceiling, and was now hurtling downward.

 

Before Bakugo could raise his hands, Izuku’s feet slammed into Bakugo’s shoulders, using him as a springboard. Izuku kicked off with incredible force, sending Bakugo crashing face-first into the concrete floor.

 

Izuku landed ten feet down the hall, turning around smoothly, his tail swishing. "0.4 seconds, Kacchan. That's how long it takes you to react. I can do a lot in 0.4 seconds."

 

Bakugo scrambled to his feet, blood dripping from his nose. His eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated fury. "SHUT UP!"

 

Bakugo lunged, firing a continuous stream of explosions behind him to propel himself forward like a rocket. He closed the gap in an instant, swinging a massive right hook laced with nitroglycerin straight at Izuku’s face.

 

Izuku didn't just dodge; he flowed.

 

He leaned back, the fiery fist missing his nose by a millimeter. Izuku dropped his hands to the floor, transforming into a blur of kinetic motion.

 

What followed was a breathtaking, horrifying display of apex mobility.

 

Bakugo unleashed hell. He fired explosion after explosion, blasting craters into the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. The building shook violently.

 

But he couldn't hit the target.

 

Izuku was a pinball of kinetic energy. He bounded off the left wall, ricocheted off the ceiling, bounced off the right wall, and landed behind Bakugo. Every time Bakugo turned to fire, Izuku was already gone, leaving only a fading afterimage and a gust of wind that fanned the flames.

 

"STAND STILL!" Bakugo shrieked, firing wildly, blowing a hole through the floorboards.

 

Izuku bounded across the ceiling, his claws tearing through the concrete. He's losing his temper. His movements are becoming wider. He's relying entirely on his gauntlets to do the damage. It's time to end this.

 

"Uraraka," Izuku whispered into his earpiece, hanging upside down in the smoke. "Status?"

 

"I'm at the weapon room!" Uraraka’s voice crackled. "Iida is completely distracted by the explosions! I'm moving in!"

 

"Understood," Izuku replied.

 

Bakugo heard the murmur. He stopped firing, panting heavily, his suit scorched and dusty. He looked up, spotting the glowing amber eyes in the smoke above him.

 

Bakugo slowly raised his right arm, grabbing the pin of his massive grenade gauntlet. "You think you're so smart, Deku. You think you can just bounce around forever. But you can't dodge an attack that fills the entire room."

 

In the control room, All Might bolted upright. "Young Bakugo! Stop! Are you trying to kill him?! If you pull that pin, you'll bring the building down!"

 

"If he's as fast as he thinks he is, he won't die!" Bakugo roared, yanking the pin.

 

A colossal, blinding torrent of fire erupted from the gauntlet. It wasn't an explosion; it was a concentrated laser of pure, expanding thermal destruction. It filled the entire hallway, vaporizing the walls and surging straight toward Izuku.

 

There was no room to dodge. The fire consumed everything.

 

In the control room, the class screamed.

 

But Izuku Midoriya did not run from the fire. He commanded the air around it.

 

Hanging on the ceiling, Izuku dropped to the floor directly in the path of the inferno. His slit-eyes dilated wildly. The Predator Drive seized control of his motor functions.

 

He needed to redirect the kinetic energy of the blast.

 

Izuku crouched low, his tail planted firmly. He began to spin.

 

He spun on one foot, using his sickle claws to anchor himself, moving his body at over Mach 1.5 in a tight, stationary circle. He became a localized centrifuge.

 

When the torrent of fire hit him, it didn't burn him. The sheer velocity of his spinning created a hyper-pressurized vacuum shield of displaced air. The flames hit the vacuum and were violently pulled into the vortex, swirling around Izuku like a fiery tornado.

 

Bakugo watched in absolute horror as his ultimate attack was caught, spun, and redirected outward, blasting harmlessly through the windows and the ceiling, leaving Izuku completely untouched in the center of the scorched corridor.

 

Izuku stopped spinning. Smoke steamed off his scales. The floor around him was molten glass.

 

Bakugo’s gauntlet smoked, completely empty. He stood frozen, his mind completely unable to process the god-tier display of physics he had just witnessed.

 

He deflected it. He deflected an explosion with pure speed.

 

Izuku didn't give him time to recover.

