What if Betrayed Deku had the mangekyou sharingan and one for all

The afternoon sun filtered through the large glass windows of the Heights Alliance dormitory, casting a warm, golden hue over the common area. It was a tranquil Sunday. The kind of day that felt earned after weeks of grueling training, villain attacks, and the constant, crushing weight of hero society's expectations. Izuku Midoriya sat at the corner desk in his room, an array of brightly colored gel pens scattered across his All Might-themed notebook. He was mumbling softly to himself, analyzing the latest televised fight featuring Kamui Woods, his hand moving in furious, jagged strokes across the paper.

He was happy. For the first time in his life, he felt a profound, unshakable sense of belonging. He had friends who cared for him. He had a mentor who believed in him. He had a Quirk—a sacred, terrifying, beautiful power—that hummed beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. 

He had no idea that in less than an hour, his entire world would be burned to ashes.

A sharp, authoritative knock shattered the quiet of his room. It wasn't the rhythmic, cheerful tapping of Uraraka, nor the rapid, rigid knocking of Iida. It was heavy. Final. 

"Midoriya. Open the door."

Izuku blinked, his pencil pausing mid-stroke. It was Mr. Aizawa. The erasure hero’s voice lacked its usual gruff exasperation; instead, it was frighteningly cold. A chill, entirely unbidden, crawled up Izuku’s spine.

"Coming, Mr. Aizawa!" Izuku called out, pushing his chair back. He smoothed down his casual green t-shirt and opened the door with a bright, welcoming smile. 

The smile died instantly.

Standing in the hallway was not just his homeroom teacher. Aizawa stood at the forefront, his capture weapon unwound and hovering around his shoulders like a nest of agitated vipers. His eyes were glowing a menacing, crimson red—his Quirk was active, and he was staring directly at Izuku. Flanking him was Hound Dog, the school's guidance counselor and security chief, who was bearing his teeth in a low, feral snarl. Behind them stood Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi, his face an impenetrable mask of sorrow and hardened resolve.

"Mr. Aizawa?" Izuku's voice wavered, his eyes darting between the three men. He felt the familiar, comforting hum of One For All suddenly vanish from his veins, suppressed by Aizawa's unblinking gaze. "Detective? What's... what's going on? Is there a villain attack?"

Before Izuku could process another thought, Hound Dog lunged forward with terrifying speed. A massive, heavy hand grabbed Izuku by the shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him face-first against the wall of his own room. The impact knocked the wind out of him, sending a shockwave of pain through his nose and chest.

"Hey! Wait! What are you doing?!" Izuku cried out in a muffled voice, struggling against the sheer physical strength of the canine hero. 

"Do not resist, Midoriya Izuku," Tsukauchi’s voice rang out, devoid of the warmth he usually reserved for All Might's protege. "By order of the Hero Public Safety Commission and the administration of U.A. High School, you are being placed under immediate arrest."

Click. Clack.

Cold, incredibly heavy metal clamped around Izuku’s wrists. They weren't standard police cuffs. They were Quirk-suppressing restraints, lined with quirk-canceling alloys, thick and immovable. 

"Arrest?" Izuku gasped as Hound Dog pulled him back, forcing him to face the three men. His green eyes were wide, welling with terrified tears. "For what?! I haven't done anything! Mr. Aizawa, please, tell them! There's a mistake!"

Aizawa’s expression was carved from stone. He didn't blink. He didn't soften. "Save it for the interrogation room, Midoriya. Move."

They marched him out of his room. Izuku’s legs felt like lead. His mind raced at a million miles an hour, desperately trying to piece together this nightmare. Was it a training exercise? A bizarre test of his psychological fortitude? But the bruising grip Hound Dog had on his arm, and the palpable, suffocating aura of disappointment radiating from Aizawa, told him this was agonizingly real.

As they moved through the halls, Izuku prayed they wouldn't run into anyone. He didn't want his friends to see him like this, treated like a common criminal. But fate had entirely abandoned Izuku Midoriya. 

They reached the lobby of the Heights Alliance. The entire class was there. 

The silence in the common room was deafening. Nineteen students stood in various states of shock, anger, and devastation. Izuku’s breath hitched. He looked at them, his eyes pleading for someone, anyone, to step forward and stop this.

"Guys..." Izuku whispered, his voice cracking. 

Tenya Iida, the class president, stood at the front. His posture was rigid, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. He refused to meet Izuku's eyes. "To think," Iida spoke, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and profound betrayal, "that the one who taught me what it meant to be a true hero... was the one selling us to the slaughter."

"Iida, no! What are you talking about?!" Izuku begged, stepping toward his friend, only to be yanked back roughly by Hound Dog. 

He looked frantically for Uraraka. Ochako stood near the sofas, her hands covering her mouth, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks. When Izuku met her gaze, she flinched as if physically struck. She turned her back to him, burying her face in Tsuyu’s shoulder, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. 

"Uraraka! Please, you have to believe me!" Izuku screamed, his voice tearing at his throat. The panic was turning into a suffocating terror. 

"Shut up, you damn nerd," a low, dangerous voice growled. Katsuki Bakugo stepped out from the crowd. He wasn't yelling. He wasn't producing explosions. And that made it infinitely worse. Bakugo’s crimson eyes were filled with a cold, disgusted hatred that pierced straight through Izuku’s soul. "You played us all. You played him. I always knew there was something wrong with a Quirkless nobody suddenly getting a power like that. You made a deal with the devil, didn't you, Deku?"

"Kacchan, no! I didn't! I swear!" 

"Keep moving," Aizawa ordered harshly, shoving Izuku forward toward the dormitory doors. 

"Mr. Aizawa! Please!" Izuku sobbed, the tears finally breaking free, trailing down his freckled cheeks. "I don't know what they think I did, but I didn't do it! I want to be a hero! I want to save people!"

Aizawa stopped just before the exit. He leaned down, his face inches from Izuku’s, his glowing red eyes boring into the boy's terrified green ones. "The USJ. The training camp. Kamino. Every time the League was one step ahead. Every time they knew our schedules, our weaknesses, our locations. It was you. You almost got my students killed, Midoriya. I will never forgive you."

The words felt like a physical knife twisting into Izuku's gut. He was dragged out into the bright sunlight, shoved into the back of an armored, black police transport vehicle. The heavy steel doors slammed shut, plunging him into darkness. 

He was entirely alone.

The interrogation room was buried deep beneath U.A., in a secure bunker normally reserved for extreme villain containment. The walls were stark white, illuminated by harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights that made Izuku’s eyes ache. He sat in a metal chair, his heavy cuffs bolted to the steel table in front of him. 

Across from him sat Principal Nezu, Detective Tsukauchi, and Aizawa. 

"Let us begin," Nezu said, his usually cheerful, squeaky voice devoid of any warmth. He pressed a button on a remote, and a holographic screen projected onto the center of the table. 

"Midoriya Izuku. You are being charged with high treason, domestic terrorism, and conspiracy to commit mass murder in association with the League of Villains," Tsukauchi stated, opening a thick manila folder. "Do you understand these charges?"

"I am innocent!" Izuku practically shrieked, leaning forward as far as the chains would allow. "Detective, your Quirk! You can tell when people are lying! Ask me if I'm a traitor! Ask me!"

Tsukauchi looked at him with pity. "My Quirk only detects what the speaker believes to be the truth, Midoriya. If someone is deeply brainwashed, or a pathological liar who has convinced themselves of a false reality, my Quirk can be bypassed. We have consulted psychologists. The evidence we have supersedes my Polygraph."

"What evidence?!" Izuku cried. 

Nezu tapped the screen. A video began to play. 

It was grainy, looking like security footage from an abandoned warehouse. In the center of the frame stood Tomura Shigaraki, Kurogiri, and Dabi. A moment later, a figure walked into the frame. 

Izuku stopped breathing. 

It was him. The boy on the screen wore his exact school uniform. He had his messy green hair, his freckles, his exact posture and nervous muttering. The 'Izuku' on the screen bowed respectfully to Shigaraki and handed over a flash drive. 

"The schedule for the forest training camp," the Izuku on the screen said, his voice a perfect, flawless match. "All the student Quirks and weaknesses are on there. Just like you asked."

"Good work, little hero," Shigaraki rasped on the video, taking the drive. "Your master will be pleased."

Izuku stared at the projection, his jaw hanging open. "That... that's not me! That's a fake! Someone with a transformation Quirk! Toga! Toga Himiko can turn into people!"

"We thought of that," Nezu said coldly. "However, Toga Himiko requires blood to transform. Her transformations also do not replicate the exact bio-electric signature of a person. This footage was analyzed by top tech heroes. There is no CGI. The thermal and biometric scanners from the camera confirm that the person in that video possesses your exact bone density, your exact height, and traces of your specific energy output."

"It's a lie!" Izuku screamed, pulling at his chains. 

Nezu swiped to the next file. "Exhibit B. Bank records. An offshore account in your mother's maiden name, opened three days before the USJ attack. It has received regular, massive deposits from shell corporations tied directly to All For One's criminal empire. Over fifty million yen, Midoriya."

"I don't know anything about that! Check my computer! Check my phone!"

"We did," Aizawa said softly. He placed a small, black, metallic device on the table. Izuku recognized it as a villain communicator. "We found this sewn into the lining of your mattress this morning. It holds encrypted logs of messages sent directly to a League server. Messages detailing our security patrols, the layout of the Heights Alliance, and All Might's declining health."

Izuku stared at the black device. The room started to spin. The sheer magnitude of the setup, the terrifying perfection of the frame job, crashed down on him. This wasn't a misunderstanding. This was a meticulously crafted, flawlessly executed assassination of his life. Someone had gone to unimaginable lengths to destroy him. 

"I am telling the truth," Izuku whispered, tears dripping off his chin onto the metal table. "Please. You have to believe me. Why would I do this? I break my bones to save people! I fought Muscular! I fought Overhaul! Why would I do that if I was a villain?!"

"To gain our trust," Aizawa replied, his voice devoid of emotion. "To embed yourself so deeply within our ranks that you could dismantle us from the inside when the time was right. You played the role of the self-sacrificing martyr perfectly. It sickens me."

"No... no..." 

The door to the interrogation room opened with a heavy thud. 

The air in the room instantly grew heavy, thick with a suffocating, crushing pressure. Izuku looked up, and his heart shattered into a million irreparable pieces. 

Toshinori Yagi—All Might—stepped into the room. He was in his skeletal form, looking more frail and exhausted than Izuku had ever seen him. He wore a baggy yellow suit that seemed to hang off his emaciated frame. But it was his face that destroyed Izuku. 

There was no signature smile. There was no warmth. The sunken blue eyes that usually held a paternal, boundless affection were entirely devoid of light. He looked at Izuku not as a successor, not as a son, but as a monster. 

"All Might," Izuku sobbed, a pathetic, desperate sound escaping his lips. "All Might, please. Tell them. You know me. You know my heart. I would never—"

"Silence." 

The word was spoken softly, but it echoed in the room like a gunshot. Izuku snapped his mouth shut, his chest heaving with sobs. 

Toshinori walked slowly to the table. He didn't look at Nezu or Aizawa. He kept his hollow gaze locked on Izuku. 

"I gave you everything," Toshinori said, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of sorrow and suppressed rage. "I gave you my power. I gave you my legacy. I gave you my trust. I looked at a Quirkless boy and saw the heart of the greatest hero this world would ever know." 

Toshinori leaned forward, placing his skeletal hands on the table. "I was a fool. I let my desperation for a successor blind me to the darkness in your heart. You used my fading strength to empower the very monster who crippled me. Who killed Nana."

"I didn't!" Izuku wailed, thrashing against the chains, ignoring the way the metal tore at the skin of his wrists, drawing blood. "I swear on my life, All Might, I didn't! Please don't look at me like that! Please!"

"You will not call me that," Toshinori growled. "You have lost the right to use that name. You have lost the right to stand in the light." 

Toshinori stood up straight, his expression hardening into pure ice. "One For All is a sacred torch, passed down to illuminate the darkness. It does not belong in the hands of a traitor. Give it back, Midoriya. Now."

Izuku stopped struggling. The words hung in the air, a death sentence to his soul. He looked at his idol, his father figure, the man who had pulled him from the dirt and told him he could be a hero. He saw absolutely no hesitation in Toshinori's eyes. He had made his choice. He believed the lie. 

The last ember of hope inside Izuku Midoriya sputtered and died. 

His head drooped. His messy green curls fell over his eyes, hiding the sudden, terrifying emptiness that washed over his features. The tears stopped. The panic faded, replaced by a cold, yawning void in his chest. 

"Okay," Izuku whispered. His voice sounded dead. "Okay. If... if you don't believe me... then take it." 

He slowly pulled at his own hair, plucking a single green strand from his head. His hands were shaking violently as he held it out toward Toshinori, restricted by the short chains. 

Toshinori reached out, his face a mask of bitter regret. He took the hair. "Eat this," Toshinori muttered to himself, the irony of the phrase tasting like ash in his mouth. He swallowed it. 

