What If Deku Had a Bunny Transformation Quirk

 The computer screen cast a dim, flickering glow across the dark bedroom, illuminating the wide, starry eyes of a four-year-old boy. Izuku Midoriya was practically vibrating with excitement. In his small hands, he clutched a vintage All Might action figure, squeezing it so tightly his knuckles turned white. 

On the screen, a low-quality video played, the audio distorted by age and the sheer volume of destruction it was recording. It was a disaster scene in the heart of a ruined city, fires blazing, sirens wailing, and civilians crying out for salvation. And then, amidst the smoke and the terror, a massive silhouette emerged, carrying a dozen people on his back, laughing heartily. 

“Fear not, citizens! Hope has arrived. Because I am here!”

Izuku gasped, a massive smile stretching across his freckled face. He leaned forward in his computer chair, rewinding the video for the hundredth time that evening. 

“He’s so cool,” Izuku whispered to himself, bouncing in his seat. “When I get my Quirk, I’m gonna be just like him. I’m gonna save everyone with a smile!”

He stood up on the chair, holding the action figure high in the air, mimicking his idol’s triumphant pose. He took a deep breath, preparing to let out a booming laugh, when suddenly, a bizarre, sharp sensation shot up his spine. 

Izuku froze. The laugh died in his throat. 

It wasn't a painful sensation, exactly, but it was deeply uncomfortable, like a massive itch deep inside his bones that he couldn't reach. It started at the base of his tailbone, a strange pressure building and swelling. Then, the sensation rocketed up to his head. His scalp tingled fiercely. 

He dropped his action figure. “Mommy?” he called out, his voice trembling slightly. 

The pressure in his head intensified. He reached up with both hands, rubbing his wild, unruly green curls. His fingers brushed against something hard protruding from his skull, right beneath the skin. 

Pop. Pop.

Izuku cried out as two long, fuzzy appendages burst forth from the top of his head, pushing past his thick green hair. At the same time, the pressure at the base of his spine finally gave way, and a small, spherical tuft of white fur popped out from his pajama bottoms. 

He tumbled off the chair, landing on his hands and knees. But as he tried to stand, he found his balance completely thrown off. His legs felt entirely different. They were lengthening, the bones shifting and realigning. His feet elongated, the structure changing so that he was forced to stand on the balls of his feet, his heels permanently raised off the floor in a digitigrade stance. The muscles in his thighs and calves swelled tightly, pulsing with an unfamiliar, terrifying energy. 

The world suddenly sounded different. The hum of the computer fan, previously a quiet background noise, was now a roaring engine. The sound of a car driving by on the street outside sounded like it was right next to his ear. He could hear the neighbor’s television, the dripping of the kitchen faucet down the hall, and the frantic, rapid pounding of his own heart. 

Overwhelmed by the sensory overload and the strange new weight on his head, Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and let out a wail. 

Down the hall, Inko Midoriya heard her son's cry. She dropped the dish towel she was holding and sprinted toward his room. She threw the door open, her face pale with worry. “Izuku! Sweetheart, what’s wro—!”

She stopped dead in her tracks, her hand flying to cover her mouth. 

There, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, was her four-year-old son. But he looked vastly different. Two long, floppy rabbit ears, coated in fine green and white fur, sprouted from his head. They twitched erratically, swiveling in different directions as they picked up the sound of her sudden intake of breath. A small, fluffy white tail poked out of a newly torn hole in his pajama pants. And his legs... they were the powerful, reversed-jointed legs of a hare, covered in fine down.

“Mommy...” Izuku sniffled, looking up at her with huge, tear-filled eyes. His long ears drooped, pinning themselves flat against his green hair in a universal sign of distress. “My legs feel funny.”

Inko’s shock melted into a sudden, overwhelming wave of joy. She fell to her knees and pulled her son into a fierce, bone-crushing hug, tears streaming down her face. 

“Oh, Izuku!” she cried, petting the soft fur on his new ears. “You got it! You got your Quirk!”

“I did?” Izuku sniffled, pulling back slightly. He reached up, feeling the long ears attached to his head. He gave them a gentle tug. They were definitely real. “A Quirk?”

“Yes! Oh, it’s a Transformation type! Or maybe a Mutant type!” Inko beamed, wiping her tears away. “You look just like a little bunny! Oh, wait until we tell your father!”

Izuku looked down at his strange, powerful new legs. The fear began to fade, replaced by a bubbling, effervescent excitement. He had a Quirk! He wasn't normal! He was going to be a hero! 

“I’m gonna be a hero!” Izuku cheered. 

Without thinking, he bent his new knees, acting on the sudden, overwhelming instinct to leap. He pushed off the floor with all his might. 

He had intended to do a small jump, a celebratory hop. But his newly mutated biology had other plans. The sheer kinetic force stored in his rabbit-like legs detonated like a coiled spring snapping. 

BOOM.

Izuku shot off the floor like a bullet fired from a gun. He blew past his mother in a blur of green and white, rocketing across the small bedroom at terrifying speed. He didn't even have time to scream before he slammed feet-first into the bedroom wall. 

The drywall shattered upon impact. Plaster and wood splintered outwards as Izuku’s small body crashed completely through the wall, landing in a dusty, coughing heap in the adjacent living room. 

Silence hung over the apartment, save for the sound of settling dust. 

Inko peeked her head through the gaping, jagged hole in the wall, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and absolute horror. 

Izuku sat up, covered in white plaster dust. He shook his head, his long ears flapping wildly. Miraculously, he wasn't hurt. His legs felt incredibly sturdy, as if kicking through solid walls was what they were built to do. 

He looked at his legs, then up at his mother through the hole he had just created, a sheepish, gap-toothed smile spreading across his face. 

“I think I’m gonna be a really strong hero, Mommy.”

It didn't take long for the playground hierarchy to establish itself. In a world where eighty percent of the population possessed superhuman abilities, a playground was a microcosm of society. The strong ruled, and the weak followed.

Katsuki Bakugo was the undeniable king. His Quirk, Explosion, was flashy, powerful, and undeniably suited for heroism. He could sweat nitroglycerin and ignite it from his palms, creating loud, bright, destructive blasts. It was a predator’s Quirk. 

Izuku, on the other hand, had quickly learned that society viewed Quirks through a very specific lens. 

“So, you’re a rabbit?” Bakugo asked, crossing his arms and leaning back on the playground slide, looking down his nose at a four-year-old Izuku. A small crowd of their peers had gathered around to witness the evaluation of Izuku’s new Quirk.

“Lepus!” Izuku corrected, his ears standing tall and proud, twitching as he picked up the whispers of the other kids. “The doctor said it’s a Mutant-class Quirk. I have super hearing, and I can jump really, really high! Watch!”

Izuku bent his knees and sprang into the air, easily clearing a six-foot leap and landing gracefully on his digitigrade feet. He looked at Bakugo, expecting the same awe and praise the ash-blonde boy received. 

Instead, Bakugo scoffed. He hopped off the slide and walked up to Izuku, a small explosion popping in his right palm. Crack-pop!

Izuku’s biological response was instantaneous. His ears flattened tightly against his skull, instinctively trying to muffle the loud, sharp sound. His danger-sense flared, and before his brain could process the movement, he had scrambled backwards on his hands and feet, putting several yards between himself and the noise. 

The playground erupted into laughter. 

Bakugo smirked, raising his smoking hand. “You can jump away. That’s all a rabbit is good for, right? Running away from the strong guys.”

“N-no!” Izuku stammered, his cheeks flushing pink. He stood up, but a new, uncontrollable nervous tick took over. His right foot began to tap against the dirt. Thump-thump-thump-thump. Rapid, rhythmic thumping—a rabbit’s way of signaling danger to the warren. He couldn't stop it. The more anxious he got, the faster his foot thumped. 

“Look at him! He’s terrified!” one of Bakugo’s lackeys sneered. 

“My Quirk isn't just for running!” Izuku protested, his voice cracking. “I-I'm gonna be a hero like All Might! I can kick the bad guys!”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Bakugo sneered, stepping closer. He let off another, louder explosion. BANG!

Izuku flinched violently, his eyes squeezing shut, his body curling inward defensively. His biology betrayed him. He was a creature of prey in the presence of a natural-born predator. The smell of burning sugar from Bakugo's sweat, the deafening cracks of his explosions—everything about Bakugo overloaded Izuku’s hypersensitive senses and triggered his flight response. 

“You’re just a weak little herbivore,” Bakugo declared, looking down at the shaking, green-haired boy. “You can’t even handle a little noise without crying. You’re totally useless.” Bakugo thought for a moment, a cruel grin spreading across his face. “A useless rabbit... Deku. That’s what we’ll call you. Deku! The useless, frightened little bunny!”

The other children chanted the name, laughing and pointing. Deku. Deku. Deku.

Izuku sat in the dirt, his long ears drooping so low they dragged on the ground. His foot thumped rhythmically against the earth, a desperate, silent plea for a safety that wasn't coming. He looked at his powerful, mutated legs, and for the first time, he hated them. 

Ten years passed, but the dynamic remained entirely unchanged. 

“Since you’re all third years, it’s time for you to think seriously about your future,” the homeroom teacher of Aldera Junior High announced, holding a stack of career aptitude papers. Izuku sat near the back of the classroom, his head bowed, furiously scribbling in his hero analysis notebook. 

Izuku Midoriya, now fourteen, had grown into his Quirk, even if he hadn't grown into society's expectations. He wore a specially modified uniform; his pants were tailored to accommodate his digitigrade, heavily muscled legs, and his desk chair had a section removed so his fluffy white tail wasn't crushed when he sat. He also wore a pair of bulky, noise-canceling headphones around his neck, though he kept them off during class. His long, green-and-white ears poked out through a slit in his hair, swiveling constantly. 

Even now, he could hear the hushed conversations of students in the hallway, the scratching of pencils three desks away, and the rhythmic breathing of his classmates. He had learned to filter out most of it, but loud noises were still a tremendous problem. 

“I could pass out these career printouts,” the teacher continued, a smirk on his face. “But why bother? I know you all want to go to the hero track!” 

The teacher threw the papers into the air. The classroom erupted into cheers as students showed off their Quirks. Hands elongated, water squirted, small fires were lit. 

Izuku’s ears immediately pinned flat against the back of his head, his hands flying up to cover them. The cacophony of a dozen Quirks activating simultaneously in an enclosed space was like a physical blow to his eardrums. He winced, his right foot beginning its anxious thump-thump-thump against the floorboards. 

“Hey, teach! Don't lump me in with these bunch of losers!” 

The loud, arrogant voice cut through the noise. Izuku didn't need to look up to know who it was. Katsuki Bakugo lounged with his feet on his desk, an aura of supreme confidence radiating from him. 

“I’m the only one here with the right stuff to make it to the top. I’m going to U.A. High School, and I’m gonna surpass All Might himself!”

The class gasped, muttering about the prestigious, near-impossible entrance exam for U.A.

“Oh, right,” the teacher said, looking at his clipboard. “Midoriya, you wanted to go to U.A. too, right?”

The entire room went dead silent. Izuku froze, his pencil snapping under his grip. His ears shot straight up, rigid with panic. Every eye in the room slowly turned toward him. 

Then, the laughter started. It was mocking, cruel, and deafening. 

“Deku? The rabbit kid? You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“What’s he gonna do? Thump his foot at the villains until they give up?”

“He’ll just run away before the exam even starts!”

“I-It’s not impossible!” Izuku stammered, standing up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. “I know a lot of heroes have flashy Quirks, but my legs are really strong! And there’s precedent! Look at the Rabbit Hero, Mirko! She’s in the top ten, and she’s a rabbit type just like me!”

SMASH.

A blazing hand slammed onto Izuku’s desk, incinerating the corner of his notebook. Izuku shrieked, his danger-sense flaring wildly. He bounded backward, a powerful, instinctual leap that carried him instantly to the back wall of the classroom. He landed on a desk, crouching low, his ears pinned flat, his chest heaving. 

Bakugo stood where Izuku had been a second before, smoke rising from his palms, a murderous glare in his crimson eyes. 

“Listen to me, you pathetic herbivore,” Bakugo growled, stalking toward the back of the room. “Mirko is a freak of nature. You? You’re just a coward. You’ve been flinching at my shadow since we were four. You think a skittish little prey animal like you can stand in the same arena as me? You think U.A. wants a hero who wets himself every time there’s a loud noise?”

“Kacchan, please,” Izuku pleaded, his foot thumping uncontrollably against the desk he was crouching on. Thump-thump-thump-thump. The sound only seemed to agitate Bakugo more. 

“Stop making that annoying noise!” Bakugo snapped, swiping his hand and letting off a sharp warning explosion. Izuku flinched, curling into a tight ball. 

Bakugo snatched the burnt hero notebook from the desk. “Hero Analysis for the Future? You’re delusional.” With a swift motion, Bakugo clapped the notebook between his hands, blasting it with a fiery explosion. 

“Stop it!” Izuku cried out. 

Bakugo casually tossed the smoldering book out the open third-story window. He stepped up to Izuku, leaning in close. Izuku could smell the burnt caramel scent of nitroglycerin. It made his stomach churn with ancient, ingrained prey instincts. 

“Do us all a favor, Deku. Stop trying to pretend you’re a predator. Keep your head down, eat your carrots, and stay out of my way.” Bakugo turned and walked out of the classroom as the final bell rang, his lackeys laughing as they followed him out. 

Izuku remained crouched on the desk for a long time, his breathing shallow. Slowly, the nervous thumping of his foot stopped. His ears drooped over his face, hiding his watering eyes. 

I’m not just prey, he thought desperately, though he didn't quite believe it himself. 

He trudged downstairs to retrieve his notebook, finding it in a koi pond, being nibbled on by the fish. He sighed, fishing it out and shaking the water from the burnt pages. 

He began his walk home, taking a secluded route underneath a large highway bridge to avoid the crowded streets. He slipped his noise-canceling headphones over his long ears, craving silence. The world was too loud, too cruel. 

He thought about his second idol, Mirko. Rumi Usagiyama. She had a Rabbit Quirk, just like him. She had the ears, the legs, the instincts. But she didn't have the fear. She was fearless, aggressive, a brawler who thrived in the chaos of battle. Izuku had spent thousands of hours studying her fights, trying to mimic her powerful kicks and her unyielding confidence. But whenever he tried to apply it, his biology betrayed him. A loud noise, a flash of fire, and he was a frightened four-year-old all over again. 

“Can I really do it?” he asked himself, looking down at his digitigrade feet as he walked. “Can a rabbit be a symbol of peace?”

A strange, squelching sound broke through his thoughts. 

Izuku stopped. His ears twitched beneath his headphones. He pulled the right cup away from his ear. 

Squelch. Gurgle. Slop.

It was coming from a manhole cover a few yards ahead of him. The heavy iron lid began to rattle, then was violently shoved aside. Out of the dark sewer poured a massive, foul-smelling mountain of dark green sludge. It shifted and coalesced, forming two massive, bulbous eyes and a jagged, gaping mouth. 

A villain. 

Izuku’s danger-sense didn't just flare; it exploded. His entire body seized up, screaming at him to run. His legs tensed, ready to vault him fifty feet in the opposite direction. 

“An invisibility cloak!” the Sludge Villain gurgled, its liquid eyes locking onto Izuku. “A medium-sized meat-suit! Perfect!”

Before Izuku’s paralyzed muscles could react, the sludge lunged. 

A thick, viscous tendril of slime wrapped around Izuku’s waist, violently yanking him forward. Izuku screamed, but a second tendril shoved itself down his throat, cutting off his air. 

No! No! Izuku thrashed wildly. He kicked out with his powerful legs, his iron-hard feet smashing against the concrete pillars of the bridge, sending chunks of stone flying. But kicking the sludge was like kicking water. There was nothing solid to strike. 

