What if Deku had a Fierce Wings but wanted to be a Farmer instead of a hero

The digital clock on the bedside table clicked over to 4:30 AM. 

Before the alarm could even initiate its electronic chirp, a single, brilliant red feather detached itself from the massive pile of plumage resting atop the bedsheets. The feather darted forward with the speed of a striking viper, its rigid edge pressing the 'off' button with pinpoint precision. 

Beneath the warm cocoon of blankets, fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya opened his eyes. 

He didn't groan, nor did he roll over to steal another five minutes of sleep. The predawn hour wasn't a punishment; it was a sanctuary. Izuku sat up, the blankets falling away to reveal a torso that was remarkably lean and corded with the unique, stabilizing muscles required to carry the massive appendages on his back. 

He stretched. As he did, two enormous wings unfurled behind him, stretching nearly eight feet from tip to tip. The feathers were the color of freshly spilled blood, a vibrant, shocking vermillion that seemed to catch the meager moonlight filtering through the bedroom window. He gave them a single, powerful flap, circulating the stagnant air of the small bedroom, before folding them tightly against his spine. 

For the rest of the world, Quirks like his were meant for the sky. They were meant for diving off skyscrapers, intercepting villains in mid-air, and posing for the flashing cameras of the hero paparazzi. The Hero Public Safety Commission called it Fierce Wings—a mutant-emitter hybrid Quirk that granted the user flight, enhanced speed, and telekinetic control over hundreds of individual feathers. It was, by all societal metrics, a god-tier Quirk. 

But as Izuku pulled on a faded, soil-stained pair of denim overalls and a worn-out t-shirt, he wasn't thinking about villains, rescue ratios, or Billboard charts. 

He was thinking about the nitrogen levels in his soil. 

Izuku tiptoed out of his room, careful not to wake his mother, Inko, who was sleeping down the hall. He slid open the glass door leading to the cramped backyard of their Musutafu apartment. 

The air was crisp, carrying the faint, metallic scent of city smog, but as Izuku stepped onto the grass, that smell was overpowered by the rich, loamy aroma of damp earth. The Midoriya backyard was no longer a patch of suburban lawn. Over the years, Izuku had transformed it into a dense, meticulously engineered microcosm of agriculture. 

Raised wooden planter boxes stood in perfect geometric rows. Trellises, constructed from bamboo and twine, climbed the concrete walls of the property line, heavy with the weight of sprawling vines. There were daikon radishes resting beneath the soil, plump cherry tomatoes waiting to turn red, leafy greens like spinach and komatsuna catching the morning dew, and a specialized compost bin tucked into the far corner, quietly radiating heat.

Izuku inhaled deeply, a soft smile gracing his freckled face. "Alright," he whispered to the quiet morning. "Let's get to work."

With a subtle flex of his shoulder blades, the wings on his back shimmered. Fifty feathers detached themselves from his wings in a silent, crimson cascade. They hovered in the air behind him like a legion of loyal, tiny soldiers waiting for their commander's orders. 

Izuku didn't even need to speak. Controlling the feathers was as natural to him as breathing or flexing his fingers. 

Two large primary feathers shot toward the garden shed, sliding their rigid edges under the handles of two heavy metal watering cans. With a screech of metal on concrete, the cans were lifted into the air, carried over to the rain barrel, and submerged. Once full, the feathers carried them over the planter boxes, tipping them gently. A fine, even shower of water began to rain down on the thirsty spinach.

Meanwhile, a dozen smaller, softer covert feathers fluttered toward the tomato plants. They acted as Izuku’s extra hands—and eyes. He could feel what they felt. He sent them weaving through the dense foliage, feeling the stems for structural integrity. When a feather brushed against the sticky, unwanted texture of an aphid infestation on a lower leaf, Izuku's brow furrowed. With surgical precision, the feathers plucked the pests away one by one, crushing them far away from the delicate leaves. 

Three more rigid, sword-like feathers plunged into an empty planter box in the corner, turning the soil, breaking up the hard clumps of earth to aerate it for the upcoming sweet potato planting. 

Izuku himself walked over to a bush of bell peppers. He knelt in the dirt, ignoring how it stained his kneepads. He reached out with his own two hands, gently cradling a large, green pepper. He inspected it for sunscald, his thumb rubbing the smooth skin. 

This was where he belonged. With his hands in the dirt, surrounded by life that he was actively nurturing. He didn't want to break things. He didn't want to punch people. He wanted to grow things. He wanted to watch a tiny, insignificant seed, buried in the darkness, push its way up toward the sun and become something that could sustain human life. 

As the sun began to peek over the jagged skyline of Musutafu, casting long, golden shadows across his miniature farm, Izuku let out a content sigh. The city was waking up. Soon, the sounds of traffic, sirens, and heroic clashes would fill the air. But for now, in this tiny patch of green, there was only the gentle rustle of leaves and the soft swish of red feathers tilling the earth.

It hadn't always been this way. There was a time, briefly, when Izuku had looked up at the sky and wanted to be the man soaring through it. 

The memory, though ten years old, was forever burned into his mind. He was four years old. They were in the waiting room of Dr. Tsubasa’s pediatric clinic. Inko was pacing a hole into the linoleum floor, wringing her hands with anxiety. Izuku had been a late bloomer. Most of his kindergarten classmates had already manifested their Quirks—Katsuki Bakugo most notably, showing off his explosive palms every chance he got. Izuku had shown nothing.

Until the day his back started to itch.

The itch had turned into a burning ache, a feverish pressure that radiated from his shoulder blades. Inko had rushed him to the clinic, terrified he was suffering from some bizarre childhood illness. 

He remembered sitting on the crinkly paper of the examination table, crying as the pain peaked. And then, with a sickening rip of skin and the sudden, overwhelming sensation of cold air on new nerve endings, two wet, tightly crumpled appendages had burst from his back. They were covered in blood and downy white fuzz, which rapidly began to turn a vibrant red as they expanded, drying in the sterile air of the clinic.

Inko had taken one look at the wings, gasped, and promptly fainted, collapsing into a heap on the floor. 

Dr. Tsubasa had been ecstatic. After reviving Inko, he ran a battery of tests. Izuku remembered the doctor’s bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lights as he practically vibrated with excitement.

"It's extraordinary, Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor had said, pointing to the X-rays. "A perfect amalgamation of genetic mutation and emitter capabilities. He has the physical mutation of wings, but the neural network extending into the feathers suggests telekinetic control. This is a top-tier Quirk. Unprecedented power and versatility. With this, little Izuku here won't just be a hero... he could rival Endeavor. He could be the Number One Hero in Japan."

The Number One Hero. 

Those words were supposed to be a blessing. To any other four-year-old in their superhero-obsessed society, it would have been the ultimate validation. 

But while the doctor and his mother were celebrating, weeping tears of joy, four-year-old Izuku had wandered out of the examination room and back into the waiting area. 

The television in the corner was playing the news. On the screen, the Symbol of Peace, All Might, was locked in a fierce battle with a villain whose Quirk allowed him to shoot highly corrosive acid. All Might laughed his booming laugh, winding up for a massive punch. With a shout of "Texas Smash!", the hero's fist connected with the air. The resulting wind pressure was so immense that it not only blew the villain away, but it entirely leveled a three-story office building behind him. 

The news anchor cheered. The crowd on the screen cheered. 

Izuku stared at the screen, but he didn't feel the thrill. He looked at the rubble of the building. He saw the shattered glass, the twisted steel, the pulverized concrete. He thought about the people who worked in that building, the things they had kept on their desks, the plants in their windowsills. All of it, destroyed in a single second of violence, all in the name of 'saving the day'.

He looked down at his hands, and then over his shoulder at the massive red wings weighing him down. Am I supposed to break things too? he wondered.

Izuku reached up and fumbled with the television remote resting on the reception desk. He pressed the channel button. The screen flickered away from the violence, landing on a public broadcasting channel. 

It was a documentary. The camera was panning over lush, incredibly steep mountains. The narrator, a man with a deep, soothing voice, was speaking. 

"Here, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the ancient Incas faced an impossible landscape. To survive, they did not fight the mountain; they worked with it. By carving these magnificent agricultural terraces into the steep slopes, they created micro-climates, retained water, and prevented soil erosion. They took harsh, unforgiving rock, and through patience and ingenuity, turned it into a cradle of life."

Four-year-old Izuku stepped closer to the television, mesmerized. The screen showed farmers tending to hundreds of varieties of potatoes, their hands buried in the dark, rich soil. They weren't screaming. They weren't punching. They were quiet, diligent, and deeply connected to the earth. They were building something that lasted, something that fed people, something that brought life rather than destroying it.

Right then and there, a fundamental shift occurred in Izuku Midoriya’s psyche. Society saw his wings and saw a weapon of justice. They saw a fighter jet. They saw a hero. 

But Izuku looked at the television, and he made his choice. He didn't want to be All Might. He wanted to be the person who built the terraces. He wanted to be a farmer. 

"Midoriya! Are you paying attention?!"

The sharp bark of his homeroom teacher snapped Izuku back to the present. He blinked, the lush green fields of his imagination fading into the dull, scuffed walls of a classroom at Aldera Junior High. 