They waited in silence. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. A full minute. 

Toshinori frowned, pressing a hand to his chest. He closed his eyes, searching for the familiar, roaring warmth of the stockpile. Nothing. The void inside him remained entirely empty. 

"What is the meaning of this?" Toshinori demanded, his voice rising in anger. "Transfer the Quirk, Midoriya!"

Izuku looked up, genuine confusion piercing through his despair. "I... I did. I willed it to pass back to you. I swear I did."

Deep within the recesses of Izuku’s mind, in a space that defied time and reality, the dark, starry expanse of the Vestige realm began to tremble. Izuku felt his consciousness violently yanked backward, plunging into his own psyche.

He found himself standing in the void. Before him stood the seven past users of One For All. They were not seated in their usual chairs. They were standing, furious, their spectral bodies glowing with intense, erratic energy. 

"We will not go," a voice echoed through the darkness. 

Izuku looked toward the front. Yoichi Shigaraki, the First User, stepped forward. His long white hair floated as if underwater. His eyes were burning with a fierce, protective light. 

"First?" Izuku asked softly. 

"We see the truth," Yoichi said, his voice resonating with the combined power of the predecessors. "We reside within your soul, Izuku Midoriya. We know your heart. We know every thought, every memory, every ounce of pain you have endured for the sake of others. You are innocent."

Daigoro Banjo, the fifth user, cracked his knuckles, his shadowy face scowling into the distance. "That blond idiot out there is blind. The system is blind. They're throwing away the best thing they ever had over cheap parlor tricks."

"You... you believe me?" Izuku choked out, dropping to his knees in the void, fresh tears spilling down his face. 

Nana Shimura knelt beside him, wrapping her glowing, spectral arms around his trembling shoulders. "Oh, Izuku. Of course we do. We are a part of you now. You are our Ninth. Our final hope. We will not abandon you, even if the world does."

"But... but All Might wants it back," Izuku cried. "I have to give it back. I'm a criminal now."

"No," Yoichi said firmly. He walked up to Izuku and placed a hand over the boy’s heart. "One For All cannot be stolen. It cannot be forced. And we refuse to be transferred. Toshinori has lost his way, blinded by fear and betrayal. We choose you, Izuku Midoriya. We will always choose you."

Izuku was violently pulled back to reality. He gasped, his lungs burning as he slammed back into his physical body. 

Toshinori was glaring at him, his fists clenched. "Why are you resisting? Give it back!"

"I... I can't," Izuku panted, his chest heaving. "They... they won't go. They won't leave me."

Toshinori’s face contorted into an expression of sheer disgust. "You lie even now. You refuse to relinquish it. You are trying to steal One For All for your master." 

"No! All Might, please, I'm telling the truth!"

Toshinori turned his back. "I have nothing more to say to this villain. Lock him up. Throw away the key. May God forgive me for unleashing you upon this world."

Toshinori Yagi walked out of the room, the heavy steel door sealing with a deafening clang behind him. 

Izuku stared at the door. The silence returned. It was heavy, oppressive, and utterly devoid of hope. He lowered his head to the cold metal table. The boy who wanted to save everyone with a smile finally broke. He didn't scream. He didn't thrash. He just wept, a silent, broken weeping of a soul that had been entirely crushed by the weight of a world that had betrayed him. 

Six Hours Later - Tartarus Maximum Security Prison

The helicopter ride was entirely silent. Izuku sat strapped to a chair in the cargo hold, surrounded by heavily armed guards whose faces were hidden behind tactical masks. He was clad in a bright orange jumpsuit, his arms and legs encased in a full-body, motorized restraint system that severely limited his movement and nullified any Quirk usage. 

Through the small porthole window, Izuku saw it rising from the dark, churning waters of the ocean. Tartarus. The inescapable abyss. A massive, brutalist fortress of black steel and concrete, isolated from humanity, a tomb for the monsters that hero society wished to forget. 

The landing, the processing, the descent—it was all a blur to Izuku. He was subjected to humiliating strip searches, chemical showers, and endless biometric scans. No one spoke to him. To the guards, he wasn't a person. He was a number. Prisoner 9430. 

He was escorted down, down, down. Past the levels of regular murderers. Past the containment cells of B-rank villains. Down to the very bottom of the ocean floor, where the pressure of the water outside the reinforced walls groaned and creaked. The Abyss Level. 

A massive blast door hissed open, revealing a hallway lined with featureless white doors. The guards hauled him to the very end of the hall. Door number 004. 

They unlocked his motorized restraints, shoving him inside. Izuku stumbled, falling to his knees on the cold, hard floor. 

"Enjoy eternity, traitor," one of the guards spat, before hitting a button on the wall. 

The door slammed shut. 

Izuku was plunged into absolute, impenetrable darkness. There were no windows. There were no bars. There was just a smooth, ten-by-ten foot cube of quirk-resistant metal. There was no light, no sound, no sense of time. Just a hole in the floor for a toilet, and a small slot in the door where nutrient paste would be pushed through twice a day. 

Solitary confinement. Deep isolation. Designed to break the minds of the most hardened megalomaniacs. 

Izuku sat on the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. He stared into the pitch black. 

One day passed. Or maybe it was an hour. Or maybe a week. Without sensory input, Izuku’s mind began to unravel. 

He hallucinated. He saw Uraraka’s face, laughing at him, her eyes turning into pitch-black voids. He saw Iida, chopping his hand down like an executioner's axe. He saw his mother, Inko, crying, holding a newspaper with his face plastered under the word 'TERRORIST'. 

Why? 

The question looped in his brain, a relentless, torturous mantra. Why didn't they look deeper? Why didn't they trust me? Why did Aizawa assume the worst? Why did All Might abandon me?

For the first few days, the emotion that ruled him was despair. He wept until he was severely dehydrated. He begged the empty darkness for forgiveness for crimes he didn't commit. He prayed that the real villain would be caught and they would come down to open his door, apologizing, telling him it was all a terrible mistake. 

But as the days bled into weeks, the despair began to rot. It fermented, mutating in the suffocating darkness of Tartarus. 

The despair turned to anger. 

Izuku remembered the countless times he had shattered his own bones to save people. He remembered the agony of his arms turning purple, the sensation of his skin tearing, the feeling of his own blood in his mouth. He remembered breaking himself to save Uraraka from the zero-pointer. To save Iida from Stain. To save Todoroki from himself. To save Kota. To save Eri. 

He had bled for them. He had offered his life on a silver platter for hero society. And the moment a shadow of a doubt was cast, they threw him to the wolves without a second thought. They didn't even give him a trial. 

Hypocrites.

The word echoed in the dark. 

Fakes. Liars. Blind, arrogant fools.

A dark, boiling rage began to pool in the pit of Izuku’s stomach. It was an ugly, unfamiliar emotion. It was entirely alien to the boy who had once idolized heroes. But in the blackness of Tartarus, that boy was starving to death, and something else was taking his place. 

It was during what Izuku estimated to be his second month in the hole that the physical changes began. 

The human body and mind are intrinsically linked. Quirks, specifically, are deeply tied to a person's physical and psychological state. Intense emotional trauma can cause Quirks to evolve, awaken, or mutate. Quirk awakenings were rare, usually happening in near-death scenarios. 

But Izuku Midoriya was experiencing a death of the soul. 

He was sitting in the corner of his cell, his eyes wide open, staring into the dark. He was thinking of All Might. He was replaying the moment Toshinori turned his back on him, over and over and over. The betrayal was a physical ache in his chest, a jagged knife scraping against his ribs. 

I hate you, a voice whispered in his mind. It sounded like him, but colder. I hate you all.

Suddenly, a blinding, searing pain exploded behind Izuku's eyes. 

"GAAAH!" Izuku screamed, his hands flying to his face. He fell sideways onto the cold floor, thrashing in agony. 

It felt as though someone had poured molten lead directly into his optic nerves. The pain was beyond anything he had ever experienced—worse than shattering his arms, worse than Muscular’s devastating blows. It was a deep, genetic burning, radiating from his brain down through his eyes. 

Genetics. Quirk factors. 

Izuku’s mother, Inko, possessed a weak telekinetic Quirk. Her father had possessed a minor visual enhancement Quirk. 

His father, Hisashi Midoriya, possessed a fire-breathing Quirk. But deeper in Hisashi's bloodline, buried under generations of diluted genetics, was an ancient, dormant Quirk factor. A Quirk that responded to intense emotional despair, linked to a specific type of biological energy that ancient quirk theorists called 'Chakra'. It was an ocular Quirk, one that evolved through the trauma of losing love and replacing it with hatred. 

For generations, this gene had laid entirely dormant, lacking the necessary catalyst to awaken. 

Until now. Until a boy with a heart too big for his own good was subjected to the ultimate betrayal, completely shattering his psyche while his body was simultaneously saturated with the god-like, mutating energy of One For All. 

The stockpile of One For All surged in response to Izuku's agony. It acted as an accelerant, dumping immense amounts of raw power into the mutating dormant gene in Izuku's optic nerves. 

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" Izuku shrieked, tearing at his hair. 

Blood began to leak from his closed eyelids. Thick, warm, crimson tears streamed down his pale, gaunt cheeks, dripping onto the floor of the cell. The pressure in his skull built to a crescendo, threatening to split his head wide open. 

And then, as suddenly as it began, the pain stopped. 

Izuku lay on the floor, panting heavily, his chest rising and falling in the absolute darkness. His face was stained with his own blood. Slowly, trembling, he lowered his hands from his face. 

He opened his eyes. 

The darkness of the cell was gone. Or, rather, it no longer mattered. Izuku could see. 

His vision was unimaginably sharp. He could see the microscopic imperfections in the metal walls of his cell. He could see the faint thermal outlines of the air currents circulating from the tiny ventilation shaft. The world moved in a strange, hyper-detailed slow motion. 

He didn't know it, but his eyes were no longer emerald green. The irises had bled into a brilliant, glowing, terrifying crimson red. Within the red, a black pattern had formed—three jagged, sweeping blades intersecting around his pupil, forming the shape of a deadly, hypnotic pinwheel. 

The Mangekyou Sharingan had awakened. 

Deep within him, in the Vestige realm, the sudden shift was catastrophic. 

Yoichi Shigaraki, Nana Shimura, and the other predecessors were thrown off their feet as the starry sky of their mental world violently fractured. The soft, comforting bioluminescence of One For All was suddenly overpowered by a terrifying, oppressive crimson aura that flooded the realm. The starry sky turned blood red. The ground cracked, leaking a dark, dense, heavy energy. 

"What is happening?!" Daigoro yelled, shielding his eyes from the sudden, oppressive pressure. "The stockpile! It's reacting to something!"

Nana looked up at the sky, her eyes wide with terror. "This feeling... it's so cold. It's... it's pure sorrow. And rage."

Yoichi stood up, looking at the massive, glowing orb of One For All in the center of the realm. The once-pure light was now swirling with thick, black and red tendrils of energy. 

"Izuku has awakened a dormant power," Yoichi said softly, his voice echoing with sorrow. "A power fueled by his pain. The boy who loved the light has been consumed by the dark."

Back in the cell, Izuku slowly pushed himself up to his feet. He felt different. The crushing, suffocating despair that had chained him to the floor for weeks was gone. It had been burned away, replaced by a cold, clinical, hyper-focused clarity. 

He raised a hand, looking at his scarred fingers. He could see the faint, microscopic flow of his own circulatory system. He could see the dormant energy of One For All resting in his core, glowing like a miniature green sun. 

With his new, cursed eyes, he could see the exact pathways the power needed to take. He saw the bottlenecks, the inefficiencies, the reasons why using 100% shattered his bones. His previous method of Full Cowling was like trying to force a raging river through a garden hose. But now... now he could see the micro-valves in his muscles. He could see how to weave the power between his cells, using the visual kinetic tracking of the Sharingan to perfectly manage the strain.

Izuku clenched his fist. 

BZZZT.

Green lightning, interlaced with dark red, jagged sparks, erupted around his arm. He didn't feel the familiar, terrifying pressure of his bones straining to contain the power. He felt perfect control. 

He looked toward the massive, steel, quirk-resistant door of his cell. 

A cruel, humorless smirk crept across Izuku's bloodstained face. His crimson, pinwheel eyes glowed menacingly in the dark. 

The heroes thought they had buried a traitor. They thought they had extinguished the light of One For All. 

They were wrong. They hadn't buried a traitor. 

They had forged a demon. 

And in due time, the Ghost of Tartarus would rise, and hero society would reap exactly what it had sown. 

Izuku Midoriya sat back down on the floor, crossing his legs in the dark, the red lightning fading. He had time. He would wait in this darkness, and he would master these new eyes. And when the walls of this prison finally fell, he would show the world the true meaning of despair.

Time in the Abyss Level of Tartarus did not flow; it stagnated. It was a suffocating pool of nothingness where seconds stretched into hours, and days dissolved into meaningless voids. There was no sun to mark the morning, no moon to signal the night. There was only the rhythmic, maddening drip of condensation somewhere beyond the reinforced walls, and the dull, mechanical hum of the air filtration system.

