What if Deku was the reincarnation of Galactus

 

The world, Izuku Midoriya had learned at the tender age of four, was fundamentally, biologically, and cruelly unfair.

It was an axiom printed in the marrow of his bones, reiterated by the extra joint in his pinky toe. In a society where the extraordinary had become ordinary, where mankind had taken a sudden, sharp left turn on the evolutionary highway, to be born without a Quirk was to be a relic. An artifact of a bygone era. A blank canvas in a museum filled with vibrant, chaotic masterpieces. 

He was Quirkless. It was a clinical term for a societal death sentence. 

The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly through the windows of Aldera Junior High, casting long, mocking shadows across Izuku’s desk. The classroom was a cacophony of adolescent exuberance and raw, unfettered power. Desks rattled as a boy with stone for skin slammed his fist down; papers fluttered as a girl breathed miniature gales of wind. And at the front of the room, their teacher stood with a stack of career aptitude papers, a patronizing smile plastered across his face. 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your future," the teacher announced, his voice barely cutting through the din. "I'll pass out handouts for your future plans now, but... you're all pretty much planning to go into the hero course, right?"

The room erupted. Limbs extended, fire erupted from palms, eyes glowed with luminescent energy. It was a chorus of superhuman potential. 

Izuku sat in the middle of it all, shrinking into his uniform. He kept his head down, his green curls falling over his eyes, hiding the desperate, flicker of hope that refused to die in his chest. He raised his hand, a timid, trembling flag of surrender, but the gesture was swallowed by the sheer volume of his classmates.

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher chuckled, waving them down. "But remember, using your powers in school is against the rules!"

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these losers!" 

The voice was like a crack of thunder, instantly silencing the room. Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his feet propped up on his desk, a feral, arrogant grin stretching across his face. Smoke curled lazily from his fingertips. "They'll be lucky to end up as sidekicks to some busted D-lister. I'm the real deal."

The class erupted in offended shouts, but Bakugo merely laughed, the sound sharp and metallic. "Bring it on, extras!"

"Ah, Bakugo," the teacher said, glancing at a clipboard. "You're aiming for U.A. High, aren't you?"

A collective gasp swept through the room. U.A. The apex of hero academia. A fortress of prestige with an acceptance rate lower than a fraction of a percent. 

"That's right!" Bakugo vaulted onto his desk, his fists clenched, small explosions popping in his palms like firecrackers. "I aced the mock test. I'm the only one at this crappy middle school who has the stuff. I'm gonna surpass All Might and become the top hero! My name will be inscribed on the list of top earners!"

Izuku flinched. He knew what was coming next. He braced himself, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. 

"Oh, yeah," the teacher added, almost as an afterthought. "Midoriya wanted to go to U.A., too, right?"

Silence. A cold, heavy silence fell over the classroom. For a heartbeat, time stood still. Then, the laughter began. It wasn't just cruel; it was dismissive. It was the laughter reserved for a clown who didn't realize the joke was on him.

"Midoriya? No way!"

"You can't get in just by studying!"

"What can he even do? He's Quirkless!"

Izuku stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum. "T-There's no rule against it!" he stammered, his voice cracking, his face burning with a humiliation so deep it ached. "They got rid of that rule! I could be the first..."

He never finished the sentence. A blast of heat and concussive force slammed into his desk, throwing Izuku backward. He crashed onto the floor, the wind knocked out of him. Smoke billowed over his head as Bakugo stood towering above him, his crimson eyes burning with an irrational, all-consuming fury. 

"Listen up, Deku," Bakugo snarled, the derogatory nickname dripping with venom. "You're worse than the rest of these rejects. You're completely Quirkless. You really think you can rub shoulders with me?"

"N-No, wait, Kacchan!" Izuku scrambled backward until his back hit the wall. "I'm not trying to compete with you! I swear! It's just... it's been my dream since I was little. And... and there's no harm in trying, right?"

"Try?! What can you even do?!" Bakugo roared. "You're a Defenseless Izuku! You'll die in the exams! A Quirkless wannabe."

The rest of the day passed in a blur of numb misery. The final bell rang, signaling a temporary reprieve. Izuku remained at his desk, staring blankly at the cover of his notebook, Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13. He was carefully transcribing notes on Kamui Woods' recent debut when a scarred, calloused hand snatched the book away. 

"We're not done talking, Deku." 

Bakugo stood there, flanked by two of his lackeys. He weighed the notebook in his hand, a look of profound disgust on his face. 

"Kacchan, give it back," Izuku pleaded, though he made no move to reach for it. He knew better.

Bakugo didn't answer. He simply clapped his hands together, trapping the notebook between his palms. A bright, concussive flash filled the room. Izuku watched in horror as the heat scorched the cover, curling the edges of the pages and turning his hours of meticulous work into a smoldering, blackened mess. 

"Ah!" Izuku cried out.

Bakugo carelessly tossed the smoking ruin out the open window. It fluttered down into the koi pond below. "The best heroes out there showed signs of greatness from a young age," Bakugo said, his voice dropping to a low, menacing register. "I'll be the only one from this garbage school to make it to U.A. I'm a perfectionist, see? And I can't have a speck of dirt like you ruining my perfect origin story."

He placed a smoking, hot hand on Izuku's shoulder. The fabric of his uniform singed, the heat pressing uncomfortably close to his skin. 

"Don't even think of applying to U.A., nerd." 

Bakugo turned to leave, his lackeys snickering in his wake. Pausing at the door, Bakugo glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes devoid of any warmth or humanity. 

"If you want a Quirk so badly, there might be another way. Just pray that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof of the building."

The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Izuku froze. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. The sheer, callous cruelty of the suggestion paralyzed him. He stood there, trembling, until the footsteps faded down the hall. 

The walk home was a march through a hazy, sweltering purgatory. The cicadas screamed from the trees, a relentless, buzzing chorus that mirrored the static in Izuku’s mind. 

Take a swan dive.

He had fished his ruined notebook out of the koi pond, the ink bleeding across the damp, scorched pages. He held it tightly against his chest, as if it were a physical anchor keeping him tethered to the earth. 

He walked through a dark underpass, the shadows providing a brief respite from the glaring afternoon sun. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Idiot, he scolded himself, forcing a wobbly smile onto his face. What would he have done if I actually jumped? He’d be charged with instigating suicide. Think before you speak, Kacchan.

He tried to channel his childhood idol. He puffed out his chest, throwing his head back. "HA HA HA HA!" he forced out, the laugh sounding hollow and pathetic in the echoing concrete tunnel. "I will keep smiling... because I am..."

A squelching, wet sound interrupted him. It was a repulsive noise, like thick mud being stirred by a giant spoon. 

Izuku stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. A foul stench, a mix of open sewage, rotting garbage, and ozone, filled the tunnel. He turned around slowly. 

Rising from the manhole cover behind him was a nightmare. A massive, amorphous blob of dark green, viscous sludge. It had no shape, no solid form, save for two bulbous, bloodshot eyes and a jagged maw filled with crooked, yellow teeth. 

"Well, well, what a perfectly sized meat-suit," the creature gurgled, its voice wet and guttural. "A medium-sized invisibility cloak."

Izuku’s brain short-circuited. His fight-or-flight response kicked in, but his legs refused to move. He was rooted to the spot, his wide eyes staring into the face of his own imminent death. 

The Sludge Villain lunged. 

It was fast. Impossibly fast. Before Izuku could even scream, the thick, gelatinous mass slammed into him, knocking him flat on his back. The sludge wrapped around his arms and legs, pinning him to the concrete. It was cold, incredibly heavy, and smelled of rot. 

"Don't worry," the villain hissed, his hideous face manifesting inches from Izuku’s. "I'm just hijacking your body. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then, it'll all be over."

The sludge surged forward, forcing itself into Izuku’s nose and mouth. 

Panic, primal and absolute, erupted in Izuku’s chest. He gagged, his hands flying to his face, his fingernails tearing at the liquid bindings, trying to pry the sludge away. But his fingers just slipped right through. There was nothing to grab. Nothing to fight. 

I can't breathe! 

The sludge slid down his throat, a violation so deeply horrifying it defied description. His lungs burned. His chest heaved instinctively, desperate for oxygen, but only drew in more of the foul-tasting muck. 

"You can't grab me," the villain laughed, a sickening vibration that Izuku felt inside his own chest. "I'm fluid! Thanks for the help, kid. You're my hero. I didn't think he had tracked me to this city."

Izuku was thrashing now, a dying fish on dry land. His vision began to blur, black spots dancing at the edges of his sight. The pain in his chest was agonizing, his heart beating so fast it felt like it might burst through his ribs. 

Somebody, he pleaded internally, his mind screaming into the void. Somebody, please help. Anybody. 

He thought of his mother, waiting for him at home. He thought of the ruined notebook. He thought of All Might, with his fearless smile, saving everyone.

Where is he? Why isn't anyone coming?

The black spots merged, eating away at the edges of his vision until only a tiny pinprick of light remained. The thrashing of his limbs grew weaker. The burning in his lungs began to fade, replaced by a cold, terrifying numbness. 

I'm dying, he realized. The thought was surprisingly calm, detached from the frantic horror of seconds prior. I'm going to die here. A Quirkless nobody. 

The last of the light vanished. Izuku Midoriya slipped into the dark.

But the dark was not empty. 

Izuku expected nothingness. He expected the cessation of thought, the final, permanent silence that follows the end of a life. Instead, his eyes snapped open to a sight of incomprehensible scale.

He was no longer in the underpass. He was floating in a boundless void. 

There was no up, no down. No air to breathe, yet he was not suffocating. Beneath him, or perhaps above him, stretched an endless canvas of space. But this was not the night sky he knew. This space was bleeding. 

Galaxies, vast spirals of starlight, were unraveling like frayed threads. Nebulae, once vibrant with cosmic dust, were dull and bruised, choking on their own gravity. He watched, paralyzed by an awe so immense it bordered on terror, as a star the size of a million Earths flickered, collapsed inward, and detonated in a silent, mournful supernova, its light immediately swallowed by the encroaching, absolute blackness. 

Where... where am I? Izuku thought, his voice echoing not in the air, but within his own soul. Is this... death?

"THIS IS THE END OF ALL THINGS."

The voice did not come from a single direction. It reverberated through the fabric of the void, shaking the very atoms of Izuku’s ethereal form. It was a voice older than time, heavy with a weariness that spanned billions of millennia. 

Izuku spun around in the weightless vacuum. 

Rising from the dying cosmic dust was a figure. To call it a 'man' would be an insult to its majesty. It was a colossal silhouette, humanoid in shape but composed of the universe itself. Its body seemed to be forged from the deep violet hues of cosmic radiation, clad in armor that looked like the architecture of a forgotten, godly civilization. Its head was crowned by a massive, tuning-fork-like helmet, casting a shadow that eclipsed dying suns. 

Izuku could not comprehend the entity’s size. It could have been the size of a skyscraper, or it could have been larger than a solar system. The human mind simply rejected the geometry of its existence. 

"DO NOT FEAR, LITTLE MORTAL," the entity spoke. Its eyes, glowing with a cold, pale light, looked down at Izuku. The gaze was not cruel, but it was profoundly indifferent. It was the look a human might give an ant. "YOU HAVE NOT PERISHED. YET YOU STAND ON THE PRECIPICE OF THE CYCLE."

"Who... what are you?" Izuku asked, his thoughts trembling. 

"I HAVE HAD MANY NAMES. ONCE, I WAS GALAN OF THE PLANET TAA. I WAS A MORTAL, NOT UNLIKE YOURSELF, IN A UNIVERSE THAT PREDATES YOUR OWN." 

The giant raised a hand, and the dying universe around them accelerated. Entire galaxies collapsed into supermassive black holes, eating one another until only a single, condensed point of infinite density remained. 

"THE COSMOS IS NOT ETERNAL. IT BREATHES. IT EXPANDS, IT CONTRACTS, AND IT DIES. AND FROM THAT DEATH, A NEW UNIVERSE IS BORN. BUT FOR THE NEW TO FLOURISH, THE OLD MUST BE DESTROYED. FOR LIFE TO HAVE MEANING, THERE MUST BE BALANCE. THERE MUST BE ENTROPY."

The entity leaned forward. The sheer gravitational pressure of its presence forced Izuku to his knees in the void. 

"WHEN MY UNIVERSE DIED, I SURVIVED. I MERGED WITH THE SENTIENCE OF THE COSMOS. I BECAME THE BALANCE. I BECAME GALACTUS. THE DEVOURER OF WORLDS."

Izuku gasped. Images flooded his mind, forced into his consciousness not through sight, but through absolute truth. He saw this titan descending upon vibrant, alien worlds. He saw vast machines converting oceans, continents, and civilizations into pure, blinding energy. He felt the terror of billions, the weeping of planets, and the cold, mechanical necessity of the act. He felt a hunger—a ravenous, aching, bottomless pit in the center of the universe that screamed to be filled. 

"You... you killed them," Izuku wept, clutching his head as the psychic weight of countless genocides pressed down on him. "You're a monster! A villain!"

"VILLAINY IS A MORTAL CONSTRUCT," Galactus boomed, unbothered by the accusation. "DOES THE WOLF MOURN THE SHEEP? DOES THE HURRICANE APOLOGIZE TO THE COASTLINE? I AM NOT EVIL, IZUKU MIDORIYA. I AM GRAVITY. I AM TIME. I AM NECESSITY. WITHOUT MY HARVEST, THE UNIVERSE WOULD SUCCUMB TO CANCEROUS OVERGROWTH. I CULL THE WEAK, I BALANCE THE EQUATION OF REALITY, AND IN RETURN, I BEAR THE BURDEN OF THE COSMIC HUNGER."