He was fourteen now, in his final year of middle school. He was sitting at his desk near the window, his posture rigidly straight. He had to sit straight; if he slouched, the bulk of his wings—tightly bound against his back and hidden beneath a specially tailored, oversized black school uniform—would press painfully against the wooden chair. 

"Y-Yes, sensei," Izuku replied, keeping his voice even. 

The teacher sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was a tired-looking man who clearly found his job of wrangling thirty super-powered teenagers exhausting. In his hand, he held a thick stack of papers. 

"As I was saying," the teacher continued, his voice projecting over the low hum of chatter in the room. "Since you are all third-years, it's time to seriously think about your futures. I'll be passing out printouts for your desired career paths." 

The teacher paused, a sudden, conspiratorial smirk crossing his face. He dramatically threw the stack of papers into the air, letting them scatter across the front row. "But who am I kidding? You're all planning on entering the Hero Course, aren't you?!"

The classroom erupted. It was a cacophony of sound and light as nearly every student in the room activated their Quirks in a blatant display of rule-breaking excitement. A boy in the front row stretched his neck like a giraffe; a girl near the door created small, floating bubbles of water; the boy next to Izuku pulled his eyes out of their sockets. 

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

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these background characters!" 

The voice was loud, abrasive, and dripped with unearned arrogance. Izuku didn't need to look to know who was speaking. Katsuki Bakugo was leaning back in his chair, his feet propped up on his desk, a cocky grin plastered across his face. Small, crackling explosions popped in the palms of his hands, smelling faintly of burnt sugar and nitroglycerin. 

"I'm not going to be stuck at the bottom of the barrel with the rest of these rejects," Bakugo declared, ignoring the angry shouts of his classmates. "I've aced all the mock tests. I'm the only one here with the stuff to make it into U.A. High School. I'm going to surpass All Might and become the top hero, and my name will be carved into the highest tax brackets!"

"Ah, yes," the teacher said, looking down at his clipboard. "Bakugo, you are aiming for U.A. High. Your grades are certainly impressive enough."

The class muttered in awe. U.A. was the national standard, a fortress of heroism with an acceptance rate of less than two percent. 

Izuku ignored the grandstanding. He quietly reached out and pulled one of the scattered career forms onto his desk. He pulled a mechanical pencil from his pocket, the plastic casing slightly chewed. 

He looked at the form. It had sections for First Choice, Second Choice, and Third Choice for high schools. 

He didn't hesitate. He bypassed the section labeled 'Hero Course Academies' entirely. He moved down to the section for specialized schools. With neat, precise strokes of his pencil, Izuku wrote down his first and only choice: 

Totsuka Agricultural High School - Department of Agronomy.

It was a prestigious school in its own right, located a few hours outside of the city. It boasted sprawling acreage, state-of-the-art greenhouses, and a curriculum entirely dedicated to crop science, soil management, and sustainable agriculture. It was Izuku's dream. To spend three years learning how to optimize crop yields, to study the genetic modification of drought-resistant wheat, to never have to worry about villain attacks or media training.

"Oh, Midoriya," the teacher called out, having spotted Izuku's form as he walked down the aisle. The teacher’s voice carried a tone of profound confusion. "You're applying for... Totsuka Agricultural?"

The classroom went dead silent. The crackling in Bakugo’s palms ceased abruptly. 

The teacher frowned, looking from the paper to Izuku, and then to the bulky lumps beneath Izuku's uniform. "Midoriya, I know you like plants, but... with your Quirk? You have a top-class mutant Quirk. U.A., Shiketsu, Ketsubutsu—any of the top hero academies would take you on recommendation alone. The Hero Public Safety Commission has literally called the school asking about you. Why on earth would you want to go to a farming school?"

The students began to whisper. 

He's insane.

He has those huge red wings, right? I've seen him fly. He's so fast.

What a waste of an elite Quirk. He's throwing away millions of yen.

Izuku felt the weight of thirty stares pressing down on him. He hated this. He hated how society viewed Quirks as a mandatory draft into a war between heroes and villains. Just because someone was born with long legs didn't mean they had to become a marathon runner. Why did having wings mean he had to fight?

"I want to study agriculture, sensei," Izuku said, his voice quiet but unwavering. "I intend to become a commercial farmer. I'm not interested in heroics."

SNAP.

The sound of a pencil breaking echoed loudly through the quiet room. 

Izuku slowly turned his head. Katsuki Bakugo was gripping the remnants of a wooden pencil in his fist, his knuckles white. Bakugo’s crimson eyes were locked onto Izuku, burning with an intensity that could melt steel.

To Bakugo Katsuki, a Quirk was a measure of a person's worth. Power was everything. From the moment Izuku had manifested his wings, Bakugo had seen him as his ultimate rival. Bakugo had an emitter Quirk of immense destructive power; Izuku had a mutant Quirk of immense speed and versatility. They were supposed to clash. They were supposed to compete to see who was the best.

But Izuku refused to play the game. Izuku never fought back. Izuku never bragged. Izuku treated his god-tier Quirk like a gardening tool. To Bakugo, this was the ultimate insult. It felt as though Izuku was looking down on him from some high horse, mocking Bakugo’s ambition by claiming he didn't even need to try.

"Deku," Bakugo growled, his voice dangerously low. The childhood nickname—meaning 'useless'—had stuck, but the context had changed. Bakugo no longer used it because Izuku was Quirkless; he used it because Izuku was, in his eyes, uselessly throwing his potential away. "What the hell did you just say?"

"I said I want to be a farmer, Kacchan," Izuku repeated calmly. 

The bell rang, signaling the end of homeroom, but no one moved. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on. The teacher, sensing the impending explosion, nervously gathered his papers and hurried out of the room, leaving the students to fend for themselves.

Bakugo stood up, kicking his chair back so violently it clattered to the floor. He stomped over to Izuku's desk, slamming both hands down on the cheap wood. Smoke began to curl from his palms, singing the edges of Izuku’s career form.

"You think you're better than me, you damn bird?" Bakugo hissed, leaning in so close Izuku could smell the smoke on his breath. "You think you can just sit there, hoarding a Quirk like that, and play in the dirt? You're mocking me! You're telling me that fighting me isn't worth your time!"

"It's not about you, Kacchan," Izuku said softly. He didn't lean back. He didn't cower. He just looked at Bakugo with a tired, exasperated expression. "I just don't like fighting. It doesn't build anything. It just breaks things."

"Heroes save people, you idiot!" Bakugo yelled, a small explosion popping near Izuku's ear, making him flinch slightly. "We beat the villains so the weak extras can live in peace! If you have the power to win, you have an obligation to fight!"

"I don't believe that," Izuku countered, his green eyes meeting Bakugo's red ones. "People need saving, yes. But people also need to eat. Without farmers, society collapses in a week. Heroes keep the city standing, but agriculture keeps humanity alive. I want to nurture life, Kacchan. Not punch it."

Bakugo’s face contorted in sheer, unadulterated rage. He raised his right hand, sparks intensifying into a bright, dangerous light. "You pretentious little—!"

Bzzzzzz.

The confrontation was suddenly interrupted by a low, annoying buzzing sound. A large, fat green bottle fly had flown in through the open window. It buzzed drunkenly around the room, before landing squarely on the tip of Bakugo’s nose. 

Bakugo froze, his eyes crossing slightly to look at the insect. His rage momentarily short-circuited by the sheer audacity of the bug. 

Before Bakugo could even twitch a muscle to swat it, a flash of red light blinded the classroom. 

It was so fast that none of the students’ eyes could track it. One second, the fly was resting on Bakugo's nose. The next second, a single, razor-sharp red feather was hovering a millimeter away from Bakugo's face, perfectly still. 

The fly was gone. 

Bakugo blinked, his breath hitching. He slowly looked past the feather, tracing the air current back to Izuku. 

Izuku hadn't moved his arms. His hands were still resting calmly on his desk. But beneath his blazer, a slit he had specifically tailored into the fabric was slightly parted. With a subtle flick of Izuku's mind, the feather zipped back, disappearing beneath the blazer, resting perfectly back in its place on his left wing. 

On the desk between them, perfectly bisected into two clean halves, was the fly. 

The classroom was utterly silent. The sheer precision, the terrifying speed, and the lethal accuracy required to slice a fly in half on a person's face without so much as scratching their skin was beyond professional-level Quirk control. It was the kind of mastery that Pro Heroes trained decades to achieve. 

And Izuku had done it without even blinking, purely on reflex. 

Bakugo swallowed hard, the sweat on his brow suddenly feeling very cold. He looked from the dead fly to Izuku's calm face. The sheer gap in their control, in their lethality, was laid bare in that single microsecond. If Izuku had wanted to, he could have taken Bakugo's head off before Bakugo could even spark an explosion. 

But Izuku didn't look triumphant. He didn't look like he was showing off. He just looked slightly annoyed by the interruption. 

Izuku reached into his pocket, pulled out a small handkerchief, and neatly wiped the dead fly off his desk, tossing it into the nearby trash can. He looked back up at his childhood friend, his expression entirely sincere.