 

Crack.

 

Izuku crossed the thirty feet between them in 0.05 seconds.

 

Bakugo barely blinked before Izuku was inside his guard. Izuku dropped low, swinging his heavy, armored tail in a brutal sweep. The tail struck Bakugo’s ankles with the force of a sledgehammer.

 

Bakugo’s legs were knocked entirely out from under him, launching him horizontally into the air.

 

Before Bakugo hit the ground, Izuku shifted his weight, driving his right knee into Bakugo’s chest, slamming the explosive boy into the concrete floor with a force that cracked the foundation.

 

THUD.

 

All the air rushed out of Bakugo’s lungs in a violent gasp.

 

Izuku pinned Bakugo’s right arm with his knee. He raised his right foot, placing it gently, but with terrifying intent, across Bakugo’s neck.

 

Click.

 

The five-inch, razor-sharp sickle claw extended from Izuku’s toe, resting a millimeter away from Bakugo’s carotid artery.

 

The building was silent. The fires crackled softly in the background.

 

Bakugo looked up, his crimson eyes wide, trembling, staring into the glowing, feral amber slits of the predator standing over him. Izuku wasn't smiling. He wasn't gloating. He looked entirely bored.

 

"You rely on power, Kacchan," Izuku whispered, the guttural purr vibrating against Bakugo’s throat. "But power is nothing without the speed to deliver it. You're too slow."

 

Over the earpiece, Uraraka’s voice rang out, breathless and triumphant. "I secured the weapon! Iida is captured!"

 

A heavy buzzer echoed through the building.

 

"HERO TEAM WINS!" All Might’s voice announced over the speakers, though he sounded slightly shaken by the absolute dismantling he had just watched.

 

Izuku slowly retracted his claw. He stepped off Bakugo, the feral light leaving his eyes as his scales retracted back into his suit. He offered a hand down to Bakugo.

 

Bakugo didn't take it. He lay on the cracked concrete, staring at the ceiling, his breathing ragged. For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo felt completely and utterly powerless. The gap between them wasn't a crack; it was a canyon.

 

Izuku lowered his hand. He turned and walked down the hallway, leaving the bomber in the ashes of his own defeat. The Apex had claimed his territory, and no one in U.A. would ever challenge his speed again.

 

The bus ride to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint was supposed to be a quiet, nerve-wracking journey, but Class 1-A was entirely too energetic for silence.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat near the back, his posture relaxed, his eyes gazing out the window at the passing city. He was in his hero costume, the sleek, matte-black and emerald-green bodysuit feeling like a second skin. Beside him, Ochaco Uraraka was humming a cheerful tune, while across the aisle, Tsuyu Asui—the frog-quirked girl—was staring intently at him.

 

"Hey, Midoriya," Tsuyu said bluntly, her large, dark eyes unblinking. "I speak my mind. Your Quirk is incredible, but it's fundamentally a mutation, right? You look a bit like a dinosaur when you transform. Ribbit."

 

The chatter on the bus died down. Even Katsuki Bakugo, who was sitting in the front row with his arms crossed and his eyes squeezed shut in perpetual anger, seemed to lean back slightly to listen. Ever since the battle trials, Bakugo had been unusually quiet. The explosive boy had encountered a wall he couldn't blast through, and it was eating him alive.

 

Izuku turned his head, offering Tsuyu a polite smile. The faint green scales on his neck shimmered in the sunlight pouring through the bus windows. "You're right, Asui. It's a localized genetic atavism combined with a physiological mutation. The official registry calls it Apex Raptor. It gives me the biological hardware of a dromaeosaurid, specifically tailored for extreme kinetic velocity."

 

"But you move so fast," Eijiro Kirishima leaned over his seat, his sharp teeth bared in a grin. "Like, faster than anything I've ever seen! During the 50-meter dash, you literally vanished. How do you not, you know, explode from hitting a wall?"

 

"Physics and a lot of red meat," Izuku replied calmly. "My bone density is roughly five times that of a normal human's, and my muscle fibers are essentially organic shock absorbers. But there are heavy drawbacks. Moving at supersonic speeds places immense G-forces on my internal organs. If I turn too sharply without using my tail as a counterweight, I could snap my own spine. Plus, the caloric burn is astronomical. If I run at Mach 1 for more than ten minutes without eating, my body will start cannibalizing its own muscle tissue."