The colossal figure began to crack. Fissures of blinding white light erupted across its violet armor. 

"BUT EVEN GODS DIE," Galactus stated, a hint of ancient sorrow entering his voice. "MY CYCLE HAS ENDED. MY PHYSICAL FORM HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN THIS ITERATION OF REALITY. YET, THE COSMOS STILL REQUIRES A DEVOURER. THE SCALES MUST BE BALANCED. THE POWER COSMIC CANNOT DISSIPATE; IT MUST FIND A NEW VESSEL."

"Why are you telling me this?" Izuku cried out, terrified of the answer he already felt forming in his soul. "I'm just a kid! I'm nobody! I don't even have a Quirk!"

Galactus paused. The giant reached out, extending a massive finger toward Izuku. 

"THAT IS PRECISELY WHY YOU WERE CHOSEN."

Izuku froze. "What?"

"IN YOUR UNIVERSE, MORTALS HAVE EVOLVED. THEY CARRY SPARKS OF GENETIC ENERGY YOU CALL 'QUIRKS'. THEIR SOULS ARE FULL. THEIR BIOLOGICAL VESSELS ARE ALREADY OVERFLOWING WITH MUTATION. THEY CANNOT CONTAIN THE INFINITE. IF I WERE TO BESTOW THE POWER COSMIC UPON THE STRONGEST HERO OF YOUR WORLD, HE WOULD INCINERATE IN A MICROSECOND."

The glowing finger hovered inches from Izuku’s chest. 

"BUT YOU, IZUKU MIDORIYA... YOU ARE EMPTY. YOUR BIOLOGY IS PRISTINE. YOUR SOUL IS A VOID. YOU ARE A CUP THAT HAS BEEN EMPTIED BY THE CRUELTY OF FATE, WHICH MAKES YOU THE ONLY VESSEL CAPABLE OF HOLDING THE OCEAN."

"No," Izuku shook his head, scrambling backward in the ether. "No, I don't want it! I want to be a hero! I want to save people, like All Might! I don't want to destroy worlds!"

"YOUR DESIRES ARE IRRELEVANT," Galactus declared, his voice echoing with finality. "THE SEED OF TAA HAS FOUND ITS SOIL. YOU WILL BECOME THE NEW DEVOURER. YOU WILL WIELD THE POWER COSMIC. YOU WILL SHAPE MATTER, COMMAND ENERGY, AND WALK AMONG THE STARS. BUT..."

The entity leaned in, its glowing eyes narrowing, burning with a terrible, eternal curse. 

"...YOU WILL HUNGER."

Before Izuku could scream, Galactus thrust his colossal finger directly into Izuku’s chest. 

There was no physical pain, but a spiritual agony so intense it shattered Izuku’s sense of self. It felt as if a star had ignited inside his ribcage. Blinding violet light poured from his eyes, his mouth, the pores of his skin. He saw the birth of galaxies, the geometry of molecules, the intricate, vibrating strings of reality itself. 

He felt the memories of Galan of Taa weaving into his own. He felt the knowledge of physics, transmutation, and cosmic awareness downloading into his fragile human brain. 

And then, rising above it all, a sensation entirely new and infinitely terrifying. 

An emptiness. A hollowness in his stomach that expanded outward, crying out for sustenance. It was a hunger that human food could never touch. It was a hunger for energy. For life. 

"AWAKE, GALACTUS," the dying entity commanded as it shattered into cosmic dust, flowing entirely into Izuku’s glowing form. "AWAKE, AND FEED."

Beneath the bridge, in the sweltering heat of the underpass, the Sludge Villain was celebrating. 

"Perfect," the villain gurgled, feeling the boy's struggles finally cease. "He's out. Just a little more and the body is mine. I can get out of town before that muscle-bound freak finds—"

The villain stopped. 

Something was wrong. 

The boy’s body, previously limp and yielding, suddenly went rigid. The temperature in the underpass plummeted, the oppressive summer heat instantly freezing into a winter chill. A thin layer of frost crept up the concrete pillars. 

Then, the gravity shifted. 

The Sludge Villain felt himself being pulled, not down toward the earth, but inward, toward the boy he was trying to drown. The boy’s eyelids snapped open. 

There were no irises. No sclera. Izuku Midoriya’s eyes were pools of blinding, luminescent purple light. 

"What... what the hell is this?" the Sludge Villain stammered, instinctively trying to pull his fluid body away from the boy. He couldn't. It felt as though he were caught in the event horizon of a black hole. 

Izuku stood up. He didn't scramble to his feet; he simply floated upward, hovering an inch above the concrete. The sludge that had been forcing its way down his throat was violently expelled, not by coughing, but by a pulse of raw, kinetic force that blasted from Izuku’s body. 

The boy's face was completely devoid of emotion. His jaw was slack, his features relaxed into a mask of terrifying, cosmic apathy. His uniform gently fluttered, despite there being no wind, buoyed by the leaking, crackling violet energy that began to aura around him. 

Hunger. 

The thought wasn't a word; it was an instinct. It was the only thing Izuku's overwhelmed consciousness could process. The transition back to the physical world had brought the curse to the forefront. His cells were screaming, his soul demanding fuel to stabilize the infinite power newly housed within a mortal frame. 

Izuku slowly raised his hand, pointing his palm at the massive blob of sludge. 

"Hey, kid! Wait!" The Sludge Villain shrieked, true fear entering his voice. He could feel it. The boy wasn't looking at him like a threat. The boy was looking at him like a piece of bread. "What is that Quirk?! Let me go!"

Izuku did not speak. He didn't know how. The Power Cosmic flared in his palm. 

He didn't fire an energy blast. He didn't use telekinesis. He simply reached out and pulled. 

The Sludge Villain screamed. It was a sound of absolute, biological horror. The villain's body began to break down at the molecular level. His fluid form separated into glowing streams of raw, biological and kinetic energy. The energy spiraled through the air, illuminating the dark underpass in a ghostly violet hue, and funneled directly into Izuku’s open palm. 

Izuku absorbed it. 

The sensation was intoxicating. As the villain’s life-force and Quirk factor flowed into him, the agonizing, tearing emptiness in his gut was momentarily soothed. He felt the villain’s stamina, his genetic makeup, his very essence being digested and converted into fuel for the Power Cosmic. 

"NO! STOP! PLEASE!" The villain's face warped and distorted as his mass rapidly diminished. "I'M DRYING UP! I'M—"

In less than five seconds, it was over. 

The screaming stopped. The glowing streams of energy faded. The massive, towering Sludge Villain had been reduced to a pile of dry, brittle, grey ash that crumbled onto the concrete floor. 

Izuku blinked. 

The blinding purple light in his eyes faded back to his natural, forest green. The anti-gravity field dissipated, and his feet hit the pavement with a soft thud. 

The cosmic awareness, the overwhelming knowledge of the universe, receded to the back of his mind, locked away behind a mental dam built by his human subconscious to keep him from going instantly insane. 

Izuku Midoriya, the fourteen-year-old middle schooler, was back in control. 

He stood there, panting heavily, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at his hands. They were trembling. He looked down at the pile of grey ash. 

"What... what did I do?" he whispered, his voice cracking in the silent underpass. 

He remembered the sludge forcing its way down his throat. He remembered the feeling of dying. And then... a dream? A nightmare about a purple giant? 

But this wasn't a dream. The villain who had nearly killed him was gone. Dead. No, not just dead. Consumed. 

Izuku stumbled back, a wave of profound nausea washing over him. He felt sick, yet paradoxically, he felt more energized than he ever had in his entire life. His muscles hummed with a dormant, terrifying strength. 

"I... I killed him," Izuku gasped, tears pricking his eyes. "I used a Quirk... I killed him!"

Suddenly, the manhole cover a few feet away blew off its hinges with the force of a cannonball, clattering noisily against the ceiling of the underpass. 

"HAVE NO FEAR, YOU ARE SAFE!" a booming, larger-than-life voice echoed through the tunnel. "NOW THAT I AM HERE!"

A colossal figure leaped from the sewer, landing with a ground-shaking thud. It was him. The Symbol of Peace. All Might. 

The towering, muscular hero struck a pose, his signature smile gleaming in the dim light. He looked around, his fists planted on his hips, expecting to find the sludge villain he had been chasing all morning. 

Instead, he found a terrified, trembling teenager with green hair, staring at him with wide, tear-filled eyes. And at the boy's feet, a pile of unidentifiable grey ash. 

All Might's smile faltered slightly. He blinked, looking from the boy to the ash, and back again. The scent of ozone and burnt biology lingered heavily in the air. 

"Young man," All Might said, his booming voice dropping a fraction in confusion. "Are you alright? I was pursuing a villain composed of fluid. Did he pass through here?"

Izuku couldn't breathe. It was All Might. His hero. His idol. The man he had admired since he could walk. And he was standing over the remains of a villain he had just murdered. 

If he stayed, there would be questions. They would analyze the ash. They would find out what he did. They would lock him away in Tartarus. He would never be a hero. He was a monster. 

Run. 

The instinct took over. Without a word, Izuku spun on his heel and sprinted out of the tunnel. 

"Hey! Wait, young man!" All Might called out, reaching a massive hand forward. "Are you injured? Let me—!"

But Izuku was already gone. He ran faster than he ever had in his life. In fact, as he sprinted down the street, his feet barely seemed to touch the pavement. Each step propelled him forward with unnatural speed, the residual Power Cosmic in his cells reacting to his panic, unknowingly lessening the pull of gravity on his body. 

He didn't stop running until he reached his apartment complex. He bypassed the elevator, sprinting up the four flights of stairs in mere seconds, not even slightly out of breath. 

He burst through his front door. "Mom! I'm home!" he yelled, his voice strained and frantic. 

"Izuku? You're home early," Inko Midoriya called from the kitchen. "Is everything alright?"

"Y-Yeah! Just... stomach ache! Going to my room!" 

He ran down the hall, slammed his bedroom door shut, and locked it. He collapsed against the wood, sliding down until he hit the floor, burying his face in his knees. 

His room, a shrine to All Might, was bathed in the warm, orange light of the setting sun. Posters of the smiling hero covered every inch of wall space. Action figures stood on his desk like silent sentinels. 

Izuku looked up at a poster of All Might, his fist raised in triumph. I will save everyone with a smile! 

Izuku sobbed. He clutched his chest, digging his fingers into his uniform. He wasn't a hero. He didn't save anyone. He had absorbed a living creature. He had turned a person into ash. 

He lay on his floor for hours, weeping until he had no tears left. Eventually, exhaustion claimed him. The sun dipped below the horizon, plunging his room into darkness. 

It was 2:00 AM when he woke up. 

He didn't wake up slowly. His eyes snapped open, wide and alert. He was lying on his back on the floor. 

Something was wrong. 

The energy he had felt earlier—the humming, vibrant power that had fueled his frantic run home—was gone. In its place was a void. 

Izuku clutched his stomach. A jolt of pain shot through his abdomen, so sharp and intense he curled into a fetal position, letting out a strangled gasp. It felt like his stomach was eating itself. It was an agony that dwarfed the pain of the sludge villain's attack. 

I'm hungry, he thought. 

It wasn't a normal hunger. It wasn't the feeling of skipping lunch. It was a cosmic starvation. He could feel his cells dying, crying out for fuel. The Power Cosmic, housed within his frail mortal body, was consuming his own life force to sustain itself. If he didn't feed it, it would eat him from the inside out. 

Izuku staggered to his feet. He felt weak, his limbs trembling violently. He stumbled to his door, unlocked it as quietly as he could, and crept down the hall to the kitchen. 

He opened the refrigerator. The cool air washed over his sweaty face. He grabbed whatever he could find—leftover katsudon, a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, raw vegetables. He dumped it all onto the counter. 

He tore open the bread and shoved a fistful into his mouth. He chewed frantically, swallowing the dry mass, then moved on to the cold katsudon, shoveling it in with his bare hands. He drank the entire carton of milk in three gulps. 

He ate until his physical stomach was painfully distended, stretched to its absolute physical limit. 

He leaned against the counter, panting, waiting for the relief. 

It didn't come. 

The pain in his center only intensified. The food he had just consumed felt like nothing. It felt like he had tried to put out a forest fire by spitting on it. Human food, composed of mere carbohydrates and proteins, was biologically useless to the cosmic furnace burning within his soul. 

It's not enough, the realization dawned on him, cold and horrifying. 

He looked down at his trembling hands. In the dim light of the kitchen, he saw a faint, violet spark crackle across his knuckles. 

The memories of the vision flooded back, no longer suppressed. The colossal titan, the dying stars, the screaming planets. 

"YOU WILL HUNGER."

Izuku fell to his knees on the kitchen floor, clutching his stomach as another wave of agonizing starvation ripped through him. He pressed his forehead against the cool linoleum, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. 

He remembered the feeling of the Sludge Villain’s energy flowing into him. The relief. The intoxicating rush of raw, converted life-force. 

He knew what he needed. He knew what he had become. 

He wasn't Izuku Midoriya, the Quirkless boy who wanted to be a hero anymore. The universe had looked at his empty vessel and filled it with a curse. 

As the cosmic starvation gnawed at his sanity, Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear rolling down his cheek. 