“Stop fighting, kid. It’ll only hurt for about 45 seconds,” the villain laughed, forcing more slime into Izuku’s mouth and nose. “You’re my hero!”

Izuku’s vision began to blur. His lungs burned with a terrifying agony. He scratched furiously at the sludge covering his face, tears streaming from his eyes. His long ears drooped, pinning themselves flat as his strength began to fade. He was going to die here. A weak, helpless herbivore, caught in a predator’s trap. 

Suddenly, a massive shockwave rattled the entire underpass. 

The heavy iron manhole cover didn't just fly off; it was obliterated into shrapnel by a colossal force erupting from the sewer. 

“HAVE NO FEAR, YOU ARE SAFE!” a voice bellowed, shaking the very air in Izuku’s chest. “NOW. BECAUSE I AM HERE!”

Through his dimming vision, Izuku saw a mountain of muscle leap from the sewer. All Might. 

“TEXAS... SMASH!” 

All Might threw a punch. He didn't even make physical contact with the villain. The sheer wind pressure generated by his fist was like a hurricane in a wind tunnel. The Sludge Villain shrieked as the air pressure tore its liquid body apart, splattering it against the walls of the tunnel. 

The pressure released Izuku, and he fell to the concrete, gasping and coughing up vile-tasting slime. He lay on his back, his chest heaving, his ears ringing from the sonic boom of the punch. 

“Hey! Hey, are you alright, young man? Excellent! Apologies for getting you caught up in my villain hunt!” 

All Might’s booming voice snapped Izuku back to reality. The Number One Hero was standing over him, effortlessly stuffing the remnants of the Sludge Villain into two large plastic soda bottles. 

Izuku scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his eyes wide. It was him. It was really him! 

“A-All Might! An autograph! Where’s my notebook?” Izuku frantically searched the ground, finding his damp, burnt notebook. He opened it to a blank page and thrust it toward the hero, only to find that All Might had already signed it in massive, sprawling letters spanning two whole pages. 

“THANK YOU VERY MUCH!” Izuku bowed so quickly his long ears whipped against his face. “IT WILL BE A FAMILY HEIRLOOM!”

“Well, I must be off!” All Might announced, tucking the bottles into his cargo pockets. “A Pro Hero’s work is never done!”

“Wait, already?” Izuku panicked. He couldn't leave. Not yet. He had to ask him. The question that had tormented him for ten years. If anyone knew the answer, it was the Symbol of Peace. “I-I have a question!”

“NO TIME FOR QUESTIONS, I’M AFRAID!” All Might bent his knees, preparing for a massive leap. 

Don't go! Izuku’s brain screamed. Acting on pure, desperate impulse, Izuku’s powerful rabbit legs fired. 

Just as All Might launched himself into the stratosphere, Izuku leaped with him, wrapping his arms around the hero’s massive, tree-trunk-like leg. 

The wind tore at Izuku’s face. His long ears flapped wildly behind him like twin flags in a hurricane. 

“HEY, HEY, HEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? LET GO!” All Might yelled over the roaring wind, trying to shake his leg. 

“IF I LET GO NOW I’LL DIE!” Izuku screamed, his eyes rolling back in terror. 

“OH. GOOD POINT.”

They landed with a heavy thud on the roof of a three-story office building. Izuku collapsed onto the gravel, his legs shaking violently, his foot resuming its frantic thump-thump-thump against the roof. 

“That was highly irresponsible, young man!” All Might scolded, though his voice sounded somewhat strained. “You could have been killed. Now, knock on the door, someone will let you downstairs. I have to go!”

“Wait!” Izuku scrambled to his feet, ignoring the trembling in his digitigrade legs. “Please! Just one question!”

All Might stopped. Smoke began to curl off his massive body. 

Izuku closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He balled his hands into tight fists. “Even if... even if I have a weak Quirk... even if my instincts tell me to run away... can someone like me still be a hero? Can a... can a rabbit be a hero just like you?!”

Izuku stood there, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the booming, reassuring voice of his idol. He waited for the validation he had craved his entire life. 

Instead, he heard a wet, hacking cough. 

Izuku opened his eyes. And gasped. 

The massive, invincible All Might was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man in clothes that were ten sizes too big for him. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. 

Izuku screamed, his ears shooting straight up. “W-What happened?! You deflated! Are you an imposter?!”

“I am All Might,” the skeletal man sighed, wiping the blood from his chin. He sat down heavily against the rooftop fencing. He lifted his oversized shirt, revealing a horrific, sprawling mass of scar tissue that seemed to have destroyed half his respiratory system. 

Izuku clamped a hand over his mouth. 

“Five years ago, a villain did this to me,” All Might explained, his voice low and exhausted. “My respiratory system is nearly destroyed. I lost my whole stomach. I can only do hero work for about three hours a day now. The rest of the time... I look like this.”

Izuku stood frozen in shock. The indestructible symbol of peace was broken. 

“You asked if a rabbit could be a hero,” All Might said, looking at Izuku with sunken, sorrowful eyes. “I know of Mirko, of course. She’s strong. But she doesn’t hesitate. She’s a fighter by nature. You, young man... you’re trembling right now.”

Izuku looked down at his rapidly thumping foot. He tried to stop it, but he couldn't. 

“Hero work is dangerous. It’s brutal. It requires you to throw yourself into the jaws of death with no hesitation,” All Might said softly. “If your biology, your very instincts, force you to freeze or flee when faced with danger... then I cannot tell you that you can be a hero.”

The words hit Izuku like a physical blow. His breath hitched. 

“It’s not wrong to dream, young man,” All Might said, standing up and opening the roof access door. “But you have to be realistic. If you want to help people, become a police officer. It’s noble work. But don’t throw your life away trying to be something your body isn’t built for.”

The door clicked shut. 

Izuku stood alone on the rooftop. The wind rustled through his green curls. His long ears, usually so expressive, fell completely limp, hanging down the sides of his face like dead weight. His foot stopped thumping. 

He was right. Bakugo was right. The teachers were right. Even All Might was right. 

A rabbit wasn't meant to fight monsters. A rabbit was meant to hide. 

Izuku didn't remember walking down from the roof. He drifted through the streets of Musutafu like a ghost, his noise-canceling headphones securely over his ears, drowning out the vibrant, bustling city around him. His burnt notebook felt like a lead weight in his yellow backpack. 

His dreams were shattered. The finality of it was crushing. He would apologize to his mother tonight. He would tell her he was going to look into police academies, or maybe an office job. He would stop pretending. 

Suddenly, his long ears twitched beneath the thick foam of his headphones. 

Even through the noise-canceling technology, Izuku’s mutated hearing picked up a sound that made his blood run cold. 

BOOM. BOOM.

It was a highly specific frequency. The exact decibel, the exact crackling resonance. It was the sound of Katsuki Bakugo’s explosions. But they weren't rhythmic or controlled. They were frantic. Desperate. 

Izuku’s danger-sense spiked. His heart began to hammer in his chest. Before his conscious mind could make a decision, his body reacted. He ripped his headphones off and bolted, his powerful digitigrade legs propelling him down the street at incredible speed. He bounded over park benches, vaulted a mailbox, and rounded the corner onto the main shopping district. 

A massive crowd had gathered. A block down, the street was entirely engulfed in flames. 

Izuku pushed his way through the crowd to the front line, where a barricade of police officers and Pro Heroes were holding people back. Kamui Woods, Death Arms, and Backdraft were all there, standing by helplessly. 

Izuku looked into the inferno. And his heart stopped. 

Towering in the middle of the street was the Sludge Villain. All Might must have dropped the bottles. 

And trapped within the massive, swirling mass of green slime was a teenager with ash-blonde hair. 

Bakugo was suffocating. He was firing off massive explosions in a blind panic, setting the surrounding buildings on fire and keeping the Pro Heroes at bay. 

“None of us have the right Quirks for this!” Death Arms shouted, shielding his face from the intense heat. “We have to wait for someone with a suitable Quirk!”

Izuku stood frozen. His body was locked in a terrifying battle of biology versus soul. 

Everything about this scene screamed at him to run. The roaring flames triggered a deep, primal fear of fire. The deafening explosions of Bakugo’s Quirk made Izuku’s ears ring with agonizing pain. The overpowering stench of smoke, sulfur, and raw ozone made his nose burn. His right foot began to thump against the pavement so hard and so fast he was leaving a dent in the asphalt. 

Run, his instincts whispered. Run away. Hide in your warren. You are prey. This is a predator's fight.

Izuku took a step backward, his ears pinned flat against his skull, his eyes wide with sheer terror. He couldn't do it. He was a coward. He was a Deku. 

But then, through the smoke and the slime, Izuku’s eyes locked onto Bakugo’s. 

The arrogant, fiery, untouchable king of the playground was looking back at him. And in those crimson eyes, Izuku didn't see anger or superiority. 

He saw tears. He saw a desperate, silent plea for help. 

The biological imperative to flee shattered. The rabbit instincts were violently overwritten by a force much stronger—the heart of a hero. 

Izuku Midoriya didn't think. He didn't plan. He simply dug his digitigrade feet into the pavement, coiled his powerful, mutated muscles, and unleashed the full kinetic force of his Quirk. 

CRACK.

The pavement beneath Izuku’s feet spider-webbed, chunks of asphalt exploding outward from the sheer force of his launch. 

He didn't run into the fire. He flew over it. 

Izuku launched himself into the air in a massive, bounding arc, clearing the heads of the Pro Heroes, vaulting over the police barricade, and soaring directly into the roaring inferno. 

“Hey, kid! Stop! You’ll be killed!” Death Arms roared, reaching out to grab him, but Izuku was already gone, a blur of green and white. 

The heat was blistering. The sound of explosions was deafening. But Izuku’s mind was laser-focused. He was in the air, falling toward the massive Sludge Villain. 

What am I doing?! Izuku’s conscious mind finally caught up to his body in mid-air. I don’t have a plan! I can’t punch this guy!

He remembered his middle school notebook. He remembered the hours of footage of Mirko, the Rabbit Hero. Don’t fight like a human. Fight like a rabbit.

Izuku reached backward, grabbed his heavy yellow backpack, and hurled it with all his might directly at the Sludge Villain’s face. The heavy zipper collided perfectly with the villain’s bulging, liquid eye. 

“GAAAH!” The villain shrieked, its grip loosening for a fraction of a second as it recoiled in pain. 

It was enough. Bakugo gasped for air, coughing violently. “Deku?! What the hell are you doing?!”

Izuku didn't answer. Gravity was pulling him down fast. He twisted his body in mid-air, bringing his knees up to his chest. As he plummeted toward the villain, he extended his legs with explosive, jackhammer force. 

Both of his iron-hard, digitigrade feet slammed squarely into the villain’s other eye. 

The impact was tremendous. Izuku’s legs, built to absorb the shock of fifty-foot leaps, delivered a blow that rippled through the sludge like a shockwave through water. The villain roared in agony, completely losing its form for a moment. 

Izuku bounced off the villain’s face, flipping backward and landing gracefully on his feet next to Bakugo, his claws digging into the pavement to arrest his momentum. 

He grabbed Bakugo’s collar and hauled the stunned boy to his feet. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Bakugo screamed, though his voice was hoarse from coughing slime. “Why are you here?!”

“I don’t know!” Izuku screamed back, tears streaming down his face, his long ears standing straight up in sheer terror. “My legs just moved on their own! You looked like you were asking for help!”

Bakugo’s eyes widened. 

“YOU LITTLE BRAT!” the Sludge Villain roared, reforming its mass, towering over the two boys like a tidal wave of filth. Giant tendrils of sludge rose into the air, preparing to crush them both. “I’LL KILL YOU!”

Izuku pushed Bakugo behind him, raising his arms in a desperate, futile guard. He couldn't jump them both out of here in time. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for death. 

But the blow never came. 

A massive hand grabbed Izuku’s shoulder, and another grabbed Bakugo’s. 

“I REALLY AM PATHETIC.”

Izuku opened his eyes. Standing in front of them, steam rolling off his rapidly expanding muscles, was All Might. He was bleeding from the mouth, his face twisted in a mixture of pain, rage, and profound self-loathing. 

“I TOLD YOU WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION, YET I DIDN’T LIVE UP TO MY OWN IDEALS!” All Might roared, drawing his fist back. The air pressure around them shifted drastically, the flames flickering and dying simply from the vacuum created by his movement. “PROS ARE ALWAYS RISKING THEIR LIVES! DETROIT... SMASH!”

The punch was cataclysmic. A literal tornado erupted in the middle of the street. The Sludge Villain was atomized instantly, the slime blowing backward in a torrential rain of filth. The sheer wind pressure generated by the punch rushed upward, piercing the sky and scattering the storm clouds that had gathered overhead. 

Sunlight poured down onto the ruined street. It began to rain. 

All Might stood tall, his fist still raised, panting heavily. 

Izuku sat on the pavement, completely drained. His powerful legs finally gave out, and he collapsed onto his back, staring up at the sky. He had done it. He hadn't run away. He had leaped. 

The aftermath was a blur. The Pro Heroes had thoroughly chewed Izuku out for his reckless behavior. Death Arms had lectured him for ten minutes about the dangers of playing hero, while Kamui Woods praised Bakugo’s resilience and powerful Quirk. 

Izuku had simply nodded, his ears drooping in exhaustion, offering no arguments. He knew they were right. He had been reckless. But as he walked home under the twilight sky, he didn't feel the crushing despair he had felt on the rooftop. He felt... strangely at peace. He had moved. When a Pro Hero couldn't, he had moved. 

“DEKU!” 

Izuku stopped, his ears swiveling backward. He turned to see Bakugo jogging down the street toward him, panting heavily. 

“Kacchan?”

Bakugo stopped a few feet away. He glared at Izuku, his fists clenched at his sides. He looked angry, but beneath the rage, there was a profound confusion. 

“Listen to me, you stupid rabbit,” Bakugo growled, pointing a finger at Izuku’s chest. “I didn’t ask for your help! I didn’t need it! I was fine! I would have gotten out of there myself!”

Izuku blinked, offering a tired, soft smile. “I know, Kacchan.”

“Don’t look at me like that!” Bakugo snapped, his voice cracking slightly. “You didn’t save me! You’re just a Quirkless nobody... no, you’re just a weak, pathetic herbivore! Don’t think this changes anything! Don’t you dare look down on me!” 

Bakugo turned on his heel and stormed off down the street, his shoulders tense. 

Izuku watched him go. For the first time in his life, Bakugo’s yelling didn't make him flinch. His foot didn't thump. His ears didn't pin flat. 

“I AM HERE!” 

Izuku shrieked as All Might practically materialized out of an alleyway, striking a dramatic pose. Izuku’s danger-sense flared, and he bounded three feet backward in an instant. 

“All Might?! What are you doing here?! How did you get past the reporters?!”

All Might laughed heartily. “HA HA HA! STANDING FOR JUSTICE MEANS ALWAYS FINDING A WAY THROUGH! I SIMPLY—” 

He stopped suddenly, a familiar gurgling sound escaping his throat. A massive cloud of steam erupted from his body, and the towering hero deflated back into the skeletal, blood-spitting man Izuku had met on the roof. 

Izuku winced. “A-Are you okay?”

All Might coughed into a handkerchief, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m fine, young man. I came here to thank you. And to apologize.”

Izuku’s long ears perked up in surprise. “Apologize? To me? But the pros said I just got in the way.”

“If you hadn't been there, if you hadn't told me about your life... I would have stood in that crowd doing nothing like a hypocrite,” All Might said, walking closer, his sunken blue eyes piercing through Izuku. “You, a young man with no combat training, a young man whose very biology screamed at him to run away from the fire and the noise... you were the only one who acted.”

Izuku felt a lump form in his throat. 