 

The class stared at him in awe and slight horror.

 

"Mach 1?!" Denki Kaminari yelled, grabbing his hair. "You can break the sound barrier?! Are you kidding me?!"

 

"I can push past Mach 2 if I absolutely have to," Izuku said, his voice dropping slightly, "but the friction begins to melt the keratin in my claws, and the shockwaves can cause immense collateral damage. That's why I hold back. A hero's job is to save people, not deafen them with sonic booms."

 

"Man, that's a pro-level Quirk," Kirishima sighed, looking at his own hardened hands. "My Hardening is great for taking a hit, but it's not flashy at all."

 

"I think your Quirk is amazing, Kirishima," Izuku said sincerely. "Durability is a cornerstone of frontline combat. In a confined space, a durable hero can hold the line against dozens of enemies."

 

"We're here. Quiet down," Shota Aizawa's tired voice cut through the conversation as the bus hissed to a halt.

 

The students filed out of the bus, their eyes widening as they looked up at the colossal, domed structure before them. It looked like a massive stadium, entirely encased in glass and steel. Waiting for them at the entrance was a hero in a bulky, white spacesuit.

 

"Welcome, students!" the Space Hero, Thirteen, greeted them warmly. "I've been waiting for you! Inside, you will find various disaster zones: a shipwreck, a landslide, a fire, a windstorm, and more. I created this facility to prepare you for all types of disasters! I call it the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or USJ for short!"

 

The class cheered, completely starry-eyed. Izuku, however, noticed Aizawa walking over to Thirteen, muttering something under his breath. Izuku’s sensitive ears twitched, picking up fragments of the conversation.

 

"...All Might isn't here... pushed himself too hard this morning... resting in the lounge..."

 

Izuku frowned slightly, but his attention was pulled back as Thirteen began a very serious speech.

 

"Before we begin, I have one or two... or three... or four things to say," Thirteen held up a thick, gloved finger. "You all know my Quirk, Black Hole. I can suck up any material and turn it to dust. It is a Quirk that has saved many lives from disaster. However... it is also a Quirk that could easily be used to kill."

 

The atmosphere in the room shifted from excitement to solemnity.

 

"In our superhuman society, Quirks are heavily regulated," Thirteen continued. "But please do not forget that many of you possess Quirks that, if utilized improperly, can cause catastrophic harm. Aizawa's physical tests showed you your potential. All Might's combat trials showed you the danger of using that power against others. Today, you will learn how to use your Quirks to save lives. Do not forget that your powers exist to help others."

 

Izuku looked down at his hands. Beneath the black polymer of his gloves, he could feel the sharp tips of his claws resting against his skin. He understood Thirteen’s words better than anyone. His Predator Drive was a constant, simmering voice in the back of his head, urging him to hunt, to tear, to establish dominance. He fought a mental war every day to ensure his power remained a shield, not a slaughterhouse.

 

"Alright, that's enough," Aizawa said, stepping forward. "First, we'll—"

 

Bzzzt.

 

The massive overhead lights of the USJ suddenly flickered. A low, electrical hum echoed through the dome, followed by the shattering of several bulbs. Down in the central plaza, the massive water fountain stuttered, its streams dying out completely.

 

"Did the power go out?" Kaminari asked, looking around.

 

Izuku’s head snapped up. The hair on the back of his neck stood entirely on end. His amber eyes narrowed, the pupils instantly contracting into razor-thin vertical slits. His heart rate, normally a steady drumbeat, instantly spiked.

 

Threat. Massive threat.

 

He didn't smell ozone or burning wires. He smelled something entirely unnatural. He smelled the cold, metallic tang of blood, the foul stench of decay, and the deep, suffocating void of a vacuum.

 

Down in the central plaza, directly in front of the dead fountain, a speck of black mist appeared. It expanded rapidly, tearing a hole in reality, swirling into a massive, purple-black vortex.

 

"Gather together and don't move!" Aizawa barked, his voice laced with sudden, absolute panic. He ripped the capturing weapon from around his neck, pulling his yellow goggles down over his eyes. "Thirteen, protect the students!"