The Hunger had begun.

The human stomach is a relatively small organ. When empty, its volume is roughly two and a half ounces. It growls, it aches, it sends electrical signals to the brain to demand sustenance. It is a biological mechanism perfected over millions of years of evolution to ensure survival. 

Izuku Midoriya no longer had a human stomach. Or rather, the organ itself still sat behind his ribs, but it had become nothing more than a fleshy facade for the infinite, yawning abyss that now resided at the core of his being. 

Ten months had passed since the incident in the underpass. Ten months since All Might had unknowingly stood over the ashes of the Sludge Villain. Ten months since Izuku had inherited the mantle of Galan of Taa. 

His bedroom, once a sanctuary of heroic aspirations, had transformed into a quarantine zone. The All Might posters that smiled down at him now felt mocking. The hero who saved everyone with a smile could not save Izuku from the monster he was becoming. 

He had not returned to Aldera Junior High. The very thought of being in a crowded classroom, surrounded by the vibrant, pulsing life-force of his classmates, sent him into a cold sweat. He had convinced his mother that he was doing an intensive self-study program for the U.A. entrance exams, feigning a sudden, overwhelming anxiety about school. Inko, bless her gentle heart, had believed him, though the worry lines around her eyes deepened with every passing week. 

He isolated himself because he was terrified. 

The Power Cosmic was not a Quirk. Izuku had spent the first two months trying to quantify it using the metrics of modern superhuman society, analyzing himself in a new notebook he kept hidden beneath his floorboards. Quirks were biological. They had limits, exhaustion points, genetic markers. 

The power within him had no limits. It was the fundamental source code of reality. 

He discovered this during his midnight excursions to Dagobah Municipal Beach Park. The beach was a notorious illegal dumping ground, a mountain range of rusted refrigerators, crushed cars, and rotting tires. It was secluded. It was safe. 

On a cold night in November, Izuku had stood before a rusted pickup truck. He had wanted to move it. He didn't tense his muscles; he didn't feel a biological "activation" like the Quirk-users he had studied. He merely willed it. 

His eyes had ignited with that terrifying, blinding violet light. The gravity around the truck simply ceased to exist. The two-ton vehicle floated into the air as lightly as a dandelion spore. Izuku had swiped his hand to the side, and the truck had flown fifty yards, crashing into the ocean silently. 

He had gasped, marveling at the effortless display of godhood. But a microsecond later, the backlash hit. 

The Hunger. 

It was a physical implosion. Using the Power Cosmic expended the latent energy holding his mortal form together. When he manipulated gravity, he burned the universe’s fuel, and the universe demanded reimbursement. The agonizing, tearing void in his center had flared so violently that Izuku had collapsed into the sand, screaming, clutching his chest as he felt his own cells beginning to consume one another to pay the toll. 

He had learned then the cruelest joke of his existence: he had the power to shatter planets, but if he used it, he would starve to death in seconds. 

Unless he fed. 

The dilemma consumed his waking hours. How could he be a hero if using his power meant he had to drain the life from others? The memory of the Sludge Villain turning to ash haunted his nightmares. The intoxicating rush of the villain's life-force pouring into his veins was a high his cosmic instincts desperately craved, but his human morality violently rejected. 

He had to find an alternative. He spent weeks researching, reading advanced collegiate physics textbooks, articles on theoretical astrophysics, and papers on botany and radiation. Galactus had consumed planets—raw, elemental energy. 

Izuku began to experiment. 

His first success came at an abandoned electrical substation on the outskirts of Musutafu. Driven half-mad by a week of fasting (during which normal food tasted like ash and passed through him providing zero sustenance), he had broken through the chain-link fence. 

He found a massive, humming transformer that still carried city grid current. Trembling, his eyes glowing a faint purple, Izuku pressed his bare hands against the thick, insulated cables. 

He bypassed the rubber casing entirely, his mind reaching into the flow of electrons. He opened the metaphysical maw within his chest and inhaled. 

The substation shrieked. Blue and purple arcs of lightning violently lashed out, striking Izuku’s body, but they didn't burn him. They flowed into him, absorbing through his skin like water into a sponge. The lights of the distant city blocks flickered and dimmed. 

The sharp, ozone taste of raw electricity filled his mouth. The agonizing void in his stomach shrank. It didn't disappear—it never disappeared—but the sharp edges of the starvation dulled. He drained the transformer completely, leaving it a dead, sparking husk. 

It was a revelation. He could eat energy. 

Over the next few months, Izuku developed a grim routine. He became a nocturnal scavenger. He visited hospital disposal sites to absorb the low-level radiation from discarded X-ray equipment. He sat in the middle of thunderstorms on the Dagobah beach, acting as a lightning rod, drinking the atmospheric static. 

But it was like trying to sustain a raging bonfire with singular twigs. The raw, inorganic energy burned off too quickly. It was the biological energy—the spark of life, the Quirk factor—that his cosmic biology truly craved. 

One evening, deep in a forgotten stretch of woods near the mountains, the Hunger had flared unexpectedly. He was miles from any power lines. He had fallen to his knees in the dirt, vision blurring, the violet aura leaking from his skin and causing the rocks around him to levitate uncontrollably. 

Desperate, he had crawled toward the nearest source of life. It was a massive, ancient oak tree, its trunk split by a lightning strike decades ago. It was dying, its branches bare, rot eating at its core. 

Izuku pressed his palms against the rough bark. I'm sorry, he wept internally. I'm so sorry. 

He pulled. 

The tree shuddered. A faint, emerald-green mist seeped from the wood, funneling into Izuku’s chest. He felt the slow, ancient, sluggish life-force of the oak wash over him. It was nowhere near as potent as a human Quirk, but it was incredibly dense, rich with the history of the earth. 

Within seconds, the massive oak groaned, turned a brittle, sickly gray, and collapsed into a pile of fine sawdust. 

Izuku sat in the dirt, breathing heavily, his hunger satiated for the first time in weeks. He stared at the dust. He hadn't killed a person, but he had taken life. He was a parasite. A Devourer. 

If I want to be a hero, Izuku thought, wiping his mouth, I have to carry this sin. I will only eat what is already broken. I will only consume what the world no longer needs.

February arrived, bringing with it a biting chill and the day of the U.A. Entrance Exam. 

Izuku stood before the towering, H-shaped glass building of U.A. High School. He looked drastically different from the boy who had cowered under a bridge ten months ago. 

He hadn't gained the bulging muscles of a bodybuilder—his biology didn't work that way anymore. The Power Cosmic kept his mortal vessel in a state of suspended physical optimization. He was lean, wire-taut, and pale. The youthful roundness of his face had sharpened into angular, almost statuesque features. 

But it was his eyes that drew the most attention. They were still green, but there was a permanent, faint luminescent violet ring around his irises. Furthermore, he emanated a presence. It wasn't intentional, but the sheer density of the cosmic energy housed within him subtly warped the gravity in a two-foot radius around his body. Snowflakes falling near him didn't drift; they were yanked downward to the pavement. People instinctively gave him a wide berth, their primitive hindbrains screaming at them to avoid the apex predator. 

Izuku took a deep breath, clutching the straps of his yellow backpack. He had gorged himself the night before, draining the batteries of a scrapyard's worth of electric cars. He was as full as he could possibly be. 

"Stupid Deku." 

The harsh, familiar voice grated against the crisp morning air. Izuku turned his head slowly. 

Katsuki Bakugo was marching up the pathway, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his face twisted into its permanent scowl. He stopped a few paces away, his crimson eyes locking onto Izuku. 

Bakugo opened his mouth to hurl an insult, to shove Izuku to the ground like he always did. But the words died in his throat. 

Bakugo’s instincts, honed by a powerful, combative Quirk, flared violently. The boy standing in front of him looked like Deku, wore Deku’s clothes, but the feeling he gave off was entirely alien. Looking at Izuku felt like standing at the edge of a sheer cliff in pitch darkness. It was a profound, suffocating pressure. 

"Kacchan," Izuku said. His voice had changed, too. It was softer, yet it carried a strange, dual resonance, as if someone else were speaking in unison with him from very far away. 

Bakugo grit his teeth, forcing down the inexplicable shiver that ran down his spine. "What the hell is wrong with your eyes, you Quirkless freak? Get out of my way before I set you on fire."

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't stutter. He just stared at Bakugo with an apathy that was far more terrifying than anger. The cosmic being within him looked at Bakugo’s explosions and saw nothing but a microscopic spark of friction. 

"Good luck on the exam, Kacchan," Izuku said softly, stepping aside. 

Bakugo scowled, his pride warring with the cold sweat on his neck. He bumped his shoulder roughly against Izuku’s as he passed. "Don't patronize me, Deku. You're gonna die in there."

Izuku watched him walk away. He turned back toward the gates and took a step, but his boot caught on an uneven paving stone. 

His human clumsiness, it seemed, had not been erased by the cosmos. He pitched forward, bracing for the impact of the concrete. 

"Oops!" 

A soft voice called out. Izuku felt a sudden loss of gravity, followed by a gentle hand grabbing the back of his jacket. He floated in mid-air, righted himself, and was gently placed back on his feet. 

He turned to see a girl with short, bobbed brown hair and large, warm brown eyes. She was smiling brightly, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. 

"Are you okay?" she asked, pressing her fingers together. "I used my Quirk on you. Sorry for not asking first! But it would be bad luck if you fell right before the exam, right?"

Izuku stared at her. His cosmic awareness flared to life unbidden. He didn't just see a girl; he saw the intricate flow of her biological energy. He saw how her Quirk manipulated gravitons, a crude, biological mimicry of his own absolute control over fundamental forces. She was practically glowing with vibrant, pinkish life-force. 

His stomach gave a violent, involuntary lurch. A sharp pang of the Hunger stabbed at him. Food. 

Izuku violently suppressed the instinct, taking a staggering step backward. He clamped his hands over his stomach, his eyes widening in horror at his own thoughts. 

"I-I'm fine," Izuku choked out, forcing his eyes to the ground so she wouldn't see the flash of violet. "T-Thank you. Good luck." 

Without waiting for a response, he practically fled into the building, leaving a very confused Uraraka Ochaco standing at the gates. 

The orientation in the massive auditorium was a blur of noise. The Voice Hero, Present Mic, stood at the podium, projecting at decibels that made Izuku’s hyper-sensitive eardrums throb. 

Izuku stared down at the pamphlet on his desk. The practical exam rules were simple: destroy robots. One point, two points, three points. 

Robots. 

Machines. Constructs of steel, copper, and artificial intelligence. 

They had no life-force. They had no Quirk factors. They possessed electrical batteries, yes, but combat-grade robots were heavily shielded. He couldn't just casually absorb their power grids without breaking them open first. 

Izuku’s hands gripped the edge of his desk. This was the worst possible scenario. The exam was a test of destructive capability, and using his destructive capabilities burned his energy. He would be spending cosmic fuel without any way to replenish it. 

If I use my power too much, I'll starve before the ten minutes are up. I have to be efficient. I have to minimize the physics. 

"Excuse me!" 

A tall, broad-shouldered boy with glasses stood up rigidly, pointing a stiff arm at the podium. "On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the top hero agency of Japan, should be ashamed!" The boy then whipped around, pointing directly at Izuku. "And you, with the unkempt hair! You've been muttering to yourself and exuding a highly distracting, oppressive aura this entire time! If you are here on a pleasure trip, then leave immediately!"

Izuku blinked. He hadn't realized his anxiety was causing his gravitational field to fluctuate. The students sitting immediately around him were leaning away, looking pale and uncomfortable. 

Izuku didn't apologize. He merely looked at the boy with glasses. The dual resonance in his voice slipped out, cold and ancient. 

"My apologies," Izuku said, the sound carrying effortlessly across the large auditorium without him raising his voice. "I will contain myself." 

The boy with glasses flinched, sitting down abruptly as if an invisible weight had pressed down on his shoulders. Present Mic cleared his throat, somewhat unnerved by the interaction, and explained the Zero Pointer—an obstacle meant to be avoided. 

Soon after, they were herded onto buses and taken to the mock cities. 

Izuku stood before the massive gates of Battle Center B. He wore a simple green tracksuit, having refused to wear anything bulky. The other examinees were stretching, showing off their Quirks, hyping themselves up. Izuku stood perfectly still, his eyes closed, regulating his breathing to conserve every microscopic drop of energy. 

"Right, let's start!" Present Mic’s voice boomed from a loudspeaker. "Get moving! There are no countdowns in real battles! Run, run, run!"

The gates swung open. While the other students hesitated, confused by the lack of a formal start, Izuku moved. 

He didn't run. He manipulated the kinetic energy at the soles of his shoes, creating a microscopic, frictionless slipstream. He glided forward, instantly rocketing past the gates and into the faux city at sixty miles per hour. 

He rounded the first corner and came face to face with a Three-Pointer. The massive, tank-like robot locked its optics onto him and raised its missile launchers. 

"Target acquired," the robotic voice droned. 

Izuku didn't stop. He couldn't afford to waste time dodging. He raised his right hand. He didn't want to use transmutation; changing the fundamental state of matter burned too much energy. Kinetic projection was cheaper. 

His eyes flashed violet. He gathered a fraction of a percent of the Power Cosmic into his palm and released a compressed wave of concussive force. 

The air distorted. A silent, invisible battering ram moving at the speed of sound slammed into the robot. The Three-Pointer didn't just break; it crumpled backward like a crushed soda can, its chassis violently caving in on itself before it was blasted through the concrete wall of the building behind it. 