For a normal human, six months in Deep Solitary Confinement was a guaranteed death sentence for the mind. Men would claw their own eyes out, shatter their skulls against the quirk-canceling alloy of the walls, or regress into catatonic, drooling shells of their former selves. 

Izuku Midoriya sat in the dead center of his cell, entirely motionless. His legs were crossed in a lotus position. His breathing was so shallow, so perfectly controlled, that his chest barely seemed to rise. 

He was far from a normal human anymore. 

Physically, he was a ghost. The nutrient paste shoved through his door twice a day was just enough to keep his organs functioning, but it had stripped away his boyish fat. His face was gaunt, his cheekbones sharp and pronounced beneath a layer of grime and a tangled, unkempt mane of dark green hair that now cascaded down to his shoulders. His orange prison jumpsuit hung off his frame, stained and tattered. The heavy, motorized quirk-suppressing cuffs still locked his wrists and ankles together, their red indicator lights the only illumination in the pitch-black cube. 

But beneath that fragile, emaciated exterior, a dormant volcano was roaring. 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. 

The darkness of the cell was instantly banished, replaced by a hyper-detailed, monochrome schematic of the world around him. His irises burned with a brilliant, self-illuminating crimson light, casting an eerie, bloody glow against the metal walls. The three-pronged pinwheel of his Mangekyou Sharingan spun lazily around his pupils. 

He didn't just see the walls; he saw the micro-fissures in the steel, the thermal variance of the cold ocean water pressing against the exterior hull, and the faint, pulsing electromagnetic fields generated by his cuffs. 

“Focus, Izuku.”

The voice echoed not in the cell, but inside his own mind. It was a calm, ethereal voice that carried the weight of generations. 

Izuku closed his eyes, and the physical world fell away. 

He stood in the Vestige Realm. 

Six months ago, this mental landscape had been a dark, tranquil void illuminated by the soft, starry glow of One For All and the floating, spectral chairs of the past users. 

Now, the realm was a reflection of Izuku’s shattered soul. 

The sky above was a tempestuous, bleeding crimson, swirling with heavy, dark clouds. The ground beneath his feet was no longer an abstract void, but a vast, cracked wasteland of obsidian stone. In the center of the realm, the core of One For All—once a blinding, pure sun of green and gold—now burned with a fierce, emerald light interlaced with jagged streaks of black and blood-red energy. It crackled with a volatile intensity. 

The past users stood in a semi-circle around him. They no longer sat in their chairs; the chairs had crumbled into dust the day Izuku’s eyes awakened. 

Yoichi Shigaraki, the First User, stood at the forefront. His white hair whipped around his face in the phantom wind of the realm. He looked at Izuku with a mixture of profound sadness and undeniable awe. 

“You are pushing your mind to the absolute limit, Ninth,” Yoichi said softly. 

Izuku opened his crimson eyes in the mental world. His gaze was cold, unreadable, utterly devoid of the nervous, eager-to-please energy that had once defined him. “I have nothing else to do, First. The physical world is dead to me right now. This is my only reality.”

Daigoro Banjo, the burly, leather-clad fifth user, stepped forward, crossing his muscular arms. “Kid, we’re not complaining about the training. But the power radiating from those eyes… it’s changing the stockpile. Your despair mutated a dormant gene, and One For All acted like gasoline on a lit match. You’re wielding two separate, god-tier powers now. If you don't synchronize them perfectly, they’ll tear your physical body apart the moment you try to move.”

“That is why I am here,” Izuku replied, his voice monotone. “Again.”

“Very well,” Yoichi said, stepping back. “Let us test your left eye. The realm of the mind.”

Izuku closed his right eye, focusing entirely on his left. The pinwheel design spun faster, blurring into a solid black ring. A sharp, localized pain flared behind his optic nerve, but Izuku didn't flinch. He had long since grown accustomed to the agony. Pain was a familiar friend; it was the only thing that had stayed with him in Tartarus.

“Tsukuyomi.”

The obsidian wasteland around them shattered like glass. Instantly, the Vestiges found themselves standing in a meticulously crafted replica of the U.A. Heights Alliance dormitory. The details were terrifyingly perfect—the smell of the floor wax, the exact scuff marks on the couches, the warmth of the afternoon sun filtering through the windows. 

Nana Shimura gasped, looking down at her hands. “Incredible. This isn't just an illusion, Izuku. You’ve commandeered our sensory input entirely.”

“Inside this space, I control mass, space, and time,” Izuku’s voice echoed from everywhere at once. 

Suddenly, the warm sunlight outside the U.A. windows turned a sickly, blood red. The sky tore open, revealing a massive, glowing crimson moon. The gravity in the room increased tenfold, bringing Daigoro and the other Vestiges to their knees. 

Izuku materialized in front of them, sitting casually on the back of a sofa, his red eyes glowing in the dim light. 

“In the physical world, a fraction of a second passes,” Izuku explained clinically, as if reading from a textbook. “But inside the Tsukuyomi, I can force a target to experience three days of subjective time. I can torture them. I can break their minds. I can show them exactly what it felt like to be locked in a box for six months.”

He blinked, and the illusion instantly collapsed. The U.A. dorm vanished, and they were back in the crimson-skied wasteland. 

Daigoro stood up, wiping phantom sweat from his brow. “Christ, kid. That’s terrifying. If you hit a villain with that, they’d be vegetables.”

“I will not kill unless forced,” Izuku said, staring at his hands. “But I will not hold back. Not anymore. The heroes of this world play a game of tag with monsters. They lock them up, the villains break out, innocent people die, and the cycle repeats. I am done playing their game.”

Nana looked at him, her heart breaking for the thousandth time. “Izuku… you can’t let the hatred consume you. You are still a hero.”

“I am a ghost, Nana,” Izuku corrected her softly. “A hero is someone who stands in the light and smiles. My smile died the day All Might told me I was a monster.”

A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the Vestiges. None of them could defend Toshinori. They had all watched, helpless and screaming in Izuku’s mind, as the Symbol of Peace tore the boy's heart out. 

“Let’s move on,” Izuku said, breaking the silence. He closed his left eye and opened his right. The pinwheel spun in reverse. “The right eye.”

“The black flames,” Yoichi noted, taking a step back. “Amaterasu.”

Izuku focused his vision on a massive, jagged spire of obsidian rock a hundred yards away. The pain behind his right eye was much sharper, a searing heat that felt like a branding iron pressed against his brain. 

He didn't blink. He just stared. 

“Amaterasu.”

With a sickening shhhk sound, a localized point of reality on the stone spire simply ignited. There was no spark, no travel time, no projectile. The flames simply appeared exactly where his eyes focused. 

They were pitch black, darker than the void of his cell. They burned silently, devoid of the familiar crackle of normal fire. The heat they radiated was so intense that the air around the spire visibly warped and distorted, the sheer thermal energy threatening to melt the mental landscape. In seconds, the massive stone spire was entirely incinerated, reduced to a pile of molten, glowing slag. And still, the black flames continued to burn upon the liquid rock, refusing to go out.

“Flames that never extinguish,” Izuku muttered, a thin trail of blood leaking from his right eye in the mental world. “They burn until the target is reduced to ash. Even water or a vacuum cannot stop them.”

“It’s too destructive,” Daigoro warned. “If you use that in a populated area, you’ll cause untold collateral damage. You can’t just go around setting buildings on fire with indestructible black fire, kid.”

“I know,” Izuku replied. “That is why I need your Quirk, Daigoro.”

Daigoro blinked. “Blackwhip? How’s that gonna help?”

“Watch.”

Izuku raised his right hand. Black energy crackled around his forearm, and with a sharp crack, five thick, serpentine tendrils of Blackwhip shot out from his knuckles. They thrashed in the air, glowing with their usual teal and black energy. 

Izuku then turned his right eye—the Amaterasu eye—toward the tendrils. He focused intensely, his brow furrowing as he bridged the gap between his mutated chakra and the stockpile of One For All. 

“Burn.”

The black flames of Amaterasu erupted along the length of the Blackwhip tendrils. But instead of incinerating the energy whips, the flames bonded to them. The teal glow was entirely consumed by pitch-black fire. Izuku was now holding five whips of solid, writhing, inexhaustible black flame. 

He cracked the whip. The sound was like a thunderclap. The Black Flame Whip struck the ground, carving a trench fifty feet deep into the obsidian stone, leaving a trail of black fire in its wake. 

The Vestiges recoiled in shock. 

“You… you localized the Amaterasu onto my Quirk,” Daigoro stammered. “You’re using Blackwhip as a physical containment field for the flames!”

“Yes,” Izuku said, releasing the whips. They retracted into his arm, and the black flames instantly vanished, extinguished only by Izuku's own will. “With this, I control the shape, the reach, and the exact area of effect. I can use the flames offensively or defensively without collateral damage. I call it the Black Flame Whip.”

“Masterful,” Yoichi praised, though his voice was lined with apprehension. “But the physical toll, Izuku. We must discuss the physical toll. You have been in sensory deprivation for six months. Your body is starved. If you attempt to use this power, or One For All, your body will shatter.”

Izuku shook his head slowly. A grim, terrifying confidence radiated from him. 

“No, First. It won’t.”

Izuku closed his eyes, and his physical body in the cell mirrored the action. 

“For a year, I broke my bones because my body couldn't adapt to the sudden influx of kinetic energy,” Izuku explained to the Vestiges. “My brain couldn't process the micro-tears in my muscles fast enough to stop the power output. Full Cowling was a patch—a way to limit the power to what my slow, human nervous system could handle.”

Izuku opened his eyes. The crimson Mangekyou Sharingan glowed fiercely. 

“These eyes change everything. The Sharingan gives me hyper-kinetic perception. I can see the exact flow of energy in my own body. I can see my muscle fibers at a microscopic level. When I summon One For All, my eyes process the exact point of failure before it happens.”

Green lightning began to arc around Izuku’s spectral body in the Vestige realm. It wasn't the erratic, wild sparking of Full Cowling. It was dense, fluid, and terrifyingly concentrated. 

“I don't need to limit myself to a percentage anymore,” Izuku stated, his voice resonating with power. “My eyes automatically micro-manage the energy flow. They act as a governor, opening and closing the floodgates in my cells millions of times a second, perfectly distributing the kinetic force so that no single bone or muscle takes the brunt of the impact.”

The green lightning flared brilliantly, illuminating the dark crimson sky. 

“I can use One For All at one hundred percent. Permanently. Without breaking a single bone.”

The Vestiges stared in absolute, stunned silence. The boy they had watched stumble, cry, and shatter his own limbs had, in the depths of unimaginable darkness, cracked the code to the ultimate power. He had surpassed All Might. He had surpassed all of them. 

“You are ready,” Yoichi whispered, a single tear rolling down his translucent cheek. “But Izuku… what will you do when you leave this place? Will you seek revenge?”

Izuku’s crimson eyes dimmed slightly. He looked down at his scarred hands. 

“Revenge is for villains,” Izuku said quietly. “Revenge implies that I care enough about those who betrayed me to want to hurt them. I don't. They are nothing to me now. Aizawa, Iida, Uraraka, All Might… they are strangers. I don't want their apologies. I don't want their pain.”

He looked back up, his gaze hardening into diamond. 

“I will hunt down the League. I will find the one who framed me, and I will dismantle All For One’s empire brick by bloody brick. I will do what the heroes are too weak to do. I will be the monster the shadows fear.”

Before Yoichi could respond, a violent, deafening tremor ripped through the Vestige Realm. The ground violently pitched sideways, throwing the past users to the floor. The crimson sky fractured, raining down jagged shards of dark energy. 

“What’s happening?!” Nana cried out, clinging to the cracking obsidian ground. 

Izuku didn't fall. His eyes locked onto the sky. 

“My physical body,” Izuku said, his voice entirely calm despite the chaos. “The prison is shaking.”

In the physical world, deep beneath the ocean, Tartarus was screaming. 

The vibration hit Izuku’s cell first, a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through the metal floor and into his bones. Then came the sound. It wasn't the sound of rushing water, which meant the outer hull hadn't been breached by the ocean. It was the sound of groaning steel, shattering concrete, and distant, muffled explosions. 

Then, the red indicator lights on his heavy quirks-suppressing cuffs flickered, whined, and died. 

The primary power grid had been completely severed. The facility was running on emergency backups, which did not have the voltage required to maintain the suppression fields on the maximum-security restraints. 

The heavy metal cuffs around Izuku’s wrists and ankles clicked, the magnetic locks disengaging. 

Izuku slowly opened his eyes in the pitch-black cell. His Mangekyou Sharingan flared to life, casting its bloody glow over his unkempt hair and hollow cheeks. He slipped his hands out of the heavy metal gauntlets, the metal clattering loudly onto the floor. 

He slowly stood up. His joints popped and cracked in protest, stiff from six months of minimal movement. But as he drew a breath, calling upon the dormant sun in his chest, the pain vanished. 

BZZZZT.