 

"What is that?" Kirishima asked, stepping forward, squinting at the portal. "Is this like the entrance exam? Does the training start right away?"

 

"Don't step forward!" Aizawa roared, his terrifying intensity freezing the class in place.

 

From the swirling purple mist, a hand emerged. It was a pale, sickly hand, gripping the edge of the portal. A man stepped through, covered in disembodied, grayish hands clutching his face, arms, and torso. He had pale blue hair and red eyes that scanned the students with a mixture of boredom and manic rage.

 

Behind him, a hulking, nightmarish monstrosity stepped into the light. It was massive, heavily muscled, with skin the color of a bruised plum. Its brain was completely exposed, a horrifying dome of gray matter and bulging veins. A massive bird-like beak rested beneath empty, dead eyes.

 

And then came the rest. Dozens, then hundreds, of villains began pouring out of the portal, wielding pipes, swords, and manifesting dangerous-looking mutant and emitter Quirks.

 

"Those are villains," Aizawa said, his voice cold as ice.

 

The word hit the class like a physical blow. Villains? Here? In U.A.? It was impossible. The security was supposed to be impenetrable.

 

"Where is he?" the hand-covered man scratched his neck violently, his dry skin flaking off. "I went through the trouble of bringing this whole crowd... and All Might... the Symbol of Peace... isn't here? I wonder if he'll show up if we kill some kids."

 

Izuku didn't hear the rest of the villain's monologue. His eyes were locked dead onto the bird-brained monster.

 

The Predator Drive was screaming at him. His hindbrain, a biological supercomputer designed to evaluate threats, analyzed the monster in a fraction of a second. Muscle density: off the charts. Stance: unnatural, unfeeling. Threat level: Apex. Izuku’s body began to undergo micro-shifts. His fingernails elongated, slicing through the tips of his gloves. His jaw clenched, his teeth sharpening.

 

"Aizawa-sensei!" Izuku called out, his voice already dropping into a guttural purr. "That large one... the one with the exposed brain. It's not human. It's a bio-engineered weapon. Do not engage it in close combat!"

 

Aizawa glanced back at Izuku, surprised by the boy's clinical, terrifyingly accurate assessment. But the underground hero didn't have time to process it. "Thirteen! Start the evacuation! Try to contact the school! These villains had to have a way to bypass the sensors. One of them is likely a radio-wave jammer. Kaminari, try your Quirk on the comms!"

 

"Yes, sir!" Kaminari panicked, tapping his headset.

 

Aizawa didn't wait. He leaped down the massive staircase, his scarf billowing behind him. He plunged directly into the army of villains, moving with lethal, fluid grace, erasing their Quirks and smashing their faces into the concrete.

 

"We need to go!" Thirteen urged, waving the students back toward the heavy steel doors.

 

But as the class turned to run, the purple mist on the plaza floor vanished.

 

In a blink, it reappeared directly in front of the exit, towering over them in a massive, swirling dome. Two glowing yellow eyes opened within the mist.

 

"I am afraid I cannot allow that," the mist spoke, a deeply cultured, chilling voice. "Greetings. We are the League of Villains. It may be presumptuous of us, but we have invited ourselves into the home of the heroes... to bid All Might take his final breath."

 

Bakugo and Kirishima didn't wait for permission. With synchronized roars, they lunged forward. Bakugo unleashed a massive explosion directly into the center of the mist, while Kirishima swung a hardened fist. The shockwave rattled the glass dome.

 

"Did we get him?!" Kirishima yelled.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. "Get back! He doesn't have a physical body to hit!"

 

"My, my," Kurogiri said, the mist expanding rapidly, entirely unaffected by the blast. "That was close. You students are indeed formidable. But it is my job to scatter you... and let you meet your ends."

 

The mist surged forward like a tidal wave. It washed over the students. Izuku felt a terrifying sensation of weightlessness, a complete loss of kinetic control. The world around him dissolved into a swirling vortex of purple and black.

 

 

 

 

Thud.

 

Izuku hit the ground hard. His enhanced reflexes kicked in instantly. He tucked his chin, rolled over his right shoulder, and sprang to his feet in a defensive crouch.