"Like I said," Izuku murmured, his voice soft in the quiet classroom. "I just really like tomatoes, Kacchan. I'm going to go grow them. You can go be the Number One Hero. I'm not in your way."

Izuku stood up, carefully slinging his yellow backpack over one shoulder to avoid crushing his bound wings. He bowed politely to Bakugo, who was still standing frozen in shock, and walked out of the classroom. 

As Izuku walked down the hallway, he let out a long breath. He knew his mother would be worried about the parent-teacher conference regarding his high school choice. He knew society would continue to look at him like he was a broken machine, a weapon that refused to fire. 

But as he walked out of the school gates and felt the afternoon sun on his face, his mind drifted away from the stress of heroes and villains. He checked his watch. If he hurried home, he would have just enough daylight left to test the pH levels of the soil in his new cabbage patch. 

And that, to Izuku Midoriya, was the only thing that truly mattered.

The urban geography of Musutafu was a testament to rapid, often reckless modernization. Skyscrapers of glass and steel thrust into the smog-choked sky, layered over concrete overpasses and neon-lit commercial districts. It was a city designed for verticality, meant to accommodate soaring heroes and the sprawling masses they protected. Space was a premium. Dirt was an afterthought. 

But nestled behind the bustling Dagoba Shopping District, wedged between a dilapidated twenty-four-hour laundromat and the brick firewall of an aging pachinko parlor, lay a scar in the concrete jungle. 

For nearly a decade, Lot 404 had been a wasteland. It was an abandoned residential plot where a house had burned down years ago, leaving nothing but a sunken foundation and a magnet for illegal dumping. It was a graveyard of modern convenience: rusted-out washing machines, shattered CRT televisions, mountains of bald car tires, and a sea of broken green glass. Weeds, tough and bitter, choked whatever exposed dirt remained. It was an eyesore, a hazard, and a place most citizens hurried past without a second glance. 

To fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya, however, it was a canvas. 

His backyard at the apartment had simply run out of real estate. His mother, Inko, had been supportive, but even she had drawn the line when Izuku suggested converting her small living room into a temperature-controlled greenhouse for cultivating ghost peppers. He needed more land. 

He had approached the neighborhood association six months ago. The elderly chairman, a man with a tortoise-shell mutation, had been so shocked that a teenager wanted to clean up the infamous Dagoba lot that he had practically thrown the property rights at Izuku, citing an obscure beautification bylaw to let him use it rent-free. 

The transformation of Lot 404 had been a masterclass in the absolute, terrifying utility of a top-tier Pro Hero Quirk applied exclusively to landscaping. 

Izuku remembered the first day he had stood at the edge of the rubble. It was a Saturday morning, crisp and gray. He had stripped off his jacket, leaving only a white t-shirt, and let his wings unfurl to their full, magnificent eight-foot span. 

Fierce Wings. The Hero Public Safety Commission had classified it as a weapon of mass suppression. But Izuku saw it as a hundred sets of hands. 

With a deep breath and a flex of his mind, seventy rigid, sword-like primary feathers had exploded from his back. But they hadn't formed a defensive perimeter, nor had they sought out a target to pierce. Instead, they had become a phantom construction crew. 

Four large feathers had slid beneath the rusted frame of a washing machine, lifting the two-hundred-pound appliance into the air as if it were made of paper, depositing it neatly onto a rented scrap-metal truck. A dozen feathers, vibrating at high frequencies, had acted as buzzsaws, slicing through the tangled, thorny overgrowth of invasive weeds. Smaller, softer covert feathers had swept over the ground like a crimson wave, delicately picking out thousands of shards of broken glass and micro-plastics, leaving behind nothing but the bruised earth. 

Once the debris was cleared, the real work had begun. The soil was dead—compacted by years of neglect, choked by toxins, and starved of oxygen. Izuku had sent twenty of his stiffest feathers plunging deep into the ground. Acting as a telekinetic rototiller, they churned the earth, breaking up the hardpan clay. He had spent his allowance on bags of rich, loamy topsoil, peat moss, and vermiculite, using his wings to tear open the bags and fold the nutrients into the dead dirt, mixing it until the ground felt soft and breathed with new life. 

Now, six months later, Lot 404 was unrecognizable. 

It was mid-July, and the afternoon sun beat down on a sprawling, emerald oasis hidden within the concrete labyrinth. Raised beds constructed from reclaimed, treated wood sat in perfect, parallel rows. Trellises made of bamboo supported a dense jungle of snap peas and climbing cucumbers. A sophisticated drip-irrigation system, pieced together from hardware store clearance bins, pulsed with life-giving water. The air here didn't smell of exhaust fumes and stale fried food; it smelled of damp earth, crushed mint, and the sharp, bright tang of tomato vines.

Izuku stood in the center of it all, wearing a faded straw hat that cast a deep shadow over his freckled face, a pair of dark green overalls, and heavy rubber boots. 

His wings were partially deployed, acting as a massive, articulated multi-tool. To his left, three feathers were gently guiding a wandering cucumber vine back onto its trellis, tying it securely with twine. To his right, a cluster of feathers was gently aerating the soil around the base of a struggling bell pepper plant. 

Izuku himself was entirely focused on the crown jewels of his summer harvest: the Senryo eggplants. 

He was kneeling in the dirt, a pair of rusted pruning shears in his gloved hands. He didn't use his Quirk for this. Some things required the tactile, intimate touch of human fingers. He gently lifted one of the heavy, deep-purple teardrops, inspecting the glossy skin. It was flawless. The color was a rich, midnight violet, indicating perfect sun exposure and a flawless balance of potassium in the soil. 

"You're doing great," Izuku murmured to the plant, his voice barely above a whisper. He carefully snipped a yellowing leaf near the base to improve air circulation. "Just a few more days and you'll be ready for Mrs. Sato at the bakery. She said she wanted to make a summer vegetable curry..."

He sat back on his heels, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. He let out a long, contented sigh. The rhythmic hum of the distant traffic felt miles away. This was his sanctuary. Here, he wasn't the boy who was wasting a god-tier Quirk. He wasn't Bakugo's punching bag. He was just Izuku, the gardener. 

BOOM.

The serenity was shattered with the violence of a bomb going off. 

Izuku flinched, his head snapping up. The sound hadn't come from the main street; it had come from the narrow alleyway leading directly toward his lot. 

CRACK. SMASH.

The ground beneath Izuku's boots trembled. Dust and pulverized brick rained down from the roof of the adjacent laundromat. The heavy, rhythmic thudding of something massive approaching grew louder, accompanied by the high-pitched screams of terrified pedestrians and the wail of police sirens. 

"Get back! Clear the street!" a deep, booming voice echoed from the alley. 

Izuku stood up, his heart sinking. No. Please, not here. Any street but this one.

Suddenly, the brick wall at the end of the alley exploded outward. A cloud of gray dust and debris billowed into the air, raining chunks of concrete down on the edge of Izuku's neatly trimmed basil bushes. 

Through the dust, a monstrous figure stumbled into the open space of the lot. 

It was a man, or at least, it had been. He was currently standing at nearly twenty feet tall, his body grotesquely disproportionate. His clothes had ripped to shreds, leaving him in tattered rags. His skin was stretched tight, veins bulging like thick purple ropes across his unnaturally swollen biceps. He was clutching a designer handbag in one hand, which looked comically tiny, like a doll's purse, in his massive grip. 

A minor villain. A purse-snatcher who had panicked when cornered by Pro Heroes and activated a Gigantification Quirk he clearly couldn't fully control. The villain was thrashing blindly, his oversized feet cracking the asphalt as he backed away from the alley. 

"Surrender now! There is nowhere left to run!" 

Swinging through the dust cloud on a tether of thick, elongated wood came the rising star of the hero world, Kamui Woods. He landed gracefully on a nearby streetlamp, his wooden armor creaking as he crouched, assessing the giant. 

A second later, Death Arms—a massive, heavily muscled Pro Hero with a construction motif—smashed through the remaining rubble of the wall. He pounded his giant fists together, the sound echoing like a gunshot. "You're trapped, punk! Make it easy on yourself!"

The villain panicked. He let out a wet, guttural roar and spun around, looking for an escape route. His wild, bloodshot eyes scanned the dead-end of the firewall, the side of the laundromat, and finally... the open expanse of Lot 404. 

To the villain, and to the heroes, it was just an empty lot. A place to fight. An arena. 

To Izuku, it was six months of blood, sweat, and nitrogen balancing. 

The villain took a massive step backward. His heel, the size of a small car, came down directly over the first row of raised beds. The shadow of his foot eclipsed the sun, plunging Izuku's delicate, prize-winning Senryo eggplants into darkness. 

In that fraction of a second, time seemed to dilate for Izuku Midoriya. 

He didn't see a villain who needed apprehending. He didn't see a helpless civilian that needed saving. He didn't care about the laws regarding unlicensed Quirk usage, or the jurisdiction of Pro Heroes. 

He saw a boot coming down on roots he had spent months coaxing into the earth. He saw the impending destruction of life. 