“There are stories about every great hero, young man,” All Might continued, his voice soft but carrying an immense weight. “Most of their stories have one thing in common. Before they even had time to think, their bodies moved on their own.”

Tears welled up in Izuku’s eyes. The words he had waited his whole life to hear. 

“You jumped to save that boy,” All Might said. “You proved that a hero’s spirit isn't dictated by their Quirk or their instincts. It’s dictated by their heart.” All Might paused, pointing a bony finger at Izuku. “You can become a hero.”

Izuku fell to his knees. The dam broke. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders shaking with the force of a decade of repressed emotion. His long ears, previously drooping with exhaustion, slowly stood up straight, tall and proud. 

All Might waited patiently for the boy to compose himself. When Izuku finally looked up, his eyes red and puffy but burning with a new, fierce determination, All Might smiled. 

“I deem you worthy of my power,” All Might declared. “My Quirk is yours to inherit.”

Izuku blinked, sniffing loudly. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Inherit? Your Quirk? But... Quirks are genetic. You can’t just pass them down.”

“Mine is different,” All Might explained, holding out his hand. A faint, golden energy seemed to crackle across his palm. “It is a sacred torch, passed from generation to generation, cultivating power and passing it on to the next worthy vessel. It is called One For All.”

“One For All...” Izuku whispered, mesmerized by the golden light. 

“I have been looking for a successor for a long time,” All Might said. “And today, I watched you fight. I watched you leap over a roaring fire without a second thought. And I realized something.”

All Might stepped forward, looking critically at Izuku’s legs. “You said your Quirk is a Mutant class. Your lower body is entirely restructured. I saw the power you generated when you jumped to strike that villain. The kinetic force your legs can handle is astronomical.”

Izuku looked down at his thick, digitigrade legs. 

“One For All is a power of immense physical force,” All Might explained. “If I were to give it to a normal boy, the sheer power would blow his limbs off. But you... your lower half is already heavily mutated to withstand incredible kinetic shock and stress. Your bones are denser. Your muscle fibers are coiled like steel wire. You are, quite literally, biologically built to be the perfect vessel for explosive power.”

Izuku’s breath hitched. His Quirk... the Quirk everyone had mocked, the Quirk that labeled him as prey... was exactly what made him strong enough to hold the ultimate power. 

“I offer you this power, young man,” All Might said, extending a hand to Izuku. “Will you take it?”

Izuku didn't hesitate. He didn't think about the danger, or the pain, or the impossible road ahead. He thought about the smile he wanted to wear when saving people. He thought of Mirko, kicking her way through villains with unmatched ferocity. He thought of his mother, who had cried for him. 

Izuku Midoriya reached up and grasped All Might’s hand firmly. 

“Yes,” Izuku said, his voice steady and clear. “I’ll do it.”

The Number One Hero smiled, hauling the boy to his feet. “Excellent! Though, I must warn you, young man. Your legs may be strong, but your upper body is a disaster! If we are to prepare you for the U.A. Entrance Exam in ten months, we have a tremendous amount of work to do. We must forge you into a vessel capable of housing the power of a god!”

Izuku nodded fiercely, his long, fluffy ears twitching in excitement. The prey animal was gone. In its place stood a young hero, ready to leap into the future. 

The Herbivore’s dream was finally beginning.

The salty ocean breeze sweeping off the coast of Musutafu used to be refreshing. Now, it just smelled of rust, rotting kelp, and ten years' worth of illegal dumping. 

Dagobah Municipal Beach Park was a graveyard of discarded appliances, crushed vehicles, and jagged scrap metal. It was a monument to societal apathy, a place where people threw the things they no longer wanted to look at. 

“This,” All Might declared, gesturing grandly with a massive, muscular arm toward a mountain of rusted refrigerators and blown-out tires, “is your new training ground, young Midoriya!”

Izuku stood at the edge of the sea wall, his green and white rabbit ears swiveling to catch the sound of the crashing waves hidden somewhere behind the fortress of trash. He wore a simple white t-shirt and loose green sweatpants, modified to accommodate his digitigrade stance and his fluffy white tail. He stared at the sheer volume of garbage, his jaw slightly open. 

“Wow,” Izuku breathed, his nose twitching at the pungent scent of oxidized copper and stale seawater. “I knew this beach was bad, but seeing it up close… it’s a total disaster area.”

“Precisely!” All Might boomed, planting his hands on his hips. “And over the next ten months, you are going to clean it up! Every last piece of it!”

Izuku’s eyes widened. He looked from the towering piles of junk back to the Number One Hero. “A-All of it? But… there are trucks buried in there! And washing machines!”

Suddenly, with a sickening gurgle and a massive puff of steam, All Might deflated, returning to his skeletal, sunken-eyed true form. He wiped a drop of blood from his chin and pulled a stack of heavily annotated papers from his oversized cargo pants. 

“You wanted to know how to become a vessel for One For All, didn't you?” All Might asked, his voice now a raspy baritone. He walked over to Izuku, tapping the boy's chest with a bony finger. “I told you yesterday, Midoriya. Your legs are incredible. Your Quirk, Lepus, has gifted you with a lower body built for explosive kinetic force. Denser bones, tightly coiled muscle fibers, and a reversed-joint digitigrade structure that naturally absorbs and redirects shock. If you channeled One For All into your legs right now, they might just survive it.”

All Might then poked Izuku’s scrawny shoulder. “But your upper body? It’s a completely different story. You’re top-heavy in the wrong direction. You have the engine of a sports car installed on the chassis of a golf cart. If you unleashed One For All as you are now, the sheer recoil traveling up your spine would shatter your ribcage and tear your arms from their sockets.”

Izuku gulped, his ears flattening nervously against his head. The imagery was gruesome, but his analytical mind understood the physics immediately. Rabbits were built for jumping and running; their upper bodies were naturally slender and lightweight to maximize aerodynamics and leap distance. He had spent his whole life ignoring his upper body because his Quirk was entirely focused on his legs. 

“So,” All Might continued, unrolling the papers to reveal a heavily detailed, almost maniacally scheduled calendar. “I have developed the ‘Aim to Pass: American Dream Plan’! Tailor-made for a mutant-type biology! By hauling heavy, awkward objects through the shifting, unstable sands of this beach, we will force your core, your back, and your arms to develop the foundational strength required to support your mutated lower half. We are going to build a bridge between the frail human boy and the powerful rabbit!”

Izuku stared at the schedule. It detailed his diet down to the exact gram of protein, his sleep schedule, and his daily hauling quotas. It was grueling. It was borderline torturous. It was exactly what he needed.

Izuku’s long ears slowly rose, standing tall and rigid. His right foot tapped against the concrete sea wall—not the rapid, frantic thump-thump-thump of a frightened prey animal, but a slow, rhythmic, powerful beat. It was a new habit he was developing, a way of grounding himself, of loading kinetic energy into his muscles like a coiled spring. 

“I’ll do it,” Izuku said, his green eyes locking onto All Might’s sunken blue ones. “I’ll clear this entire beach. I won't let you down.”

The first month was unadulterated agony. 

Izuku’s alarm went off at 4:00 AM every single day. He would drag himself out of bed, his muscles screaming in protest, choke down a massive protein-heavy breakfast prepared by a bewildered but supportive Inko, and jog to the beach before the sun even crested the horizon. 

His first task was moving a row of rusted filing cabinets. 

Izuku strapped a thick leather harness around his chest, attaching the heavy ropes to the handles of the bottom cabinet. He dug his digitigrade feet into the loose sand. This was the first hurdle. His feet were built for launching off hard, solid surfaces. The soft, shifting sand absorbed his kinetic output, robbing him of his natural leverage. 

“Lower your center of gravity!” All Might barked from his perch atop a nearby refrigerator, lounging in a beach chair. “Don't rely on your legs to do the pulling! Use your back! Engage your core! Pull with the human parts of you!”

Izuku gritted his teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. He leaned forward, dropping to a low crouch, his hands digging into the sand. He pulled. The ropes went taut. The heavy steel cabinet groaned against the sand, moving a grand total of two inches. 

Izuku gasped for air, his chest heaving. His arms felt like they were made of lead. His back ached with a deep, burning fire. 

But he didn't stop. He visualized the Sludge Villain. He visualized Bakugo’s desperate, tear-filled eyes. He visualized the smile of the Symbol of Peace. 

He pulled again. And again. And again. 

By the third month, the pain had transformed into a dull, manageable ache. The physical changes were becoming undeniable. The loose white t-shirts he wore to train were starting to stretch tightly across his broadening shoulders. His core had hardened into a washboard of lean, dense muscle. His arms, previously thin and unremarkable, now sported thick, corded veins and defined biceps. 

But Izuku wasn't just blindly following All Might’s physical regimen. He was a thinker. A planner. An analyst. 

One evening in late November, the freezing rain poured down on Dagobah Beach. All Might had sought shelter under the awning of a nearby convenience store, sipping hot cocoa in his skinny form. 

Izuku was still on the beach. He had just finished hauling a waterlogged sofa to the designated trash pickup zone. Instead of resting, he walked over to a massive, rusted steel girder jutting out of the sand. 

He pulled his cracked smartphone from his sweatpants pocket, keeping it shielded from the rain with one of his long, floppy ears. He opened a video file he had downloaded years ago. 

It was a shaky, amateur recording of Rumi Usagiyama—the Rabbit Hero, Mirko—taking down a villain with a gigantification Quirk. Izuku watched her movements with hyper-focused intensity. 

She doesn't throw punches, Izuku muttered to himself, rain dripping from his nose. Punches leave her off-balance because her center of gravity is lower than a normal human's due to the weight and density of her leg muscles. She fights like a breakdancer. She uses centrifugal force.

Izuku put his phone away. He stepped up to the steel girder. 

He took a deep breath, visualizing his own anatomy. He had spent his whole life trying to walk, run, and move like a normal human boy. But he wasn't one. His digitigrade legs meant he was permanently standing on the balls of his feet. He had a natural, built-in shock absorption system that allowed for instantaneous directional changes. 

Izuku dropped low to the ground. He spun on his left foot, generating immense rotational torque, and whipped his right leg around in a vicious sweeping kick. 

CLANG.

The impact was deafening. The rusted steel girder shuddered violently, a massive dent appearing where Izuku’s heel had connected. The sheer kinetic feedback rippled up Izuku’s leg, but his mutated joints absorbed it flawlessly, leaving him perfectly balanced. 

From the convenience store, All Might watched, his jaw dropping slightly. He had expected the boy to eventually try to mimic his own boxing-heavy combat style. But Midoriya was doing something far smarter. He was creating a martial art entirely unique to his biology. 

Izuku didn't stop. He unleashed a flurry of kicks against the girder. Axe kicks that drove the steel deeper into the sand. Roundhouses that sent shockwaves through the heavy metal. Dropkicks that launched his own body backward, using the recoil to flip through the air and land gracefully on his feet. 

He was vicious. He was fast. He was lethal. 

For the first time in his life, Izuku Midoriya felt like a predator. 

Ten months evaporated in a blur of sweat, sand, and screaming muscles. 

The morning of the U.A. Entrance Exam arrived crisp and clear. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, painting the sky in vibrant shades of pink and gold. 

All Might drove his pickup truck to the edge of the sea wall. He stepped out, holding a thermos of coffee, and looked out over Dagobah Municipal Beach Park. 

He dropped his thermos. It clattered against the pavement, spilling hot coffee everywhere. 

The trash was gone. All of it. 

The rusted refrigerators, the sunken cars, the mountains of shredded tires—every single piece of refuse had been hauled away. In its place was a pristine, sparkling stretch of white sand, glowing beautifully in the dawn light. 

And standing atop the final, neatly stacked pile of debris by the roadside was a young man. 

Izuku Midoriya stood shirtless against the morning wind. The transformation was breathtaking. The scrawny, skittish boy was gone. His upper body was now a canvas of chiseled, hard-earned muscle, perfectly proportioned to support the massive, tree-trunk thickness of his mutated rabbit legs. Sweat glistened on his skin, his chest heaving with exertion. 

He threw his head back, his long green-and-white ears standing tall and triumphant, and let out a primal, visceral scream of pure victory. It was a roar that echoed across the water, a declaration that the herbivore was dead. 

All Might felt a swell of profound pride in his chest. In an instant, he expanded, steam rushing from his body as he took on his massive, muscle-bound hero form. 

“OH MY... GOODNESS!” All Might boomed, leaping from the sea wall and landing gently on the sand below. 

Izuku turned, panting heavily. He hopped down off the truck bed, landing with a soft thud on his digitigrade feet. He looked at All Might, a massive, exhausted grin on his face. 

“I did it,” Izuku gasped, his foot tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the pavement. “I cleared the warren.”

“You didn’t just clear it, young Midoriya,” All Might said, holding up a smartphone showing a picture of Izuku from ten months ago. “You over-delivered! You cleared even the areas outside the park limits! Look at you! You are a perfect vessel!”

All Might stepped forward, placing a massive, heavy hand on Izuku’s bare shoulder. The hero’s smile softened into something deeply genuine and fatherly. 

“We met ten months ago, on a day when you felt entirely powerless,” All Might said quietly. “But you proved to me that true heroism isn't born from an invincible Quirk. It’s born from the will to act when others won't. You have bled, you have sweat, and you have built yourself into a man worthy of the future.”

Izuku felt tears prick his eyes. His ears drooped slightly, overwhelmed by the praise. “All Might…”

“Now,” All Might declared, his voice rising to its normal, bombastic volume. “It is time for the final step! The transfer of power!”

All Might reached up and gripped one of the long, golden bangs of hair that hung over his face. With a sharp yank, he plucked a single strand. 

He held the hair out to Izuku, the dawn light catching the golden strand. Izuku looked at it with sheer reverence. This was it. The culmination of his dreams. The torch of One For All. 

“EAT THIS.”

The emotional atmosphere shattered like glass. 

Izuku stared at All Might, his ears dropping completely flat against his skull. “...Huh?”

“To inherit the power, you must consume a piece of my DNA!” All Might explained cheerfully. “It doesn't really matter what it is, but a hair is usually the easiest! Come on now, chop chop! The exam starts in three hours, and you need time to digest!”

Izuku looked at the hair. Then at All Might’s expectant face. He swallowed hard. 

“This… is not how I pictured this moment,” Izuku muttered. He reached out, took the golden hair, squeezed his eyes shut, and popped it into his mouth. 

He chewed dryly, fighting down his active gag reflex, and swallowed. It felt like swallowing a piece of sharp fishing line. 

“Excellent!” All Might cheered, clapping Izuku on the back so hard the boy nearly coughed the hair back up. “Now, get home, take a shower, and get to U.A.! Today is the day you prove to the world who you are!”

The towering gates of U.A. High School were intimidating enough to make anyone’s stomach churn. 

Izuku stood at the base of the massive steps leading up to the main building, wearing his black middle school uniform. His noise-canceling headphones rested around his neck, ready to be pulled up at a moment's notice. The sheer volume of thousands of teenagers swarming the courtyard was a sensory nightmare, but Izuku kept his breathing steady. He let his ears swivel naturally, mapping the acoustic landscape of the crowd, filtering out the useless noise and focusing on the path ahead. 

I'm here, he thought, gripping the straps of his yellow backpack. I swallowed the hair, but I don't feel any different yet. All Might said it takes two to three hours for the DNA to fully integrate with my system. I just have to hope it kicks in before the practical exam.

“Out of my way, Deku.”

The voice was low, dangerous, and instantly recognizable. Izuku didn't flinch. His danger-sense twitched slightly, a small ripple up his spine, but his feet remained firmly planted. 

He turned his head to see Katsuki Bakugo standing a few feet away, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his crimson eyes glaring daggers. 