 

He took a rapid breath, his lungs filtering the new environment. The air was thin, dry, and smelled of dust and rust. He was standing on a steep, rocky incline surrounded by jagged cliffs and massive boulders. The Mountain Zone.

 

"Oof!"

 

"Kyaaa!"

 

Two heavy thuds sounded behind him. Izuku spun around. Momo Yaoyorozu and Denki Kaminari had just fallen out of thin air, crashing onto the unforgiving rocks. Kaminari groaned, clutching his head, while Momo sat up, rubbing her elbow, her eyes wide with fear.

 

"Where... where are we?" Kaminari panicked, looking around at the desolate, rocky terrain. "Did we get warped?"

 

"The Mountain Zone," Izuku stated flatly. He didn't look at them. His glowing amber eyes were scanning the ridge lines above them.

 

"Midoriya!" Momo gasped, relieved to see him. "We have to find the others. We need to get back to the entrance!"

 

"We aren't going anywhere yet," Izuku said softly. His hands twitched. The Predator Drive was flooding his system with adrenaline.

 

"What do you mean?" Kaminari asked, stepping forward.

 

"He means," a raspy voice echoed from the cliffs above, "that you kids are dead meat."

 

From behind the boulders, villains began to emerge. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. They poured out from the crevices, completely surrounding the three students on the rocky plateau. They were armed with heavy machetes, metal pipes, and assault rifles. Several of them sparked with elemental Quirks—fire, earth, and electricity.

 

"Looks like we got a lucky draw," a large man with a reptilian mutation sneered, cracking his knuckles. "Just three little brats. The boss said to rough 'em up, but I say we break their legs so they can't run."

 

Kaminari took a step back, his face completely pale. He raised his hands, small sparks of electricity dancing between his fingers. "M-Midoriya... Yaoyorozu... what do we do? There's too many of them!"

 

Momo grit her teeth, her hands glowing as she prepared to use her Creation Quirk. "I can make weapons, but I can't arm us fast enough to fight off thirty armed adults. Midoriya, we need a tactical retreat!"

 

"No retreat," Izuku said.

 

He slowly stood up straight. He reached down and unzipped the lower back portion of his hero suit.

 

"Yaoyorozu," Izuku’s voice was completely different. The soft-spoken, polite boy was gone. What replaced him was a commanding, terrifyingly cold frequency that demanded absolute obedience. "Use your Quirk. Create a dome shield over yourself and Kaminari. Make it out of reinforced tungsten alloy. At least three inches thick. Leave no gaps."

 

Momo blinked, stunned by the sheer authority in his tone. "But what about you?!"

 

"Do it," Izuku growled, his slit-eyes glowing fiercely in the shadow of the mountain. "Do not drop the shield until I tell you. Kaminari, touch the inside of the shield. If any of them try to pry it open, discharge your electricity to fry them. Go. Now."

 

The villains began to charge down the slopes, screaming battle cries.

 

Momo didn't argue. She slapped her hands onto the rocky ground. Her Quirk flared brilliantly. A massive, heavy dome of dark gray tungsten erupted from her skin, expanding rapidly over her and Kaminari, sealing them inside completely.

 

"What is he doing?!" Kaminari yelled from inside the dome, banging on the metal. "He's out there alone!"

 

Outside, Izuku stood entirely alone against a tidal wave of thirty murderers.

 

He took a deep breath.

 

Shift.

 

The transformation was explosive. His bones cracked loudly, elongating and fortifying. His sleek hero suit stretched seamlessly as massive, coiled muscles packed with fast-twitch fibers expanded across his frame. The emerald-green scales erupted over his face, arms, and chest, acting as flawless biological armor. His jaw pushed forward, his teeth lengthening into serrated daggers.

 

From the open slit in his suit, his tail burst forth—a massive, muscular appendage, heavy enough to crush bone, swaying deliberately behind him.

 

He dropped to all fours, his legs snapping into their reverse-jointed structure. The five-inch sickle claws clicked out from his toes, digging deeply into the solid rock beneath him.

 

The charging villains skidded to a halt, their eyes widening in shock as the skinny teenager morphed into a literal, prehistoric monster.

 

Izuku let out a roar—a deafening, blood-curdling screech that echoed off the canyon walls, causing rocks to tumble from the peaks.

 

"What the hell is that thing?!" a villain with a sword screamed, stepping back.