Three points. 

Izuku dropped his hand. Instantly, the void in his stomach tore open wider. The battery juice he had consumed the night before was already burning away. He gritted his teeth against the pain. Too much. I used too much force. Be precise. 

He dashed down the street. The sounds of explosions and shouting echoed from behind him as the other examinees finally entered the city. 

Over the next six minutes, Izuku fought a war of attrition against his own biology. He found a Two-Pointer and, instead of blasting it, used telekinesis to rip its main power cable out from the inside. It cost less energy, but it required intense focus. He crushed a One-Pointer by briefly increasing the gravity localized entirely on its head, flattening it to the pavement. 

Points accumulated. Fifteen. Twenty-eight. Thirty-five. 

But the Hunger was growing exponential. 

By the seventh minute, Izuku was stumbling. The vibrant colors of the mock city were desaturating into a dull, gray haze. His breathing was ragged, his skin ice-cold and slick with sweat. 

The Power Cosmic was a demanding god. It did not tolerate a deficit. Since Izuku was not feeding it, it began to feed on Izuku. 

He felt his muscle tissue beginning to ache as it was slowly converted into raw energy. The violet aura around him, usually contained beneath his skin, began to violently leak. Tendrils of purple fire danced across his shoulders. Where he stepped, the concrete cracked and turned to gray ash, the ambient energy of the earth itself being passively drained to keep him upright. 

He rounded a corner and bumped into another examinee—the boy with glasses from the auditorium. The boy had just kicked a Two-Pointer’s head off. 

"You!" the boy shouted, but his voice hitched as he looked at Izuku. 

Izuku looked terrifying. His eyes were completely awash in blinding purple light. The air around him was heavily distorted, smelling strongly of ozone and decay. 

"S-Stay back!" the boy stammered, his instincts overriding his bravado. "What is wrong with your Quirk?!" 

Izuku couldn't speak. His jaw was locked tight to keep from screaming. He looked past the boy to the wreckage of the Two-Pointer. He stumbled forward, ignoring the boy, and fell to his knees beside the robot. He ripped the metal plating off with his bare hands, tearing his fingernails, and grabbed the sparking battery core. 

He inhaled the electricity. It was barely a mouthful. A drop of water in a desert. 

"Three minutes remaining!" Present Mic announced over the speakers. 

Izuku dropped the dead battery. He was starving. The cosmic apathy—the Galactus persona—was bleeding through the cracks in his fractured, panicked mind. 

The city. The earth. The students. So much energy. Consume them. Balance the equation. 

"No," Izuku whispered, clutching his head, his dual-voice violently echoing in the empty street. "I am Izuku Midoriya. I am a hero."

Suddenly, the ground began to shake. 

It wasn't a small tremor. It was a localized earthquake. The glass in the surrounding buildings shattered, raining down onto the streets. A shadow fell over the sector, eclipsing the morning sun. 

Izuku looked up. 

Rising from the center of the mock city was a monstrosity of steel. It was larger than the buildings, a towering behemoth with a singular, glowing red optic. The Zero Pointer. 

The colossal machine rolled forward, its treads crushing entire streets into rubble. The sheer scale of it was awe-inspiring to the human eye. 

But to the entity looking through Izuku’s eyes, it was an insult. It was a crude, pitiful toy. 

The other examinees were screaming, turning, and fleeing in absolute terror. The boy with glasses sprinted past Izuku. "Run! It's the obstacle! There's no point in fighting it!"

Izuku tried to stand, intending to flee as well. His body was at its limit. If he used the Power Cosmic again, he would die. The Hunger would consume his heart and brain. 

"Ow! Help!" 

The cry was faint, nearly drowned out by the grinding of the Zero Pointer’s gears. 

Izuku’s head snapped toward the sound. Through the dust and debris, he saw her. The girl with the bobbed hair—Uraraka. Her leg was trapped beneath a massive slab of concrete that had fallen from a building. 

The Zero Pointer was bearing down on her, its massive tread less than fifty yards away, completely indifferent to the human obstacle in its path. 

Izuku watched the other examinees run away. No one was turning back. The human instinct for self-preservation was too strong. 

But Izuku Midoriya was not just human anymore. And he was, fundamentally, a hero. 

The Galactus instinct screamed at him to conserve energy, to let the mortal perish, for her life was insignificant in the grand cosmic scheme. But Izuku’s will—forged in ten years of Quirkless suffering and an unyielding desire to save others—violently overpowered the god within him. 

Izuku stood up. 

The leaking violet aura exploded. A pillar of blinding cosmic energy shot into the sky, tearing the clouds apart. The oppressive gravity around him expanded outward, cracking the pavement in a fifty-yard radius. 

He didn't run toward the robot. He manipulated space itself. 

With a deafening CRACK that shattered the sound barrier, Izuku vanished from his spot and reappeared instantly, hovering directly in the path of the Zero Pointer, right in front of Uraraka. 

Uraraka looked up, her eyes wide with pain and terror, reflecting the blinding purple light of the boy hovering before her. 

"What... what are you?" she whispered. 

Izuku didn't look at her. He stared up at the mechanical titan. The robot raised a massive, steel fist, intending to crush the annoyance in its path. 

Transmutation, Izuku thought, his mind crystal clear as he embraced the ultimate power, knowing it would be his end. Change the state. Balance the equation. 

Izuku raised his right hand and flew upward, meeting the descending fist of the Zero Pointer. 

He didn't punch it. He didn't brace for impact. He simply placed his open palm gently against the cold, descending steel. 

For a microsecond, the world stood entirely still. There was no sound. No wind. Total, absolute cosmic silence. 

Then, reality rewrote itself. 

A wave of iridescent violet light pulsed from Izuku’s hand, washing over the entire colossal structure of the Zero Pointer. 

The steel didn't break. It didn't explode. It fundamentally changed. 

Starting from the fist and spreading rapidly up the arm, across the chassis, and down to the treads, the thousands of tons of military-grade metal dissolved. But they didn't just vanish; Izuku altered their atomic structure. 

The steel turned into millions upon millions of shimmering, iridescent soap bubbles. 

The colossal weight of the robot disappeared instantly. A massive, towering silhouette of bubbles hung in the air for a fraction of a second, catching the sunlight in a breathtaking display of prismatic colors. 

Then, a gentle breeze swept through the mock city, and the Zero Pointer popped, scattering into harmless, glittering dust that rained down gently upon the awestruck examinees. 

Total silence fell over Battle Center B. 

In the observation room miles away, the U.A. faculty sat in stunned, absolute silence. Aizawa Shota leaned forward, his eyes wide behind his capture weapon, while All Might gripped the edge of his console so hard the plastic cracked. They hadn't seen a Quirk. They had seen a miracle. 

Back in the city, Uraraka stared in shock as the debris trapping her leg was gently lifted away by an invisible force. 

High above, the blinding light fading from his eyes, Izuku Midoriya smiled. He had saved someone. He had been a hero. 

Then, the toll was collected. 

The Hunger, denied its fuel, devoured the last of Izuku's internal reserves. His heart stopped. His consciousness shattered. The anti-gravity field died instantly, and Izuku plummeted from the sky like a cut string. 

He hit the pavement hard, rolling a few feet before coming to a complete, lifeless stop. His skin was gray, his veins completely black, his body a starved, empty husk. 

"Time's up!" Present Mic’s voice echoed, though it sounded incredibly subdued. 

Uraraka dragged herself toward him, ignoring the pain in her leg. "Hey! Hey, wake up!" she cried, reaching out to shake his shoulder. His skin was ice cold. He wasn't breathing. "Somebody help! He's dying!"

The examinees gathered around, murmuring in fear and awe. The boy with glasses stared down at Izuku, his worldview entirely shaken. 

"Stand back, children. Let me through." 

The crowd parted as an elderly woman, diminutive in stature and wearing a nurse's visor, walked briskly through the rubble. Recovery Girl. 

"Oh dear," she muttered, her eyes widening as she took in Izuku’s condition. She had seen exhaustion before, but this boy looked as though he had been dead for three days. His life-force was completely entirely absent. 

"Is he going to be okay?" Uraraka asked, tears spilling down her cheeks. 

"He pushed his Quirk far past the breaking point," Recovery Girl said grimly, leaning over him. "His stamina is entirely depleted. His cells are cannibalizing themselves. I have to act fast."

She puckered her lips. Her Quirk, Heal, accelerated the body's natural healing process by drawing on the patient's own stamina. However, in extreme cases where the patient had no stamina left, she could safely impart a microscopic spark of her own vitality to jump-start their system, like a defibrillator for the soul. 

She leaned down and planted a kiss squarely on Izuku's forehead. 

She pushed a spark of her life-force into him. 

It was the worst mistake she could have possibly made. 

The moment her biological energy entered his body, the dormant, starving entity within Izuku latched onto it. The boy’s body acted like a vacuum exposed to a pressurized cabin. 

Recovery Girl gasped, her eyes snapping wide open. She couldn't pull away. Her lips were locked to his forehead by an immense, invisible gravitational pull. 

She felt it. A terrifying, bottomless void within the boy. And it was drinking her. 

Her life-force, the vibrant, healing energy she had cultivated for decades, was being violently siphoned out of her. It was a torrential flood. She felt decades of her life slipping away in milliseconds. Her vision blackened. Her knees buckled. 

He's eating me, she realized in sheer, unadulterated horror. He's consuming my life!

Deep within the void of Izuku's subconscious, the Galactus persona roared in triumph, reveling in the taste of pure, potent biological energy. But Izuku’s fractured mind, sparked back to life by the stolen energy, realized what was happening. 

NO! Izuku’s will screamed. STOP!

With a Herculean mental effort, Izuku slammed the metaphysical jaws shut. 

The connection severed. 

Recovery Girl was violently thrown backward, collapsing onto the rubble, gasping frantically for air. She clutched her chest, her heart palpitating wildly. She had lost nearly twenty percent of her total vitality in a fraction of a second. 

"Recovery Girl!" The boy with glasses rushed to her side. "Are you alright?!"

She waved him off weakly, her terrified gaze fixed entirely on the boy on the ground. 

Izuku gasped, his chest heaving as air rushed back into his lungs. The gray pallor of his skin receded, replaced by a healthy, flushed color. The black veins vanished. His heart beat strong and steady. 

He was alive. He was satiated. The agonizing void in his stomach was, for the first time in ten months, comfortably full. 

He slowly opened his eyes. The brilliant green was back, though the violet ring remained. He sat up, looking at his hands, then looked over at Recovery Girl. 

He saw the sheer terror in the elderly heroine's eyes. He saw the way she scrambled backward, pressing herself against the boy with glasses to get away from him. 

Izuku’s heart sank. The triumphant feeling of saving Uraraka evaporated. 

He had survived. He had passed the physical exam. But he knew, with chilling certainty, that the true test of his life was only just beginning. 

He had tasted human life-force. And heaven help him... it was delicious.

Spring at U.A. High School was supposed to be a season of vibrant beginnings, a time when the nation’s most promising youth blossomed under the sun of their own limitless potential. But in Class 1-A, an unnatural chill had taken up permanent residence. 

It wasn't a temperature drop that could be measured by a thermostat, but rather a coldness that settled deep in the marrow. It was the feeling of walking alone in a dark forest and knowing, with absolute biological certainty, that you were being watched by something at the top of the food chain. 

The source of this primal unease sat in the third row, mutely staring out the window. 

Izuku Midoriya was currently consuming his fourth super-sized bento box of the morning. His jaw worked methodically, rhythmically grinding down mountains of white rice, fried pork cutlets, and steamed vegetables. Next to his elbow sat an empty jar of high-calorie peanut butter and a dozen crumpled wrappers of protein bars. 

He didn't eat with the joy of a growing teenager. He ate with the grim, mechanical efficiency of a man bailing water out of a sinking ship. 

Aizawa Shota stood at the front of the classroom, his red, sleep-deprived eyes tracking the green-haired boy. Aizawa was a pro hero who had fought underground for years; he had faced blood-curdling villains, murderers, and psychopaths. Yet, looking at Midoriya made the hairs on his arms stand on end. 

It wasn't just the eating. It was the physics. 

A stray pencil had rolled off the desk of a student two rows away. Aizawa had watched it hit the floor and, instead of rolling toward the slight incline of the doorway, it had rolled uphill, tracing a slow, curved orbit until it bumped against the toe of Midoriya’s red shoe. Small, loose objects in the classroom were constantly, almost imperceptibly, drawn toward him. 

“Be careful with that one, Eraser,” Recovery Girl had warned him in the faculty lounge on the first day of term, her voice trembling as she clutched a cup of tea with shaking hands. “His file says his Quirk is some form of energy manipulation. It’s a lie. It’s a gross understatement. When I touched him during the exam… I felt the universe looking back at me. And it was starving.”

Aizawa had dismissed it as the hyperbole of an elderly woman who had suffered a sudden stamina drain. But after two weeks of teaching Class 1-A, he understood her terror. Midoriya’s eyes—pools of deep green ringed with an unnatural, luminescent violet—were devoid of the fiery ambition typical of U.A. students. They held the chilling, indifferent emptiness of the night sky. 

"Midoriya," Aizawa drawled, his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the classroom. 

Izuku stopped chewing. He turned his head slowly. He didn't blink. "Yes, Aizawa-sensei."