They hadn't spoken since the Sludge Villain incident. Bakugo had entirely ignored him at school, treating him like an annoying ghost. But there was a new tension in Bakugo’s posture now. It wasn't the casual, arrogant cruelty of their childhood. It was a defensive, bristling anger. He was looking at Izuku not as a piece of trash, but as a confusing anomaly that he couldn't categorize. 

“Good morning, Kacchan,” Izuku said calmly. He didn't stutter. His foot didn't thump. 

Bakugo’s eye twitched. He scoffed loudly, brushing past Izuku and storming up the stairs without another word. 

Izuku watched him go, feeling a strange sense of liberation. The invisible chain that had bound him to his childhood bully was finally broken. He took a deep breath, turned, and took his first step toward the school. 

His digitigrade foot caught on an uneven paving stone. 

Because his biology required him to walk on the balls of his feet, his balance was entirely dependent on momentum. The sudden halt pitched him forward immediately. 

Oh no, Izuku panicked, his arms flailing as the hard concrete rushed up to meet his face. Ten months of hellish training, and I'm going to break my nose before the exam even starts!

He braced for impact, closing his eyes. 

But the impact never came. He stopped, suspended in mid-air, floating effortlessly a few inches above the ground. 

“Are you okay?” 

A cheerful, bright voice accompanied the sudden loss of gravity. Izuku opened his eyes and flailed his legs, turning himself upright. Standing next to him was a girl with short, bobbed brown hair and permanent pink blush on her cheeks. She held one hand out, her fingertips glowing with a faint pink light. 

She pressed her hands together, and gravity suddenly reasserted itself. Izuku dropped to the pavement, landing gracefully on his feet thanks to his natural shock absorbers. 

“I used my Quirk on you! Sorry for not asking first,” the girl smiled brightly. “But it would be bad luck if you fell right before the exam, right?”

“Oh! Uh, th-thank you!” Izuku stammered, a furious blush rising to his cheeks. He wasn't used to girls talking to him, let alone saving him from public humiliation. 

The girl’s eyes suddenly widened as she looked at the top of Izuku’s head. “Whoa! Your ears! They’re so cute!” 

Without warning, she reached out and gently stroked the soft, green-and-white fur on his right ear. 

Izuku’s entire body went rigid. A massive shiver ran down his spine, and his left leg began to thump the ground uncontrollably. Thump-thump-thump-thump. 

“Oh! They’re so soft!” she giggled. “Are you a rabbit Quirk? That’s so cool! You must be super fast!”

“Y-yes! I-I mean, I try to be!” Izuku squeaked, his face now the color of a tomato. 

“Well, I’m Ochaco Uraraka! Let’s both do our best today!” She gave him a bright wave and jogged up the stairs toward the auditorium. 

Izuku stood frozen for a solid ten seconds, his brain completely short-circuiting. I just talked to a girl. And she touched my ear. I can die happy now.

Shaking his head to clear the embarrassment, he marched into the building. 

The written exam went by in a blur. Izuku had spent his entire life analyzing Quirks, hero laws, and combat strategies. He breezed through the questions, finishing with time to spare. 

Then came the orientation for the practical exam. 

Izuku sat in the massive auditorium, wedged between Bakugo and a very intense-looking boy with glasses. On stage, the Voice Hero: Present Mic, was explaining the rules of the practical test with his usual deafening enthusiasm. 

Izuku had to slide his noise-canceling headphones halfway over his ears just to tolerate the volume. 

Present Mic explained the setup. They would be released into a massive replica city, where they would hunt down three different types of robotic “villains,” each worth a different amount of points (1, 2, or 3 points). 

Suddenly, the boy with glasses stood up, his arm rigid in the air. 

“Excuse me, sir! On the printout, there are four types of villains listed! If this is a misprint, U.A., the most prominent academy in Japan, should be ashamed of that foolish mistake!” 

The boy then turned around, his stern eyes scanning the crowd before locking directly onto Izuku. 

“And you, with the large ears and the headphones!” The boy pointed an accusatory finger at Izuku. “Your constant foot tapping is highly distracting! If you are frightened of this exam, or if you think this is some sort of game, you should leave immediately!”

Izuku blinked. He looked down at his foot, which was indeed tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the floor. But it wasn't out of fear. It was kinetic loading. 

Bakugo, sitting next to Izuku, scoffed loudly, sparks popping in his palm. He was waiting for Izuku to apologize, to cower, to pin his ears back and cry. 

Instead, Izuku stood up. He pulled his headphones off, letting them rest around his neck. His green-and-white ears stood tall, completely relaxed. He looked the bespectacled boy dead in the eye. 

“It’s a kinetic grounding technique, actually,” Izuku said, his voice carrying clearly across the silent auditorium. “My Quirk is a Mutant type. By keeping a steady rhythm, I keep the fast-twitch muscle fibers in my legs primed for immediate, explosive movement without cramping. It’s not fear. It’s preparation.” 

The auditorium was dead silent. The boy with glasses looked momentarily stunned, then bowed deeply at the waist. “I see! I apologize for my presumptuous remark! Please, continue your preparation!” 

He sat down quickly. 

Bakugo stared at Izuku, his mouth slightly open, before aggressively turning his head away, crossing his arms with a furious huff. 

Present Mic cleared his throat over the microphone. “RIGHT, WELL! Moving on! The fourth robot is the Zero Pointer! It’s an arena trap! It’s massive, it’s tough, and it’s worth absolutely no points! If you see it, don’t fight it! Just run away! Now, make some noise and get to your assigned battle centers! PLUS ULTRA!”

Ground Beta was a sprawling, hyper-realistic replica of a major metropolitan district, complete with skyscrapers, roads, and alleyways. 

Izuku stood near the front of the massive crowd of nervous teenagers waiting behind the towering metal gates. He took a deep breath, stretching his massive, muscular legs. He bounced lightly on the balls of his digitigrade feet, feeling the incredible, coiled power waiting to be unleashed. 

He still didn't feel One For All. There was no glowing energy, no sudden surge of superhuman power. It was just him and his mutated biology. 

That’s fine, Izuku thought, his eyes narrowing in focus. All Might trained me to be strong on my own. I don't need to rely on a power I haven't mastered yet. I just need to use my own strengths.

He closed his eyes and focused his hearing. He filtered out the nervous chatter of the other students. He filtered out the wind. He cast his auditory net forward, beyond the massive metal gates, deep into the mock city. 

He heard them. The heavy, metallic clank-clank-clank of robotic treads on pavement. The high-pitched whine of servo motors. The hum of targeting sensors. He mapped their locations in his mind. There was a cluster of 2-pointers two blocks down the main street. A single 3-pointer in an alleyway to the left. 

“START!” Present Mic’s voice bellowed from a massive speaker tower. 

While the other students jumped in surprise and hesitated, Izuku was already moving. 

He didn't run. Humans ran. Rabbits leaped. 

Izuku dropped low and pushed off with his iron-hard legs. The pavement cracked slightly beneath his feet as he shot forward like a green missile. He cleared the opening gates before they were even halfway open, leaving a gust of wind in his wake that blew the hats off the students behind him. 

“What are you waiting for?!” Present Mic screamed from the speakers. “There are no countdowns in real battles! Look at the rabbit kid go! Follow him!”

The crowd roared and surged forward, but Izuku was already a block ahead. 

He bounded down the street, each leap carrying him twenty feet forward in a single, fluid motion. He didn't even touch the ground for more than a fraction of a second. 

He rounded the corner and found his first targets: a pair of 2-pointers rolling down the asphalt. They locked their red optical sensors onto him, raising their mechanical arms. 

“Target acquired,” the robots droned in unison. 

Izuku didn't slow down. He accelerated. 

As the first robot fired a blunt-force projectile at him, Izuku leapt diagonally, hitting the brick wall of a nearby building feet-first. His digitigrade joints absorbed the impact instantly. He used the wall as a springboard, launching himself at an impossible angle directly over the projectile. 

He flipped gracefully in mid-air, raising his right leg high above his head. Centrifugal force, just like Mirko. 

“Luna Fall!” Izuku shouted, borrowing his idol's move name as he brought his heel crashing down on the robot’s central casing. 

The impact sounded like a car crash. The thick metal chassis caved in completely under the immense kinetic force of Izuku’s modified leg muscles. The robot sparked, its optical sensors dying instantly as it collapsed into a pile of smoking junk. 

Izuku didn't pause to admire his work. He used the crushed robot as a platform, leaping backward in a tight arc to dodge a mechanical swipe from the second 2-pointer. 

He landed on all fours, his long ears swiveling to track the machine's movements. Before the robot could retract its arm, Izuku fired forward, leading with a devastating double-foot dropkick squarely to its sensory array. The robot was sent flying backward, crashing through the window of a mock storefront in a shower of glass and sparks. 

Four points, Izuku calculated, landing softly on his feet. Not bad. But I need to move faster.

For the next ten minutes, Izuku Midoriya was a terror of the urban jungle. He utilized his environment perfectly, ricocheting off walls, light posts, and even the larger robots themselves to maintain his momentum. He didn't have explosive firepower or wide-range lasers, but he had unmatched agility and lethally precise strikes. 

He found a 3-pointer pinning a student with long blonde hair against a wall. Izuku vaulted over a rusted car, sprinted up the wall of the alleyway, and delivered a spinning roundhouse kick that cleanly decapitated the machine. 

Thirty-two points, Izuku thought, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. I should probably get to at least forty to be safe.

Suddenly, a strange, burning sensation flared in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't pain. It was heat. Like he had swallowed a miniature, glowing sun. The heat began to radiate outward, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. 

Izuku gasped, clutching his stomach. One For All... the DNA finally digested! It’s waking up!

He could feel the raw, incomprehensible power churning within him, a terrifying ocean of energy just waiting for a floodgate to open. 

Before he could even attempt to tap into it, the ground beneath his feet began to shake violently. 

It started as a low rumble, rattling the glass in the surrounding buildings. Then, the sound of tearing metal and crushing concrete filled the air. 

At the end of the main thoroughfare, a massive shadow blotted out the sun. 

Izuku looked up, his jaw dropping. 

The Zero Pointer wasn't a robot. It was a walking skyscraper. It towered over the buildings, its massive caterpillar treads crushing entire city blocks with agonizing slowness. Its singular, glowing red eye swept the street, casting an ominous crimson glare over the paralyzed students. 

With a deafening mechanical roar, the Zero Pointer slammed a massive fist into a nearby building, shattering the facade and sending a rain of deadly debris plummeting toward the street below. 

Panic erupted. The students screamed, abandoning their point hunts and fleeing in the opposite direction. 

Izuku’s biology seized control. His danger-sense didn't just twitch; it screamed like an air raid siren. His long ears pinned themselves so tightly against his head they hurt. His heart hammered furiously. The sheer scale of the predator before him triggered a primal, uncontrollable urge to run. To hide. To survive. 

He turned around. He took a step backward, preparing to leap to safety with the rest of the crowd. 

“Ow!”

The sound was tiny. Barely a whisper beneath the roar of crumbling concrete and panicked screaming. 

But Izuku’s mutated ears caught it. 

He froze. His ears swiveled, snapping forward, locking onto the source of the sound. 

Beneath a massive slab of debris from the destroyed building, about fifty yards from the approaching treads of the Zero Pointer, someone was trapped. 

Izuku’s eyes zoomed in on the rubble. He saw a flash of brown hair. A pink cheek. 

It was Uraraka. The girl who had saved him from falling. Her leg was pinned under a piece of concrete, and she was looking up at the approaching mechanical titan with absolute terror in her eyes. 

The rabbit in Izuku’s brain screamed to run away. It told him he couldn't win. It told him he would die. 

The hero in Izuku’s heart told the rabbit to shut the hell up. 

Izuku didn't run away. He turned back around, facing the colossal machine. 

All Might said this power would blow my limbs off if I used it wrong, Izuku thought, his analytical mind operating at lightspeed. He said my upper body couldn't handle the recoil. But my legs... my legs are built to withstand immense kinetic shock.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. He focused on the burning sun in his stomach. He pictured a floodgate. But instead of opening the gate fully and letting the power flood his entire body, he visualized a channel. A highly pressurized pipe directing the energy downward. 

Down. Past the chest. Past the waist. Into the engine.

Izuku forced One For All into his mutated lower half. 

His eyes snapped open, glowing with a brilliant, fierce green light. 

His sweatpants ripped at the seams. The muscles in his thick, digitigrade thighs and calves bulged monstrously, swelling with raw, uncontrollable power. Brilliant, glowing red veins spider-webbed across his skin, pulsing with golden lightning. 

The pain was instantaneous and excruciating. It felt like liquid fire had been injected directly into his marrow. His bones creaked under the immense pressure. 

But he could hold it. Just for a second. 

Izuku dropped into a deep crouch. He looked up at the head of the Zero Pointer, hundreds of feet in the air. 

Clench everything.

Izuku fired. 

He didn't just jump. He detonated. 

The sheer force of his launch obliterated the street beneath him. A crater twenty feet wide and five feet deep exploded outward, throwing chunks of asphalt and concrete into the air like shrapnel. A massive shockwave flattened the nearby streetlights. 

Izuku broke the sound barrier. 

He shot upward like a green comet, leaving a trail of golden lightning in his wake. The G-force pressed his face back, the wind tearing at his clothes. Within a fraction of a second, he had vaulted completely over the ruined buildings, rising until he was eye-level with the Zero Pointer’s massive, glowing red optical sensor. 

Down on the ground, Uraraka watched in awe as the boy with the rabbit ears defied gravity in a way her Quirk never could. 

Time seemed to slow down. Izuku hung in the air, suspended above the mechanical titan. 

Now!

Izuku twisted his body violently, throwing all his momentum into his right leg. The glowing red veins flared blindingly bright. He raised his leg high above his head in an axe kick stance, the golden lightning sparking wildly. 

“SMASH!” Izuku roared, bringing his heel crashing down directly onto the center of the Zero Pointer’s head. 

The impact defied the laws of physics. 

A massive, ring-shaped shockwave of pressurized air exploded outward from the point of impact, blowing the clouds away from the sky. 

The Zero Pointer’s reinforced steel skull crumpled like wet tissue paper. The immense kinetic force of One For All, channeled perfectly through the biological shock absorbers of a mutated rabbit’s leg, ripped straight down through the robot’s chassis. 

The titan’s eye flickered and died. A series of massive internal explosions ripped through its body, and the gargantuan machine began to fall backward, away from Uraraka, completely destroyed by a single strike. 

In the observation room, the U.A. teachers sat in stunned silence, watching the monitor as the Zero Pointer collapsed. 

Izuku was still in the air. The adrenaline began to fade, and the reality of his biology caught up with him. 

Crack. Snap.

Izuku let out a blood-curdling scream. 

His bones were dense, yes. His muscles were tightly coiled. But One For All at one hundred percent was simply too much for any biological structure to withstand cleanly. 

Both of his legs snapped. The femur in his right leg fractured. The tibia and fibula in both legs shattered under the recoil. The glowing red veins vanished, replaced by an ugly, dark purple bruising that rapidly spread up his thighs. His legs dangled uselessly beneath him, completely broken. 

And now, he was falling. Fast. 

I can't land, Izuku realized in horror, the wind rushing past his ears as he plummeted toward the concrete hundreds of feet below. My shock absorbers are broken. If I hit the ground, I’ll die.

He looked down. He was falling directly toward the rubble where Uraraka was trapped. If he landed on her, he would kill them both. 

He couldn't kick. He couldn't jump. He had no control over his descent. 

Think! What do I have left?!

Izuku’s eyes widened. He felt the wind whipping furiously against his head. 

His ears. 

His massive, three-foot-long, muscular rabbit ears. 

Rabbits in the wild used their ears to steer their bodies in mid-air when changing direction during a jump. It was a form of aerodynamic ruddering. 

Acting entirely on instinct, Izuku strained the muscles at the base of his skull. He flared his long ears out wide, catching the intense updraft created by the falling robot. 