 

"It's just a mutant brat! Shoot him!" another yelled, raising an assault rifle.

 

Izuku didn't wait for them to pull the triggers.

 

BOOM.

 

The rock beneath Izuku’s feet shattered into dust. He vanished.

 

The villain with the rifle didn't even have time to blink. A gust of wind, carrying the force of a hurricane, slammed into him. Izuku materialized right in front of the man, moving so fast his body was a blur of green and black.

 

Izuku didn't punch him. He didn't need to. Moving at Mach 0.8, Izuku simply grabbed the barrel of the assault rifle and twisted. The heavy steel weapon crumpled like tin foil. In the same fluid motion, Izuku swung his heavy tail. It struck the man in the chest with the blunt force trauma of a car crash. The villain was launched forty feet through the air, crashing into the cliff face and slumping to the ground, instantly unconscious.

 

"He's fast!" a villain with fire-hands yelled, unleashing a torrent of flames. "Burn him!"

 

The fire roared toward Izuku. But Izuku wasn't there.

 

He had already bounded up the side of the cliff, his claws punching deep into the stone, defying gravity as he ran horizontally along the canyon wall. The villains spun around, trying to track him, but it was impossible. He was moving over six hundred miles an hour.

 

Vector: down. Targets: cluster of five.

 

Izuku pushed off the wall, diving into the group like a missile. He landed directly in the center of the five villains. Before they could even raise their weapons, Izuku dropped low, spinning on his heel. His tail whipped in a perfect 360-degree arc.

 

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

 

The sound of shattering bones echoed as his tail swept their legs out from under them. As they fell, Izuku moved, delivering rapid, precise, non-lethal strikes with the blunt back of his hands to their temples. The five men hit the ground, completely out cold, before their brains even registered the pain.

 

"Don't let him get close!" a villain screamed in sheer panic, firing a shotgun blindly into the dust cloud.

 

Izuku was playing a game of three-dimensional chess, and his opponents were barely moving.

 

The Predator Drive was fully unleashed, but Izuku held the absolute veto power. The feral instinct screamed at him to use his sickle claws to sever arteries and end the threats permanently. But the hero within him reigned supreme. He was not a killer. He was an apex weapon of crowd control.

 

He darted through the rocks, becoming a pinball of kinetic destruction. He bounded from boulder to cliff face, ricocheting through the canyon. Every time his feet touched a surface, a localized sonic boom cracked the air.

 

Boom. Boom. Boom.

 

The villains were thrown into absolute disarray. They couldn't fight what they couldn't see. Weapons were snatched from their hands and snapped in half. Men were yanked backward by an invisible force and slammed into the ground.

 

A group of ten villains huddled together, back-to-back, holding swords and pipes in a desperate circle of defense.

 

"Where is he?! Where is he?!" one of them sobbed, completely terrified.

 

Izuku decided to show them.

 

He dropped from the sky, landing twenty feet away from the group. But he didn't attack them. Instead, he dropped into a sprinter's stance and began to run in a circle around them.

 

He accelerated. Mach 0.5. Mach 0.9. Mach 1.1.

 

A massive sonic boom shattered the remaining loose rocks on the cliffside. Izuku became a continuous, unbroken ring of green light surrounding the ten men.

 

Inside the circle, the villains suddenly gasped for air. The sheer velocity of Izuku’s movement was violently displacing the air, pulling the oxygen out of the center of the ring, creating a hyper-pressurized vacuum.

 

"I... can't... breathe..." a villain choked out, dropping his sword and falling to his knees, clutching his throat.

 

One by one, the lack of oxygen caused the men to pass out, collapsing into a heap on the ground.

 

Izuku snapped his tail down, breaking his momentum. He skidded across the rocks, coming to a dead halt. Steam hissed from his open jaws. His chest heaved, pulling in massive amounts of oxygen to refuel his burning muscles.

 

Silence descended on the Mountain Zone.

 

Two minutes. It had taken him exactly two minutes.

 

Thirty armed, hardened criminals lay scattered across the rocky terrain, groaning in pain, completely incapacitated. Weapons were shattered, the ground was cratered, and not a single villain had managed to land a hit.

 

Izuku slowly stood up. He walked over to the tungsten dome. He tapped lightly on the metal with a single claw.