Emerald-green lightning, laced with terrifying crimson sparks, erupted from his skin. The sheer kinetic pressure of One For All at 100% instantly blew the dust and grime off his prison uniform. The air in the tiny cell grew incredibly hot and dense, vibrating with the raw, untethered power of a god. 

Outside his cell door, the hallway was in absolute pandemonium. 

Through the thick steel, Izuku’s hyper-enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of slaughter. Guards screaming. The terrifying, wet sound of flesh tearing. And a sound Izuku knew intimately from his nightmares: the screech of a High-End Nomu. 

“Find him!” a raspy, unhinged voice echoed down the corridor. “Find the traitor’s cell! Shigaraki wants his new toy!”

Footsteps thundered toward Cell 004. 

“This one! It says 004!” a villain yelled. 

“Blow it open! We’re breaking out the U.A. kid!” another laughed. 

Izuku stood in the center of the cell, entirely relaxed. He rolled his shoulders, the green lightning swirling around him like a violent emerald storm. His red eyes locked onto the door. 

BOOM!

A massive explosive charge detonated against the exterior of the door. The thick, quirk-canceling steel buckled, groaned, and was blown inward in a cloud of smoke and fire. 

Two villains stepped into the smoke-filled doorway. One was a towering mutant with arms made of jagged stone; the other was a wiry man whose hands were glowing with explosive energy. 

“Hey, Midoriya!” the stone villain laughed, peering into the dark cell. “Pack your bags, kid! The League is here to bust you out! Shigaraki said you did good work, so we’re—”

The villain’s words died in his throat. 

As the smoke cleared, the emergency red lighting of the hallway illuminated the interior of the cell. 

Standing in the center was not a broken, crying teenager. 

It was a demon wreathed in green and red lightning. The air pressure radiating from the boy was so heavy that the two villains physically stumbled backward, their instincts screaming at them to run. The boy’s eyes—those terrifying, glowing, crimson pinwheels—pierced through the smoke, locking onto their souls. 

“You… you aren’t the League,” Izuku’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the noise of the alarms like a scythe. It was cold, hollow, and devoid of any humanity. 

“What the hell is wrong with his eyes?!” the explosive villain stammered, raising his glowing hands. “Hey, kid! We’re on your side! Stand down!”

Izuku didn't speak. He just moved. 

To the villains, he didn't run. He simply vanished. 

In a fraction of a millisecond, utilizing One For All at 100% perfectly regulated by his Sharingan, Izuku crossed the distance. He appeared directly in front of the massive stone mutant. 

Before the villain’s brain could even register the movement, Izuku drove his fist into the mutant’s sternum. 

The impact sounded like a cannon shot. The stone armor instantly shattered into dust. The villain was launched backward with the force of a missile, flying down the entire length of the Abyss Level hallway, crashing through three blast doors before crumpling against a concrete wall, instantly unconscious. 

The explosive villain shrieked, firing a point-blank blast at Izuku’s face. 

Izuku didn't dodge. He simply blinked. 

“Amaterasu.”

A torrent of black flames erupted from Izuku’s right eye, intercepting the explosion mid-air. The black fire instantly devoured the concussive blast, swallowing the energy before leaping onto the villain’s hands. 

“AGHHHHH!” the villain screamed, falling to his knees as the black flames began to consume his arms. He rolled on the ground, frantically trying to pat them out, but the fire only spread, melting through his clothes and skin with silent, terrifying efficiency. 

Izuku stood over him, watching him burn with a dead, impassive stare. 

He let the man scream for three agonizing seconds before reaching out with his left foot and violently kicking the villain in the head. The man’s skull cracked against the floor, instantly knocking him out. 

Izuku severed the visual link. The black flames vanished, leaving the unconscious villain with severe, blistering third-degree burns up to his elbows. He would live, but he would never use his Quirk to hurt anyone again. 

Izuku stepped out of the cell and into the hallway. 

The Abyss Level was a warzone. Cells had been breached. Dozens of S-rank and A-rank villains were flooding the corridors, murdering the few remaining guards. At the far end of the hall, a monstrous, multi-armed Nomu was tearing a steel gate off its hinges. 

Several villains turned around, hearing the commotion. They saw Izuku standing there, bathed in green lightning, his red eyes glowing in the dark. 

“Is that him?” a villain with a blade for a head asked. 

“Yeah, that’s the U.A. kid!” another yelled. “Hey, Midoriya! Come on! We’re heading to the surface!”

Izuku slowly raised his right arm. Black energy began to pool around his knuckles. 

“You misunderstand,” Izuku’s voice carried down the hallway, perfectly clear, chilling the blood of every villain who heard it. 

CRACK.

Five thick tendrils of Blackwhip erupted from his arm. 

“I am not here to join you.”

Izuku opened his right eye wide. 

“Amaterasu.”

The Blackwhip tendrils instantly ignited, consumed by the pitch-black, inextinguishable fire. The heat in the hallway spiked to a suffocating level. 

“I am here to ensure none of you leave this tomb alive.”

With a terrifying, primal roar, Izuku lashed out. 

The Black Flame Whip cleaved through the air. The blade-headed villain didn't even have time to scream before the black whip wrapped around his torso. The searing heat melted his armor instantly. Izuku yanked his arm back, hurling the burning villain into a crowd of escaping prisoners. 

Panic erupted. 

“He’s crazy! Kill him! Kill the kid!” 

A dozen villains charged him, unleashing a barrage of Quirks—fire, acid, kinetic blasts, and sharpened bone projectiles. 

Izuku’s Mangekyou Sharingan tracked every single attack. The world slowed to a crawl. He saw the trajectory of the acid, the thermal core of the fire, the exact rotation of the bone projectiles. 

His body moved with the grace of a dancer and the devastation of a hurricane. He side-stepped the acid, ducked beneath the fire, and parried the bone projectiles with the Black Flame Whip, the black fire instantly incinerating the projectiles into ash. 

He dashed forward, a blur of emerald light. He didn't use flashy named attacks. He didn't yell "Smash." He was a silent, hyper-efficient machine. 

A palm strike to the throat crushed a villain's windpipe. A sweeping low kick shattered another’s kneecaps, accompanied by the sickening crunch of bone. He whipped his arm, the Black Flame Whip severing a villain’s mechanical arm entirely, cauterizing the wound with black fire before the man hit the ground. 

The multi-armed Nomu shrieked, charging at Izuku with blinding speed. 

Izuku didn't flinch. He focused his left eye on the mindless beast. 

“Tsukuyomi.”

The Nomu, a creature bred for mindless destruction, suddenly froze mid-stride. Its brain, entirely foreign to psychological assault, was instantly shattered by the forced genjutsu. In its mind, it was crushed under the weight of a thousand oceans. 

The Nomu collapsed, foaming at the mouth, entirely brain-dead. 

The remaining villains stopped in their tracks. They looked at the pile of broken, burning bodies surrounding the gaunt, green-haired boy. They looked at the Nomu that had been defeated with a single glance. 

The bravado vanished. It was replaced by raw, unadulterated terror. 

“Monster…” one villain whimpered, dropping his weapons. “He’s a monster!”

They turned and ran. 

Izuku didn't chase them. He didn't care about the small fry. His eyes tracked upward, staring at the concrete ceiling. He could sense the massive battle raging on the surface level. He could sense the powerful, distinct energy signatures of Pro Heroes. 

He bent his knees. The green lightning around him flared so brightly it blinded the cameras in the hallway. 

“One For All… One Hundred Percent,” Izuku whispered to himself, feeling the power surge perfectly through his reinforced muscles. 

BOOM!

Izuku leapt straight up. He didn't use the stairs. He didn't use the elevators. 

He became a human missile, powered by the strength of the gods. He smashed through the reinforced concrete ceiling of the Abyss Level, tearing through the steel rebar as if it were wet tissue paper. He crashed into Level 6, ignoring the villains scrambling in terror, and leapt again, smashing through the ceiling to Level 5. 

Level 4. Level 3. Level 2. 

He carved a vertical tunnel of destruction straight up through the most secure prison on the planet, an unstoppable force ascending from the depths of hell. 

Surface Level - Tartarus Courtyard

The night sky was illuminated by roaring fires and the frantic, sweeping beams of searchlights. The courtyard of Tartarus was a scene of absolute devastation. 

The League of Villains had executed a flawless siege. Shigaraki Tomura stood atop a pile of rubble, his white hair blowing in the wind, a manic grin plastered across his face as he watched his High-End Nomus tear into the Tartarus defense forces. 

Pro Heroes were arriving in droves, deployed via emergency dropships. 

Shouta Aizawa—Eraserhead—dropped from a helicopter, his capture weapon unfurling around him. Beside him was Present Mic, his friend and colleague, looking grim. 

“It’s a massacre down there, Shouta!” Mic yelled over the roar of the alarms. “Communications are totally jammed! We don't know who’s broken out, but the main cell blocks are open!”

“Focus on containment,” Aizawa commanded, his eyes already glowing red behind his goggles. “Don't let a single one of them reach the mainland. We secure the perimeter, then we push inside.”

Aizawa’s heart was heavy. In the back of his mind, a nagging, painful thought echoed. 

Midoriya. 

The kid was down there. Somewhere in the Abyss Level. Aizawa had spent the last six months trying to bury the memory of the boy’s terrified, pleading face. He had convinced himself that Midoriya was a monster, a master manipulator who deserved his fate. But right now, with the League attacking, a cold dread settled in his stomach. 

Was this a rescue op? Was Shigaraki here specifically to retrieve his greatest spy?

Before Aizawa could give another order, the ground beneath their feet violently shuddered. 

“Earthquake?!” Mic yelled, struggling to keep his balance. 

“No!” Aizawa shouted, looking toward the center of the massive courtyard. “Something is coming up!”

The concrete of the courtyard bulged upward, glowing with an intense, blinding green light. 

With a deafening roar that shook the very island, the ground exploded outward. A geyser of shattered concrete, steel, and dust shot hundreds of feet into the night sky. 

The fighting in the courtyard ceased instantly. Heroes and villains alike froze, staring in awe and terror at the massive crater that had just been blown open from the inside out. 

From the dust cloud, a figure emerged. 

He didn't walk; he hovered, landing softly on the edge of the crater. 

The dust settled, revealing a boy clad in a tattered orange prison jumpsuit. His dark green hair whipped violently in the wind. Dense, crackling arcs of green and crimson lightning surged around his body, violently displacing the air around him. 

But it was his face that made every hero in the courtyard hold their breath. 

He wore a dark, metallic mask he had ripped from a guard, covering the lower half of his face. Above the mask, his eyes were fully visible. They were not the wide, innocent emerald green eyes of Izuku Midoriya. 

They were glowing, bloody red, bearing a sinister, black pinwheel design that seemed to pull the soul of anyone who stared into them. 

“Who is that?!” a sidekick yelled, trembling. 

Aizawa’s breath hitched in his throat. He recognized the hair. He recognized the build. He recognized the terrifying, bone-crushing energy of the Quirk. But the aura… the sheer, suffocating malice radiating from the boy… it was entirely alien. 

“Midoriya,” Aizawa whispered, stepping forward, his heart hammering against his ribs. 

Izuku slowly turned his head. His crimson Mangekyou Sharingan locked directly onto Aizawa. 

Even from fifty yards away, Aizawa felt the gaze like a physical blow to the chest. It was so incredibly cold. There was no recognition. There was no plea for help. There was only the dead, calculating stare of an apex predator looking at an insect. 

“He’s escaping!” a Pro Hero yelled. “He’s the U.A. traitor! Apprehend him!”

Three heroes charged at Izuku, their Quirks flaring. 

Izuku didn't even shift his stance. He simply looked at them. 

“Amaterasu.”

A torrent of black flames erupted in a sweeping arc on the ground directly in front of the charging heroes. The heat was so intense it instantly melted the concrete courtyard into glowing lava. The heroes shrieked, skidding to a halt just inches from the inextinguishable fire, falling backward in sheer terror. 

“Stay back!” Aizawa roared, his capture weapon whipping around him. “He’s too dangerous! I’ll handle him!”

Aizawa ripped his goggles off. His eyes flared a brilliant red as he activated Erasure. He locked his vision squarely on Izuku, aiming to shut down the green lightning and whatever new, horrific Quirk the boy had awakened. 

“Your reign ends here, Midoriya!” Aizawa shouted. 

Izuku stood completely still. He felt the familiar, invisible pressure of Erasure wash over him, attempting to sever his connection to his Quirk factor. 

But One For All was no longer just a Quirk. It was deeply entrenched in his mutated DNA, fueled by a primal energy that bypassed standard biology. And his Mangekyou Sharingan, directly linked to his optic nerves and his brain’s limbic system, completely rejected the dampening effect. 

Izuku’s green lightning didn't flicker. It roared brighter. 

Aizawa’s eyes widened in horror. “It’s not working! Why isn’t it working?!”

Izuku raised his hand. He didn't point. He just let his fingers fall open. 

“Tsukuyomi.”

Aizawa blinked, and the world vanished. 

Aizawa was no longer in the courtyard. 