His voice carried a strange acoustic quality. It was soft, polite, but underneath it lay a microscopic reverberation, an echoing dual-tone that made it sound as though two people were speaking simultaneously—one a fourteen-year-old boy, the other something impossibly old and impossibly tired.

"Are you paying attention to the rescue protocols, or is your lunch more important?" Aizawa challenged. 

"I am paying attention, Sensei," Izuku replied flatly. "Rescue protocols in disaster zones require a triage of the most critically injured, assessing structural integrities, and minimizing collateral damage through controlled Quirk application." 

He recited it perfectly. Aizawa narrowed his eyes, finding no flaw to penalize. "Right. See that you apply it this afternoon."

A few seats away, Katsuki Bakugo’s hands twitched, tiny sparks of nitroglycerin popping against his palms. Bakugo’s pride demanded that he assert his dominance, to scream at Deku, to put the Quirkless freak back in his place. But his instincts—honed by a combat-oriented Quirk—screamed a different command entirely. 

Do not engage. Do not provoke. Survive.

Bakugo hated himself for it, but he had barely spoken a word to Izuku since the entrance exam. The memory of the Zero Pointer turning into a cloud of iridescent bubbles haunted him. That wasn't a Quirk. Quirks didn't rewrite the laws of thermodynamics. 

The bell rang, signaling the end of the morning block. Izuku methodically packed his five empty bento boxes into a large duffel bag. He stood up, the ambient air pressure in the room immediately shifting. Denki Kaminari and Minoru Mineta, who had been loudly joking near the back, instantly quieted down and unconsciously took a step back as Izuku walked past them toward the door. 

Animals and idiots were always the first to sense danger, Izuku noted with a detached, clinical part of his brain. 

As he walked down the hallway toward the cafeteria—where he would attempt to force another ten thousand calories into a biological system that didn't need them—Izuku rubbed his chest. 

I'm so hungry.

The ache was constant. It was a physical tearing at the center of his soul. The food he ate did absolutely nothing. Human food was composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. It was chemical energy. The Power Cosmic demanded essential energy. Life-force. Quirk factors. Raw, elemental radiation. 

He had survived the last two weeks by sneaking out at night, finding stray, dying wildlife—a sick raccoon, a bird with a broken wing—and absorbing the last fading embers of their vitality. It was horrifying. It disgusted his human morality. But the Galactus persona within him viewed it as natural as breathing. The weak perish to sustain the strong. It is the balance. 

He needed a real meal. The spark he had accidentally taken from Recovery Girl had sustained him for a week, but since then, he had been running on fumes, his cosmic engine sputtering. If he didn't consume substantial biological energy soon, the Hunger would override his human consciousness, and he would devour his classmates. 

The afternoon brought the Rescue Training class. The students of 1-A donned their hero costumes and boarded the bus to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint (USJ). 

Izuku’s costume was radically different from the sketches in his ruined notebook. He had abandoned the smiling mask and the rabbit ears. With Mei Hatsume's help in the support department, he had designed a containment suit. It was a heavy, dark green and deep violet armor, segmented with thick, insulated plating. Large, circular bracers adorned his forearms and calves, built with internal dampeners to suppress his leaking gravitational field. The most striking feature was the helmet: it possessed a wide, tuning-fork-like crest that swept upward, a subconscious tribute to the cosmic titan whose memories resided in his head. 

He sat at the back of the bus. The seat next to him was empty. The rest of the class sat clustered toward the front. 

"Hey, Midoriya," a blunt voice called out. 

Izuku looked up. Tsuyu Asui, the frog-like girl, was staring at him with unblinking, large eyes. "I say whatever comes to mind. Your Quirk... it’s not really telekinesis, is it? During the combat trials, you didn't just throw Bakugo. The air around him completely vanished. He suffocated for a second."

The bus went dead silent. Bakugo stiffened in the front row, his knuckles turning white. 

"It is a form of energy manipulation, Asui," Izuku said, his dual-voice echoing softly over the hum of the engine. "I can manipulate the fundamental forces. Gravity, kinetic energy, atmospheric pressure."

"That's incredibly overpowered," Eijiro Kirishima said, leaning over his seat, trying to break the tension with a grin. "Like, you could be the next All Might with a flashy Quirk like that!"

Izuku looked at Kirishima. The boy was brimming with physical energy. His hardening Quirk made his cells dense, rich with potential calories. Izuku’s stomach gave a violent, painful lurch. He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands gripping his knees so hard the insulated metal of his gauntlets groaned. 

"I am nothing like All Might," Izuku whispered, the Galactus resonance fading entirely, leaving only the sound of a terrified boy. "All Might brings hope. I only bring... balance."

Before anyone could question the cryptic, grim response, the bus rolled to a stop. 

The USJ was a colossal dome, a marvel of modern hero engineering designed by the Space Hero, Thirteen. As the class filed inside, Thirteen greeted them, launching into a passionate speech about the deadly nature of Quirks. 

"Quirks can kill," Thirteen said, gesturing with their puffy, astronaut-like suit. "In a superhuman society, we have regulated these powers to maintain order. But never forget that it takes only one wrong move, one lapse in control, to take a life. This class is about learning to use your powers to save, not to destroy."

Izuku closed his eyes. The words resonated in the empty void of his chest. If they only knew. If I lose control for one second, I wouldn't just take a life. I would take the hemisphere. 

Suddenly, Izuku’s eyes snapped open. The luminescent violet ring flared brilliantly, bleeding into his green irises. 

He didn't see the plaza. He saw the fabric of space-time. And it was tearing. 

A microscopic fluctuation in the localized gravity field. A sudden, violent spike in dark energy. Before the lights even flickered, before the water in the fountain began to bubble, Izuku stepped forward, his containment suit whirring. 

"Aizawa-sensei," Izuku’s voice rang out, the dual-tone loud and commanding, devoid of any teenage hesitation. "We are being invaded."

Aizawa spun around, ready to scold him, but the words died on his lips. Down in the central plaza, the air tore open. A swirling, violent vortex of purple and black mist expanded, a portal bleeding into their reality. 

"Gather together and don't move!" Aizawa barked, pulling his yellow goggles over his eyes. "Thirteen, protect the students!"

"What is that?" Kirishima asked, stepping back as figures began to emerge from the mist. "Is this like the entrance exam? Does the training start right away?"

"Don't move!" Aizawa yelled, his scarf unfurling like a nest of vipers. "Those are... villains."

An army poured out of the warp gate. Mutants, thugs, and criminals of every shape and size. But three figures stood out. A man made entirely of the dark mist. A massive, bird-headed monstrosity with an exposed brain, its body bulging with unnatural, stitched-together muscles. And standing at the front, a lanky man covered in disembodied hands, his pale, cracked skin barely visible beneath the grip of a hand clutching his face. 

Tomura Shigaraki scratched his neck furiously. "Eraserhead and Thirteen... According to the schedule we acquired, All Might is supposed to be here. Where is he? I went through all this trouble... brought all these friends... just to kill the Symbol of Peace."

High above on the landing, Izuku looked down at the army. His classmates were panicking. Thirteen was preparing to evacuate them. Aizawa was diving headfirst into the fray. 

But Izuku didn't feel panic. 

As he looked at the hundred-plus villains swarming the plaza, his cosmic awareness flared. He didn't see a threat. He saw a buffet. 

He saw hundreds of brimming, overflowing biological batteries. He saw Quirks of fire, water, mutation, and kinetic force. He saw the raw, chaotic energy of human malice, ripe for the harvest. 

The void in his stomach tore open, roaring in anticipation. The Hunger, suppressed for so long, flared into an inferno. 

Food.

"Thirteen!" Izuku commanded, stepping past the hero. "Do not let them scatter!"

But it was too late. The mist villain, Kurogiri, expanded exponentially, rushing up the stairs in a blink. "My apologies, but my job is to scatter you and torture you to death."

The dark mist engulfed the students. Izuku felt the spatial distortion wrap around him. It was a rudimentary, biological teleportation Quirk—laughable compared to the Power Cosmic, but Izuku didn't resist it. He let the mist take him, curious to see where his meal would be served. 

The Shipwreck Zone

The transition was instantaneous. The world shifted from the dry, well-lit entrance to a plunging, freezing darkness. Izuku fell into the artificial lake of the Shipwreck Zone. 

The water closed over his head. Instantly, five aquatic villains, armed with blades and mutated fins, darted toward him like sharks smelling blood. 

Izuku didn't swim. He didn't need to breathe oxygen anymore. He hung suspended in the water, watching them approach. 

First course, the Galactus entity whispered in his mind. 

Izuku’s eyes burned a brilliant, blinding purple, illuminating the dark water like a sunken star. He raised his hand. 

He didn't attack the villains. He manipulated the hydrogen and oxygen molecules around them. With a flick of his wrist, the water surrounding the five villains instantaneously solidified, not into ice, but into a hyper-dense, pressurized liquid cube. 

The villains froze in place, trapped in localized pockets of immense pressure. They dropped their weapons, clutching their throats in panic. 

Izuku slowly drifted upward, breaching the surface. He landed gently on the deck of the sinking ship, his heavy armor making no sound, leaving no wet footprints. The water simply repelled off him. 

"Midoriya!" 

He turned. Tsuyu Asui and Minoru Mineta were clinging to the railing of the ship. Mineta was weeping hysterically, while Tsuyu looked remarkably calm, though her eyes were wide. 

"Are you alright, Asui, Mineta?" Izuku asked, his voice echoing eerily over the lapping waves. 

"We're fine," Tsuyu croaked. "But the water is swarming with villains. We're trapped on this ship, and it's sinking."

"We're gonna die!" Mineta shrieked, pulling a sticky purple ball from his head. "They're gonna drown us and eat us! I haven't even touched a boob yet!"

"You are not going to die," Izuku said softly. 

He walked to the edge of the ship and looked down. Below the surface, dozens of villains were circling, waiting for the ship to go under. 

"Midoriya, what are you doing?" Tsuyu asked, stepping forward. "We need a plan to get past them."

"I am securing the area. And..." Izuku paused, his hand drifting to his stomach. "...I am breaking my fast."

Izuku raised both hands over the water. The purple glow around him intensified, leaking from the seams of his armor, casting long, terrifying shadows across the deck of the ship. The air grew freezing cold. 

Down below, a villain with a shark mutation grinned. "He's just standing there! Water bullets, fire!" 

Several villains launched high-pressure water jets and aquatic projectiles at the ship. 

Izuku didn't dodge. He simply opened his mouth and inhaled. 

The kinetic energy of the projectiles, the momentum, the very water itself, was sucked into a localized singularity hovering inches from Izuku’s face. The attack vanished, absorbed entirely into his body. 

The villains paused, confused. 

Izuku lowered his hands, pointing his palms at the lake. 

"Rise."

He reversed the gravity of the water in a fifty-yard radius. 

With a deafening roar, a massive, cylindrical pillar of the lake simply detached from the basin and floated into the sky. Thousands of gallons of water, along with three dozen screaming villains, were hoisted into the air, suspended in a zero-gravity bubble. 

Mineta stopped crying. His jaw hit the deck. Tsuyu’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. They were looking at a boy who was casually defying the mass of an ocean. 

Izuku levitated off the deck, floating toward the massive sphere of floating water. The villains inside were thrashing, drowning in the air, completely immobilized by the lack of leverage. 

"Now," Izuku whispered, his dual-voice vibrating with a terrifying, ancient hunger. "Your tithe."

He reached out. He didn't want to kill them. He was Izuku Midoriya. He was a hero. But he needed their energy. He carefully, surgically, extended the Power Cosmic into the sphere. 

He latched onto their Quirk factors. 

A cacophony of muffled, gurgling screams echoed from the water bubble. Brilliant streams of multicolored light—reds, blues, greens, representing the raw biological energy of the villains’ stamina and Quirks—were violently ripped from their bodies. The streams funneled through the air, twisting into a braided river of pure life-force that slammed directly into Izuku’s chest. 

Izuku threw his head back, an involuntary gasp of absolute ecstasy escaping his lips. 

It was intoxicating. The agonizing void in his stomach seized, drank, and expanded, soaking up the stolen vitality. He felt the shark-mutant’s stamina, the water-shooter’s kinetic reserves, the collective, raw malice of thirty criminals being burned as fuel in his cosmic furnace. 

He drained them for exactly five seconds. Just enough to push them to the absolute brink of total exhaustion, but stopping short of consuming their life force completely. 

Izuku snapped his hand shut. The connection severed. 

He waved his arm, and the massive water sphere collapsed, crashing back into the lake basin with the force of a tidal wave. The thirty villains washed up onto the artificial shoreline, completely unconscious, their bodies entirely drained of stamina, pale and twitching helplessly. 

Izuku floated back down to the deck. The leaking violet aura receded. He took a deep, shuddering breath, his chest expanding as the stolen energy hummed in his veins. The Hunger was not sated—it would never be truly sated—but the tearing agony was gone, replaced by a comfortable, buzzing warmth. 

He turned back to his classmates. 

Mineta had backed himself into a corner, shaking so violently his teeth were audibly chattering. Tsuyu stood perfectly still, her amphibious instincts screaming at her to camouflage, to hide, to flee from the apex predator. 

"The water is clear," Izuku said, his voice returning to its normal, human pitch, though his eyes remained a glowing, terrifying purple. "We should proceed to the central plaza. Aizawa-sensei requires assistance."

Without waiting for a response, Izuku didn't jump. He simply stepped off the ship and floated across the water toward the shore. Tsuyu grabbed Mineta and followed, keeping a very, very safe distance behind him.