It hurt terribly, the wind threatening to rip the appendages from his head, but it worked. The drag shifted his aerodynamic profile. He violently twisted his upper body, using his core strength to swing his dead weight. 

His trajectory altered. He wasn't falling straight down anymore; he was gliding forward, skimming dangerously close to the side of a glass-paneled building. 

I’m going to miss her! Izuku realized, panicking. He was gliding past the rubble, heading for an empty stretch of street. 

“Uraraka!” Izuku screamed, his ears flapping wildly as he plummeted past her location. 

Down on the ground, Uraraka had managed to free her leg from the concrete while the Zero Pointer was falling. She saw the boy plummeting toward the earth. 

She gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain in her ankle. She pushed off the debris, launching herself as high as she could, reaching her hand out toward the falling boy. 

As Izuku plummeted past, Uraraka slapped him squarely across his cheek. 

Instantly, the terrifying pull of gravity vanished. 

Izuku stopped inches from the pavement, floating weightlessly in the air, his broken legs dangling beneath him. 

Uraraka hit the ground hard, rolling away from the impact. She put her hands together, a sickly green look crossing her face. “Release!” 

Izuku dropped the remaining three inches, hitting the pavement with a soft thud. 

The loud, piercing blare of a buzzer echoed across the mock city. 

“AND THAT’S TIME!” Present Mic’s voice rang out. “THE EXAM IS OVER!”

Izuku lay on his back, gasping for air. The pain in his legs was agonizing, pulsing with a deep, throbbing heat. He couldn't move them. But he was alive. Uraraka was alive. 

He turned his head to the side. Uraraka was sitting a few feet away, holding her stomach, looking thoroughly nauseous from overusing her Quirk. 

“Thank you,” Izuku whispered hoarsely, his long ears lying completely flat and limp against the concrete in exhaustion. 

“Thank you for saving me,” Uraraka replied, offering a weak, pained smile. 

A few minutes later, the crowd of students cautiously returned to the scene of the destruction, staring in awe at the crushed remains of the Zero Pointer and the boy with the rabbit ears lying broken in the street. 

“Very well done, everyone. Excellent work.” 

A tiny, hunched elderly woman wearing a lab coat and a helmet shaped like a syringe hobbled through the crowd. It was Recovery Girl, the Youthful Hero and U.A.’s chief medical officer. 

She walked up to Izuku, examining his legs with a critical eye. “My goodness. You certainly didn't hold back, did you? To shatter mutant-class leg bones takes an obscene amount of force. It’s a good thing your biology is structured this way, sonny. If you had normal human legs, they would have exploded entirely.” 

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. 

Instantly, Izuku felt a massive surge of lethargy wash over him. His stamina rapidly drained, but the agonizing pain in his legs vanished. The purple bruising faded, and he could feel the bones knitting themselves back together. 

“That’s all I can do for now,” Recovery Girl said, handing him a few gummy candies. “You’ll need a wheelchair to get out of here, but they should be fully healed by tomorrow. Get some rest.”

Izuku chewed the gummies, staring up at the blue sky. He had survived. He had used One For All. But a nagging, horrible realization began to settle in his gut. 

He had spent the entire exam taking down small fry, gathering 32 points. He had spent the climax of the exam destroying a robot worth zero points. 

He didn't have enough points. 

The rabbit had found its courage, but it seemed the dream was over before it even began. 

A week passed in agonizing silence. 

Izuku sat at the small dining table in his apartment, mechanically chewing on a piece of grilled mackerel. His legs were fully healed, though they occasionally ached if he sat still for too long. He had taken to doing light squats in his room just to keep the kinetic energy from building up and causing his foot to thump uncontrollably. 

Inko watched her son from the kitchen sink, her heart breaking for him. He hadn't smiled since he returned from the exam in a wheelchair. 

“Izuku, sweetie,” Inko said gently. “You know… there are other hero schools. Shiketsu is very prestigious. And Ketsubutsu—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Izuku interrupted quietly, forcing a small smile. “I know I didn't get enough points. I used everything I had on a zero-point target. I acted foolishly. But… I don't regret it. I saved someone.”

Inko smiled warmly, wiping a tear from her eye. “You did. And I’m incredibly proud of you for that.”

The sound of the front door mail slot snapping shut echoed through the quiet apartment. 

Izuku froze, his ears shooting straight up, twitching wildly. 

Inko hurried to the front hall. She returned a moment later, her hands shaking, holding a thick, cream-colored envelope bearing the blood-red seal of U.A. High School. 

“Izuku,” she whispered, holding it out to him. “It’s here.”

Izuku stood up so fast his chair tipped backward. He took the envelope with trembling hands. He walked into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. 

He sat at his desk, staring at the envelope. This was it. The final verdict on his dream. 

He tore the seal open. 

Instead of a letter, a small, metallic disc fell out onto his desk. 

The disc whirred to life, projecting a massive, high-definition hologram against his bedroom wall. 

“I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!” 

Izuku gasped, falling back into his chair. It was All Might. But he wasn't in his skinny form. He was massive, muscular, and wearing a bright yellow suit. 

“All Might? But… this is from U.A.!” Izuku stammered to himself. 

“Surprise, young Midoriya!” All Might boomed from the hologram. “I know it’s been a while, but I have been busy! You see, the truth is, I didn't come to this city just to fight villains. I am going to be teaching at U.A. High School!”

Izuku’s jaw dropped. The Number One Hero, teaching at a high school? 

“Now, onto your results,” All Might’s expression turned slightly serious. “You scored thirty-two villain points on the written and practical combined. I’m afraid… that is simply not a passing grade.”

Izuku looked down at his lap, his long ears drooping over his eyes. He knew it. 

“However!” All Might yelled, pointing dramatically at the camera. “There is a twist!”

The hologram shifted, showing a video recording of the observation room. Izuku watched as a young girl with brown hair and permanent blush walked up to Present Mic’s desk. It was Uraraka. 

“Excuse me,” Uraraka said in the video, looking nervous but determined. “The boy with the green hair and the rabbit ears… he saved me. He sacrificed his chance to get points to stop that giant robot. Can you please… can you give him some of my points? He deserves to pass!”

Izuku stared at the projection, tears welling up in his eyes. She had gone to bat for him. 

The video faded back to All Might. 

“A hero course that rejects those who do the right thing is no hero course at all!” All Might declared, his voice ringing with absolute conviction. “How could we ignore a student who throws himself into harm's way to save a peer? That is the very foundation of heroism!” 

A scoreboard materialized next to All Might’s head. Izuku’s name was at the top. 

“U.A. doesn't just grade based on combat! We also evaluate rescue!” All Might boomed. “Ochaco Uraraka: forty-five rescue points! And Izuku Midoriya… sixty rescue points!”

Izuku’s score shot up to ninety-two points. 

“You passed, young Midoriya,” All Might smiled, holding out his hand toward the camera as if reaching through the screen. “Come. This is your Hero Academia.”

The hologram clicked off, leaving the room in silence. 

Izuku sat perfectly still for a moment. Then, his right foot began to tap. Slow at first, then faster, building rhythm, building kinetic energy, matching the frantic, euphoric beating of his heart. 

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

He buried his face in his arms on the desk and wept. Not out of fear, or despair, or exhaustion. He wept with the absolute, triumphant joy of a dream realized. 

The warren was cleared. The prey had found his fangs. And U.A. High School was about to meet the Leaping Hero.

The morning sun filtered through the window of the Midoriya apartment, casting a warm golden glow across Izuku’s bedroom. Izuku stood entirely still before his full-length mirror, his chest rising and falling with deep, steadying breaths. 

He was staring at a stranger. 

Reflected in the glass was a young man wearing the prestigious gray and green uniform of U.A. High School. Because of his Mutant-class Quirk, the uniform had required heavy custom tailoring. The gray slacks were significantly wider at the thigh and heavily tapered at the calf to accommodate his digitigrade leg structure. A neat, reinforced slit at the base of his spine allowed his fluffy white tail to rest comfortably without being crushed against the fabric. His standard-issue brown dress shoes had been replaced with specialized, reinforced boots—open at the heel and heavily padded at the ball of the foot to support his natural stance. 

At the top of his head, poking through his messy green curls, his long, fur-covered rabbit ears stood tall and rigid. They twitched slightly, swiveling toward the sound of his mother humming in the kitchen. 

“Izuku? Are you ready, sweetie? You don’t want to miss your train!” Inko called out, the clattering of plates providing a domestic soundtrack to his monumental morning. 

“Coming, Mom!” Izuku called back. He reached up and adjusted his red tie. His hands lingered on the collar of his shirt. Beneath the crisp white fabric, his newly muscled torso felt tight and compact. Ten months of clearing a beach of literal tons of garbage had transformed his human upper half to match the explosive power of his rabbit lower half. 

He grabbed his yellow backpack, slung his noise-canceling headphones around his neck, and bounded into the kitchen. 

Inko turned around, a spatula in hand, and immediately burst into tears. 

“Mom, please don’t cry,” Izuku sighed, a fond smile crossing his face. “If you cry, I’m going to cry, and my ears will droop, and I want to look confident on my first day!”

“I can’t help it!” Inko sobbed, dropping the spatula and rushing forward to pull her son into a crushing hug. “You look so handsome! You’re a U.A. student! My little bunny is going to be a hero!”

Izuku hugged her back tightly, his tail giving a small, happy wag against his slacks. “I am, Mom. I promise.”

The commute to U.A. was a sensory gauntlet. The morning rush hour train was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with businessmen, students, and pro-heroes heading to their patrols. For a teenager with hyper-sensitive rabbit hearing, the confined space of a screeching metal tube was usually a nightmare. But Izuku kept his noise-canceling headphones securely over his ears, playing a low, steady track of white noise. He closed his eyes and leaned against the train door, his right foot tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the floor. Thump. Thump. Thump. Loading kinetic energy. Grounding himself. 

When he finally arrived at the towering gates of U.A. High School, he took a moment to just stare. The massive glass building gleamed in the morning light. It was real. He had made it. 

Navigating the sprawling corridors of U.A. was an adventure in itself, but Izuku eventually found a massive door bearing a giant red “1-A”. 

“The door is huge,” Izuku muttered, his ears swiveling forward. “Is it for accessibility? For giant students? That makes sense.” 

He reached out and slid the massive door open. 

Instantly, his ears were assaulted by the sound of yelling. 

“Remove your foot from that desk immediately! It is insulting to the upperclassmen who used it before us, and to the craftsmen who made it!” 

It was the tall, bespectacled boy from the auditorium—the one who had yelled at Izuku about his foot-tapping. He was chopping his arms through the air with mechanical rigidity, glaring down at a very familiar head of spiky, ash-blonde hair. 

Katsuki Bakugo leaned back in his chair, his heavy boots kicked up onto his desk, a sneer plastered across his face. “Like I care! What middle school did you go to, you stick-in-the-mud extra?”

“I am Tenya Iida from Somei Private Academy!” 

“Somei? So you’re a damn elite, huh?” Bakugo scoffed, sparks popping dangerously in his palms. “I’m gonna have fun crushing you.”

“Crushing me? You wish to be a hero, yet you act like a villain!” Iida gasped. 

Izuku stood in the doorway, his ears pinning flat against his head. Of course they’re in my class. The two most intense people I’ve ever met.

Iida turned, catching sight of Izuku in the doorway. The tall boy’s eyes widened, and he immediately marched over. 

“You!” Iida announced, bowing at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “I am Tenya Iida! I must commend you! You realized there was a hidden rescue parameter in the practical exam, didn’t you? I was entirely blind to it! I judged you for your kinetic grounding technique, but it seems you are far more perceptive than I!”

“O-Oh! No, I didn’t realize anything!” Izuku stammered, waving his hands frantically, his face flushing red. U.A. or not, he was still socially inept. “I just moved! My body just kind of… jumped!”

“Oh! The rabbit boy!” 

A cheerful voice chimed from behind Izuku. He turned to see Ochaco Uraraka beaming at him. She looked exactly as she had at the exam, her brown hair bobbing as she stepped into the classroom. 

“You made it!” Uraraka cheered, clapping her hands together. “I knew you would! That jump you did was amazing! You totally smashed that giant robot! And your ears are standing up today! They look so soft!”

Izuku’s face transitioned from red to a deep, glowing crimson. “I-I—th-thank you, Uraraka! Y-You passed too! Th-That’s great!”

Across the room, Bakugo watched the interaction, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth ground together. Deku. The useless, frightened little herbivore. He’s standing there acting like he belongs here. Acting like a hero. Bakugo’s hands balled into fists, tiny explosions crackling against his knuckles. 

“If you’re just here to make friends, you can pack up your things and leave.”

The voice was tired, dry, and entirely devoid of enthusiasm. It came from the floor. 

Izuku, Iida, and Uraraka looked down. Lying on the floor in the hallway, wrapped entirely in a bright yellow sleeping bag, was a haggard-looking man with messy black hair and heavy bags under his eyes. He looked like a giant caterpillar. 

The man unzipped the sleeping bag and stood up, pulling a juice pouch from his pocket and taking a slow sip. 

“It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down,” the man said, stepping up to the podium at the front of the class. “Time is limited. You kids are not rational enough.”

Izuku’s ears twitched. This is our homeroom teacher? He looks exhausted. But wait… that scarf… those goggles! 

“I’m Shota Aizawa. Your homeroom teacher.”

The Erasure Hero: Eraserhead! Izuku’s inner fanboy screamed, though he managed to keep his mouth shut. He’s an underground hero! No wonder he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week!

Aizawa reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white uniforms. “Right. Let’s get to it. Put these P.E. uniforms on and head out to the training grounds.”

“The training grounds?” Uraraka asked, tilting her head. “What about the entrance ceremony? Or orientation?”

“U.A. doesn’t care about traditions. We sell freedom,” Aizawa replied flatly, his dark eyes scanning the room. “Which means I have the freedom to run this class however I see fit. Get changed.”

Ten minutes later, Class 1-A stood on the sprawling, dirt-covered expanse of Ground Alpha. The sun was beating down, and a warm breeze swept across the field. 

Izuku tugged at the collar of his blue P.E. uniform. The school had provided a modified version for his legs, but it still felt foreign to wear something other than his beach-training clothes. He looked around at his classmates. There was a boy with dual-colored hair who radiated a freezing chill, a girl with pink skin and horns, a boy with a bird head, and a girl with long, frog-like physical features who kept glancing at his rabbit ears with mild curiosity. 

“A Quirk Apprehension Test?” the class echoed in shock. 

“Exactly,” Aizawa said, holding a digital tablet. “In junior high, you took standardized physical tests without being allowed to use your Quirks. It’s an irrational system that ignores the reality of our society. The Department of Education is dragging its feet. So, we’re going to find out what your true baselines are.”

Aizawa turned to Bakugo. “Bakugo, you finished first in the practical exam. What was your farthest softball throw in junior high?”

“Sixty-seven meters,” Bakugo grunted. 

“Try it with your Quirk,” Aizawa instructed, tossing Bakugo a baseball. “Do whatever you want, just stay in the circle. Give it everything you’ve got.”

Bakugo stepped into the chalk circle. He rolled his shoulders, a vicious grin stretching across his face. He wound his arm back, his palm beginning to spark. 

“DIE!” Bakugo roared. 

With a deafening BOOM, a massive explosion erupted from his palm, propelling the ball into the stratosphere leaving a trail of black smoke. 

Izuku flinched instantly. Even with his ears pinned back, the sound of the explosion rattled his skull. His right foot began its frantic thump-thump-thump against the dirt before he could force himself to stop it. He clamped his hands over his ears, forcing his breathing to slow. Don't act like prey, he reminded himself. You're not a scared kid anymore.

Aizawa held up his device. It beeped. He turned the screen toward the class. 

705.2 Meters.

The class erupted. 