He was hanging upside down, his arms spread wide, chained to a massive, black cross. The sky above him was a sickly, bloody crimson. A massive red moon hung in the sky. 

The air was freezing, and the silence was absolute. 

Aizawa struggled against the chains, panic rising in his throat. “What is this?! A mental attack?! An illusion?!”

The space in front of him rippled, and Izuku stepped out of the thin air. He was no longer wearing his mask. His face was entirely devoid of emotion. He held a long, black katana in his hand. 

“Welcome to my reality, Eraserhead,” Izuku’s voice echoed in the bloody sky. 

“Midoriya! Stop this! Surrender!” Aizawa barked, trying to maintain his authority despite the sheer terror gripping his mind. 

Izuku slowly raised the blade, pointing it at Aizawa’s chest. 

“You call yourselves heroes,” Izuku said softly, his red eyes burning into Aizawa’s soul. “You pride yourselves on seeing the truth. You pride yourselves on looking beneath the surface.”

Izuku stepped forward, driving the blade directly into Aizawa’s shoulder. 

Aizawa screamed, a gut-wrenching, agonizing sound. The pain wasn't an illusion; his brain registered the absolute, horrific reality of cold steel tearing through flesh and bone. 

“But you are blind,” Izuku whispered, pulling the blade out, ignoring Aizawa’s screams. “You looked at a boy who broke himself for you, and you chose to see a villain because it was easier than finding the truth.”

Izuku stepped back. Suddenly, dozens of identical Izukus materialized from the air, surrounding the cross, each holding a black blade. 

“In the real world, only one second will pass,” Izuku said, the chorus of voices echoing in Aizawa’s mind. “But in here, I will make you feel exactly what I felt. Six months of total isolation. Six months of darkness. Six months of betrayal.”

Aizawa’s eyes widened in abject horror. 

“Midoriya, no! Wait!”

The clones stepped forward and plunged their blades into Aizawa’s body. 

In the real world, exactly one second had passed. 

Present Mic watched in utter shock as Aizawa, who had just activated his Quirk, suddenly screamed. It wasn't a yell of anger. It was a blood-curdling, soul-shattering scream of pure agony. 

Aizawa’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed to the concrete courtyard like a puppet with its strings cut, foaming at the mouth, his body convulsing in sheer psychological shock. 

“Shouta?!” Mic screamed, dropping to his knees beside his friend, frantically checking his pulse. “Shouta, wake up! What did you do to him?!” Mic yelled, turning his sonic Quirk toward Izuku. 

Izuku didn't answer. He looked at the chaos around him. He saw Shigaraki in the distance, watching him with a wide, manic grin. He saw the Pro Heroes paralyzed by fear, staring at the black flames that continued to burn on the concrete. 

He had made his point. Tartarus had fallen. And he was free. 

Izuku crouched low to the ground. The concrete beneath his feet spider-webbed, instantly pulverized by the raw kinetic force building in his legs. 

BZZZZT.

With a sound like a sonic boom, Izuku launched himself into the air. The sheer force of his takeoff created a shockwave that knocked Present Mic and several other heroes off their feet, shattering the windows of the nearby guard towers. 

Izuku soared into the night sky, a streak of emerald green and crimson lightning cutting through the darkness, leaving Tartarus, the League, and the broken heroes far behind. 

He didn't look back. The shattered hero was dead. 

The Ghost of Tartarus had been unleashed upon the world, and society would soon learn that true justice did not wear a smile. It wore a mask, and it burned with inextinguishable black fire.

The rain fell in sheets over the industrial district of Musutafu, washing the grime of the city into the overflowing gutters. It was a miserable, freezing downpour that sent honest citizens hurrying into the warmth of their homes, locking their doors against the dark. But in the shadows of the abandoned warehouse district, the predators of society thrived. 

Inside a sprawling, rusted munitions factory, a splinter cell of the League of Villains had set up a forward operating base. Crates of illegal support gear, black-market trigger vials, and stolen blueprints were stacked high to the ceiling. Two dozen hardened criminals, escapees from Tartarus and loyalists to Shigaraki’s cause, lounged around makeshift fire barrels, their raucous laughter echoing off the corrugated iron walls.

They felt invincible. The hero society was bleeding. Tartarus had fallen. The Symbol of Peace was a broken, retired shell. It was the dawn of the villains. 

"I'm telling you, it was a massacre!" a mutant villain with scales for skin roared, slamming his beer bottle onto a rusted oil drum. "The High-Ends ripped the perimeter apart. And that U.A. kid? The traitor? I saw him with my own eyes. He blew a hole straight through five levels of solid concrete! The League’s got a god on their side now!"

"I heard he killed Eraserhead," another villain snickered, sharpening a serrated combat knife. "Left the bastard foaming at the mouth in the courtyard. If Shigaraki got his hands on that kind of power, we'll be marching on the Diet building by next month."

The lights in the warehouse flickered. 

A low, mechanical whine hummed through the air, followed by the sharp pop of the main generator blowing out. Plunged into absolute darkness, the laughter died instantly. The only light came from the flickering orange glow of the fire barrels.

"Hey! Who blew the breaker?" the scaled villain barked, his hand instinctively reaching for a heavy plasma rifle resting against a crate. 

There was no answer. Only the rhythmic drumming of the rain against the metal roof. 

Then, the shadows in the corner of the warehouse seemed to detach from the walls. 

BZZZZT.

A sudden, blinding arc of emerald-green lightning illuminated the rafters for a fraction of a second. It was completely silent, yet the sheer atmospheric pressure of the energy made the air in the warehouse heavy, suffocating, and terrifyingly dense. The hair on the back of the villains' necks stood up. 

"Show yourself!" a villain yelled, igniting his hands with bright yellow fire to illuminate the room. "We're the League of Villains! You want to die?!"

From the catwalk thirty feet above, a voice drifted down. It was cold, hollow, and devoid of any human cadence. It sounded like the voice of a ghost.

"The League of Villains. You claim to be the architects of a new world." 

A figure stepped to the edge of the catwalk. 

The firelight caught the edges of a tattered, rain-soaked cloak, as black as the night outside. Beneath the cloak, the remnants of a ruined U.A. blazer—the gold buttons tarnished and the fabric stained with dried blood—were visible, worn over heavily reinforced, dark tactical mesh. The lower half of his face was obscured by a jagged, steel guard mask. 

But it was his eyes that froze the blood in the villains' veins. 

Glowing from beneath the shadow of a dark hood were two brilliant, piercing red irises, housing a sinister, spinning black pinwheel. 

"But you are nothing more than rats scavenging in the ruins," Izuku Midoriya whispered. 

"It's him!" the scaled villain shrieked, raising his plasma rifle. "It's the Tartarus kid! He's not with the League! Fire! Fire!"

Dozens of Quirks activated at once. Plumes of fire, jagged spikes of bone, concussive energy blasts, and streams of acid illuminated the dark warehouse, converging on the catwalk in a blinding display of lethal force. The metal walkway exploded into a cloud of molten slag and smoke. 

"Got him!" one villain cheered. 

Before the smoke could even clear, the sound of tearing air echoed behind them. 

Izuku had not just dodged; he had traversed the thirty-foot vertical drop and the fifty yards of horizontal space in less than a tenth of a second. His Mangekyou Sharingan tracked the micro-movements of every villain's muscle fibers, predicting their firing arcs before their synapses even fired. One For All, perfectly governed by his ocular prowess, propelled him with zero wasted kinetic energy.

He appeared directly in the center of the mob. 

"Wha—"

Izuku didn't use a named attack. He didn't scream. He simply pivoted on his heel, his leg sweeping in a lethal arc. A concentrated shockwave of air pressure erupted from his kick, slamming into the first rank of villains with the force of a runaway freight train. Bones shattered instantly. Six men were launched through the air like ragdolls, crashing through the wooden crates and into the concrete walls, rendered instantly unconscious. 

Panic erupted. The villains turned their weapons on the center of their own formation, but Izuku was already a ghost. 

He slipped through the crossfire, his red eyes darting, processing information at a god-like speed. He grabbed the wrist of a villain wielding a machete, twisting it until the bone snapped, then used the man's body as a meat shield against a barrage of acid. He dropped the screaming villain, stepped over him, and lunged toward the scaled mutant holding the plasma rifle. 

The mutant fired point-blank. A blinding orb of superheated plasma rocketed toward Izuku's face. 

Izuku didn't blink. He stared directly into the plasma.

"Amaterasu."

Black fire erupted in mid-air, swallowing the plasma orb whole. The inextinguishable flames devoured the energy, expanding into a wall of black heat that forced the mutant backward. 

Izuku burst through the black flames, entirely unburned, his right arm crackling with dark energy. Five tendrils of Blackwhip shot from his knuckles, wrapping around the mutant's throat, wrists, and ankles. 

"Wait! Wait!" the mutant gurgled as he was hoisted into the air. 

Izuku closed his fist. The Black Flame Whip ignited, the pitch-black fire racing up the tendrils. The villain screamed as the heat melted through his scales, searing his flesh. 

"Who framed me?" Izuku demanded, his voice echoing in the mutant's mind via a localized Genjutsu, amplifying the terror. "Who fabricated the U.A. data? Who planted the transmitter?"

"I don't know! I swear!" the villain sobbed, his skin blistering. "We're just grunts! Shigaraki doesn't tell us anything! Only the inner circle knows! Please! I don't know!"

Izuku's Sharingan analyzed the man's pupils, his heart rate, his micro-expressions. He wasn't lying. He was useless. 

Izuku dropped him, letting the black flames extinguish just before they caused lethal damage. The mutant collapsed, thrashing in agony. 

The remaining villains—less than five of them—were backing away toward the warehouse doors, their weapons trembling in their hands. They looked at the pile of broken bodies, the melted steel, and the demonic, glowing red eyes of the boy in the center of the carnage. 

"Monster," one of them whispered. 

Izuku slowly turned toward them. "Run," he commanded softly. "Tell your master that the ghost is coming for him."

The villains didn't need to be told twice. They threw their weapons down and bolted into the rainy night, screaming for their lives. 

Izuku stood alone in the ruined warehouse. He let out a slow, controlled breath. The green lightning faded, and the intense strain on his eyes dulled into a familiar, throbbing ache. He reached up, rubbing the bridge of his nose above his steel mask. 

Two months. It had been two months since he shattered the ceiling of Tartarus. In that time, the "Red-Eyed Vigilante" had become an urban legend whispered in terrified hushes in the criminal underworld. He had dismantled fifteen League strongholds, crippled their supply chains, and hospitalized over two hundred villains. 

Yet, he was no closer to the truth. The League's compartmentalization was flawless. Whoever had created the deepfakes and orchestrated the frame job was buried deep within All For One's inner sanctum. 

We will find them, Izuku, Nana's voice echoed gently in his mind. 

I know, Izuku replied mentally, stepping over a groaning villain and walking toward the exit. But time is running out. Shigaraki is consolidating power. And the heroes are hunting me.

As if on cue, Izuku's ears caught a sound over the heavy rain. 

Thwip. Thwip. Thwip. 

It was the distinct, rhythmic sound of a helicopter rotor, but much quieter, much faster. No, not a helicopter. Wings. 

Izuku stepped out of the warehouse and into the downpour. He looked up at the sky. 

Perched on the edge of a neighboring rooftop, barely visible against the dark clouds, was a figure with massive, crimson wings. Hawks. The Number Two Hero. 

And he wasn't alone. 

Down at the end of the alleyway, the rain began to hiss and turn into steam. A massive figure strode out of the shadows, his imposing frame wreathed in roaring, orange hellfire that defied the downpour. Enji Todoroki—Endeavor, the Number One Hero. 

Flanking Endeavor were three U.A. students, clad in their winter hero costumes. Shoto Todoroki, his right side frosting the damp air. Katsuki Bakugo, his gauntlets primed, his jaw set in an aggressive, furious scowl. And Ochako Uraraka, her visor down, her expression a tight, painful mask of suppressed emotion. 

Izuku's heart did not flutter. The profound, aching love he once held for these people had been surgically removed in the depths of Tartarus. He felt only a cold, calculating detachment. 

"Target acquired," Endeavor's booming voice echoed down the alleyway. "Red glowing eyes, black cloak. Matches the description of the vigilante who's been leaving a trail of crippled villains from Kamino to Musutafu." 

Endeavor raised a massive, flaming fist. "Stand down and surrender! By order of the Hero Public Safety Commission, you are under arrest for unsanctioned quirk usage, vigilantism, and grievous bodily harm!"

Izuku tilted his head slightly. The steel mask hid his expression, but his red eyes narrowed in the dark. 

"You're a long way from your ivory towers," Izuku's voice was mechanically distorted by the mask, sounding like two panes of glass grinding together. "There are real monsters out there tonight. You're wasting your time on me."

"We don't tolerate rogue elements in this society," Endeavor growled, the flames on his face flaring. "Especially ones who use lethal force. Surrender, or we will take you down by force."