The Central Plaza

Aizawa Shota was dying. 

He lay in a crater of shattered concrete, his arms bent at horrifying, unnatural angles. Blood poured from his face, blinding him. The bones in his face were fractured. 

Standing over him was the Nomu. The creature was an abomination of science, a mindless puppet bred for a single purpose: to rival All Might. Its exposed brain pulsed sickeningly as it raised a massive, muscular fist to deliver the killing blow to the erasure hero. 

A few yards away, Tomura Shigaraki watched with a manic, giddy smile. "You put up a good fight, Eraserhead. But you're just a man. And this is a god of destruction."

Shigaraki looked up as a booming crash echoed through the dome. The entrance doors had been blown off their hinges. 

"I HAD A BAD FEELING, SO I CUT MY CHAT WITH THE PRINCIPAL SHORT," a voice thundered, shaking the very foundations of the USJ. 

All Might stood at the top of the stairs. He wasn't smiling. For the first time in a decade, the Symbol of Peace looked genuinely, terrifyingly angry. 

"I AM HERE!" 

All Might vanished, a blur of golden light and kinetic force. In a fraction of a second, he crossed the plaza, grabbed Aizawa’s broken body, scooped up the nearby students (Tsuyu and Mineta, who had just arrived at the plaza's edge), and deposited them safely away from the beast. 

"Take Aizawa and run," All Might commanded, his voice tight. 

Then, the clash of titans began. 

Izuku landed softly on the edge of the plaza, watching the battle unfold. To the human eye, it was a blur of shockwaves and shattered earth. All Might and the Nomu traded blows at speeds exceeding the speed of sound. The air pressure alone was enough to uproot trees and tear the pavement to shreds. 

"Carolina Smash!" All Might roared, bringing a cross chop down on the Nomu’s shoulders. 

The creature didn't even flinch. It grabbed All Might’s arms, its flesh rippling as it absorbed the immense kinetic energy of the blow. 

"It doesn't work, All Might!" Shigaraki cackled, scratching his neck. "Nomu has Shock Absorption! To deal damage to him, you'd have to slowly gouge out his flesh! And that's if he doesn't use his Hyper-Regeneration to heal instantly! He's the ultimate bio-weapon! He is infinite!"

Izuku froze. 

Infinite. 

He focused his cosmic awareness on the battling behemoths. He looked past the Nomu's grotesque flesh and saw its biological blueprint. 

Shigaraki wasn't lying. The creature’s cells were in a constant, hyper-accelerated state of death and rebirth. It absorbed kinetic energy and immediately converted it into cellular regeneration. It was a closed-loop system of infinite biological energy. It was a perpetual motion machine made of flesh. 

It was, quite literally, the perfect meal. 

Izuku felt his mouth water. A literal drop of saliva slipped past his lips. The Galactus persona, always lurking, always hungry, surged to the forefront of his mind with terrifying force. 

A feast, the ancient voice echoed in his soul. A bounty that will not die upon the first bite. Take it. Consume it. Balance the abomination. 

Down in the plaza, the battle had taken a grim turn. Kurogiri had opened a warp gate beneath All Might, and the Nomu had driven its fingers into the hero's weak spot—his old, festering wound. All Might was trapped, bleeding, his time limit rapidly approaching. 

"You've gotten weaker, All Might," Shigaraki mocked, walking toward the struggle. "Nomu, pull him apart."

"NO!" Kirishima, Bakugo, and Todoroki, who had fought their way out of their respective zones, rushed the plaza. Bakugo blasted Kurogiri’s physical neck, pinning the warp gate villain. Todoroki unleashed a massive wave of ice, freezing the Nomu's right side, allowing All Might to break free. 

The Nomu shattered the ice, its frozen arm breaking off entirely. 

"Ah, the students are trying to play hero," Shigaraki sneered. "Nomu. Kill the explosive boy. Take back our exit."

The Nomu regenerated its arm in a sickening explosion of flesh and muscle. It crouched, the ground shattering beneath its feet, and launched itself at Bakugo with speeds that rivaled All Might. 

Bakugo didn't even have time to blink. The beast was upon him, its massive fist drawn back, promising instant death. 

But the blow never landed. 

CLANG. 

A sound like a massive, cosmic bell tolled through the USJ, deafening everyone. 

The Nomu stopped dead in mid-air. It didn't hit a wall. It didn't hit a shield. It was simply frozen in space, suspended three feet away from Bakugo's face, completely immobilized by an invisible, absolute force. 

Bakugo fell backward, gasping for air, staring up at the monster that was currently struggling against empty air. 

"What... what is this?" Shigaraki demanded, stepping back. "Kurogiri, did you do this?"

"It is not my doing, Shigaraki Tomura," Kurogiri said, his misty form trembling. "The ambient gravity in the room... it is collapsing."

Heavy, slow footsteps echoed across the plaza. 

From the shadows of the entrance tunnel, Izuku Midoriya emerged. 

But he didn't look like Izuku Midoriya. 

The containment suit he wore was glowing white-hot at the seams. The air around him was heavily distorted, vibrating with a high-frequency hum that made everyone’s teeth ache. And towering above him, projected into the air as a massive, spectral, violet hologram, was the silhouette of a colossal helmet—the crest of Galactus. 

Izuku’s eyes were no longer human. They were blinding beacons of pure, cosmic radiation. He wasn't walking; he was hovering an inch off the ground, the concrete turning to fine gray dust beneath him as his passive energy drain kicked in. 

"Deku?" Bakugo whispered, terror finally overriding his pride. 

Izuku didn't look at Bakugo. He looked at the Nomu. 

"An abomination of the natural order," Izuku spoke. His voice was no longer a dual-tone. It was the sole, booming voice of the Devourer. It vibrated in the chests of everyone present, a sound that commanded absolute, terrified reverence. "A vessel of infinite stamina, bred in a laboratory to mock the cycle of life and death."

Izuku raised his hand, pointing at the frozen Nomu. 

"I accept your offering."

"Kill him!" Shigaraki shrieked, suddenly gripped by a primal, irrational terror. "Nomu, break free and kill him!"

The Nomu roared, its muscles bulging as it fought the telekinetic hold. It possessed strength meant to rival All Might. Slowly, agonizingly, it began to push through Izuku’s invisible grip, inching forward. 

Izuku tilted his head. "You rely on kinetic force. You absorb the kinetic energy of blows. A formidable defense against a mortal."

Izuku slowly floated forward until he was hovering face-to-face with the towering bio-weapon. 

"But I do not deal in kinetic force," Izuku whispered, reaching his hand out. "I deal in entropy."

Izuku placed his bare, unarmored hand squarely on the center of the Nomu’s chest, directly over its exposed, beating heart. 

He opened the cosmic maw. 

The Nomu's eyes rolled back into its head. Its roar of fury turned into a high-pitched, gurgling shriek of absolute agony. 

A pillar of blinding violet light erupted from the Nomu’s chest, funneled entirely into Izuku’s palm. It was a torrential flood of biological energy, a million times more potent than the aquatic villains. 

Izuku felt the Nomu’s Shock Absorption Quirk. He felt the Hyper-Regeneration. He felt the sheer, monstrous stamina of a creature designed to never tire. 

He consumed it all. 

As Izuku drained the energy, the Nomu’s Hyper-Regeneration reflexively kicked in. The creature’s cells violently replicated, trying to heal the massive loss of vitality. It generated new life-force, new tissue, new stamina. 

Which Izuku immediately consumed. 

It was a grotesque, beautiful loop of cosmic feeding. The Nomu created energy; Izuku ate it. Over and over and over, thousands of times a second. 

Izuku’s head threw back, a sound escaping him that was half a moan of ecstasy and half a roar of godly power. The spectral helmet above him solidified, shining with the brilliance of a supernova. The dome of the USJ groaned under the pressure of the localized cosmic storm. The glass ceiling shattered outward, raining shards that evaporated into dust before they even hit the ground. 

All Might shielded his eyes, struggling to stand against the sheer gravitational pressure radiating from his student. What... what is this power? It's not a Quirk. It's... it's divine!

Shigaraki fell to his knees, clawing at his own neck until it bled. He was looking at a god. A purple, glowing god that was casually eating his invincible weapon. 

"No... no, no, no!" Shigaraki babbled. "That's cheating! You can't just delete him! He has shock absorption!"

For ten agonizing seconds, the feeding continued. The Nomu’s hyper-regeneration began to fail. Its cellular division reached its absolute, biological limit. It could no longer replace what was being taken. 

The creature’s bulging muscles deflated. Its dark skin turned a brittle, sickly gray. Its exposed brain shriveled like a dried raisin. 

Izuku squeezed his hand into a fist. 

The Nomu crumbled. It didn't fall to the ground; it disintegrated into a cloud of fine, gray ash that was immediately scattered by the wind of Izuku’s aura. 

The invincible bio-weapon was gone. Eaten. 

Silence descended on the plaza, broken only by the hum of Izuku’s containment suit. 

Izuku lowered his arm. The blinding light in his eyes slowly faded back to green, though the violet ring was thicker, pulsing with vibrant life. The spectral helmet vanished. 

Izuku Midoriya stood on the ground. For the first time in ten months, the Hunger was gone. Completely, utterly satiated. He felt heavy, grounded, filled to the brim with raw, immense power. He felt... perfect. 

He slowly turned his head to look at Shigaraki. 

The villain flinched violently, scrambling backward on his hands and knees. "Kurogiri! Get us out! Get us out now!"

"Shigaraki Tomura, we cannot," Kurogiri panicked. "The space around him... it is too dense. My warp gates cannot penetrate his gravitational field."

Izuku took a step toward them, but stopped. 

He looked to his left. Aizawa Shota lay in the rubble, barely clinging to life. His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat fading. The human part of Izuku—the boy who wept at hero documentaries—welled up, temporarily suppressing the cold apathy of the Devourer. 

He is dying. I have to save him. 

But Izuku didn't have a healing Quirk. Recovery Girl used stamina to heal. Izuku possessed an infinite reservoir of stolen stamina. 

Izuku walked over to Aizawa, his heavy boots crunching on the shattered concrete. All Might tried to step in, but Izuku held up a hand, a gentle wave of telekinesis pushing the Number One Hero back. 

"Midoriya, my boy, what..." All Might coughed blood, stunned. 

Izuku knelt beside his broken teacher. 

Galan of Taa shared his power, the ancient memories whispered. He created Heralds. Mortals infused with a fraction of the Power Cosmic, granted immortality and power to serve the balance. 

"Aizawa-sensei," Izuku said softly. 

Aizawa’s bloodied eye cracked open. He looked at the boy, expecting to see the monster that had just eaten the Nomu. Instead, he saw a crying teenager. 

"Midoriya..." Aizawa choked on his own blood. "Run..."

"You are a true hero," Izuku whispered. "You protect the weak. You bring balance to the chaos of this world. But your mortal vessel is broken."

Izuku placed his glowing, violet-ringed fingers gently on Aizawa’s forehead. 

"I cannot heal you with medicine. But I can share the burden. I can give you the spark."

Izuku closed his eyes and pushed. 

He didn't take. He gave. He channeled a microscopic fraction of the massive biological reserves he had just consumed, filtering it through the Power Cosmic, and forced it into Aizawa’s dying body. 

Aizawa arched off the ground, a sharp gasp escaping his lips. 

A brilliant, liquid-silver light erupted from Aizawa’s eyes and mouth. The blood on his face evaporated. The horrific, grinding sound of bones realigning and snapping back into place echoed loudly. 

The silver light cascaded over Aizawa’s body, weaving through his torn flesh, stitching muscles, and rebuilding shattered bone. The exhaustion, the pain, the proximity to death—it was all washed away in a tide of pure, cosmic vitality. 

Aizawa fell back onto the concrete, breathing heavily. He slowly opened his eyes. They were no longer bloodshot; they were a vibrant, glowing silver. 

He sat up. He looked at his hands. They were perfectly healed, thrumming with an alien, limitless energy. He felt lighter than air. He felt as though he could see the gravitational pull of the earth itself. 

Izuku stood up, stumbling slightly as he disconnected the tether. Giving power was exhausting in a different way; it required immense concentration to avoid incinerating a mortal soul. 

"Stand, Aizawa-sensei," Izuku commanded gently. "Stand, my Herald."

Aizawa stood. The silver aura around him flared, pushing the debris away from him. He didn't understand what had been done to him, but he felt the connection. He felt the vast, terrifying intelligence residing within his student. He understood, without words, that he had been touched by a god. 

Aizawa turned his silver, glowing eyes toward Shigaraki. The scarf around his neck animated, moving not by Aizawa’s physical movement, but by the sheer, raw telekinetic power now coursing through his veins. 

"Leave my students alone," Aizawa said, his voice echoing with the same, terrifying dual-tone as Izuku's. 

Shigaraki screamed in pure terror. "Kurogiri! PULL ME OUT!"

With the localized gravity field slightly weakened by Izuku’s exhaustion, Kurogiri managed to open a narrow, desperate warp gate. He threw himself and Shigaraki into the mist, vanishing from the USJ like rats fleeing a sinking ship. 

The remaining villains, witnessing their leaders flee and their ultimate weapon turned to dust, threw down their weapons and surrendered immediately. 

The battle was over. 

Aizawa stood perfectly still for a moment, the silver fire in his eyes burning bright. Then, like a switch being flipped, the power receded. Izuku severed the connection, pulling the Power Cosmic back into himself. 