Izuku didn't think. The instinct that lived in his marrow, the sheer, overwhelming power of the mutation he had been born with, took absolute control. 

His eyes widened, the irises contracting into pinpricks. The muscles in his back coiled like industrial springs. 

SKREEEEEECH.

It sounded like the tearing of metal, a high-pitched, deafening shriek of wind being violently displaced. 

Kamui Woods, preparing to launch his Lacquer Chain Prison, froze mid-swing. Death Arms, winding up for a punch, stopped dead in his tracks. 

The air in the lot suddenly turned violent. A shockwave of pure aerodynamic pressure exploded from where the small boy in the overalls was standing. The straw hat flew off Izuku’s head, carried away by the localized hurricane he had just created. 

From Izuku’s back, over two hundred primary feathers erupted simultaneously. 

They did not look like the soft plumage of a bird. In this state, hardened by Izuku’s telekinetic will and fueled by raw adrenaline, they were a flurry of crimson broadswords. They caught the sunlight, gleaming like freshly forged steel as they shot forward with the speed of fired bullets. 

Half of the flock—nearly a hundred razor-sharp feathers—swarmed the giant villain. They didn't aim to kill or maim. They moved with terrifying, surgical precision. They targeted the reinforced fabric of the villain's oversized, tattered clothing. 

THWACK. THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.

The sound was a rapid-fire staccato of impacts. The feathers pierced the thick denim of the villain’s jeans, the heavy canvas of his jacket, and the thick leather of his belt. They drove backward, carrying the sheer, ungodly kinetic force of a freight train. 

The twenty-foot-tall villain, weighing several tons, was literally lifted off his feet. He let out a shriek of confusion and terror as he was thrown backward through the air, carried entirely by the red plumage. 

He slammed into the brick firewall of the pachinko parlor with a sickening crunch that rattled the windows of the entire block. Before the villain could even process the impact, the feathers drove themselves deep into the mortar of the brickwork, embedding themselves inches deep. 

The villain was pinned spread-eagle against the wall, five feet off the ground, completely immobilized by a net of glowing red blades. He struggled, but the feathers were like rebar; they didn't give a single millimeter. 

But Izuku wasn't finished. The threat to his garden hadn't just been the villain's foot. It was the debris. It was the dust. It was the shockwave of the battle. 

The remaining hundred feathers from Izuku’s wings shot upward into the sky. They fanned out, spreading wide over the entirety of the seventy-foot lot. Then, they began to multiply. The larger primary feathers shed smaller, softer covert and down feathers, which in turn locked together telekinetically. 

In less than three seconds, a massive, vibrating dome of interwoven red feathers formed a perfect canopy over the garden. 

A shower of pulverized brick, shattered glass from the alleyway, and a massive cloud of cement dust washed over the lot. But none of it touched the soil. The debris hit the red canopy and bounced off, sliding harmlessly down the sides onto the concrete perimeter. Beneath the dome, the air was perfectly still. Not a single leaf on the eggplant bushes so much as twitched. 

Silence descended upon the lot, broken only by the whimpering of the pinned giant and the faint, thrumming vibration of the feather canopy. 

Izuku stood in the center of the garden, panting softly. His wings, now reduced to skeletal frames of bone and skin with only a few straggling feathers remaining, ached with a dull, throbbing heat. The adrenaline was already beginning to crash, replaced by a cold, sinking feeling in his gut. 

He slowly looked up. 

At the entrance to the lot, Death Arms’ jaw was hanging slack, his giant fists completely forgotten at his sides. Kamui Woods was perched on a jagged chunk of concrete, his wooden mask betraying no emotion, but his posture radiating absolute shock. 

They were staring at the pinned villain, and then at the massive, impossible dome of feathers, and finally... at the scrawny fourteen-year-old boy in dirty overalls. 

"What... in the world..." Death Arms muttered, his voice barely a rasp. 

Slowly, the red dome over the garden began to dissolve. The feathers broke apart, floating gently down like cherry blossoms, before zipping back through the air and reattaching themselves to Izuku's back with soft clicks. Within seconds, his massive wings were whole again, folded tightly behind him. 

The dust began to clear, revealing a crowd of civilians that had gathered at the edges of the police tape near the alleyway. 

Kamui Woods was the first to recover. He dropped down from the rubble, walking slowly toward Izuku. The Pro Hero’s eyes, visible through the slits of his wooden mask, were wide with awe. 

"Kid," Kamui Woods said, his voice reverent. "That... that was incredible. The speed, the spatial awareness, the raw kinetic power to pin a gigantification user... I've only ever seen that kind of Quirk mastery in the top ten Billboard rankings."

Death Arms jogged up behind him, a massive grin breaking across his face. He let out a booming laugh, slapping a heavy hand on Izuku's shoulder. The force of the friendly blow nearly knocked the boy into his cabbage patch. 

"Hah! Kamui's right! I thought we were gonna have to bring the whole block down to stop this guy, but you handled him in three seconds flat!" Death Arms leaned in, looking at Izuku's wings. "With a Quirk like that, you've got it made, kid! You're what, a middle schooler? You applying to U.A. High next year? You're a shoe-in for the Hero Course! Hell, with power like that, you could be a sidekick on my agency on day one!"

Izuku's stomach did a violent flip. 

He looked past the heroes. The crowd at the perimeter had multiplied. And worse, the cell phones were out. 

Dozens of screens were pointed directly at him. Flashes went off, blindingly bright even in the afternoon sun. He could hear the excited murmurs of the crowd carrying over the distance. 

Did you see that?

He took down a giant!

Look at those wings! He looks like an angel!

Who is he? An underground hero?

Get a video! Get a video!

Panic, cold and sharp, seized Izuku's chest. This was exactly what he had spent his entire life trying to avoid. He didn't want this. He didn't want the eyes, the expectations, the pressure. He didn't want to be a weapon. He didn't want to be analyzed for his combat potential. 

"Hey, kid, what's your name?" Kamui Woods asked gently, reaching out a hand. "The police will need a statement for the unlicensed Quirk use, but given the circumstances, I'm sure I can vouch for you as a hero candidate—"

Izuku flinched away from the hero's hand. 

He looked down. In his excitement, Death Arms had taken a step forward. The heel of his heavy steel-toed hero boot was resting squarely on the edge of the wooden planter box, pressing down into the dark, meticulously cultivated soil of the eggplant bush. 

Izuku’s breathing hitched. 

"Kid? You alright?" Death Arms asked, his smile faltering as he noticed the boy's pale face. "Shock setting in?"

Izuku looked up. He didn't look at the pinned villain, who was now being surrounded by police officers. He didn't look at the cameras. He looked Death Arms dead in the eye, his expression a mixture of profound distress and quiet indignation. 

"Please," Izuku said, his voice trembling slightly, but carrying a surprising weight. "Please don't step on the soil. It compacts the roots, and it stops the water from reaching the lower taproot."

Death Arms blinked, entirely bewildered. He looked down at his foot, then back up at the boy. "Uh... what?"

Izuku didn't explain. He couldn't handle this. The noise, the lights, the heroes... it was all too much. 

He quickly bent down, snatching up his rusted pruning shears and his faded straw hat. He shoved them into the deep pockets of his overalls. 

"I have to go," Izuku blurted out. 

Before either Pro Hero could say another word, Izuku crouched low to the ground. His massive red wings snapped open to their full, glorious width. 

With a single, thunderous downward flap, the street exploded with wind pressure. The sheer updraft kicked up a localized tornado of dust and loose leaves, forcing Death Arms and Kamui Woods to shield their eyes and stagger backward. 

By the time they opened their eyes, the boy in the overalls was gone. 

All that remained of the encounter was a single, vibrant red feather slowly drifting down from the sky, landing gently on the flawless, unblemished skin of a dark purple eggplant. 

High above the Musutafu skyline, a tiny red speck darted through the clouds, flying faster than the speed of sound, desperate to escape the gravity of a world that refused to let him just grow in peace.

The soft, blue glow of the smartphone screen illuminated the dark confines of Izuku Midoriya’s bedroom. It was past midnight, but sleep was a luxury he couldn't grasp. His thumb hovered over the glass, trembling slightly before he forced himself to swipe down, refreshing the page.

The numbers jumped again. 

3.2 Million Views. 

The video, shot from a shaky, vertical angle by a civilian across the street from Lot 404, was dominating the national trending page. The title, entirely in capitalized letters, screamed from the screen: MYSTERIOUS BOY HERO SAVES KAMUI WOODS?! INSANE QUIRK! AvianVigilante

Izuku felt a wave of nausea wash over him. He watched the loop for the fiftieth time. He saw the gigantification villain stepping backward. He saw the blur of his own red wings deploying. He watched, horrified, as a flurry of his feathers pinned the massive man to the brick wall with the sheer, terrifying force of a railgun, followed by the majestic, shimmering dome of red that had protected his garden from the fallout.

To the internet, it was a masterpiece of heroics. The comment section was a rapidly scrolling waterfall of adoration and speculation. 

@HeroFanatic99: Who is this kid?! Those wings are top ten Billboard material easy!

@AllMightStans: Did you see the kinetic force on those feathers? He didn't even sweat! Put him in U.A. right now!