"Tch. Enough talking, old man!" Bakugo barked, small explosions popping in his palms. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and filled with a frantic, desperate anger. He had been like this since the Tartarus breakout. The guilt of realizing that Izuku might have been innocent, combined with the trauma of seeing Aizawa rendered catatonic by a red-eyed villain, had pushed Bakugo to the absolute brink of sanity. 

"If this is the bastard who hurt Mr. Aizawa, I'm gonna blast his head off!" Bakugo roared, bending his knees. 

"Bakugo, maintain formation!" Hawks called out from above, drawing two long, crimson feather blades. "This guy took out a Tartarus block by himself. Do not engage alone!"

But Bakugo was already gone. 

"DIE!" 

Propelling himself with massive explosions, Bakugo shot down the alleyway like a human missile. The rain evaporated around him. He spun mid-air, bringing his right gauntlet forward to unleash a point-blank AP Shot directly at the hooded vigilante's chest. 

Izuku didn't even shift his stance. 

His Mangekyou Sharingan flared. To Izuku, Bakugo wasn't flying; he was crawling. Izuku could see the microscopic ignition of nitroglycerin sweat in Bakugo's palms. He could calculate the exact trajectory of the condensed kinetic blast before it even left the gauntlet. 

At the absolute last millisecond, Izuku tilted his torso exactly three inches to the left. 

The AP Shot screamed past him, grazing his cloak and blowing a massive crater into the brick wall behind him. 

Bakugo's eyes widened in sheer shock. "What?!" 

Before Bakugo's momentum could carry him past, Izuku's hand shot out. He moved so fast that not even Hawks could track it. Izuku grabbed Bakugo by the collar of his winter costume, utilizing 5% of One For All—just enough to completely overpower the explosive hero's momentum. 

With a brutal, fluid motion, Izuku slammed Bakugo face-first into the flooded asphalt. The impact cracked the pavement. 

"Gah!" Bakugo choked, his face submerged in a puddle, stunned by the sheer, immovable physical strength pinning him down. 

"Bakugo!" Uraraka screamed, breaking formation and sprinting forward. She tapped her fingers together, aiming to make the rubble around Izuku weightless to hurl at him. 

"Shoto! Cover her!" Endeavor roared, unleashing a wave of fire. 

Shoto slammed his right foot into the ground. "Heaven-Piercing Ice Wall!" 

A massive, jagged glacier erupted from the alleyway, surging toward Izuku with terrifying speed, aiming to encase him completely and protect Bakugo. 

Izuku looked at the incoming glacier. He didn't let go of Bakugo. He simply raised his free left hand and flicked his middle finger against his thumb. 

Thanks to the Sharingan's micro-management, Izuku didn't need to break his finger to access 100% of the stockpile's air pressure. He opened the micro-valves in his forearm, concentrated the kinetic force exclusively to the tip of his finger, and released it. 

SMASH.

A concentrated bullet of hyper-pressurized air erupted from his fingers. The shockwave met Shoto's glacier head-on. The ice didn't just shatter; it atomized. Thousands of tons of ice were instantly reduced to fine, sparkling snow that blanketed the alleyway. The sheer force of the wind pressure continued forward, knocking Shoto, Uraraka, and Endeavor off their feet. 

"What... what is that power?!" Shoto gasped, shielding his face against the gale-force winds. "It's like... it's like All Might's..."

Above them, Hawks dove. "He's fast, but let's see how he handles a swarm!" 

Hawks unleashed dozens of feathers, sending them raining down on Izuku like crimson daggers, aiming for his limbs to pin him without lethal damage. 

Izuku looked up. His Mangekyou Sharingan tracked every single feather simultaneously. 

BZZZZT.

Green lightning exploded around Izuku. He vanished from atop Bakugo. 

Clink. Clank. Snap.

The sound was like a machine gun. Izuku moved so fast he created afterimages. He didn't dodge the feathers; he parried them. Using a broken steel pipe he had kicked up from the rubble, he deflected every single feather mid-air, moving with the precision of a master swordsman. 

He appeared directly in the air in front of Hawks. 

Hawks' eyes widened behind his visor. He can fly?! No, he jumped off the air pressure! 

Izuku drove his knee directly into Hawks' chest. The winged hero coughed up saliva, his eyes rolling back momentarily as the breath was driven from his lungs. Hawks plummeted toward the ground, crashing into a pile of garbage bags. 

"Hawks!" Endeavor roared. The Number One Hero was furious. His flames shifted from orange to a blinding, searing blue. He stepped forward, the heat evaporating the rain in a fifty-foot radius. 

"I don't care what kind of kinetic Quirk you have," Endeavor bellowed, raising his hands. "You can't punch heat! HELLSPIDER!" 

Endeavor unleashed a barrage of hyper-concentrated, razor-thin beams of blue fire, designed to cut through steel and incinerate a target instantly. The web of fire crisscrossed the alleyway, leaving Izuku absolutely no room to dodge. 

Izuku landed softly on the ground. He looked at the incoming web of blue death. 

"You rely too much on raw power, Number One," Izuku whispered. 

Izuku's right eye widened. The pinwheel spun furiously. 

“Amaterasu.”

A massive, swirling vortex of pitch-black fire erupted from Izuku's gaze. The black flames clashed with Endeavor's blue Hellspider in the center of the alleyway. 

The resulting thermal collision defied the laws of physics. Endeavor's flames, arguably the hottest in the world, were violently consumed. The Amaterasu didn't just push the blue fire back; it ate it, using the thermal energy of the Hellspider as fuel to grow larger. 

"What?!" Endeavor gasped, taking a step back as the black fire surged toward him. "It's eating my flames?! What the hell is this heat?!"

Endeavor was forced to cut his Quirk, diving out of the way as the black fire scorched the spot where he had just been standing, continuing to burn a hole straight into the asphalt, completely unaffected by the torrential rain. 

Silence fell over the alleyway, save for the hiss of the rain turning to steam against the black fire. 

Endeavor was on his knees, clutching a burn on his shoulder. Hawks was incapacitated. Shoto was staring in sheer disbelief at the shattered remains of his ultimate ice wall. 

Bakugo, finally recovering, pushed himself up from the puddle. He was bleeding from a cut above his eye, his pride shattered, his breathing ragged. 

"Who... who the hell are you?" Bakugo panted, glaring at the hooded figure. "That strength... it's not possible. The only person with that kind of power... is dead."

Uraraka stepped up beside Bakugo, her hands trembling. She looked at the vigilante. She looked at the tattered remnants of the U.A. blazer beneath his cloak. She looked at his posture. 

A terrible, suffocating feeling gripped her heart. 

"No," Uraraka whispered, tears instantly mixing with the rain on her cheeks. "No, it can't be."

Izuku slowly reached up. He grabbed the clasp of his dark hood and pulled it back, exposing his messy, overgrown green hair. Then, his hand moved to his steel mask. With a hiss of depressurization, he unlatched it and let it fall to the wet pavement. 

The gasps from Bakugo and Uraraka were simultaneous and heart-wrenching. 

Izuku Midoriya looked at them. His face was gaunt, hardened, lined with scars they had never seen before. But it was his eyes that destroyed them. The warm, bright emerald green that had always looked at them with boundless optimism was gone, replaced by a terrifying, bloody crimson that radiated nothing but pure, unadulterated sorrow and hatred. 

"Deku...?" Bakugo whispered, his voice cracking, his legs suddenly failing him. He dropped to his knees in the puddle. The aggressive facade completely shattered, leaving only a terrified, broken boy. 

"Deku!" Uraraka wailed, taking a step forward, reaching her hand out desperately. "You're alive! Oh my god, you're alive! We thought... the prison... we thought you died in the breakout!"

"Izuku..." Shoto breathed, stepping forward, his dual-colored eyes wide with horror as he took in the corrupted, demonic state of his first real friend. 

Endeavor, clutching his shoulder, stared in shock. This is the U.A. traitor? This boy possesses a Quirk that rivals All For One?

Izuku did not smile. He did not reach out. 

"Deku is a name given to a boy who dreamed of being a hero," Izuku said, his voice cold and flat, cutting through the rain. "That boy died in Tartarus. You all made sure of that."

"No!" Uraraka cried, sobbing uncontrollably. "Deku, please! We're so sorry! We were wrong! The police found the deepfake technology in a villain raid last week! They found the real logs! You're innocent! We know you're innocent! Please, come back with us!"

Izuku's expression didn't change. The revelation that his name had been cleared didn't bring him relief. It only fueled the cold ember of his rage. 

"You know I'm innocent now," Izuku said, taking a slow step forward. "Because a machine told you so. Because a piece of evidence proved it." 

He stopped five feet from them. The green lightning began to crackle around him again. 

"But when I begged you," Izuku's voice rose, vibrating with a terrifying, suppressed fury. "When I was on my knees, begging you to look into my eyes and see the truth... you turned your backs. You called me a monster. You stripped me of my dream and threw me into a lightless box to rot."

Bakugo was shaking violently. He couldn't look at Izuku's red eyes. He stared at his own hands, tears streaming down his face. "I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you damn nerd. I was scared. I was so fucking scared that you played us. I'm sorry."

"Words are cheap, Kacchan," Izuku whispered. 

In a flash of green light, Izuku crossed the distance. 

Before Endeavor or Shoto could react, Izuku grabbed Bakugo by the throat with his left hand, and Uraraka by the collar of her suit with his right. He hoisted them both into the air effortlessly. 

"Midoriya! Put them down!" Endeavor roared, surging forward. 

"Stay back, or I'll break their necks," Izuku commanded without looking, his voice radiating absolute authority. Endeavor froze. 

Izuku pulled Bakugo and Uraraka close. They were both crying, struggling weakly, too consumed by guilt and the terrifying aura of their former friend to fight back. 

"You want to apologize?" Izuku whispered, his crimson eyes locking onto theirs. The black pinwheels began to spin violently. "Then you need to understand what you're apologizing for. You need to see what you created."

"Tsukuyomi."

Bakugo and Uraraka's eyes went blank. 

The Illusion - The Abyss

Bakugo gasped for air, his lungs burning. He tried to move, but his wrists and ankles were clamped together by incredibly heavy, motorized steel cuffs. 

"What the... where am I?!" Bakugo yelled. 

He was in total darkness. The air was freezing, smelling of rust and stale salt water. 

"Bakugo?" a terrified voice echoed in the dark. 

"Round Face? Where are you?!" 

Suddenly, a dim, sickly red light illuminated the space. They were in a ten-by-ten concrete cube. There were no doors. There were no windows. 

They weren't just in the cell. They were Izuku. 

Through the terrifying mechanics of the Tsukuyomi, Izuku forced their minds to synchronize with his own memories. They felt the physical sensation of the quirk-suppressing cuffs cutting into their wrists. They felt the agonizing, hollow starvation in their stomachs. 

But worst of all, they felt his emotions. 

Bakugo fell to the floor, vomiting phantom bile as a wave of absolute, crushing despair hit his psyche. It wasn't his despair; it was Izuku's. 

It was the feeling of sitting in an interrogation room, watching All Might—the god of his universe—look at him with pure disgust. 

“I gave you everything. I was a fool.” All Might's voice boomed from the walls of the cell, deafening and horrific. “Give it back. Give it back. Give it back.”

"Stop! Make it stop!" Uraraka shrieked, covering her ears, crying hysterically as she felt the exact sensation of Izuku's heart physically breaking in his chest. She felt the moment he realized she had turned her back on him in the dorms. The memory replayed in front of them—Uraraka burying her face in Tsuyu's shoulder, refusing to look at him. 

Why didn't you look at me? Izuku's sorrowful, childlike voice echoed in their minds. I saved you. I gave up my arms for you. Why didn't you believe me?

"I'm sorry! I was stupid! I was a coward!" Uraraka wailed, clawing at the metal walls of the cell. 

Then, the despair shifted. The walls of the cell began to bleed. 

Bakugo felt his optic nerves ignite. 

"GAHHHH!" Bakugo screamed, grabbing his face as the phantom pain of the Mangekyou Sharingan awakening tore through his brain. It was a genetic burning, a literal rewiring of the brain fueled by the darkest, most concentrated hatred imaginable. 

Through the pain, they saw what Izuku had deduced during his endless hours in the dark. The pieces of the puzzle clicking together in the Tsukuyomi space. 

They saw a shadowy figure wearing a plague doctor's mask, manipulating a massive server of deepfake technology. They saw a villain with grey, clay-like skin shifting his face to perfectly mimic Izuku's. They saw the transaction—the League paying an exorbitant amount of money to an underground information broker to orchestrate the perfect frame job. 

“Look for the tech that mimics the soul,” Izuku's cold, present-day voice whispered over the nightmare. “And the face that steals the skin.”

Then, the red light vanished. The darkness returned. 

For what felt like an eternity, Bakugo and Uraraka sat in the pitch black, feeling nothing but the cold, clinical, sociopathic hatred that had replaced the soul of the boy they once loved. They felt his utter indifference to their existence. They felt that to him, they were no longer friends. They were just part of the machine that broke him. 

The Real World

Exactly three seconds had passed since Izuku activated the Tsukuyomi. 