 

"Yaoyorozu," Izuku called out, his voice slightly raspy. "It's clear. Drop the shield."

 

The dome dissolved into glowing particles, revealing Momo and Kaminari huddled together. They looked out at the battlefield.

 

Kaminari’s jaw hit the dirt. His eyes bugged out of his head. "Midoriya... you... you beat all of them? By yourself?!"

 

Momo stared at the devastation. The craters, the pulverized weapons, the unconscious bodies. She looked at Izuku. His suit was dusty, and he was panting, but he wasn't injured in the slightest. His golden eyes were glowing intensely, and the sheer, raw power radiating off his transformed body was terrifying.

 

"You didn't even use your full speed, did you?" Momo whispered, awe and fear mixing in her voice.

 

Izuku looked down, his scales retracting slightly, though he kept his legs and tail deployed for mobility. "I had to hold back. If I went any faster, the shockwaves would have pulverized their internal organs, and the vacuum could have suffocated you both inside the shield. Are you two hurt?"

 

"No," Momo said, standing up, brushing off her knees. "We're perfectly fine, thanks to you."

 

Suddenly, Izuku’s ears pinned flat against his head.

 

"Midoriya?" Kaminari asked. "What is it?"

 

Izuku’s enhanced hearing cut through the ambient noise of the USJ. He wasn't listening to the Mountain Zone anymore. He was focused on the Central Plaza, hundreds of meters away.

 

He heard the sickening sound of flesh tearing. He heard the wet, heavy thud of a body hitting the concrete. And he smelled it—a massive, fresh wave of blood.

 

Aizawa's blood.

 

"Sensei," Izuku whispered, his pupils dilating wildly.

 

He didn't hesitate. "Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, hold onto my shoulders. Do not let go."

 

"Wait, what?!" Kaminari yelped.

 

Izuku grabbed both of their hands and pulled them firmly against his back, crouching low. "Tuck your heads. Do not open your mouths, or the wind pressure will collapse your lungs."

 

Before they could protest, Izuku kicked off.

 

He didn't break the sound barrier—he couldn't, not while carrying passengers—but he pushed his speed to the absolute human limit, hurtling down the steep, rocky slopes of the Mountain Zone at over two hundred miles an hour. Momo and Kaminari screamed, squeezing their eyes shut as the wind battered them.

 

Izuku navigated the treacherous terrain flawlessly, his tail whipping violently to counter-balance their combined weight. He reached the bottom of the mountain in seconds, sprinting across the artificial forest and bursting out onto the edge of the Central Plaza.

 

He skidded to a halt, dropping Momo and Kaminari behind a large concrete pillar. "Stay hidden," he commanded.

 

Izuku peered around the pillar.

 

What he saw made his blood run completely cold.

 

 

 

 

The Central Plaza was a bloodbath.

 

Dozens of villains lay unconscious, a testament to Aizawa's incredible skill. But Aizawa himself was broken.

 

The hulking, bird-brained monster—the Nomu—had Aizawa pinned to the ground. The creature's massive hand was wrapped entirely around Aizawa's right arm. With a sickening SNAP, the Nomu broke Aizawa's arm in half like a dry twig.

 

Aizawa screamed, a choked, agonized sound.

 

Standing over them was the man covered in hands, Shigaraki. He was laughing, a dry, raspy wheeze. "You're so cool, Eraserhead. But you're just a man. Your Quirk is suited for stealth, for one-on-one combat against standard villains. Not against raw, unadulterated power."

 

Shigaraki reached down. His pale fingers wrapped around Aizawa's right elbow.

 

Aizawa's eyes widened, completely bloodshot, desperately trying to keep his Quirk active. But the pain was too much. He blinked.

 

The moment his eyes closed, Shigaraki’s Quirk activated. The fabric of Aizawa's sleeve, and the flesh and bone beneath it, instantly began to turn gray, cracking and crumbling into dust.

 

"GAAAAAH!" Aizawa thrashed, blood pouring from the decaying wound.

 

"Nomu," Shigaraki said casually, stepping back. "Finish him. Crush his skull."