@CityWatcher: Wait, why did he cover that trash lot with a dome? Was there a civilian trapped in there?

@QuirkAnalyst: The spatial awareness is off the charts. He's clearly a trained underground vigilante. He's too calm.

"I was just protecting my eggplants," Izuku whispered to the empty room, his voice cracking with exhaustion. He dropped the phone onto his mattress, burying his face in his hands. 

The door to his bedroom creaked open. A sliver of warm, yellow light spilled across the floorboards. Inko Midoriya stood in the doorway, wearing her dressing gown, holding a steaming mug of chamomile tea. Her eyes, so similar to her son's, were filled with a potent mixture of maternal worry and tentative pride. 

"Izuku? Sweetheart, are you still awake?" she asked softly.

Izuku sighed, sitting up and accepting the mug. The warmth radiating through the ceramic was a small comfort. "I can't sleep, Mom. The video... it's everywhere. The local news channel even ran a segment on it during the evening broadcast. They're calling me a vigilante."

Inko sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to gently stroke the soft, downy feathers at the base of his folded wings. Izuku leaned into the touch; it was an incredibly sensitive area, and the gentle pressure helped alleviate the tension coiled in his back muscles. 

"I saw," Inko admitted softly. "Your Auntie Mitsuki called me three times about it. The neighborhood association is in an uproar. The police stopped by earlier this evening to take a statement, though they said you wouldn't be charged with illegal Quirk use since you technically defended yourself and prevented property damage." She paused, her gaze dropping to her lap. "Izuku... you were amazing."

Izuku gripped the mug tighter. "Mom, please."

"I know, I know you don't want to hear it," Inko said, her voice gentle but insistent. "But Izuku, looking at that video... looking at what you can do. You have a gift. A miraculous gift. The way you moved, the way you protected that area... it's what heroes do. I know you love your farming, I really do. But... couldn't you do both?"

Izuku looked at his mother, his green eyes reflecting a sorrow much older than his fourteen years. 

"Maybe," Inko continued, trying to sound encouraging. "Maybe you could go to U.A. High School. You could be a Pro Hero during the week, and run a farm on the weekends! Or you could be a rescue hero who specializes in rural areas! You wouldn't have to give up your plants, but you wouldn't be turning your back on your potential, either."

It was the compromise society demanded. It was the compromise his teachers, the doctors, and the heroes wanted. 

"Mom," Izuku said, setting the tea down on his nightstand. He turned to face her fully. "Do you remember when I planted those heirloom tomatoes on the fire escape when I was eight? The ones that took six weeks to germinate?"

Inko blinked, confused by the pivot. "Yes. You were so proud of them."

"And do you remember what happened to them?"

Inko winced. "A villain with a localized tornado Quirk ran down our street. The wind pressure shattered the pots. They died."

"It took me two months of daily care to grow those," Izuku said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I monitored the soil moisture, I balanced the pH, I pruned the suckers so the main stem would grow strong. I created life, Mom. And it was destroyed in two seconds by a hero and a villain who were too busy fighting to look at where they were stepping."

Izuku stood up, walking over to the window, looking out over the neon-drenched skyline of Musutafu. 

"I don't want to do it on the weekends. I don't want to be a part-time creator in a full-time world of destruction. Heroes and villains... they operate on a currency of violence. Even when heroes win, buildings fall. Streets shatter. People get hurt. I don't want to fight. I don't want to break the world, Mom. I want to feed it. If I go to U.A., they'll teach me how to use my feathers as knives. I want to use them as plows. I won't compromise on that."

Inko looked at the rigid line of her son's shoulders, the massive red wings framing him against the city lights. She saw the absolute, unyielding conviction in his posture. He wasn't a scared boy running from a fight; he was a young man who had found his calling and refused to be swayed. 

She smiled, a sad but deeply affectionate smile. "Alright, Izuku," she whispered. "If you want to be a farmer, then you'll be the best farmer this country has ever seen. Just... try to stay out of the viral videos, okay?"

"I'll do my best," Izuku groaned, finally feeling the exhaustion pull at his eyelids. 

The next afternoon, the air at Lot 404 was heavy with humidity, promising a late summer thunderstorm. 

Izuku was back in his element, desperately trying to erase the stress of his newfound internet fame. The lot was quiet, save for the ambient hum of the city beyond the brick walls. He was currently standing in front of his specialized compost bin—a three-tiered wooden structure he had built himself. 

He had his wings fully deployed. Twenty feathers were plunged deep into the decaying organic matter, spinning rapidly like the blades of a blender, aerating the compost to speed up the microbial breakdown. Meanwhile, three larger feathers were hovering over his newly planted cabbage patch, gently dropping a highly diluted, organic neem oil solution onto the leaves to ward off cabbage moths. 

It was a delicate, intricate ballet of multitasking that required immense concentration. 

Which is why the sudden, overwhelming stench of burnt caramel and ozone made Izuku's nose wrinkle in displeasure. 

CRACK-BOOM.

The heavy iron gate at the front of the lot didn't just swing open; it was blasted off its hinges. The warped metal clattered violently onto the pavement, crushing a row of decorative marigolds Izuku had planted near the entrance to attract pollinators. 

Izuku froze. His feathers stopped spinning in the compost. He slowly turned around. 

Standing in the dissipating smoke of the ruined gate, silhouetted against the afternoon sun, was Katsuki Bakugo. 

Bakugo was in his middle school uniform, but his tie was discarded, his collar was popped, and his hands were already popping with miniature, furious explosions. His crimson eyes scanned the lush, green expanse of Lot 404, before locking onto Izuku in the center. The sheer malice radiating from the blonde boy was palpable enough to wilt the nearby spinach.

"So," Bakugo growled, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, suppressed fury. "This is where you hide, you damn bird."

Izuku sighed, feeling a migraine beginning to form behind his eyes. He recalled his scattered feathers, pulling them back to his wings to keep them out of harm's way. "Hello, Kacchan. You broke my gate. And my marigolds."

"Shut up about the damn weeds!" Bakugo roared, stomping into the garden. His heavy sneakers crunched on the gravel path. "I saw the video, Deku. The whole damn school saw the video. The whole city saw it! You took down a Gigantification villain in three seconds without even breaking a sweat!"

"I didn't want to fight him, Kacchan. He was going to step on my eggplants," Izuku explained tiredly, picking up a physical watering can. 

"Stop lying to me!" Bakugo screamed, his hands igniting into larger, brighter flares. "You've been holding back! For years, you've sat there in class, acting like some pacifist loser, acting like you're above it all! You looked down on me! You thought you were so much better than me that you didn't even need to try!"

"That's not true—"

"I am the best!" Bakugo interrupted, pounding a fist into his chest, singeing his own shirt. "I'm the one going to U.A.! I'm the one who's going to surpass All Might! But now everyone is talking about the 'Avian Vigilante'. They're comparing you to me, Deku. And I won't stand for it. I won't have some dirt-eating freak making me look like second best!"

Bakugo dropped into a wide, aggressive combat stance. He aimed his right palm directly at Izuku. 

"We're settling this right now. You and me. No heroes, no teachers. You're going to fight me, and I'm going to burn those stupid red wings to ash, and prove that I'm the strongest!"

Izuku looked at Bakugo. He saw the pride, the insecurity, the desperate need for validation. And then, Izuku looked past Bakugo, at the delicate, climbing snap peas that were just beginning to flower on their bamboo trellises, right in the line of fire. 

"Kacchan, please," Izuku said, his voice dropping into a register of utter seriousness. "Don't do this here. You'll ruin the soil pH with your nitroglycerin sweat, and the heat will cause the plants to go into shock."

"Die!" 

Bakugo didn't wait. He launched himself forward, using an explosion behind him to propel his body across the lot like a human missile. He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, his right hand glowing white-hot as he aimed a point-blank blast at Izuku's chest. 

Izuku didn't flinch. 

In a microsecond, his wings flared open. But he didn't attack. 

A wall of fifty large, rigid primary feathers slammed together into the ground directly in front of Izuku, interlocking their barbed edges to form an impenetrable, curved shield. 

BOOM!

The explosion washed over the feather shield. Flames licked the edges, and the shockwave rattled the wooden planter boxes, but not a single spark touched Izuku, nor the cabbage patch behind him. The feathers, fortified by Izuku’s telekinesis, absorbed the heat and kinetic force perfectly. 

"Don't just defend, you coward!" Bakugo screamed, using the recoil of his blast to flip backward, landing lightly on the gravel path. He immediately began stringing together a rapid-fire series of explosions, launching localized fireballs across the garden. 

This is bad, Izuku thought, his mind processing the trajectory of the blasts at superhuman speeds. The ambient temperature is rising too fast. The tomatoes will suffer blossom drop if the air gets above thirty-two degrees Celsius.

Izuku sprang into action, but it wasn't the action of a fighter. It was the frantic, hyper-competent action of a gardener performing emergency damage control.

As Bakugo fired another massive blast aimed at Izuku’s head, Izuku ducked. But he didn't just dodge. He sent twenty feathers flying in a wide arc around Bakugo. 