To Endeavor and Shoto, Izuku simply held the two students up by their collars, his eyes glowing. 

Then, Izuku dropped them. 

Bakugo and Uraraka hit the wet asphalt like sacks of dead weight. They didn't stand up. They immediately curled into fetal positions, convulsing violently. Uraraka was screaming, a raw, primal sound of absolute psychological devastation, vomiting water onto the street. Bakugo was clawing at his own face, hyperventilating, his eyes wide and unseeing, sobbing so hard he couldn't draw breath. 

"Katsuki! Ochako!" Shoto yelled, running to his friends, horrified by their state. "What did you do to them?!" Shoto glared at Izuku, his left side igniting with fire. 

Izuku looked down at the broken teenagers. He felt no satisfaction. He felt no pity. The Tsukuyomi wasn't meant to be petty revenge; it was a necessary transfer of information, heavily layered with the reality of his consequences. 

"I showed them the truth," Izuku said softly to Shoto, his eyes dimming back to their normal, glowing red. "Something you heroes struggle to see."

Izuku turned his back on them, pulling his dark hood back over his head. 

"Wait!" Endeavor shouted, stepping forward, though he hesitated to attack again. "Midoriya! If you have intel on the League, share it with us! We can bring them down together! Your name is cleared! You can come back to U.A.!"

Izuku stopped walking. He looked over his shoulder, the rain running off his hood. 

"Go back to U.A.?" Izuku's voice was laced with a chilling, hollow amusement. "And do what? Sit in a classroom with people who would sell me to the firing squad the moment a video tells them to? Smile for the cameras while the real villains pull the strings from the shadows?"

Izuku shook his head slowly. 

"The hero system is a joke, Endeavor. It's a fragile house of cards built on blind trust and PR campaigns. I'm not playing your game anymore. I gave them the clue to find the ones who framed me. You can chase the pawns."

Green lightning exploded around Izuku once more, violently cratering the asphalt beneath his boots. 

"I'm going to kill the king."

With a deafening sonic boom, Izuku launched himself into the stormy sky, vanishing into the dark clouds before the heroes could even blink. 

Endeavor stood in the rain, the black flames of Amaterasu still burning silently on the street beside him. He looked at Shoto, who was desperately trying to calm a hysterical, hyperventilating Bakugo. Uraraka was just rocking back and forth, clutching her chest, repeating the words "We killed him, we killed him" over and over again. 

The Number One Hero felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the rain. 

They hadn't just made a mistake. They had broken the greatest hero of the next generation, and in doing so, they had unleashed a monster that not even the Symbol of Peace could control. 

The ghost of Tartarus was free, and he was walking a path of black fire that would consume them all.

The criminal underworld of Japan had always operated on a hierarchy of fear. For years, All For One had sat at the absolute apex of that hierarchy, casting a long, suffocating shadow over the nation. After his fall at Kamino, the League of Villains had scrambled to inherit that fear. But over the last two months, a new apex predator had entered the ecosystem. 

He had no syndicate. He had no grand manifesto. He was a solitary phantom, a walking natural disaster wrapped in a tattered black cloak, leaving nothing but broken bodies and inextinguishable black flames in his wake. The underworld didn't call him Midoriya Izuku. They called him the Akuma—the Demon. 

Deep within the subterranean levels of a forgotten subway station in Roppongi, a high-end black-market information broker known as ‘Cipher’ was frantically packing hard drives into a lead-lined briefcase. Beside him, a villain named ‘Morph’—whose Quirk allowed him to perfectly replicate the DNA, appearance, and voice of anyone whose hair he ingested—was pacing nervously, his gray, clay-like skin sweating profusely. 

“You said this bunker was off the grid!” Morph hissed, his voice rapidly shifting through different octaves as his anxiety spiked. “The League said we’d be protected! We did the job! We framed the U.A. brat perfectly!”

“Shut up and keep packing!” Cipher barked, his fingers flying across a decryption console. “The League doesn't care about us. Shigaraki is consolidating his forces in the mountains. He abandoned the city outposts. The Red-Eyed Vigilante hit the Kamino warehouse three hours ago. He’s hunting anyone connected to the deepfakes. We need to leave the country tonight.”

“It’s too late.” 

The voice did not come from the reinforced steel door. It came from the shadows of the ventilation shaft above them. 

Cipher and Morph froze. The ambient temperature in the underground room plummeted. The humming of the server racks seemed to die away, replaced by the crackling, terrifying sound of high-voltage kinetic energy. 

BZZZZT.

A flash of emerald-green lightning illuminated the room. 

Izuku Midoriya stood between them and the exit. His steel mask covered the lower half of his face, but his eyes—those horrific, glowing red pinwheels—pierced through the dim lighting, locking onto the two villains. 

“You…” Morph stammered, stumbling backward until his back hit a server rack. “You’re the kid… Midoriya…”

Izuku didn't walk. He flowed forward, a blur of motion dictated by the microscopic perfection of his Mangekyou Sharingan. Before Cipher could even reach for the plasma pistol holstered at his hip, Izuku’s hand shot out, grabbing the tech-broker by the throat and slamming him into the concrete wall with enough force to crack the plaster. 

At the same time, five thick, writhing tendrils of Blackwhip erupted from Izuku’s left shoulder, shooting across the room and wrapping tightly around Morph’s torso, pinning the shapeshifter to the servers. 

“I am going to ask you one question,” Izuku said, his voice mechanically distorted by the mask, echoing with a cold, hollow cadence. “And you are going to answer me. If you lie, I will know. If you hesitate, I will burn you.”

Izuku’s right eye widened. The pinwheel spun. 

“Amaterasu.”

A small, localized spark of pitch-black fire ignited on the steel desk next to Cipher. The heat was instantaneous and terrifying, warping the metal of the desk in seconds. 

Cipher choked, his eyes bulging as the heat washed over his face. “Okay! Okay! Whatever you want! We just did what we were paid to do!”

“The frame job,” Izuku stated flatly. “You designed the deepfake algorithms. He wore my face to deliver the data. Where is Shigaraki Tomura?”

“The… the Jaku Mountain range!” Cipher gasped, struggling against Izuku’s iron grip. “There’s an old, abandoned J.S.D.F. bunker carved into the side of Mount Jaku! The League repurposed it! Dr. Garaki has a lab down there! That’s where the main force is! Please, I swear to God, that’s the truth!”

Izuku’s Sharingan meticulously analyzed the micro-contractions in Cipher’s facial muscles, the dilation of his pupils, the spike in his heart rate. It was the truth. The terror was too absolute to allow for deception. 

Izuku dropped Cipher to the floor. The broker gasped for air, massaging his bruised throat. 

Morph, still bound by Blackwhip, whimpered. “We told you! Let us go! The heroes are looking for us too! They found your little clue in the Kamino warehouse network! We’re dead men anyway!”

Izuku turned his head slowly toward the shapeshifter. He looked at the gray, faceless villain who had worn his skin. The villain who had perfectly replicated his nervous muttering, his desperate desire to help, and twisted it into an act of supreme treason. 

A dark, violent surge of hatred flared in Izuku’s chest. The stockpile of One For All roared in response, green lightning arcing aggressively off his shoulders. 

“Izuku, enough.” 

Yoichi’s voice echoed gently, yet firmly, in his mind. “You have the location. Do not let the darkness consume your humanity entirely. Leave them for the police.”

Izuku stared at Morph for a long, heavy moment. The black fire of the Amaterasu on the desk vanished. The Blackwhip tendrils retracted into his arm. 

“Count yourselves lucky,” Izuku whispered, turning his back on them. “The heroes will arrest you. I would have erased you.”

With a massive surge of One For All at 20%, Izuku leapt straight up, smashing through the concrete ceiling of the subway station, launching himself into the night sky toward the Jaku Mountain range. 

Jaku Mountain Range - The League Stronghold

The bunker was a fortress of rusted steel and reinforced concrete, buried deep within the sheer cliff face of Mount Jaku. It was surrounded by miles of dense, unforgiving forest, making aerial surveillance nearly impossible. But to the Mangekyou Sharingan, the forest offered no cover. 

Perched on the branch of a massive cedar tree a mile out, Izuku looked down at the facility. His red eyes pierced through the foliage, the soil, and the concrete. He saw the thermal signatures of dozens of villains patrolling the perimeter. He saw the massive energy cables running deep into the mountain, powering Dr. Garaki’s grotesque laboratories. 

And deep within the center of the mountain, he saw a cluster of terrifying, dense energy signatures. 

High-Ends. 

“He knows I’m coming,” Izuku muttered to himself, the steel of his mask cold against his jaw. 

“It is a trap, Ninth,” Daigoro Banjo warned in the Vestige realm, his spectral arms crossed. “Shigaraki isn’t hiding. He’s waiting for you. He wants your Quirk, and he probably wants those eyes of yours, too.”

“Let him try,” Izuku replied coldly. 

Izuku dropped from the tree. He didn't bother with stealth. Stealth was for those who feared discovery. Izuku Midoriya was the storm, and he wanted them to hear the thunder. 

He landed on the forest floor, completely uncoiling the governor on One For All. His Sharingan spun rapidly, micro-managing the flood of power entering his muscular system. 

One Hundred Percent.

Green lightning erupted into a blinding aura. The sheer kinetic pressure of his power instantly flattened the trees in a fifty-foot radius. 

Izuku kicked off. 

He moved faster than sound. A sonic boom shattered the stillness of the mountain air, echoing like a cannon shot. In less than two seconds, Izuku crossed the mile-long stretch of forest, crashing headfirst into the massive, foot-thick steel blast doors of the bunker. 

SMASH!

The steel doors didn't just break; they crumpled inward like tinfoil, ripped off their massive hinges, and were sent flying down the subterranean hallway, crushing three villain guards instantly. 

Alarms blared, a deafening cacophony of red lights and wailing sirens. 

Izuku walked through the smoke and dust of the ruined entrance. Dozens of League grunts flooded the hallway, armed with assault rifles, Quirk-amplifying support gear, and raw mutant strength. 

“It’s him! Kill him!”

A hail of bullets and energy blasts rained down on Izuku. 

He didn't even break his stride. His Sharingan tracked every projectile. He weaved through the gunfire with impossible, terrifying grace, his body moving in a fluid dance of absolute kinetic efficiency. He closed the distance in a millisecond. 

A palm strike shattered a mutant’s ribcage. A sweeping kick broke three pairs of legs simultaneously. He grabbed a villain by the face, using the man’s momentum to hurl him into a squad of his comrades, bowling them over like pins. 

He didn't use Amaterasu. He didn't need to. Against standard villains, One For All at 100%—without the crippling drawback of breaking his own bones—made him a god among insects. 

He tore through the bunker, leaving a trail of unconscious, broken bodies. He descended deeper into the mountain, smashing through reinforced floors and security gates as if they were made of glass. 

Finally, he reached the core of the facility: a massive, cavernous underground hangar. 

The hangar was entirely empty, save for a raised command platform at the far end. 

Sitting on a makeshift throne of jagged metal was Tomura Shigaraki. He wore a dark red suit, his pale skin heavily scarred, his messy white hair falling over his manic, ruby-red eyes. Flanking him were Dabi, Compress, and Toga. 

Hanging from the ceiling of the hangar were five massive, transparent vats filled with green liquid. Inside the vats floated the grotesque, heavily muscled, multi-brained abominations known as High-End Nomus. 

Shigaraki slowly stood up, a wide, deeply unhinged smile spreading across his face. He began to clap slowly. The sound echoed in the massive cavern. 

“Bravo, little hero,” Shigaraki’s raspy voice carried across the room. “Or should I say, little villain? I saw the footage from Tartarus. I have to admit, when I had you framed, I expected you to just break down and cry in a cell until you rotted. I never expected you to evolve into something so… beautiful.”

Izuku stood at the entrance of the hangar, the green lightning crackling fiercely around him. His red eyes locked onto Shigaraki. 

“You destroyed my life,” Izuku stated, his voice completely devoid of the rage he had felt weeks ago. It was absolute, clinical indifference. “I am here to destroy yours.”

“Oh, you misunderstand,” Shigaraki laughed, scratching his neck furiously. “I didn't destroy your life. I liberated you! I showed you the absolute hypocrisy of the society you worshipped! I proved to you that the heroes you loved would throw you to the wolves the second it was convenient for them!”

Shigaraki threw his arms wide. “Look at you! You’re magnificent! You’ve stopped holding back! You’re using your power to crush the weak, just like me! Join me, Midoriya! Give me One For All, and together we will burn this pathetic hero society to the ground! You can have your revenge on All Might! You can have your revenge on your classmates!”

“I don't want revenge,” Izuku said, taking a slow step forward. “I want you dead.”

Shigaraki’s smile vanished. His eyes narrowed. “Pity. You’re just as arrogant as they are. You think because you have a new parlor trick with your eyes, you can walk into my castle and kill a god?”

Shigaraki raised his hand and snapped his fingers. 

The five massive vats hanging from the ceiling shattered simultaneously. 