“Seven hundred meters?! That’s insane!”

“This looks like fun!” 

“We really get to use our Quirks as much as we want? Awesome!”

Aizawa’s eyes darkened, the bags beneath them seeming to deepen. “Fun? You have three years to become heroes. You think it’s all going to be fun and games?”

He smiled, a terrifying, predatory grin that sent a shiver down Izuku’s spine. 

“Right. Let’s make a new rule. Whoever comes in last place in total points across all eight tests will be judged as having no potential, and will be immediately expelled.”

The class gasped in horror. 

“Expelled?!” Uraraka cried out. “But it’s the first day! That’s entirely unfair!”

“Natural disasters, massive accidents, villain attacks,” Aizawa listed off monotonously. “Calamities that can’t be predicted. Japan is covered in unfairness. Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you wanted to talk to your friends after school at a fast-food joint, too bad. For the next three years, U.A. will inflict hardship after hardship upon you. Go beyond. Plus Ultra. Overcome it with all you’ve got.”

Izuku swallowed a hard lump in his throat. Expulsion. 

If I come in last, my dream ends today, Izuku thought, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. 

He looked down at his muscular, digitigrade legs. He had a Mutant Quirk, yes. His legs were naturally powerful. But compared to Bakugo’s explosions, Todoroki’s ice, or Iida’s engines, just having strong legs wasn't going to be enough to secure a top spot. 

He had One For All. But he had only used it once, against the Zero Pointer, and the recoil had shattered his heavily mutated leg bones entirely. 

If I use One For All at one hundred percent, I’ll break my legs again, Izuku analyzed frantically. If I break my legs on the first test, I’ll score zero on the rest of them, and I’ll be expelled for sure. I have to regulate it. I have to control it.

But how? It was like trying to turn a fire hose into a squirt gun. The power was too massive, too chaotic. 

“Test 1: 50-Meter Dash,” Aizawa announced, snapping Izuku out of his thoughts. 

Izuku stepped up to the starting line next to Iida. 

“I advise you not to hold back, Midoriya!” Iida said, dropping into a sprinter’s stance, the exhaust pipes on his calves revving loudly. “Let us see the true power of your leap!”

Izuku closed his eyes. How do I control it? 

He pictured the glowing, burning sun of One For All in his stomach. Against the Zero Pointer, he had channeled it entirely into his legs. But that was the problem, wasn't it? 

Izuku pictured a wild rabbit running. A rabbit didn't just use its legs. The entire body of a hare was a coiled spring. The spine flexed, the core contracted, the shoulders locked. The kinetic tension was distributed perfectly across the entire skeletal structure. If a rabbit only used its legs without bracing its core, it would snap its own back. 

That’s it, Izuku realized, his eyes snapping open. I treated One For All like a special move. Like a battery attached only to my legs. But it’s a physical enhancement. I can't just power up a single part. I have to spread the tension across my entire body, just like my rabbit instincts do!

“On your marks,” the starting robot droned. 

Izuku focused on the burning sun in his gut. Instead of shoving the power down into his legs, he pictured a network of veins. He imagined a gentle, steady trickle of power—maybe five percent of the total output—bleeding out from his stomach and wrapping around his entire body like a glowing, electric blanket. 

Full body tension! Five percent!

“Get set.”

Izuku’s eyes flared green. Faint, crackling green lightning sparked across his skin. His muscles tightened instantly, harder than iron, buzzing with contained energy. It was exhausting, demanding every ounce of his concentration to keep the "valve" from opening further, but he was holding it. 

“Go!” 

Iida blasted forward, his engines roaring. 

Izuku didn't run. He bounded. 

With One For All enhancing his already incredible rabbit leg strength, his first leap covered twenty-five meters in a fraction of a second. He touched down briefly in the center of the track, instantly rebounding. 

BOOM.

Izuku crossed the finish line in two massive, blurring leaps. He hit the padded barrier at the end of the track, using his hands and feet to absorb the shock, flipping backward and landing gracefully. 

“3.04 seconds,” the robotic voice announced for Iida. 

“2.81 seconds,” the robotic voice announced for Izuku. 

Iida adjusted his glasses, thoroughly impressed. “Astounding! A perfect synthesis of raw power and mutant biology!” 

Aizawa watched from the sidelines, his eyes narrowing. He didn't break himself. He’s emitting some sort of energy... an enhancement Quirk on top of his mutation? Interesting.

Izuku let out a long breath, the green lightning fading. His entire body ached with a dull, throbbing heat. Maintaining that five percent output was incredibly taxing on his stamina, but it hadn't broken a single bone. 

I can do this, Izuku thought, a confident smile touching his lips. 

The tests continued, and Izuku excelled. 

Test 2: Grip Strength. Izuku’s upper body strength was impressive from his beach training, scoring a respectable 75 kg, though he couldn't compete with the multi-armed mutant, Shoji, who scored over 500 kg. 

Test 3: Standing Long Jump. Izuku activated his 5% full-body tension again. He leaped, easily clearing the sandbox entirely and landing in the soft grass fifty yards away. 

Test 4: Repeated Side Steps. Izuku’s natural agility shone here, but the small grape-haired boy, Mineta, beat him by bouncing wildly between his sticky spheres. 

Finally, it was Test 5: The Ball Throw. 

Izuku stood in the chalk circle, holding the baseball. He was currently sitting comfortably in 4th place overall. 

I need a good score here to maintain my position, Izuku thought. My arms are strong now, but if I try to throw this ball using One For All, even at five percent, my arm bones might not be dense enough to handle the sheer rotational torque. I can't risk breaking an arm.

“Midoriya is up,” Iida noted. “Let’s see how he handles a projectile test.”

Bakugo scoffed, arms crossed. “He’s a rabbit. He can’t throw for shit. Watch him choke.”

Aizawa watched Izuku closely. If he tries to use that enhancement power in his arm, he’ll tear his muscles. His upper body isn't adapted for it like his lower half is.

Izuku took a deep breath. He didn't wind his arm back. 

Instead, he tossed the baseball lightly into the air directly above him. 

The class blinked in confusion. 

Izuku activated One For All at five percent, the green lightning crackling to life around him. As the ball reached the apex of its toss and began to fall, Izuku dropped low, planting his hands on the ground in a fluid, breakdance-like motion. He spun his body violently, whipping his massive, digitigrade right leg around in a blistering arc. 

SMASH!

Izuku’s heel connected squarely with the falling baseball. 

The sound was like a cannon firing. A shockwave kicked up the dirt inside the circle as the baseball deformed under the immense kinetic strike, rocketing into the sky at a terrifying, diagonal angle. 

Izuku finished his spin, returning to his feet in a smooth crouch, the green lightning fading. He looked toward Aizawa. 

Aizawa stared at his device. He slowly turned it around. 

412.5 Meters.

It wasn't Bakugo’s 700 meters, nor was it Uraraka’s infinity score. But it was a massive, undeniable number. 

Aizawa smiled, a genuine, albeit creepy, smirk. He adapted. He recognized the limitations of his upper body and used his mutation to his advantage. He’s rational.

“He kicked it?!” Kaminari, a boy with yellow hair, yelled. “That was a sick bicycle kick!”

“His leg strength is monstrous,” Todoroki muttered softly, his mismatched eyes tracking Izuku. 

Bakugo, however, was not impressed. He was furious. 

Bakugo’s breathing grew ragged. His crimson eyes were blown wide, locked onto Izuku. Deku had power. Deku had confidence. Deku wasn't flinching. Deku wasn't thumping his foot in fear. 

He’s been hiding it, Bakugo’s mind screamed, paranoia and rage mixing into a toxic cocktail. He’s been laughing at me this whole time! Making me think he was just a weak little rabbit!

“HEY!” Bakugo roared, explosions igniting in both palms as he lunged forward, charging straight at Izuku. “DEKU, YOU BASTARD! TELL ME HOW YOU DID THAT OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

Izuku’s ears snapped straight up. His danger-sense flared. 

But before Izuku even had to move, long, gray cloth wrappings shot out from Aizawa’s neck, wrapping tightly around Bakugo’s torso and arms, completely immobilizing him. 

Bakugo struggled wildly, his explosions suddenly fizzling out into useless sparks. “What the?! This cloth is super stiff!” 

“It’s a carbon-fiber capture weapon,” Aizawa sighed, his eyes glowing a fierce red, his messy hair floating in the air. “I’m erasing your Quirk, Bakugo. Stand down. You’re giving me dry eye.”

Aizawa blinked, his hair falling back to his shoulders, and released the bindings. Bakugo stumbled forward, panting heavily, glaring at Izuku with a hatred so potent it was almost tangible. 

“Next student,” Aizawa grunted, walking away. 

Izuku held Bakugo’s gaze. For ten years, that glare had made Izuku cower. It had made him feel small. But now, with the adrenaline of the test and the power of One For All buzzing faintly in his veins, Izuku didn't look away. 

He narrowed his eyes, his long ears standing tall. 

I am not your prey anymore, Kacchan.

The next day at U.A. High School brought the moment Izuku had been waiting his entire life for: Foundational Hero Studies. 

The door to Class 1-A burst open. 

“I AM COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!” 

All Might stood in the doorway, dressed in his Silver Age costume, his massive cape billowing behind him. The class erupted into cheers and gasps of awe. 

Izuku’s tail wagged happily against his chair. 

“Welcome to the most important class in U.A. High!” All Might boomed, marching to the podium. “Here, you will learn the basics of being a Pro! And today’s activity is… BATTLE TRAINING!” 

Bakugo’s eyes lit up with a feral glee. “Battle…” 

“…Training!” Izuku finished in his head, a knot of nervous excitement forming in his stomach. 

“And to go with that!” All Might pointed to the wall, where numbered cases slid out from hidden compartments. “Costumes made based on your Quirk registrations and requests! Get changed and gather at Ground Beta!”

Fifteen minutes later, Izuku stepped out of the tunnel into the mock city of Ground Beta, adjusting his new gear. 

His hero costume was a testament to his evolution. It retained the teal-green color scheme of his original design, a subtle homage to his mother. However, the bulky, restrictive mask mimicking All Might’s smile was completely gone. Instead, Izuku wore an open-faced cowl that exposed his hair and, more importantly, allowed his massive green-and-white rabbit ears complete freedom of movement and 360-degree rotation. 

His upper body was covered in a fitted, impact-resistant green tunic with a white utility belt. But the real engineering was in his lower half. 

He wore baggy, durable black pants that didn't restrict his wide stances. Strapped over his calves and thighs were sleek, lightweight titanium knee braces designed to distribute kinetic shock and protect his joints from the immense recoil of One For All. Most importantly, his boots were custom-forged. They were open-heeled to accommodate his digitigrade stance, but the soles covering the balls of his feet and toes were plated with solid steel, turning his already lethal kicks into literal wrecking balls. 

“Deku! Your costume looks so cool! It’s really practical!” 

Izuku turned to see Uraraka running toward him. She was wearing a skin-tight pink and black spacesuit with bulky boots and wristguards. 

“Oh, Uraraka!” Izuku blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yours is great too! It looks super futuristic!”

“I should have written exactly what I wanted,” Uraraka laughed, blushing furiously as she tugged at her collar. “The support company made it super tight. It’s embarrassing.”

“NOW THAT YOU’RE ALL HERE, IT’S TIME FOR COMBAT TRAINING!” All Might announced. 

He explained the rules. The class would be split into pairs, acting as either “Heroes” or “Villains.” The Villains would guard a fake nuclear weapon inside a building. The Heroes had to either capture the Villains using capture tape or touch the weapon within the time limit. 

All Might drew lots from a box. 

“Team A will be Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka!” All Might declared. 

“We’re a team! Awesome!” Uraraka cheered. 

Izuku smiled brightly. 

“And you will be facing… Team D! Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida! Team A are the Heroes, Team D are the Villains!” 

Izuku’s blood ran cold. The smile vanished from his face. 

Across the crowd, Bakugo slowly turned his head. His crimson eyes locked onto Izuku. The predatory grin on Bakugo’s face was terrifying. It was the look of a wolf that had finally cornered a rabbit. 

“This is gonna be fun,” Bakugo whispered to himself. 

“Villains, you have five minutes to set up! Heroes, prepare to infiltrate!” All Might’s voice echoed over the PA system. 

Izuku and Uraraka stood outside the massive, multi-story building. Izuku was unrolling a schematic of the building’s layout. 

“Okay,” Izuku said, his voice surprisingly steady. “Iida is a rational thinker. He’ll most likely stay with the weapon on the top floor to guard it. Kacchan… Kacchan doesn't care about the weapon. He only cares about one thing right now.”

“You?” Uraraka asked softly. 

Izuku nodded. His long ears rotated forward, focusing entirely on the building in front of them. He closed his eyes. The ambient noise of the wind and Uraraka’s breathing faded away. He focused his hyper-sensitive hearing, projecting his auditory net into the concrete structure. 

He heard the low hum of the fake bomb on the fifth floor. He heard Iida pacing heavily on the concrete, muttering to himself about villainous monologues. 

And then, he heard it. 

On the second floor. Slow, heavy, aggressive footsteps. The faint, crackling pop-pop-pop of tiny explosions going off in a clenched fist. Heavy, ragged breathing. 

“He’s on the second floor, waiting by the main stairwell,” Izuku opened his eyes. He turned to Uraraka. “He’s coming straight for me to prove a point. Uraraka, I need you to go up the exterior fire escape to the fifth floor. Go after Iida and the bomb.”

“What about you?” Uraraka asked, her eyes wide with worry. “Bakugo is super strong! Are you going to fight him alone?”

Izuku reached down, tightening the straps on his titanium knee braces. He looked at his steel-soled boots. 

“My whole life, he’s acted like a predator, and treated me like prey,” Izuku said quietly, the memory of burnt notebooks and playground bullying flashing through his mind. “If I run away now, I’ll never be able to stand as a hero. I’m going to distract the wolf.” 

A loud buzzer sounded. “BEGIN INFILTRATION!” 

Uraraka gave him a determined nod, activated her Quirk to lighten her weight, and leaped gracefully toward the fire escape. 

Izuku took a deep breath. He channeled five percent of One For All into his body, feeling the familiar, burning tension wrap around his muscles. The green lightning flickered to life. 

He stepped through the front doors. 

The first floor was a labyrinth of concrete pillars and dark corridors. Izuku didn't run. He moved with the silent, fluid grace of a creature born for stealth. His digitigrade feet made no sound against the floor. 

He reached the stairwell leading to the second floor. He didn't walk up the stairs. He placed his hands on the railing, coiling his powerful legs, and vaulted silently up the gap in the center of the stairwell, landing lightly on the second-floor landing. 

He swiveled his ears. Total silence. 

He was just here. Where did he—

“DIE!”

A massive explosion erupted from the shadows around the corner, entirely engulfing the corridor in a blinding flash of orange fire and black smoke. 

The shockwave blasted Izuku backward. He tumbled across the floor, his cowl singed, his ears ringing painfully from the deafening noise. 

Through the smoke, Katsuki Bakugo emerged. His gauntlets, shaped like massive grenades, glinted in the dim light. His eyes were wide with maniacal fury. 

“A sneak attack, Kacchan?” Izuku coughed, scrambling to his feet, ignoring the frantic thump-thump-thump of his right foot. 

“I’ll do whatever it takes to put you back in your place, Deku!” Bakugo roared, charging forward. He launched himself into the air using explosions from his palms, closing the distance instantly. 

Bakugo pulled his right arm back, a massive explosion brewing in his palm. It was a vicious right hook, aimed directly at Izuku’s face. 

He thinks I’m going to block, Izuku’s mind raced. He thinks I’m going to fight like All Might. Stand my ground and trade blows.

But Izuku wasn't All Might. And he wasn't human. 

Izuku’s rabbit instincts took over, fueled by the five percent output of One For All. 