 

The Nomu let out a soulless shriek. It raised its massive, tree-trunk-sized fist high into the air. The muscles in its arm bulged, packing thousands of pounds of kinetic force into the strike. It brought the fist down, aiming directly for Aizawa's face.

 

Time stopped for Izuku.

 

His human brain registered the horror. His teacher was about to die. A man who had looked at him on the first day and challenged him to be better, about to have his head caved in.

 

But the Predator Drive didn't register fear. It registered a vector. It registered speed, distance, and mass.

 

Distance: fifty meters. Target: Eraserhead. Threat: Bio-engineered apex. Required Velocity: Maximum Output.

 

Izuku’s body went into complete overdrive. The safety limiters he placed on himself shattered. His jaw unhinged, a prehistoric, terrifying hiss escaping his throat. His leg muscles swelled, the fibers tearing and instantly attempting to heal in a horrific cycle of hyper-metabolic strain.

 

Izuku dropped lower than he ever had, his chest touching the concrete of the plaza.

 

He didn't just push off the ground. He detonated.

 

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

 

The pillar he had been hiding behind completely shattered from the shockwave. The concrete floor of the plaza was ripped up into the air in a fifty-foot wide crater.

 

Izuku didn't hit Mach 1. He bypassed it entirely.

 

MACH 2.5.

 

He moved so fast that the friction in the air generated a massive localized static discharge. Green lightning crackled around his body. He was no longer a boy, or even a mutant. He was a streak of pure, unadulterated kinetic wrath.

 

Fifty meters. Fifty meters is nothing to an object moving at almost two thousand miles per hour.

 

Shigaraki didn't see him move. The Nomu didn't see him move.

 

The Nomu’s fist slammed into the ground with the force of a meteor. The impact pulverized the concrete, sending a massive shockwave of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air.

 

Shigaraki cackled, covering his face from the wind. "Game over!"

 

The dust slowly began to clear. Shigaraki looked down at the crater, expecting to see the crushed remains of the underground hero.

 

But the crater was empty. The Nomu’s fist was buried in solid, empty concrete.

 

Shigaraki blinked. He rubbed his eyes through the gaps of the hand on his face. "What? Where is he? Did he dodge?!"

 

"No," a voice echoed across the plaza. It was a voice that did not sound human. It was deep, guttural, and vibrating with an ancient, terrifying fury.

 

Shigaraki and the Nomu slowly turned their heads.

 

Fifty feet away, standing near the edge of the fountain, was Izuku Midoriya.

 

The sight of him made Shigaraki take a step backward. Izuku was fully transformed. His emerald scales were smoking, his sickle-claws glowing a dull, angry orange from the sheer friction of the air. Green lightning sparked sporadically off his heavy tail.

 

And cradled gently in his scaled arms was the heavily bleeding, unconscious body of Shota Aizawa.

 

Izuku had crossed the fifty meters, scooped up a grown man, and carried him another fifty meters away, all in the microsecond it took the Nomu to bring its fist down. He moved faster than the Nomu’s bio-engineered brain could even send a signal to its eyes.

 

"What... what are you?" Shigaraki whispered, scratching his neck furiously. "You... you weren't on the roster. You're just a kid!"

 

Izuku didn't answer him. He carefully knelt down, laying Aizawa gently on the ground behind him. He looked at the mangled, decayed arm. A localized, furious roar built up in Izuku’s chest.

 

Izuku stood back up. He turned to face the Nomu.

 

The human side of Izuku was weeping for his teacher. But the Predator was in complete control now. And the Predator was looking at the Nomu.

 

The Nomu stood up, pulling its fist out of the crater. It looked at Izuku with its dead, empty eyes.

 

Izuku’s golden eyes glowed with the intensity of a dying star. The vertical slits contracted until they were almost invisible. He bared his serrated teeth, a low, rumbling growl tearing from his throat that shook the water in the plaza fountain.

 

The Nomu shrieked back, recognizing the challenge.

 

Two monsters. Two apex weapons. One forged in a laboratory to kill a god, and one born from the earth to break the sound barrier.

 

Izuku cracked his neck, his tail sweeping heavily across the ground.

 

"You hurt my flock," Izuku snarled, the words vibrating through the air like a physical force.

 

He dug his blazing sickle-claws into the concrete, locking his eyes onto the Nomu.

 

"Now, you bleed."