The silver light faded. Aizawa’s eyes returned to their normal, exhausted black. The sheer physical toll of having his body rapidly rebuilt crashed over him, and he collapsed to his knees, unconscious but fully healed. 

Izuku swayed on his feet. The adrenaline and the cosmic high were fading, leaving the exhausted, fourteen-year-old boy behind. 

He looked around. The USJ was in ruins. All Might was staring at him with a mixture of profound awe and deep, unsettling fear. Bakugo, Kirishima, and Todoroki were standing a few yards away, perfectly still, looking at him as if he were a loaded gun. 

Izuku looked down at his armored hands. 

He had saved them. He had destroyed the monster. But he knew things would never be the same. The secret was out. He was no longer just the Quirkless boy with a late-blooming power. 

He was the Devourer. And he had tasted true power. 

Izuku closed his eyes and allowed the darkness of exhaustion to finally claim him, collapsing onto the shattered concrete of the USJ.

The nightmare always began the same way. 

Izuku Midoriya was no longer a fourteen-year-old boy from Musutafu. He was the void. He was the spaces between the stars, cold and ancient, drifting through a universe that had long since forgotten the warmth of its own birth. He was Galan of Taa, and he was starving. 

In the dream, Earth hung before him like a solitary, glowing jewel in the infinite black. To a human, it was a world of oceans, continents, bustling cities, and billions of lives. To the entity looking through Izuku’s eyes, it was a drop of nectar. It was a battery overflowing with sweet, vibrating biological and geothermal energy. 

Consume, the ancient voice echoed, reverberating against the inside of Izuku’s skull. The balance must be maintained. The cycle demands fuel.

Izuku tried to scream, tried to reach out with his human hands to protect his home, but he had no hands. He was a colossal, spectral manifestation of cosmic hunger. 

He watched in detached horror as a massive, violet vortex opened in the exosphere. The atmosphere of Earth was stripped away like the peel of an orange. The oceans instantly boiled into steam, swirling upward into the cosmic maw. The continents cracked, fault lines glowing with brilliant, blinding magma before the very crust of the planet shattered into trillions of pieces, drawn upward into the terrifying gravity well of the Devourer. 

He heard the screams of seven billion souls, snuffed out in a microsecond, their life-force converted into raw, blinding purple energy that flooded into his core. It was the most horrifying atrocity imaginable. 

And heaven help him, it tasted divine. 

Izuku woke up with a violently inhaled gasp. 

He wasn't in his bed. He was hovering three feet above it, his bedsheets floating around him in a chaotic zero-gravity bubble. The air in his bedroom crackled with violet static, the smell of ozone thick and suffocating. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, cutting off the flow of the Power Cosmic. Gravity snapped back into reality. Izuku crashed onto his mattress, the heavy blankets burying him as he curled into a tight, trembling ball. 

He clutched his stomach. The tearing, agonizing ache was there. It wasn't as severe as it had been before the USJ incident—the monstrous, infinite stamina he had drained from the Nomu had created a deep reserve within his cosmic furnace—but the fire was burning through the logs at an alarming rate. 

"I won't do it," Izuku whispered into the dark room, his voice shaking. "I'm a hero. I protect them. I don't eat them."

Emotions burn fuel, little mortal, the Galactus persona murmured in the deepest recesses of his mind. Fear. Anger. Compassion. They are mortal extravagances. To feel is to burn. To burn is to hunger. Discard them, or you will devour the ones you cherish.

Izuku buried his face in his hands, weeping silently. The USJ incident had changed everything. When he returned to class, the atmosphere had shifted from unease to outright terror. Aizawa Shota had miraculously survived, his shattered bones perfectly healed, but the underground hero refused to look Izuku directly in the eye, bearing the secret of the silver, cosmic spark Izuku had momentarily shared with him. 

His classmates treated him like an unexploded bomb. Bakugo didn't yell at him anymore; he just glared from a safe distance, his eyes wide with a primal paranoia. Mineta and Kaminari avoided him entirely. Even Uraraka, the girl he had saved, hesitated before speaking to him. 

And now, the U.A. Sports Festival was approaching. The greatest superhuman spectacle on Earth. A crucible of emotion, adrenaline, and explosive Quirks. 

For the other students, it was a chance to be scouted by pro heroes. For Izuku, it was a ticking time bomb. The sheer emotional toll of the festival—the excitement, the stress, the pressure—would accelerate his metabolism. If he let his human emotions run wild, the Hunger would spike. And if the Hunger spiked in a stadium filled with sixty thousand people overflowing with vibrant Quirk energy... 

He would become the nightmare. 

Izuku sat up, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. If he wanted to survive the festival without eating the audience, he needed to become a machine. He needed to lock his human heart in a vault of pure apathy. 

He needed armor. 

The Development Studio was a chaotic symphony of whirring drills, sparking blowtorches, and heavy machinery. Mei Hatsume was currently elbow-deep in a disassembled jetpack when the heavy steel door to her lab slowly creaked open. 

"I'm busy! Come back when you have a scheduled appointment!" Mei yelled without turning around. 

The air pressure in the room suddenly skyrocketed. 

Mei froze. The wrench in her hand suddenly felt ten times heavier. The stray nuts and bolts scattered across her workbench began to vibrate, then slowly rolled toward the doorway, defying the slant of the table. 

She turned around. 

Standing in the doorway was a boy from the hero course. Green hair, pale skin, and eyes that glowed with a faint, terrifying violet light. Mei’s Zoom Quirk activated instinctively, zeroing in on his irises. What she saw made her breath hitch. She didn't see human retinas; she saw microscopic galaxies spinning in a void of infinite dark. 

"Hatsume Mei," Izuku said, his voice carrying that strange, echoing dual-tone. "I require your assistance."

"Y-You're Midoriya, right? From Class 1-A?" Mei swallowed hard, wiping grease from her cheek. Her usual hyperactive demeanor was completely smothered by the sheer, gravitational weight of his presence. "What... what kind of babies do you need?"

Izuku stepped into the lab, holding a crude, hand-drawn schematic. 

"I do not need weapons. I do not need mobility enhancements," Izuku said flatly, placing the paper on her workbench. "I need a cage."

Mei looked at the schematic. It wasn't a standard hero costume. It looked like an environmental containment suit used for handling lethal radiation. 

"I need the innermost lining to be composed of two inches of high-density tungsten and lead," Izuku explained, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. "I need kinetic dampeners installed in the joints. The suit must be pressurized and sealed. And the helmet... it must cover the sides of my head and neck, utilizing electromagnetic field generators to redirect stray energy inward."

Mei stared at the blueprints, her genius brain rapidly processing the physics. "Midoriya... this suit would weigh over three hundred pounds. You wouldn't be able to walk. The kinetic dampeners would actively resist your movements. This isn't a hero costume. It's a mobile prison."

"Can you build it?" Izuku asked, ignoring her concern. 

"Well, yes, but why? Your Quirk is telekinesis, right? Why do you need to block radiation?"

"My Quirk," Izuku lied smoothly, the Galactus persona layering over his words with cold authority, "is highly unstable. It leaks. If I experience elevated emotional distress, my energy expands outward. If I am not contained during the Sports Festival, I will permanently alter the gravitational constant of the stadium. People will be crushed. I need the suit to suppress my own power."

Mei looked from the blueprints to the boy. For the first time in her life, she wasn't looking at a client as a canvas for her 'babies'. She was looking at a hazard. 

"I can have it done in three days," Mei said softly. "But Midoriya... if you wear this, you'll be fighting the suit as much as you're fighting the other students."

"That is the intention," Izuku said. He turned and walked out of the lab, the oppressive gravity dissipating the moment the door clicked shut. 

Mei exhaled a breath she didn't realize she was holding, looking down at the drawing of the massive, pronged helmet. 

The day of the U.A. Sports Festival arrived with deafening fanfare. The massive stadium was packed to the brim with screaming fans, pro heroes, and media outlets from across the globe. 

In the Class 1-A waiting room, the atmosphere was suffocating. 

Izuku sat in the corner. He had already changed into his new suit. It was a masterpiece of containment engineering. Thick, segmented plates of dark magenta and deep violet armor covered his body. It was incredibly bulky, making him look like a mechanical juggernaut. The massive, tuning-fork-like crest of the helmet framed his face, glowing with faint, internal electromagnetic fields that actively suppressed the violet aura leaking from his pores. 

He didn't move. He sat with his hands resting on his knees, his eyes closed. He was meditating, burying his human anxiety beneath the cold, indifferent consciousness of the Devourer. I am a force of nature. I do not feel nervousness. I do not feel fear. I simply am.

"Midoriya."

Izuku slowly opened his eyes. Shoto Todoroki stood before him. The boy with half-cold, half-hot powers looked down at Izuku with a piercing, heterochromatic glare. 

The rest of the class fell silent. Bakugo scoffed from his seat but didn't intervene. 

"Looking at things objectively, I think I'm stronger than you," Todoroki said evenly. "But All Might has his eye on you, doesn't he? I'm not trying to pry into that. But I'm going to beat you."

Izuku stared at Todoroki. To Izuku's cosmic awareness, Todoroki was a fascinating biological anomaly. One half of his body possessed a Quirk factor that rapidly sapped thermal energy (ice), and the other half rapidly generated it (fire). It was a localized, biological thermodynamic engine. 

"You are limiting yourself," Izuku’s dual-voice echoed from behind his heavy helmet. 

Todoroki frowned. "What?"

"You possess a binary system of energy, yet you only utilize the entropy," Izuku said, tilting his head slightly. "You refuse to use the thermal generation. A foolish, mortal rebellion. If you do not use all of your power, Todoroki Shoto, you will not even warrant my attention."

Todoroki’s eyes narrowed in fury, his left side twitching. "You don't know anything about me. I will win this using only my mother's power."

Todoroki turned and walked away. Kirishima rubbed the back of his neck. "Man, what's with everyone picking fights? Midoriya, you didn't have to be so cold about it."

Izuku didn't respond. He simply closed his eyes again. 

Cold, Izuku thought. Cold is good. Cold is safe.

"Class 1-A! It's time to enter!" Tenya Iida shouted, chopping the air. 

The class marched out of the tunnel and into the blinding sunlight of the stadium. The roar of sixty thousand people hit Izuku like a physical wave. The sheer volume of biological energy surrounding him was staggering. It felt like standing in the middle of a massive, all-you-can-eat buffet while starving to death. 

Underneath the three hundred pounds of tungsten armor, Izuku’s stomach gave a sharp, violent ache. He clenched his fists, the kinetic dampeners whining in protest, and forced the Hunger down. 

Midnight, the R-Rated Hero, stood on the central stage, snapping her whip. "Silence! Now, for the student pledge! Katsuki Bakugo!"

Bakugo walked up to the microphone. He looked out at the massive crowd, then glanced back at Izuku. Bakugo leaned into the mic. 

"I pledge... that I'll be number one."

The stadium erupted into boos and jeers. Bakugo didn't care. He walked down from the stage, his eyes locking onto Izuku. "Don't hold back, Deku. If you don't use whatever god-freak power you have, I'll kill you."

"The first event!" Midnight shouted, ignoring the hostility. "The Obstacle Race! All eleven classes will participate! The course is a four-kilometer ring around the stadium! On your marks!"

The massive green lights above the starting gate began to blink. 

Izuku stood at the back of the pack. He felt the heavy weight of his suit. He knew he couldn't run. The tungsten would exhaust his human muscles in minutes. 

Gravity, Izuku thought. Conserve the energy. Nullify the mass.

"START!" 

The bottleneck at the gate was instantaneous. Hundreds of students jammed together. Todoroki immediately unleashed a massive wave of ice, freezing the ground and trapping dozens of students in place as he skated ahead. 

Izuku didn't run. His eyes ignited beneath his helmet. 

The three-hundred-pound suit became completely weightless. The gravity affecting Izuku’s body shifted ninety degrees. Instead of falling toward the ground, he "fell" forward. 

He shot out of the starting gate, hovering exactly two feet above the ice. He didn't move his legs. He glided like a ghost, completely bypassing the frozen students. 

"And Midoriya from Class 1-A takes to the sky!" Present Mic screamed from the commentators' booth. "Look at him glide! He's not even running!"

Izuku quickly caught up to Todoroki, who was approaching the first obstacle: the Robo Inferno. A fleet of Zero Pointers from the entrance exam blocked the path. 

"So this is what they used in the general entrance exam?" Todoroki muttered, placing his right hand on the ground. He unleashed a glacier, flash-freezing a massive Zero Pointer in an unbalanced position. As Todoroki ran through its legs, the robot began to crash down, threatening to crush the students behind him. 

Izuku approached the falling mechanical titan. He didn't have time to go around, and transmuting it into bubbles like before would burn too much of his precious internal reserves. 

Izuku raised a heavily armored gauntlet. He targeted the kinetic energy of the falling robot. 

With a sharp flick of his wrist, Izuku redirected the kinetic momentum entirely. The thousands of tons of falling steel suddenly snapped sideways, violently reversing its trajectory. The Zero Pointer flew through the air, crashing into three other robots and clearing a massive path. 

The stadium went dead silent for a brief second before erupting in confused cheers. 

Izuku glided through the opening, his face a mask of absolute apathy. 

He reached the second obstacle, The Fall—a canyon filled with tightropes. Izuku didn't even acknowledge it. He simply floated across the chasm in a straight line, completely ignoring the physics of the challenge. 