Instead of raising his arms to block, Izuku dropped completely flat, falling backward in a move that defied human biomechanics. His upper body hit the floor, sliding under Bakugo’s massive right hook. The explosion went off inches above Izuku’s nose, singing the tips of his rabbit ears. 

Bakugo’s eyes widened in shock. He dodged?! 

Using the momentum of his fall, Izuku planted his hands on the concrete floor. He channeled the kinetic energy into his hips, spinning his lower body like a top. 

His massive, steel-plated, digitigrade leg whipped around in a devastating breakdance sweep. 

CRACK.

Izuku’s boot slammed into the back of Bakugo’s knees. The sheer kinetic force of the rabbit-kick completely shattered Bakugo’s stance, sweeping his legs out from under him with enough force to launch him into the air. 

Bakugo flipped upside down, crashing heavily onto his back, the wind knocked entirely out of his lungs in a violent gasp. 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He rebounded off his hands, flipping backward and landing perfectly on his feet five yards away, crouching low, his green eyes locked onto his opponent. 

Silence fell over the corridor, save for the sound of Bakugo gasping for air. 

In the monitor room, the entire class 1-A stood in stunned silence. 

“Whoa…” Kaminari breathed. “He totally read Bakugo’s move and countered it!” 

“That agility is terrifying,” Todoroki noted quietly. 

All Might watched the screen, a massive, proud grin hidden behind his hand. You are embracing who you are, young Midoriya!

Bakugo slowly rolled over, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. He coughed, glaring up at Izuku with a mixture of rage and absolute disbelief. 

“You… you read my move?!” Bakugo spat. 

“You always lead with a right hook, Kacchan,” Izuku said, his voice cold and steady. “You’re aggressive. You charge in because you believe you’re the apex predator. But a predator’s movements are predictable because they don't expect their prey to fight back.”

“SHUT UP!” Bakugo screamed, scrambling to his feet, both palms sparking wildly. “I AM NOT PREDICTABLE! YOU’RE JUST A WEAK LITTLE RABBIT!” 

Bakugo charged again, unleashing a flurry of rapid-fire explosions. 

Izuku moved. He didn't block. He didn't punch. He evaded. 

With 5% Full Cowl active, Izuku was a blur of green lightning. He bounded off the walls, the ceiling, the pillars. He ricocheted around the corridor like a pinball, forcing Bakugo to waste energy chasing a target he couldn't hit. Every time Bakugo swung, Izuku wasn't there. 

“Hold still, you coward!” Bakugo roared, blasting a pillar to rubble. 

“I told you, Kacchan!” Izuku yelled, launching himself off the ceiling and plummeting directly toward Bakugo. “My Quirk isn't for running away!” 

As Izuku fell, he twisted his body, drawing his right leg back. 

Bakugo looked up, raising his gauntlets to blast the boy out of the air. 

Izuku unleashed a vicious, descending axe kick. 

CLANG.

Izuku’s steel-soled boot collided perfectly with the heavy metal casing of Bakugo’s grenade gauntlet. The kinetic force of the blow was staggering. The metal gauntlet dented deeply, and the sheer downward pressure drove Bakugo’s knees straight into the concrete floor, cracking the tiles. 

Bakugo gritted his teeth, his arms shaking under the immense pressure of Izuku’s leg. He looked up, expecting to see fear in Deku’s eyes. 

But Izuku wasn't afraid. His ears were standing tall. His green eyes were blazing with determination. 

“This prey has fangs, Kacchan!” Izuku yelled. 

Before Bakugo could ignite an explosion, Izuku reached down to his utility belt. With lightning speed, he unspooled a length of white capture tape. He looped it around Bakugo’s pinned wrists, tying them tightly together in a single, fluid motion. 

Izuku kicked off Bakugo’s gauntlets, backflipping away. 

Bakugo knelt on the floor, his wrists bound together. He looked down at the white tape, his brain completely failing to process what had just happened. He had been outmaneuvered. He had been outfought. He had been captured. 

By Deku. 

“Uraraka, status!” Izuku called into his earpiece, panting heavily as he dropped his Full Cowl, the green lightning fading. 

“I’m in the weapon room!” Uraraka’s voice crackled excitedly in his ear. “Iida monologued so long he didn't realize I floated over him! I’ve touched the weapon!”

In the monitor room, All Might grabbed the microphone. 

“THE HERO TEAM… WINS!” 

The buzzer sounded, echoing through the fake city. 

Izuku let out a long sigh, his shoulders slumping. The adrenaline crashed, and his long ears drooped tiredly over the sides of his face. His right leg ached terribly from kicking the metal gauntlet, but it wasn't broken. He had done it. He had controlled his power, and he had won. 

He looked down at Bakugo. The blonde boy hadn't moved. He just stared at the floor, his body trembling slightly. 

“Kacchan…” Izuku stepped forward gently, extending a hand to help his childhood bully up. 

Bakugo flinched away, slapping Izuku’s hand aside with his bound wrists. He slowly stood up, refusing to meet Izuku’s eyes. 

Without a word, Katsuki Bakugo turned and walked slowly toward the exit of the building, his shoulders hunched, the illusion of his absolute superiority shattered. 

Izuku watched him go. A part of him felt sad for the boy he used to idolize. But another part of him—the hero, the rabbit with fangs—felt a profound sense of peace. 

He turned around and headed for the stairs to meet Uraraka. The warren had been cleared, and now, the rest of the world was about to learn exactly what kind of hero Izuku Midoriya was going to be.

The hum of the bus engine was a low, steady vibration that traveled up from the floorboards, through Izuku’s digitigrade boots, and into his leg bones. Normally, the enclosed space of a moving vehicle packed with twenty teenagers would be a sensory overload for his sensitive rabbit ears. However, today, the atmosphere was relaxed, almost sleepy. Izuku leaned back against the plush seat, letting his long green-and-white ears droop comfortably over the collar of his hero costume. 

He had modified the cowl of his outfit since the battle trial. It now rested entirely around his neck like a thick scarf when not pulled up, allowing his ears absolute freedom. He watched the cityscape roll by through the tinted windows, feeling a rare moment of peace. 

“Midoriya.” 

Izuku’s right ear twitched, swiveling like a radar dish toward the aisle. He turned his head to see Tsuyu Asui sitting next to him, her large, unblinking eyes staring directly at his face. 

“Oh, h-hi, Asui,” Izuku stammered slightly, still not entirely used to casual conversations with girls. 

“Call me Tsuyu,” she croaked, pressing a finger to her chin. “I say whatever comes to mind. I was just thinking… our Quirks are pretty similar, aren’t they? Ribbit.” 

Izuku blinked, his nervous posture relaxing slightly. “Similar? Well, I guess we both have Mutant-class Quirks based on animals. Your frog traits are amazing, Tsuyu! You can stick to walls, your tongue has incredible prehensile strength, and your leg power is fantastic for aquatic environments!”

Tsuyu offered a small, blunt smile. “Your leg power isn’t so bad either. You totally outmaneuvered Bakugo during the combat training. It was like watching a wild hare dodge a very angry, explosive wolf. It’s nice to have another animal-type in the class. A lot of the flashy emitter types don’t really understand what it’s like to have your instincts fighting your brain all the time.”

Izuku’s eyes widened. He looked down at his lap, a sense of profound kinship washing over him. “You… you feel that too?”

“Of course,” Tsuyu nodded slowly. “When it gets too cold, I get sleepy. It’s hibernation instinct. When there’s a lot of moisture in the air, I get hyperactive. You get jumpy around loud noises, don’t you? I noticed your foot thumping during the quirk assessment.” 

Izuku chuckled softly, his fluffy white tail wagging just a fraction against the seat. “Yeah. It’s a prey response. Thumping is how rabbits warn the warren of danger. It took me a long time to figure out how to use that kinetic energy for myself instead of just freezing in place.” 

“Well, you’ve done a good job,” Tsuyu said bluntly. “Though, Bakugo seems even angrier at you now.”

She pointed to the back of the bus. Katsuki Bakugo was slumped in his seat, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his eyes closed in an aggressive scowl. He hadn’t said a word to Izuku—or anyone—since their combat trial. The shattered illusion of his absolute superiority was clearly eating away at him. 

“Kacchan will be okay,” Izuku said quietly, his ears swiveling slightly backward. “He just… he needs to realize that the world is bigger than our old playground.” 

“We’re here. Stop messing around,” Aizawa’s tired voice cut through the chatter from the front of the bus. 

The vehicle hissed to a halt. The doors opened, and Class 1-A filed out into the sunlight. 

Before them stood a massive, domed structure that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was breathtaking in its scale, easily the size of a professional sports stadium. 

Waiting for them at the entrance was a hero clad in a bulky, white astronaut suit. 

“The Space Hero: Thirteen!” Uraraka practically vibrated with excitement, her hands clasped together. “The chivalrous pro who has rescued tons of people from disasters!”

“Welcome to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint!” Thirteen greeted warmly, bowing to the students. “Or, as I like to call it, the USJ! Inside, you’ll find mock environments of every conceivable disaster: shipwrecks, landslides, fires, windstorms, and more!”

The class followed Thirteen inside. Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. The interior was massive, containing an entire small ocean, a ruined cityscape, a mountainous zone, and a forested area, all connected by a sprawling central plaza. 

“Before we begin,” Thirteen said, raising three fingers. “I have one, or two, or three things to say. As you all know, my Quirk is Black Hole. It can suck up and tear apart anything. However, it is a power that can easily be used to kill.”

The class fell dead silent. Izuku’s ears perked up, listening intently. 

“In our superhuman society, Quirks have been heavily certified and regulated,” Thirteen continued, their voice taking on a somber, serious tone. “But it only takes one wrong move, one lapse in judgment, for a Quirk to become a weapon of mass destruction. Aizawa’s physical test showed you your potential. All Might’s battle trial showed you the danger of using powers against others. Today, you will learn the true purpose of your Quirks. You are not here to fight. You are here to save lives.” 

Izuku smiled, a warm feeling spreading in his chest. To save lives. That was all he had ever wanted. To use his powerful legs to leap to the rescue, just like All Might. 

Thirteen bowed deeply. “That is all! Thank you for listening!”

The class erupted into polite applause. Aizawa stepped forward, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Right, first we’ll—”

SKREEEEE-CRACK.

Izuku screamed. 

He didn’t just wince; he clamped both of his hands over his long ears and fell to his knees, a sharp cry of absolute agony tearing from his throat. 

The entire class turned to him in shock. 

“Midoriya?!” Iida gasped, rushing forward. “Are you injured?!”

Izuku couldn’t hear him. His hyper-sensitive eardrums felt like they were being pierced by red-hot needles. It was a sound no human ear could pick up—a high-frequency, ear-shattering screech of spatial distortion, like a million pieces of glass being ground together underwater. It set his teeth on edge and made his vision blur. 

His danger-sense didn’t just flare; it exploded like a supernova in his brain. 

Predators. 

Izuku forced his eyes open, tears streaming down his face from the acoustic pain. He looked past Thirteen, past Aizawa, down the long flight of stairs toward the central plaza’s water fountain. 

The air was vibrating. 

“Sensei!” Izuku roared, his voice cracking with panic. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain. “The plaza! Move!” 

Aizawa, a seasoned underground hero, didn’t question the terror in his student’s voice. He instantly dropped into a combat crouch, whipping his head toward the plaza, his hand gripping his capture weapon. 

At that exact moment, the lights in the massive dome flickered and died in a cascading sequence of loud thunks. 

Down in the plaza, the water fountain sputtered and stopped. 

A small point of purple-black mist appeared in the air over the dry fountain. In a fraction of a second, the screeching sound Izuku had heard materialized into a physical phenomenon. The mist violently expanded, tearing a jagged, swirling hole in reality itself. 

From the center of the dark vortex, a hand emerged. A pale, sickly hand, followed by an arm, and then a man covered entirely in disembodied, grayish hands. 

Following him, dozens, then scores of terrifying figures poured out of the warp gate, their eyes gleaming with malice in the dim emergency lighting. 

“Gather together and don’t move!” Aizawa barked, his voice laced with a lethal edge. He pulled his yellow goggles down over his eyes. “Thirteen, protect the students!”

“What’s going on?” Kirishima, a red-haired student, asked, taking a step forward. “Is this like the entrance exam? Has the training started already?”

“Don’t move!” Aizawa yelled, his capture scarf unfurling like a nest of angry vipers. “Those are villains.”

The word hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. 

Izuku’s breathing grew shallow. His right foot began to thump against the metal platform. Thump-thump-thump-thump. The sound echoed loudly in the quiet terror of the group. 

He looked at the sea of villains below. There were thugs with mutant quirks, villains with blades, and elemental users. But his eyes were drawn to three specific figures. 

The man covered in hands. 

The entity made of purple mist. 

And towering behind them… a monster. 

It was massive, easily as tall as All Might, but its proportions were entirely grotesque. Its skin was pitch black, bulging with unnatural muscles. Most horrifying of all, its brain was completely exposed, a throbbing mass of tissue sitting atop a beak-like jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth. 

The monster turned its head. Its dead, soulless eyes seemed to lock directly onto Izuku at the top of the stairs. 

Izuku’s biological alarms went into overdrive. Every fiber of his rabbit-mutated DNA screamed the same message. 

APEX PREDATOR. DEATH. RUN. HIDE. 

His foot thumped so fast it was a blur. He took a physical step back, his ears pinned completely flat against his skull. 

“The only real heroes I see are Thirteen and Eraserhead,” the man covered in hands scratched his neck furiously. “Where is he? We went through all this trouble, and brought so many playmates. Is All Might really not here?” 

The man lowered his hands, revealing a chapped, terrifying smile. “Maybe if I kill a few kids, he’ll come out to play.” 

“Eraserhead,” Thirteen warned. “You can’t fight them all.” 

“A hero always has more than one trick,” Aizawa growled. Without a moment of hesitation, the homeroom teacher leaped off the massive staircase, plummeting directly into the horde of villains below. 

Izuku watched in awe as Aizawa fought. He erased Quirks with a blink, used his capture weapon like a whip, and engaged in brutal, hyper-efficient hand-to-hand combat, dropping villains in seconds. 

“We have to evacuate!” Iida yelled, waving his arms to herd the frozen students toward the exit doors. “Thirteen, lead the way!” 

The students turned and bolted for the heavy metal doors. 

But a swirling mass of purple mist suddenly erupted from the floor in front of the exit, blocking their path. 

“I cannot allow that,” the mist spoke, two glowing yellow eyes narrowing within the dark vortex. “Greetings. We are the League of Villains. We have come to U.A. High School, the bastion of heroism, to extinguish the Symbol of Peace.”

“A warp Quirk,” Izuku gasped, skidding to a halt. 

Bakugo and Kirishima didn’t hesitate. With a shared battle cry, the two teenagers leaped forward, unleashing a massive explosion and a hardened punch directly into the mist’s center. 

A colossal blast of fire and smoke rocked the entrance hall. 

“Did we get him?!” Kirishima yelled. 

“No, get back!” Thirteen ordered, raising a finger on their suit, preparing to unleash their Black Hole. 

But it was too late. The mist swirled rapidly, expanding outward like a tidal wave. 

“Your roles are to be scattered, tortured, and slain!” the mist roared. 

Izuku felt a sudden, terrifying loss of gravity. The purple mist enveloped him, suffocating and blinding. He felt his stomach drop as if he were falling down an endless elevator shaft. The screaming of his classmates faded into a hollow void. 

SPLASH.

The biting cold of saltwater shocked Izuku’s system. He opened his eyes, stinging in the murky water, and thrashed his arms. 

He breached the surface, gasping for air. He wiped the water from his eyes and looked around. He was in the Shipwreck Zone, a massive, artificial lake with a sinking cruise ship in the center. 