Thousands of gallons of green fluid crashed to the floor, followed by the heavy, earth-shaking thuds of the five High-End Nomus landing on the concrete. They were massive, heavily armored, radiating an aura of pure, murderous intent. They possessed multiple Quirks: regeneration, super-strength, jet-propulsion, acidic blood, and muscle augmentation. 

“Kill him,” Shigaraki commanded. “But don't destroy his eyes or his head. Master wants those.”

The five High-Ends roared, a sound that vibrated in Izuku’s teeth, and launched themselves at him with terrifying speed. 

Izuku’s Sharingan spun into a blur. 

“Bring it,” Izuku whispered. 

The first High-End, possessing jet thrusters in its elbows, threw a hyper-accelerated punch at Izuku’s head. Izuku ducked under it, the wind pressure of the punch cracking the concrete wall behind him. Izuku retaliated with a 100% uppercut to the creature's jaw. 

The impact was cataclysmic. The High-End’s head was nearly torn from its shoulders, launched upward into the ceiling. But before it even hit the ground, the flesh was already knitting back together. Super Regeneration. 

The second High-End tackled Izuku from the side. Izuku was driven through the solid steel floor of the hangar, crashing into the sub-level below. 

Izuku flipped mid-air, landing on his feet. He raised his right hand. 

“Amaterasu!”

Black flames erupted onto the second High-End’s chest. The creature shrieked as the inextinguishable fire began to devour its flesh, out-pacing its regeneration. But before Izuku could finish it, the third and fourth High-Ends crashed through the ceiling, pinning his arms to the ground with massive, stretching tendrils of muscle. 

Izuku gritted his teeth, the strain on his body immense. The High-Ends were strong—nearly on par with All Might in his prime. Fighting five of them simultaneously, even with 100% of One For All, was a monumental task. 

He ripped his right arm free, shattering the Nomu’s muscle tendrils, and unleashed a massive wave of Blackwhip to create distance. 

Suddenly, the ceiling of the cavernous hangar didn't just break—it exploded. 

A massive wave of superheated, blinding blue fire cascaded down from the surface, incinerating the debris. Following the flames came a massive, jagged glacier of ice that crashed into the fifth High-End, pinning it to the wall. 

Through the massive crater in the ceiling, the night sky was visible. And dropping down into the hangar was the cavalry. 

Endeavor landed with a heavy thud, his beard of fire roaring. Shoto Todoroki rode down on a slide of ice, landing gracefully next to his father. Katsuki Bakugo plummeted down, using controlled explosions to soften his landing, his face contorted in a mask of desperate fury. Tenya Iida landed, his engine calves smoking. Ochako Uraraka floated down, releasing her Quirk and landing with a roll. 

And finally, descending slowly via a heavily armored, jet-propelled support suit designed by David Shield, was Toshinori Yagi. All Might. 

The heroes had followed the trail. They had decrypted Cipher’s data, tracked the energy signatures, and mobilized a strike force to assist the boy they had so deeply wronged. 

Izuku stood up from the rubble, dusting off his tattered cloak. The green lightning around him flared aggressively as he looked at the intruders. 

“Midoriya!” Endeavor shouted over the roar of the Nomus. “We tracked the broker! The police have his confession! Your name is cleared to the public! We’re here to back you up!”

“Deku!” Uraraka cried out, her voice breaking. She looked at him, desperately searching for the boy she loved beneath the terrifying steel mask and glowing red eyes. “Please! Let us help you!”

Bakugo didn't yell. He just raised his gauntlets, aiming them at the regenerating High-Ends. “We’re not leaving you again, you damn nerd. We’re finishing this together.”

On the command platform, Shigaraki laughed hysterically. “The heroes arrive to save the day! How poetic! How entirely pathetic! Nomus, kill the students first!”

Two of the High-Ends turned their attention away from Izuku and lunged toward Class 1-A. 

“Look out!” Iida yelled, stepping in front of Uraraka. 

Before the High-Ends could even cross half the distance, a massive shockwave of air pressure slammed into them, driving them sideways into the concrete wall with enough force to shatter the entire facility's foundation. 

Izuku stood with his arm outstretched, smoke rising from his knuckles. 

He slowly turned his head. His Mangekyou Sharingan locked onto the Pro Heroes and his former classmates. The look in his eyes was so utterly devoid of warmth, so violently hostile, that Bakugo physically recoiled. 

“I didn't ask for your help,” Izuku’s voice was a low, terrifying rumble that carried over the chaos. “I don't want your help. And if any of you get in my way, I will consider you enemies.”

“Young Midoriya… please.” 

The voice was weak. It came from the armored suit. 

Toshinori walked forward, stepping past Endeavor. The mechanical suit whirred as he moved. He unlatched the helmet, revealing his gaunt, hollow face. Tears were streaming down Toshinori’s sunken cheeks. The man who had been the Symbol of Peace looked completely and utterly broken. 

“My boy,” Toshinori choked out, falling to his knees on the concrete, ignoring the battle raging around them. He bowed his head so low it nearly touched the floor. “I was wrong. I was so blindly, foolishly wrong. I let my fear of All For One cloud my judgment. I abandoned my son. There are no words in this universe that can make up for what I did to you. But please… don't let this hatred consume you. You are a hero, Izuku. You have always been a better hero than I ever was.”

The cavern was silent, save for the groaning of the regenerating Nomus. The students stared in shock as the greatest hero in history prostrated himself before a teenager. 

Izuku stared down at Toshinori. 

Inside the Vestige realm, the past users were silent. Yoichi looked away, unable to bear the weight of his brother’s legacy failing so spectacularly. Nana Shimura was weeping quietly for Toshinori, for Izuku, for the sheer tragedy of it all. 

Izuku didn't feel sadness. He didn't feel vindication. He felt an overwhelming, suffocating disgust. 

“Stand up,” Izuku commanded, his voice dripping with venom. 

Toshinori slowly raised his head, looking at Izuku with desperate hope. 

“You call me your son now,” Izuku sneered, his red eyes blazing. “When the world cheered for me, I was your successor. But the moment the shadows closed in, the moment a screen told you I was a traitor, you didn't even hesitate to throw me in a cage. You didn't look at my heart, All Might. You looked at the convenience of the lie.”

Izuku raised his hand, pointing a single, scarred finger at Toshinori. 

“You are not my mentor. You are not my father. You are a coward who hid behind a smile because he was too weak to face the dark. I survived Tartarus without you. I mastered this Quirk without you. You are nothing to me.”

The words were a physical execution. Toshinori let out a sob, burying his face in his hands, entirely shattered. 

Uraraka sobbed openly, clinging to Shoto’s arm. Bakugo bit his lip so hard it bled, unable to speak, knowing that every word Izuku said was the absolute, undeniable truth. 

“How touching!” Shigaraki cackled from the platform. “The great family reunion! But we are on a schedule! Nomus! Tear them all to pieces!”

The five High-Ends, fully regenerated, roared and launched a synchronized, all-out assault. 

“Defensive formation!” Endeavor roared, stepping in front of Toshinori, unleashing a massive wall of blue fire. Shoto and Bakugo moved to intercept the flanks. 

“I told you,” Izuku’s voice cut through the air, vibrating with an energy so dense it made the air physically heavy. “To stay out of my way.”

Izuku closed his eyes. 

The physical toll of his next action would be astronomical. The Mangekyou Sharingan possessed an ultimate technique, an absolute defense and offense born from the deepest, most concentrated chakra of the user. To use it required opening every single biological floodgate in his body, merging the god-like kinetic energy of One For All with the ethereal, mutating energy of his eyes. 

Inside the Vestige realm, the emerald sun of One For All suddenly erupted, fusing perfectly with the crimson sky. 

“He’s doing it,” Daigoro whispered in awe. “He’s merging the stockpile with the ocular chakra.”

Izuku snapped his eyes open. Both of his Mangekyou Sharingan spun so fast they became solid black rings. Blood poured from both of his eyes, streaming down his cheeks beneath the steel mask. 

“SUSANOO!”

The hangar shook as if hit by a magnitude nine earthquake. 

From Izuku’s back, massive, ethereal, emerald-green flames erupted. But they weren't just flames. They began to solidify, taking physical, skeletal form. 

Endeavor, Bakugo, Uraraka, and Shigaraki all stopped in their tracks, looking on in absolute, unadulterated terror. 

First came the spine—a towering, jagged column of dense, glowing green energy laced with deep crimson veins. Then came the ribcage, massive, sweeping bones of emerald light that violently pushed outward, encasing Izuku within a fifty-foot radius of impregnable, skeletal armor. 

The wind pressure generated by the manifestation was so intense that the Pro Heroes and students were blown backward, struggling to stay on their feet. 

The five High-End Nomus crashed into the ribcage simultaneously. 

CLANG!

The sound was like a church bell struck by a meteor. The High-Ends, creatures capable of leveling skyscrapers, bounced off the ethereal green ribs, their arms shattering upon impact. The Susanoo didn't even scratch. It was absolute invulnerability. 

Izuku stood in the center of the ribcage, suspended slightly in the air, his arms crossed. His eyes were bleeding profusely, but he felt no pain. He felt like a god. 

“What… what the hell is that?!” Bakugo screamed over the roaring wind, shielding his eyes from the blinding green and red light. 

“It’s a manifestation of pure kinetic energy!” Endeavor yelled, utterly baffled. “He’s projecting his Quirk outside of his body! But the density… it’s impenetrable!”

Shigaraki stepped back on his platform, his smile completely gone. “No… no, that’s not possible. Dr. Garaki said his Quirk was just super strength! What is this?!”

Izuku raised his arms. 

Outside the ribcage, the Susanoo mirrored his movements. Two massive, skeletal arms of emerald and crimson energy materialized from the spine. The hands were massive, possessing long, jagged claws. 

The High-Ends shrieked, their programming failing to comprehend the entity before them. They charged again, attempting to find a weak point in the ribcage. 

Izuku didn't wait for them. 

He swung his right arm. 

The massive skeletal arm of the Susanoo swept across the hangar. It caught two of the High-Ends mid-air. The sheer physical force of the Susanoo’s arm—powered by 100% of One For All—did not just hit them; it obliterated them. The Nomus were crushed into a bloody paste against the cavern wall, their regeneration Quirks completely overwhelmed by the instantaneous destruction of every cell in their bodies. 

Izuku turned his glowing red eyes to the remaining three High-Ends. 

He pulled his right arm back, mimicking the stance he had learned from All Might, the stance he had practiced a million times in his bedroom as a child. But there was no smile. There was no hope. 

The Susanoo pulled its massive, skeletal fist back. Green lightning, so thick it looked like solid plasma, coiled around the ethereal bones. The crimson chakra of his eyes bled into the fist, turning it into a terrifying, pulsating weapon of mass destruction. 

“Susanoo…” Izuku whispered, his voice resonating from the giant skeletal avatar itself, echoing like the voice of a titan. 

Toshinori looked up from the ground, his eyes wide, recognizing the stance. “No… Midoriya, the structural integrity of the mountain! You’ll bring the whole facility down!”

Izuku didn't care. 

“DETROIT SMASH!”

Izuku threw the punch. 

The Susanoo’s massive fist struck the center of the three remaining High-Ends. 

The initial impact made no sound. For a fraction of a second, the universe simply held its breath. 

Then, the shockwave erupted. 

It was a cataclysm of wind, kinetic force, and spiritual pressure. The three High-End Nomus were atomized on impact. The shockwave tore through the hangar, ripping the steel command platform from its foundations. Shigaraki, Dabi, and Compress barely managed to escape through a Kurogiri warp gate that opened behind them mere milliseconds before the platform was vaporized. 

The force of the Smash didn't stop there. It hit the back wall of the cavern, blowing a hole straight through a mile of solid granite, erupting out the other side of Mount Jaku in a massive, horizontal geyser of rock and dust. 

Inside the hangar, the heroes and students were slammed to the floor, protected only by a desperate, massive ice dome created by Shoto and a wall of Blackwhip that Izuku subconsciously extended to shield them from the lethal debris. 

When the dust finally settled, the cavern was unrecognizable. The entire back half of the mountain was gone, revealing the rising moon in the night sky. The High-Ends were entirely erased from existence. 

The massive, green skeletal ribcage slowly dissolved into particles of light. 

Izuku dropped to one knee, panting heavily. The strain of manifesting the Susanoo, even for a minute, had severely taxed his optic nerves. Blood dripped steadily from his mask onto the ruined concrete. 

The heroes slowly lowered their guard, stepping out from behind Shoto’s ice. They looked at the mile-long tunnel of destruction blown through the mountain. They looked at the boy kneeling in the rubble. 

There was no cheering. There was no relief. 

Class 1-A and the Pro Heroes realized with absolute, terrifying clarity that Izuku Midoriya had not just survived Tartarus. He had transcended the entire hero-villain dynamic. 

He was no longer a hero in training. He was a force of nature. And as Izuku slowly stood back up, wiping the blood from his eyes and glaring at them with a cold, unrelenting stare, they realized that they had no idea how to stop the monster they had created.