Bakugo smirked, thinking it was a flanking attack. He spun around, preparing to blast the incoming feathers out of the sky. 

But the feathers didn't aim for him. They bypassed Bakugo entirely, diving into a large rain barrel near the back fence. The feathers absorbed the water like sponges, flying rapidly back over the garden and shaking themselves violently. A cooling, localized mist rained down over the tomato and cucumber plants, rapidly lowering the ambient temperature of the localized greenhouse effect Bakugo was creating. 

"Are you watering your plants right now?!" Bakugo roared, absolutely unhinged by the sheer disrespect. 

"They're sensitive to sudden thermal shifts, Kacchan!" Izuku yelled back, jumping over a raised bed as Bakugo charged him again. 

Bakugo lunged, swinging a massive right hook fueled by a concussive blast. 

Izuku side-stepped with effortless grace, his speed vastly superior to Bakugo's middle-school-level physical limits. As Bakugo flew past him, off-balance from missing the punch, he was heading directly toward the fragile bamboo trellises holding the snap peas. 

No you don't. 

Izuku's wings flared. Ten incredibly soft, downy covert feathers detached and shot forward, wrapping around Bakugo’s wrists and waist like a thick, plush rope. They didn't strike him; they acted as a bungee cord, catching his momentum and redirecting his trajectory mid-air. Bakugo was yanked violently to the left, crashing safely onto a pile of empty fertilizer bags instead of the trellises. 

"Stop running!" Bakugo shrieked, scrambling to his feet, coughing on the dust. His pride was in absolute tatters. He was fighting with everything he had, and Deku was literally treating him like a rogue lawnmower that needed to be steered away from the flowerbeds. 

Bakugo pressed his palms together, aiming directly at Izuku, who was currently standing in front of the prize-winning cabbages. 

"Stun Grenade!" Bakugo screamed. 

A blinding flash of light and a massive shockwave erupted from his hands. It was his strongest move, a blast designed to blind and disorient. 

Izuku didn't have time to form a shield. The blast was too wide. 

Instead, Izuku unleashed his full wingspan. He planted his boots into the gravel, braced his core, and swung his massive wings forward with the force of a hurricane. 

The resulting wind pressure didn't just meet Bakugo’s shockwave; it swallowed it. The blast of air from Izuku’s wings completely dispersed the heat, blew out the flames, and sent the blinding smoke rocketing straight up into the atmosphere. 

The gale-force wind hit Bakugo like a physical wall. He was lifted off his feet and thrown backward, skidding across the dirt and coming to a hard stop against the brick firewall of the lot. 

Silence descended on Lot 404. 

The smoke cleared. The dust settled. 

Bakugo was sprawled in the dirt, gasping for air. His arms ached, his palms were stinging from overuse, and his chest heaved as he tried to process what had just happened. He had thrown everything in his arsenal. He had fought with the intent to destroy. 

He slowly looked up. 

Izuku was standing exactly where he had been before the Stun Grenade. He hadn't broken a sweat. His breathing was even. He was currently using one single red feather to delicately wipe a speck of soot off a pristine, bright green cabbage leaf. 

The garden was untouched. The trellises were standing. The eggplants were safe. The ambient temperature was cool and misty. 

It was a total, absolute, undeniable defeat. And not a single punch had been thrown. 

Bakugo dragged himself into a sitting position, his uniform stained with mud and soot. He looked at Izuku, his crimson eyes wide and trembling with a cocktail of rage, confusion, and despair. 

"Why?" Bakugo choked out, his voice hoarse. "Why won't you fight me? Why won't you just hit me back? Are you mocking me? Do you pity me that much?!"

Izuku finished cleaning the cabbage leaf. He recalled the feather to his back, turned, and walked slowly over to where Bakugo was sitting. 

He stopped a few feet away, looking down at the explosive boy. 

"I don't pity you, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice devoid of anger, filled only with a deep, weary sincerity. "And I'm not mocking you. I'm just not playing your game."

"It's not a game!" Bakugo yelled, slamming his fist into the dirt. "It's how the world works! The strong fight the villains, and the weak hide behind them! You have the power to be at the top, and you're wasting it in the dirt!"

"You think power is only about winning fights?" Izuku asked, gesturing around the garden. "Look around you, Kacchan. Six months ago, this lot was a graveyard. It was full of broken glass, toxic waste, and dead soil. Nothing could survive here."

Izuku pointed to the massive, sprawling vines of the cucumber plants. "I didn't use my wings to beat this lot into submission. I used them to clear the poison. I used them to turn the earth, to bring oxygen to the roots, to carry water when the rain wouldn't come. I brought this place back to life."

Bakugo stared at him, his jaw clenched, but he didn't interrupt. 

"You want to be a hero, Kacchan. You want to blow up villains and be the strongest. That's fine. The world needs people to stop the bad guys. But the world has enough people breaking things. Every time a hero and a villain clash, the street cracks. Buildings fall. Lives are disrupted." 

Izuku knelt down, so he was at eye level with Bakugo. He reached out and scooped up a handful of dark, rich soil, holding it between them. 

"I don't want to break things," Izuku said softly, his green eyes burning with a passion Bakugo had never seen from him before. "I want to be someone who builds. I want to nurture life from the ground up. I want to feed people. That is my strength, Kacchan. My strength isn't in my fists; it's in my hands. I'm not looking down on you. I'm looking down at the earth. Because this is where I belong."

Bakugo stared at the handful of dirt. He looked at Izuku’s hands, calloused and stained with chlorophyll, a stark contrast to the divine, lethal wings resting on his back. 

For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo felt a profound paradigm shift. 

He had always thought Deku's refusal to fight was an act of arrogance. He thought Deku believed he was so far above Bakugo that a fight was beneath him. But looking into Deku's eyes now, Bakugo realized the terrifying truth. 

Deku wasn't above him. Deku was just standing on a completely different planet. 

They weren't on the same ladder. Bakugo was climbing a mountain of heroics, fighting tooth and nail for the peak. Izuku was standing in a valley, perfectly content to plant a forest. You couldn't defeat an opponent who fundamentally didn't care about the arena. 

The anger, the boiling, toxic insecurity that had fueled Bakugo for years, suddenly felt incredibly stupid. It evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, exhausted confusion. 

Bakugo scoffed, a dry, humorless sound. He slapped Izuku's hand away, scattering the dirt back onto the ground. 

"You're a freak, Deku," Bakugo muttered, pulling himself to his feet. He brushed the worst of the mud off his uniform, refusing to look Izuku in the eye. "You have the Quirk of a god, and the ambition of a peasant."

"I like being a peasant," Izuku replied, standing up and offering a small, genuine smile. "Peasants get the freshest corn."

Bakugo glared at him, a vein popping in his forehead. "If you ever use those damn feathers to water a plant while I'm talking to you again, I'll blow your greenhouse to kingdom come."

"I'll keep that in mind, Kacchan."

Bakugo turned his back, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He walked toward the ruined front gate, his shoulders hunched. He paused at the threshold, kicking a piece of warped metal out of the way. 

"I'm going to be Number One," Bakugo said, not looking back. "I'm going to the top. And when I'm rich and famous, I'm not buying any of your stupid, overpriced organic vegetables."

"They're not overpriced if you buy in bulk, Kacchan!" Izuku called after him. 

Bakugo just flipped him the bird over his shoulder and disappeared down the street, the faint smell of burnt caramel fading with the afternoon breeze. 

Izuku stood in the garden, letting out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for ten years. The tension, the rivalry, the unspoken challenge that had shadowed his entire childhood was finally gone. Bakugo finally understood. He didn't agree with it, he thought Izuku was insane, but he understood. 

Izuku turned back to his garden. The sky was beginning to turn a bruised, stormy purple as the humidity finally broke. The first few drops of summer rain began to fall, pattering gently against the broad leaves of the cabbages. 

Izuku smiled, deploying a few feathers to quickly repair the bamboo trellises that had been knocked loose by the wind pressure. Tomorrow, he would have to fix the front gate. But today, his crops had survived the storm. And that was a victory greater than any hero ranking.

The boardroom of the Hero Public Safety Commission was a place entirely devoid of warmth. It was a sterile, cavernous space located on the top floor of a heavily fortified tower in Tokyo, constructed of polished slate, brushed steel, and sound-dampening glass. The air conditioning was always set a few degrees too low, preserving an atmosphere of clinical detachment. It was a room where human lives were quantified into statistics, threat levels, and public approval ratings.

Keigo Takami, known to the world as the Wing Hero: Hawks, sat slouching in a high-backed leather chair, his booted feet resting casually on the edge of the mahogany conference table. To anyone else, his relaxed posture and the lazy, half-lidded expression on his face would project an aura of absolute, untouchable confidence. 

But the President of the Commission, a severe, gray-haired woman sitting at the head of the table, knew better. She knew it was a mask. She had helped forge it.

"I assume you've seen the footage, Hawks," the President said, her voice devoid of inflection. She pressed a button on a remote, and the massive screen dominating the far wall flickered to life. 

It was the viral video from Musutafu. The Avian Vigilante. 