“Midoriya! Look out!” 

Izuku spun around in the water. A villain with gills and webbed hands was rocketing toward him like a torpedo, a jagged combat knife gripped tightly in his hand. 

Izuku couldn’t dodge in the water. His digitigrade legs were built for jumping on solid ground, not swimming. 

Before the villain could strike, a long, pink blur shot past Izuku’s face. A prehensile tongue wrapped tightly around the villain’s waist, violently yanking him backward out of the water. 

“Ribbit!” 

Tsuyu Asui bounded across the surface of the water with incredible speed, holding the villain aloft. She grabbed Izuku by the collar of his uniform, launching them both upward. 

They crashed heavily onto the deck of the sinking cruise ship. A moment later, Tsuyu spat Mineta out of her mouth, the small boy coughing up seawater and screaming in absolute panic. 

“Thanks, Tsuyu,” Izuku coughed, shaking the water from his fur-covered ears like a wet dog. 

“Don’t mention it,” Tsuyu said, crouching low on the deck. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m okay,” Izuku said, standing up. His boots were heavy with water, but his legs felt fine. 

He walked to the railing of the ship and looked over the edge. 

Surrounding the sinking vessel were at least a dozen villains, treading water and watching them like sharks circling a life raft. 

“They’re aquatic types,” Izuku analyzed, his ears swiveling to catch the sound of their splashing. “They have the total advantage in the water. And the ship is sinking. We only have a few minutes before we go under with it.” 

“We’re gonna die! We’re gonna be fish food!” Mineta wailed, pulling several purple spheres from his head. “I haven’t even touched a girl’s boobs yet!” 

“Mineta, calm down,” Izuku said sharply, his voice carrying an unexpected authority that made both Mineta and Tsuyu look at him. 

Izuku wasn't trembling. His foot wasn't thumping. The initial shock of the ambush had passed, replaced by the hyper-focused, tactical mindset he had honed over a decade of Quirk analysis. 

“Think about it,” Izuku said, pointing down at the villains. “They have a warp gate user. He could have dropped us anywhere. So why did he drop Asui—a frog mutant—into the water zone? Why drop me here, when my Quirk is totally unsuited for water combat?”

Tsuyu tapped her chin. “Because they don’t know our Quirks. They just scattered us randomly.” 

“Exactly,” Izuku grinned, a fierce light in his green eyes. “They have no idea what we’re capable of. We hold the element of surprise.” 

“Surprise?! They’re waiting for us to sink!” Mineta cried. 

“Then we won’t let them wait,” Izuku said. He channeled One For All at five percent. The familiar, burning warmth spread through his limbs, and the green lightning flickered to life across his wet skin. 

He turned to Tsuyu. “Tsuyu, you have the best mobility here. If I can create an opening in the water, can you carry Mineta and jump us to the shoreline?” 

“Easily,” Tsuyu nodded. 

“Good. Mineta, when I make my move, I need you to throw as many of your sticky spheres into the water as you can.” 

Mineta looked terrified, but the glowing aura around Izuku compelled him to nod furiously. 

Izuku stepped back to the center of the ship’s deck. He took a deep breath, picturing the mechanics of a whirlpool. He needed to generate an immense amount of centrifugal force. 

“Here goes nothing!” 

Izuku sprinted toward the railing. With a massive burst of kinetic energy, he vaulted off the deck, launching himself high into the air above the water. 

The villains below cheered, thinking he had given up. 

“Looks like one’s committing suicide!” a villain laughed, swimming toward where Izuku was going to land. 

Izuku hung in the air, his long ears pinned back against the wind. He positioned his body perfectly vertical. He pulled his left leg to his chest and extended his right leg, completely stiffening the steel-plated boot. 

100% is too much. 5% isn't enough to move this much water. 

Izuku grit his teeth. He had to push the valve open just a little more. 

10%!

The green lightning around him flared blindingly bright, taking on a vicious, crackling intensity. The muscles in his right leg bulged painfully, the dark purple bruising threatening to return. 

Izuku plummeted toward the surface of the lake. 

Just before he hit the water, he initiated a violent, breakdance-style spin. 

“DELAWARE… KICK!” 

Izuku’s steel-soled boot struck the surface of the water at supersonic speed, spinning like a massive drill bit. 

The result was cataclysmic. 

The sheer kinetic force of the impact didn't just splash the water; it tore the molecular structure of the lake apart. A massive, roaring vortex erupted from the point of impact. The water was violently displaced, spinning outward in a towering whirlpool that sucked every single villain within a fifty-yard radius into its chaotic center. 

The villains screamed as they were caught in the massive centrifuge, spinning wildly out of control, slamming into one another. 

Izuku bounded off the spinning water, using a piece of floating debris as a springboard to launch himself back into the air. 

“Mineta! Now!” Izuku roared. 

“Take this!” Mineta cried, hurling a barrage of his purple, sticky spheres directly into the center of the whirlpool. 

The spheres hit the swirling water, instantly latching onto the villains. Because they were all being forced together by the vortex, the sticky balls acted like glue, trapping the entire aquatic villain team in a massive, inescapable clump of bodies and purple spheres. 

Izuku began to fall back toward the water, the recoil in his leg burning with a fiery agony. He couldn't jump again. 

Thwip.

Tsuyu’s tongue wrapped securely around Izuku’s waist. With Mineta tucked under her arm, the frog-girl bounded across the remaining distance of the lake, landing gracefully on the shallow shoreline of the Central Plaza. 

Izuku hit the ground, panting heavily. He grabbed his right leg, wincing. It wasn't broken, but the muscle fibers were severely strained. Pushing One For All to ten percent was still too risky. 

“That was incredible, Midoriya!” Mineta cheered, kissing the solid ground. “We survived!” 

“Don’t celebrate yet,” Tsuyu warned, pointing her finger toward the center of the plaza. 

Izuku looked up, and his blood froze. 

The battle in the plaza had taken a horrific turn. Aizawa was on his knees. His yellow goggles were shattered. 

Standing over him was the man covered in hands, holding Aizawa’s right elbow. With a sickening sound of crumbling decay, the fabric of Aizawa’s sleeve disintegrated, followed by the skin and muscle of his arm. 

Aizawa grunted in agony, throwing a desperate punch, but the man casually dodged it. 

“You’re cool, Eraserhead,” the man, Shigaraki, rasped. “But you’re just a man. You can’t beat absolute violence.” 

Suddenly, the hulking, brain-exposed monster—the Nomu—moved. It was so fast it was essentially a blur. 

Before Aizawa could blink, the Nomu was behind him. It raised a massive, tree-trunk-sized arm and brought it down on Aizawa’s back. 

CRACK.

Izuku heard the bones snap from fifty yards away. The sound was deafening to his rabbit ears. 

Aizawa collapsed face-first into the concrete, his body twitching uncontrollably as a pool of blood began to form beneath him. 

Izuku’s breath hitched. His eyes widened in sheer horror. The invincible teacher, the pro hero who had just taken down forty villains on his own, was broken in an instant. 

The Nomu placed a heavy foot on the back of Aizawa’s neck, pinning him to the ground. It raised its arm again, preparing to deliver a fatal blow. 

Run.

The rabbit instinct flared again. It was a suffocating, paralyzing terror. His foot began to thump uncontrollably against the shoreline. Thump-thump-thump-thump. The monster was too strong. It was unnatural. It smelled of death and formaldehyde. If Izuku went near it, he would die. He needed to hide in the water, hide behind Tsuyu, run to the exit. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Mineta sobbed, grabbing Izuku’s arm. “Midoriya, let’s go! He’s gonna die!” 

Izuku looked at Aizawa’s bleeding form. He remembered the entrance exam. He remembered Uraraka pinned under the rubble. He remembered his conversation with All Might. 

“Before they even had time to think, their bodies moved on their own.”

Izuku stopped thumping his foot. 

He dug his digitigrade boots into the concrete. 

“Tsuyu,” Izuku whispered, his voice trembling but his eyes burning with an emerald fire. “Take Mineta and run to the exit. Get Thirteen. Get help.” 

“What are you going to do, ribbit?” Tsuyu asked, her eyes widening. 

“I’m going to distract it.” 

Before Tsuyu could argue, Izuku detonated. 

With a deafening crack of shattered concrete, Izuku launched himself across the plaza like a green missile. He channeled exactly five percent of One For All, knowing he couldn't afford a single strained muscle in this fight. 

“Hey!” Shigaraki turned his head, spotting the incoming teenager. “Nomu, swat that bug.” 

The Nomu lifted its foot off Aizawa and turned toward Izuku, raising its massive fist to punch him out of the air. 

Izuku didn't aim for the Nomu. He aimed for the ground directly in front of it. 

He landed heavily, sliding forward, and unleashed a vicious, sweeping low kick aimed directly at the Nomu’s knee. 

Thud. 

The impact echoed across the plaza. Izuku’s steel-plated boot, backed by the immense leg strength of a mutated rabbit and enhanced by One For All, struck the monster with the force of a speeding truck. 

The Nomu didn't even flinch. 

It didn't stumble. It didn't groan. Its leg didn't buckle. The sheer kinetic energy of Izuku’s kick seemed to simply vanish upon impact. 

Izuku’s eyes widened in horror. Shock absorption, his analytical mind instantly realized. Physical strikes are completely useless against it! 

The Nomu’s massive hand shot out, grasping for Izuku’s head. 

Izuku’s danger-sense flared, a sharp sting at the base of his skull. He reacted purely on instinct. He threw his upper body backward, his long ears whipping through the air as the Nomu’s thick fingers grazed his nose. 

Izuku bounded backward on all fours, putting ten yards between himself and the beast in a single leap. 

“Oh?” Shigaraki scratched his neck, mildly amused. “You’re fast. You’re a jumpy one, aren’t you? Nomu, kill the rabbit.” 

The Nomu shrieked, a horrifying, bird-like screech, and lunged. 

It was incredibly fast. Faster than Bakugo, faster than Iida. But as the Nomu charged, Izuku realized something crucial. 

It’s fast in a straight line, Izuku thought, his heart hammering in his chest. It’s a predator. A wolf. It hunts by overpowering and outrunning. 

But I am a hare. 

Hares didn't escape predators by running in straight lines. They escaped through erratic, unpredictable changes in direction, using their kinetic shock absorbers to corner at speeds that would snap a predator’s ankles. 

Izuku dropped the human martial arts. He dropped the boxing stances. He embraced the rabbit. 

As the Nomu closed the distance, swinging a devastating haymaker, Izuku didn't jump backward. He jumped diagonally. 

He bounded to the left, his digitigrade feet acting like coiled springs, launching him at a 45-degree angle. He hit the side of a concrete planter box, instantly rebounded, and ricocheted over the Nomu’s head. 

The Nomu’s fist slammed into the empty air, the shockwave shattering the concrete where Izuku had been a fraction of a second before. 

Izuku landed silently behind the monster. 

“Over here!” Izuku yelled, waving his arms. 

The Nomu spun around and charged again. 

This time, Izuku dropped flat to his stomach. The Nomu bounded over him. Izuku kicked his legs up, launching himself into a backflip, landing on the Nomu’s massive back. Before the monster could grab him, Izuku used its broad shoulders as a launching pad, vaulting high into the air and landing on the rim of the dry fountain. 

“Annoying,” Shigaraki hissed, scratching his neck harder, drawing blood. “So annoying! Just kill him!” 

The Nomu shrieked again and leaped at the fountain, obliterating the stone structure into dust. 

But Izuku wasn't there. He was already mid-air, bounding off a light pole, then ricocheting off a nearby wall, touching the ground for only milliseconds before launching again. 

He was playing the most terrifying, deadly game of tag in human history. 

With 5% Full Cowl active, Izuku was a blur of green lightning and white fur. He zigzagged across the plaza, constantly changing his trajectory, never moving in a straight line. His long ears acted as aerodynamic rudders, allowing him to twist and shift his momentum in mid-air. 

He was exhausting himself rapidly, but he was succeeding. He had completely drawn the monster’s aggro away from Aizawa. 

I can't beat it, Izuku thought, panting heavily as he bounded over a lunging swipe that took off the top of a metal bench. I can't hurt it at all. But I don't have to! I just have to keep it busy! Keep it chasing me! 

“Stop jumping around!” Shigaraki screamed, furious that his ultimate weapon was being outmaneuvered by a single, bouncing teenager. 

The Nomu stopped. It seemed to recalibrate. 

Izuku landed near the stairs, gasping for air, the green lightning flickering as his stamina dwindled. It stopped? Why did it stop? 

The Nomu didn't charge him. Instead, it bent its knees, the massive muscles in its thighs bulging obscenely. 

Izuku’s danger-sense screamed so loudly it felt like a physical blow to the head. 

It’s not going to run. It’s going to jump! 

The Nomu launched itself into the air. The speed and power were incomprehensible. It didn't just jump; it crossed the entire plaza in a single bound, casting a massive, terrifying shadow over Izuku. 

Izuku looked up. The monster was falling directly toward him, both fists raised above its head. 

He couldn't dodge. He had no momentum, and the area of impact was too wide. 

I have to push it! 

Izuku channeled One For All, ignoring the 5% limit. He forced the valve open, pushing to eight, then ten percent. The red veins of power spider-webbed up his legs. He raised his arms, crossing them over his face in a desperate block, bracing his digitigrade legs against the ground to absorb the incoming shock. 

CRASH. 

The Nomu landed squarely on top of Izuku. 

The entire plaza shuddered. The concrete stairs beneath Izuku shattered into dust, creating a massive crater. A shockwave of pressurized air blew out the remaining glass in the surrounding structures. 

Down by the shore, Tsuyu and Mineta screamed his name. 

The dust slowly began to clear. 

Shigaraki laughed a dry, raspy laugh. “Finally. The bug is squashed.” 

But as the smoke parted, Shigaraki’s smile vanished. 

The Nomu was standing in the crater, its fists pressed against the ground. 

But beneath those massive fists, supporting the weight of the monster, was a towering figure in a pinstriped suit. 

All Might had arrived. 

He wasn't smiling. For the first time since Izuku had known him, the Symbol of Peace looked completely, terrifyingly furious. 

All Might held the Nomu’s fists at bay with one hand. In his other arm, he held the bruised, bleeding, and unconscious body of Izuku Midoriya. 

At the very last microsecond, before the Nomu had crushed him, All Might had moved faster than the eye could see, intercepting the blow and scooping Izuku to safety. 

Izuku opened his eyes slightly, coughing weakly. His arms were bruised, and his legs throbbed with a terrifying heat from pushing past his limit, but he was alive. His long ears drooped limply against All Might’s chest. 

“A-All Might…” Izuku whispered, tears mixing with the dust on his face. “Sensei… Aizawa is…” 

“I know, young Midoriya,” All Might said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of its usual bombastic volume. “You did incredibly well. You held the line. You acted as a true hero.” 

All Might gently tossed Izuku out of the crater. Izuku landed softly in the arms of Tsuyu, who had bounded over with Mineta the moment the dust settled. 

All Might stood up to his full height, turning his burning blue eyes toward Shigaraki and the Nomu. He ripped off his yellow tie. 

“I had a bad feeling, so I tore away from my chat with the principal and came here,” All Might growled, stepping toward the monster. “And it seems my fears were justified.” 

Shigaraki took a step back, his hands shaking slightly. “Ah… the boss is here. The continue screen…” 

All Might’s muscles bulged, steam radiating from his body. 

“IT IS FINE NOW!” All Might finally roared, the sound shaking the very foundations of the USJ dome. “BECAUSE I AM HERE!” 

Izuku lay on the concrete, supported by Tsuyu, struggling to keep his eyes open. He watched as his mentor, the greatest predator of evil in the world, prepared to clash with the monster. 

The rabbit had played its part. It had stalled the beast. Now, it was time for the true king of the jungle to finish the fight.