He arrived at the final obstacle, the Minefield. Pink explosions dotted the dirt as students tried to carefully navigate the buried explosives. Bakugo was currently blasting himself through the air, battling Todoroki for first place. 

Izuku hovered over the minefield. The mines were pressure-sensitive. He weighed nothing. He simply drifted over them, a silent, terrifying purple specter. 

Bakugo and Todoroki were grappling, trying to slow each other down, completely focused on their rivalry. They didn't even notice the hum of Izuku's containment suit until he drifted past them. 

"Deku?!" Bakugo roared, unleashing a massive explosion to propel himself faster. 

Izuku didn't look back. He shifted his personal gravity slightly, "falling" forward at a steeper angle, increasing his velocity. He crossed the finish line hovering effortlessly, his boots touching the ground with a heavy, metallic thud only after he had won. 

"First place! Izuku Midoriya!" Midnight announced. 

Izuku stood at the finish line, his chest rising and falling slowly. He felt nothing. No joy. No triumph. Only the cold, calculated relief that he had expended a mere fraction of a percent of his cosmic fuel. 

The Cavalry Battle was an exercise in isolation. 

Izuku had been assigned ten million points. In a normal year, the winner of the first round was a target. This year, the winner was a pariah. 

The other students looked at Izuku not with competitive zeal, but with genuine apprehension. The way he had moved, the sheer, effortless manipulation of reality—no one wanted to go near him. 

Except for one. 

"Ten million points!" Mei Hatsume bounded up to him, completely unfazed by his terrifying aura, thrusting a jetpack into his face. "Midoriya! Let's team up! My babies will look great on the ten-million-point man!"

Izuku looked at her. "Your mechanical devices are unnecessary for my victory, Hatsume. However, the rules dictate I need a team. I require two more."

Uraraka approached timidly, followed by Fumikage Tokoyami. "I-I'll join you, Deku," Uraraka said, trying to smile. "We can combine my zero gravity with your telekinesis."

"Very well," Izuku said mechanically. "Hatsume in front. Uraraka on the left. Tokoyami on the right. I will take the rider position."

The battle began. Immediately, several teams charged at them, drawn by the ten million points. Tetsutetsu’s team closed in from the front. 

"Midoriya, they're coming!" Tokoyami warned, Dark Shadow flaring aggressively from his chest. 

"Do not engage," Izuku commanded. 

Izuku tapped into his power. He didn't attack. He simply increased the gravitational pull in a ten-foot ring around his team, creating a localized gravity well. 

As Tetsutetsu and his team crossed the threshold, their bodies were suddenly subjected to four times the gravity of Earth. They slammed face-first into the dirt, pinned to the ground by an invisible, crushing weight. 

"What the hell?!" Tetsutetsu groaned, unable to lift his metallic head. 

"Keep moving," Izuku told his team. 

For the next fifteen minutes, it was a slaughter of physics. Any team that approached Izuku’s squad was instantly flattened to the ground or violently repelled by an invisible kinetic wall. Izuku sat atop his team like a bored emperor, his glowing violet eyes tracking the chaos of the battlefield. 

Todoroki’s team approached in the final minute, utilizing Iida’s Recipro Burst to move at blinding speeds. Todoroki reached out to snatch the headband. 

Izuku didn't even flinch. As Todoroki’s hand crossed into Izuku’s personal space, Izuku casually siphoned the kinetic energy from Iida’s engines and Todoroki’s arm. 

Iida’s engines sputtered and died instantly, the momentum stolen. Todoroki’s arm went completely numb, dropping limply to his side. Izuku absorbed the kinetic energy, feeling a tiny, microscopic flare of satisfaction in his aching stomach. 

"Time's up!" Midnight yelled. 

Izuku’s team had maintained the ten million points without a single drop of sweat. Uraraka and Tokoyami looked at Izuku in awe and terror. He hadn't just protected them; he had dominated the very laws of physics to make them untouchable. 

The one-on-one tournament brackets were drawn. Izuku’s first match was against Hitoshi Shinso. 

It was over in three seconds. Shinso asked a question; Izuku didn't reply. Shinso tried to use his brainwashing Quirk through sheer force of will, but the moment his psychic energy touched Izuku’s mind, Shinso was met with the cosmic awareness of Galactus. Shinso collapsed, bleeding from the nose, screaming in terror at the vast, infinite void he had accidentally touched. 

Izuku advanced. 

The semi-finals arrived. Izuku Midoriya versus Shoto Todoroki. 

The stadium was buzzing with anticipation. The boy with the absolute defense against the boy with the absolute offense. 

Izuku stepped onto the concrete arena. His containment suit hummed, the heavy tungsten plates locking into place. He felt the Hunger gnawing at him. He had used power in the previous rounds. Not much, but enough to wake the beast. He needed to finish this quickly. 

Todoroki stood across from him, his right side covered in frost. His eyes were burning with a fierce, human determination. 

"Start!" Midnight cracked her whip. 

Todoroki didn't hesitate. He slammed his right foot onto the ground. "Heaven-Piercing Ice Wall!" 

A glacier of unfathomable size erupted from the concrete. It was a jagged, towering mountain of ice that instantly swallowed half the stadium, plunging the arena into a freezing, blinding whiteout. The sheer kinetic and thermal displacement was staggering. The crowd screamed in shock as the ice rushed toward Izuku at terminal velocity. 

Izuku didn't move. He didn't float. He didn't raise a shield. 

The glacier slammed into him. 

But it didn't crush him. It didn't freeze him. 

As the ice made contact with Izuku’s heavy armor, Izuku opened his mouth. 

Consume the entropy, the Devourer commanded. 

Izuku actively engaged the Power Cosmic to feed. The massive, towering wall of ice began to evaporate. It didn't melt into water; it bypassed liquid entirely, turning into raw, shimmering blue thermal energy that funneled directly into the vents of Izuku’s helmet. 

The stadium watched in dead silence as the massive glacier was quite literally inhaled. 

Within ten seconds, the ice was gone. Izuku stood in the center of the arena, his containment suit completely devoid of frost. He let out a slow, frosty breath, the stolen thermal energy soothing the aching void in his chest. It tasted like crisp mint and static electricity. 

"Is that all?" Izuku asked. His dual-voice echoed across the silent stadium, amplified by the microphones. "A parlor trick of rapid temperature reduction?"

Todoroki stared, his breath hitching. He was shivering violently, the frostbite eating at his own right side. "What... what did you just do?"

"I ate your defiance," Izuku said coldly. He took a heavy, clanking step forward. "You rely on a fraction of your biological potential because of a mortal grudge. You spite your father by spiting yourself. It is pathetic."

"Shut up!" Todoroki yelled, sending a flurry of ice projectiles. 

Izuku didn't even swat them away. They struck his armor and instantly dissolved into blue energy, absorbed harmlessly. 

"The universe is cold and indifferent, Shoto Todoroki," Izuku declared, his voice rising in volume, the booming, ancient resonance shaking the very foundations of the stadium. "It does not care about your father. It does not care about your childhood. If you wish to matter in the grand cosmic equation, if you wish to be a hero, you must use all the power you possess. To do otherwise is an insult to existence itself."

Todoroki clutched his left arm, his teeth chattering. The words hit him harder than a physical blow. He looked up at the VIP booths, seeing his father, Endeavor, watching intently. 

It's your power, isn't it?! The memory of his mother’s words echoed in his mind. 

"You want me to use it?" Todoroki whispered, his human rage boiling over. "Fine. If you want to see it... burn!"

Todoroki’s left side erupted. 

A massive, roaring pillar of crimson and orange fire exploded into the sky, instantly melting the residual frost in the arena. The heat was blinding, a torrential wave of pure thermal destruction. Endeavor roared in triumph from the stands. 

Todoroki unleashed the inferno directly at Izuku. A tidal wave of fire consumed the green-haired boy, bathing the arena in a blinding, scorching light. 

Inside the fire, Izuku’s human heart pounded. The sheer heat was bypassing the tungsten armor, not burning his flesh, but burning his carefully constructed apathy. 

Todoroki was feeling. He was pouring his soul, his rage, his passion into the flames. 

And Izuku felt it. 

The human emotion infected him. Izuku remembered his own desperation to be a hero. He remembered his admiration for All Might. The lock on his vault of apathy shattered. 

And with the emotion, came the Hunger. 

It wasn't a slow ache. It was a catastrophic, violent detonation of cosmic starvation. The Power Cosmic, fueled by Izuku’s sudden emotional spike, expanded wildly. 

Izuku screamed. 

He threw his arms open. The violet aura exploded from beneath his armor, tearing the metal seams apart. He didn't just inhale the fire; he violently ripped the thermal energy from the air, from the concrete, from Todoroki himself. 

The flames spiraled into a vortex, changing from orange, to blue, to blinding violet as they were sucked into Izuku’s chest. He drank the fire, the heat, the passion. It was spicy, radioactive, overwhelmingly potent. 

Todoroki stumbled forward, his fire abruptly snuffing out. He fell to his knees, completely drained of stamina, gasping for air as the temperature in the arena plummeted below freezing. 

Izuku stood in the center of the ring. His containment suit was cracked, glowing magma-hot from the inside. The tuning-fork helmet was sparking violently. 

He had absorbed too much, too fast. His human emotions were warring with his cosmic instincts. He wanted to save Todoroki, but the Devourer wanted to eat him. 

Izuku raised his hand, trembling violently. He couldn't trust himself to blast Todoroki out of bounds. He couldn't trust his control over kinetic energy. 

Transmutation, Izuku thought desperately. Non-lethal. 

Izuku slammed his hand onto the ground. 

A wave of iridescent light washed over the concrete beneath Todoroki. The solid stone instantly turned into a thick, viscous, rubbery foam. Todoroki sank into it up to his chest, completely immobilized. The foam hardened in a microsecond, trapping him perfectly. 

"Todoroki is immobilized!" Midnight yelled, cracking her whip, though she looked terrified. "Izuku Midoriya advances to the finals!"

The crowd cheered, a chaotic mixture of awe and fear. 

Izuku didn't celebrate. He turned and stumbled toward the exit tunnel, his heavy suit clanking irregularly. He was panting heavily, clutching his chest. 

Hungry. Still hungry. More. 

The voice in his head was deafening. The thermal energy hadn't satiated the beast; it had only awakened its appetite for the main course. It wanted biological energy. It wanted Quirks. 

Izuku burst into the locker room and collapsed against the lockers, tearing his cracked helmet off. He gasped for air, his eyes glowing a blinding, uncontrollable purple. The lockers around him began to warp and bend, drawn into his gravitational field. 

He was losing control. The emotional toll of the festival—the adrenaline, the conflict with Todoroki—had pushed his human metabolism to the breaking point. The Power Cosmic was demanding to be unleashed. 

The door to the locker room kicked open. 

Katsuki Bakugo stood there, cracking his knuckles, a feral grin on his face. He had won his semi-final match against Tokoyami. 

"Finally," Bakugo snarled, stepping into the room. "No more running, Deku. No more hiding behind that bulky suit. You and me. In the finals. We're gonna see who's really better."

Izuku looked up. His vision was swimming. When he looked at Bakugo, he didn't see his childhood friend. He didn't see his bully. 

He saw a blinding, pulsing aura of orange and red kinetic energy. He saw a Quirk factor so rich and explosive it made his mouth water. 

Eat him, the Galactus persona roared. Drain the mortal. Consume his spark.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, biting his own lip until it bled, using the physical pain to anchor his human consciousness. 

"No," Izuku choked out. 

"What?" Bakugo sneered, marching closer. "You backing out now, you coward? Stand up!"

"Kacchan... stay away from me," Izuku warned, his dual-voice vibrating so intensely it shattered the mirrors in the locker room. 

Bakugo flinched, the sheer auditory force pushing him back a step. "Stop using that creepy voice! Fight me!"

Izuku slowly forced himself to his feet. His armor groaned. He looked at Bakugo, tears streaming down his face, illuminated by the violent purple light of his own eyes. 

"If I fight you out there," Izuku whispered, his voice trembling with terror, "I will not hold back. My emotions are unbound. If you use your explosions on me... I will eat them. And then... I will eat you."

Bakugo froze. The utter sincerity, the absolute, undeniable truth in Izuku’s glowing eyes struck a chord of primal terror in Bakugo’s soul. Izuku wasn't trash-talking. He was stating a biological fact. 

"I am forfeiting," Izuku said, turning his back on Bakugo. 

"You can't do that!" Bakugo yelled, his pride warring with his instincts. "I'm the one who's gonna beat you! You can't just run away!"

"I am not running away from you," Izuku said softly, looking over his shoulder. "I am running away from myself. Congratulations on your victory, Kacchan."

Izuku stepped past Bakugo, who was rooted to the spot, completely paralyzed by the sheer gravitational weight of Izuku’s passing aura. 

Izuku didn't go back to the stadium. He didn't wait for the medal ceremony. He walked out of U.A. High School, his heavy tungsten boots leaving deep craters in the pavement with every step. 

He walked into the dense forest surrounding the campus, seeking the isolation of nature. He needed to be alone. He needed to bury his emotions before they burned the world down. 

As the cheers of the stadium echoed faintly in the distance, celebrating Bakugo’s hollow victory, Izuku Midoriya sat in the dirt, a god trapped in the body of a teenage boy, weeping for the humanity he was rapidly losing. 

He had the power to rule the universe. But the burden of the crown was a starvation that would never, ever end.