Hawks didn't sit up, but his golden eyes sharpened slightly behind the amber tint of his visor. He watched the shaky, vertical footage of a fourteen-year-old boy in dirty overalls unleashing a torrent of crimson feathers. He watched the feathers pierce the villain’s reinforced clothing, carrying the sheer kinetic force required to pin a multi-ton gigantification user to a brick wall. He watched the rest of the feathers weave together into an impenetrable, shimmering dome to protect a patch of dirt from falling debris. 

Hawks felt a phantom itch between his shoulder blades. 

The Quirk wasn't just similar to his own. It was a near-perfect mirror. The coloration, the telekinetic detachment, the aerodynamic manipulation, the tensile strength—it was all there. If anything, the boy’s wings looked slightly larger, the plumage denser, hinting at a raw power that Hawks, for all his terrifying speed, might not natively possess. 

"The boy's name is Izuku Midoriya. Fourteen years old. Middle schooler in Musutafu," the President recited, reading from a sleek tablet. "His Quirk registry simply lists it as 'Fierce Wings.' His mother is a civilian with a weak telekinetic attraction Quirk. His father breathed fire. The mutation is a statistical anomaly, a genetic jackpot."

"He's got good form," Hawks murmured, popping a salted almond into his mouth. "A bit unrefined, maybe. Leaving himself wide open when he deployed the dome. But the kinetic output... yeah, that's top-tier. He took down a giant without breaking a sweat, and he didn't even scratch the guy's skin. That's high-level spatial awareness."

"He is entirely untrained," the President corrected sharply. "No martial arts background. No private Quirk counseling. He achieved that level of precision through pure, raw instinct." She set the tablet down, clasping her hands together. "We cannot allow an asset of this magnitude to slip through the cracks, Hawks. He applied to an agricultural high school yesterday. A farming school."

Hawks chuckled, a dry, breathy sound. "Kid likes his veggies. What's the problem?"

"The problem is a waste of a national resource," the President snapped. "With a Quirk like that, he could be in the Top Ten by the time he's twenty. He could be your successor. Or your partner. The Commission wants him in U.A. High School's Hero Course. We will sponsor his recommendation. Your orders are to intercept him, assess his personality, and convince him to accept the Commission’s backing."

Hawks finally swung his feet off the table, standing up in one fluid, graceful motion. His own massive, crimson wings ruffled behind him, the feathers clicking together like the drawing of blades. 

"So, you want me to play recruiter," Hawks said, his tone breezy, though a familiar, heavy exhaustion settled deep in his chest. "Go down there, flash a smile, sign an autograph, and reel him in?"

"Use whatever leverage is necessary. Fame, money, the moral obligation of power. Secure the asset, Hawks."

"Copy that, Madam President," Hawks said, offering a lazy, two-finger salute. 

As Hawks walked out of the freezing boardroom and stepped onto the open-air launchpad of the tower, he let out a long, quiet breath. He looked out over the sprawling, concrete expanse of Tokyo. To the world, he was the Number Three Hero. He was the man who flew too fast for anyone to catch. But in his own mind, he was just a bird who had been taught to love his cage. 

Another kid with wings, Hawks thought as he stepped off the ledge, allowing gravity to claim him for two terrifying seconds before his wings caught the thermals, launching him into the clouds like a scarlet bullet. Let's go see if you're ready to sell your soul, kid.

The Tanaka Family Farm was situated in the deep, rural outskirts of Musutafu prefecture, nestled in a valley where the concrete of the city finally surrendered to rolling, emerald hills. It was a modest, old-fashioned operation that supplied organic produce to high-end restaurants in the city. 

For Izuku Midoriya, it was heaven. 

Since he was too young to be legally employed, Izuku traded his weekends for an unofficial apprenticeship under Old Man Tanaka, a gruff, sun-baked farmer with a Quirk that let him predict the weather with near-perfect accuracy by smelling the wind. 

It was a Saturday morning, and the sun was already baking the earth, sending shimmering waves of heat rising from the freshly tilled fields. 

Izuku was out in the southern acreage, wearing his standard faded denim overalls, a white undershirt soaked through with sweat, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was tasked with digging new irrigation trenches for the upcoming corn planting. 

It was grueling, back-breaking work. Or, at least, it would have been for a normal teenager. 

Izuku stood at the head of the row, a physical iron hoe in his hands. But he wasn't working alone. His massive red wings were fully deployed, casting a long, cooling shadow over the dry earth. From his wings, forty primary feathers were detached, hovering in the air around him. 

They moved in perfect, rhythmic synchronization. The feathers plunged into the earth like spades, their rigid edges cutting through the dry topsoil, scooping it up, and depositing it neatly on the banks of the trench. Izuku moved forward at a steady walking pace, using the physical hoe to refine the edges and measure the depth, while his Quirk did the heavy lifting of a mechanized excavator. 

He was in a state of absolute flow. The smell of the turned earth, the rhythmic thwack-scrape of the feathers, the chirp of cicadas in the nearby tree line—it was a symphony of peace. He wasn't thinking about viral videos, or Bakugo, or the expectations of society. He was just thinking about the optimal depth for a corn root system.

High above, hidden in the glare of the morning sun, Hawks was circling. 

He had tracked the boy’s location through local traffic cameras and a bit of Commission surveillance overreach. Hawks had expected to find the kid training in an alley, or maybe showing off to friends in a park. 

Instead, peering through his specialized aviator visor, Hawks watched the 'Avian Vigilante' digging a ditch. 

Well, that's new, Hawks thought, banking sharply to the left. He watched the boy's feathers moving the earth. Hawks frowned slightly. Controlling fifty feathers at once to do localized, heavy lifting required immense mental bandwidth. Doing it smoothly, without jerky movements, while simultaneously performing physical labor with his actual hands... the kid's multitasking processing power was terrifying. 

Alright, time to make an entrance.

Hawks tucked his wings tight against his back and went into a steep, supersonic dive. He aimed directly for the dirt road adjacent to Izuku's field. He didn't slow down until he was fifty feet above the ground. 

With a theatrical flair that had won him millions of fans, Hawks flared his wings outward. 

The sudden deceleration created a massive, concussive boom of wind pressure. Dust, loose dirt, and dead leaves exploded into the air as Hawks touched down on the dirt road, crouching low in a classic, dramatic three-point superhero landing. 

He waited for the dust to clear. He prepared his trademark, easygoing smile. He waited for the gasp of shock, the frantic fumbling for a pen and a notebook, the inevitable, "Oh my god, you're Hawks!"

The dust settled. 

Izuku Midoriya had stopped walking. He was leaning on his hoe. He was looking at Hawks, but his expression wasn't one of awe or excitement. 

Izuku looked profoundly irritated. 

He reached up, adjusted his straw hat, and pointed a dirt-stained finger toward the edge of the field. "You're standing on the main irrigation line," Izuku called out, his voice carrying over the quiet hum of the farm. "And you just blew topsoil all over the young lettuce. It's going to take me an hour to wash the grit out of the leaves."

Hawks blinked. His easy smile faltered for a fraction of a second. He looked down at his boots. Sure enough, he was standing directly on top of a thick, black rubber hose. He awkwardly stepped off it. 

"Uh, my bad, kid," Hawks said, recovering his breezy tone. He sauntered over to the edge of the field, leaning against a wooden fence post, projecting effortless cool. "Didn't mean to mess up the salads. I'm Hawks. Number Three Pro Hero. But I guess you already knew that, right?"

Izuku sighed, wiping his brow with the back of a gloved hand. He recalled his forty feathers, letting them slide seamlessly back into his wings. He walked over to the fence line, looking the Pro Hero up and down. 

"I know who you are," Izuku said politely, though his tone lacked any reverence. "What is a Pro Hero doing all the way out here? There haven't been any villain sightings in this district for months."

"I'm not here for a villain, kid. I'm here for you," Hawks said, tapping the side of his visor. "Saw your little debut on the internet yesterday. Pinning a giant to a wall? Impressive stuff. The suits at the Commission were practically drooling. They sent me to have a little chat with you about your future."

Izuku’s shoulders slumped. The exhaustion that washed over his face made him look ten years older. "I already told the police, I was just defending my garden. I'm not a vigilante. I don't want to be a hero. I'm going to agricultural school."

Hawks laughed, a rich, melodic sound. "Yeah, I heard about that. Totsuka Ag, right? Cute. But come on, kid, let's be real. You're holding a winning lottery ticket. With wings like ours, you don't play in the dirt. You own the sky. I can get you into U.A. on a full recommendation. The Commission will fast-track your provisional license. You'll have fame, sponsorships, a penthouse in Tokyo, and you'll be saving thousands of lives. Why would you throw that away for... what? Carrots?"

Izuku didn't answer immediately. He looked at Hawks, really looked at him. He saw the expensive, custom-tailored hero costume lined with fur. He saw the relaxed, practiced smile. But he also saw the tension in Hawks' shoulders, and the way the hero's eyes constantly scanned the horizon, never truly at rest. 

Izuku reached into a bucket resting by the fence line. He pulled out a spare, heavy iron hoe. 

He held it out over the fence. 

"If you're going to stand here and talk to me all morning," Izuku said evenly, "you might as well make yourself useful. We need to finish this trench before the sun gets too high."

Hawks stared at the crude farming implement. He looked at Izuku's totally serious face. For the first time in perhaps five years, the Number Three Pro Hero was completely, utterly thrown off script. 

"You want me... to dig a ditch?" Hawks asked, incredulous. 

"You have the same Quirk as me," Izuku pointed out rationally. "Your feathers have high tensile strength, right? You should be able to move at least a cubic yard of soil a minute if you stagger them correctly. I can show you the angle."

Hawks couldn't help it. A genuine, unscripted bark of laughter escaped his chest. "Kid, you've got some nerve. Alright. You want to see how the pros use Fierce Wings? Watch and learn."

Hawks didn't take the hoe. Instead, with a flick of his mind, twenty of his own crimson feathers detached. They were sharper than Izuku's, honed to a razor's edge from years of combat training. They shot forward like darts, plunging into the dirt at the head of the trench. 

"You just slice and lift," Hawks said confidently, gesturing with two fingers. His feathers ripped upward. 

FWOOSH.

Instead of neatly scooping the earth, Hawks' feathers—moving far too fast and carrying too much cutting force—sliced cleanly through the compacted soil. A massive cloud of pulverized dirt exploded into the air, showering both of them in dust, but leaving the actual trench no deeper than a few inches. The soil had simply fallen back through the gaps between the blades. 

Hawks coughed, waving the dust away from his face. 

Izuku sighed, a long, long-suffering sound. He picked up his own hoe, tapped the handle on the fence to clear the dirt, and walked back over. 

"Your feathers are too stiff," Izuku explained, as if correcting a toddler. "You're treating the soil like it's a solid target you need to destroy. Soil is alive. It's aerated. It has structure. If you just attack it with velocity, it shatters. You have to curve the edges of the feathers, create a spoon-like concavity, and lift from the base of the root structure."

Izuku demonstrated, sending a single feather into the earth. It moved slowly, delicately vibrating to loosen the dirt, before curving inward and lifting a perfect, intact clod of soil, placing it gently on the bank. 

Hawks watched the red feather move. He was mesmerized. 

His whole life, he had been taught that speed was everything. Faster, Hawks. Sharper, Hawks. They can't hit what they can't see. His feathers were swords, daggers, and projectiles. He had never once considered using them as... hands. The sheer control, the micro-adjustments Izuku was making to the tension of the feather to hold the dirt without crushing it, was a masterclass in telekinetic subtlety. 

"You know," Hawks murmured, the breezy facade dropping just a fraction. "You could use that same control to disarm a villain without breaking their wrists. You could be the most precise rescue hero in history."

Izuku stopped digging. He leaned on the hoe, looking out over the rolling green hills. 

"Mr. Hawks," Izuku started, his voice quiet. "When you fly over the city, what do you see?"

Hawks blinked at the question. "I see traffic patterns. I see choke points where villains might corner civilians. I see structural weaknesses in buildings in case of a collapse. I see threats."

Izuku nodded slowly. "Right. You see a world that is constantly on the verge of breaking, and your job is to swoop in and hold it together for one more day. That's a noble thing. It really is. The world needs people like you."

Izuku turned to face the Pro Hero, his green eyes reflecting the bright summer sun. 

"But when I look at a field of dirt, I don't see threats. I see potential. I see the foundation of life. Heroes are a reactionary force, Mr. Hawks. You only arrive after something has gone wrong. But farming... farming is an act of creation. It's a promise to the future. I don't want my legacy to be the villains I defeated. I want my legacy to be the people I fed. I want to build a world that doesn't need to be saved constantly, because it's already sustained."

Hawks stared at the boy. The words struck him with the force of a physical blow. It was such a radically different paradigm, such a quiet, unshakeable philosophy, that it left Hawks momentarily speechless. 

"Come with me," Izuku said, setting the hoe down. "I want to show you something."

Hawks, feeling strangely adrift, followed the fourteen-year-old boy in dirty overalls. They walked past the cornfields, past the tomato trellises, until they reached a large, climate-controlled glass greenhouse at the center of the property. 

The air inside was thick, humid, and smelled intensely sweet. Row upon row of elevated hydroponic gutters stretched across the room, overflowing with vibrant green foliage and thousands of ruby-red strawberries. 

"These are Old Man Tanaka's pride and joy," Izuku said, his voice softening with reverence. "The Amao strawberries. They're incredibly delicate. If you squeeze them even a millimeter too hard, they bruise, and they can't be sold."

Izuku walked down the aisle. His wings fluttered softly. A dozen small, incredibly soft downy feathers—the kind found near the base of the wing, usually useless in combat—detached and floated toward the strawberry plants. 

Hawks watched, holding his breath. 

The feathers didn't just grab the fruit. They danced around the vines. Izuku closed his eyes. 

"I can feel the weight of the fruit through the feathers," Izuku murmured, his voice a hypnotic whisper in the quiet greenhouse. "I can feel the tension in the stem. When a strawberry is perfectly ripe, the stem loosens. It practically wants to let go."

A red feather gently slipped beneath a massive, perfectly shaped strawberry. The feather didn't pull. It just provided a tiny, upward pressure, mimicking the cradle of a human palm. With a soft snap, the ripe strawberry detached from the vine, resting perfectly in the bed of the red feather. 

The feather floated over to Hawks, hovering right in front of his chest, offering him the fruit. 

Hawks slowly reached out. He took the strawberry. It was warm from the greenhouse sun, flawless, and smelled like pure sugar. 

As he looked at the red feather floating back to Izuku's wing, an unwanted, deeply buried memory violently forced its way into Hawks' mind. 

He was six years old. He was in a windowless, concrete training room deep beneath the Commission headquarters. The air was freezing. His bare feet were numb. 

Before him stood a table covered in delicate, antique glass dolls. 

"Again, Keigo," the cold voice of his handler crackled over the intercom. "Speed and lethality."

Little Keigo cried out, unleashing a barrage of his feathers. They tore across the room like a hailstorm. They shattered the glass dolls into a million glittering pieces of dust. 

"Too slow," the voice reprimanded. "You clipped the edges of the table. A hero cannot afford collateral damage in close-quarters combat. You are a weapon. Weapons do not hesitate. Set up the next row of targets."

Keigo had wept, pulling his exhausted feathers back, his small back aching in agony. He had just wanted a toy to play with. He was never allowed to touch anything without breaking it first.

Hawks blinked hard, snapping back to the present. The humid air of the greenhouse felt suddenly suffocating. He looked at Izuku Midoriya. 

He saw a boy with the exact same mutation, the exact same potential for absolute destruction. But instead of shattering glass, this boy was using his feathers to cradle fruit. He was using a weapon of war to harvest sweetness. 

A profound, aching sorrow swelled in Hawks' chest. It was the grief of a stolen childhood, the realization of what he could have been if someone, anyone, had looked at his wings and seen a boy instead of a sword. 

But beneath the sorrow, there was something else. There was a fierce, protective warmth. 

Hawks looked down at the strawberry in his hand. He took a bite. The juice exploded on his tongue—sweet, bright, and incredibly complex. It was, without a doubt, the best thing he had ever tasted. 

He chewed slowly, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat. 

"Kid," Hawks said, his voice unusually quiet, stripped entirely of its media-trained bravado. "How long did it take to grow these?"

"Four months of constant care," Izuku replied, opening his eyes, looking at Hawks curiously. 

Hawks nodded slowly. He looked around the greenhouse, and then out the glass walls to the sprawling farm beyond. He looked at the dirt, the water, the life that this boy was so desperate to protect. 

The President’s orders echoed in his head. Use whatever leverage is necessary. Secure the asset. 

Hawks took another bite of the strawberry. He thought about Izuku Midoriya in a U.A. uniform. He thought about Izuku being screamed at by drill instructors, being forced to dodge explosions, being taught to harden his soft feathers into knives, until the boy forgot how to cradle a strawberry. 

Hawks closed his eyes. No. Not this one. They don't get this one.

Hawks swallowed the last of the fruit, tossing the green stem into a nearby compost bin. He reached into his aviator jacket, pulling out a sleek, government-issued datapad. With a few quick taps of his thumbs, he opened his official assessment report. 

Under the section labeled Combat Viability, Hawks typed a single sentence. 

Asset possesses severe psychological blocks preventing offensive Quirk application; entirely lacks killer instinct and possesses structural feather fragility unsuited for Pro Hero combat.

He hit submit. It was a lie. It was a massive, treasonous lie that could cost him his career if the Commission ever looked too closely. 

Hawks slipped the datapad back into his jacket. He looked up at Izuku, and for the first time that day, he smiled a genuine, unguarded smile. The tension in his shoulders melted away. 

"Well, Midoriya," Hawks sighed, stretching his arms over his head. "I've gotta say, I'm disappointed. I came all this way expecting to recruit the next big thing. But looking at your Quirk up close? Your feathers are way too soft. You'd get eaten alive in the Hero Course. You just don't have the stomach for violence."

Izuku blinked, taken aback by the sudden shift in tone. "Wait... you're not going to force me to go to U.A.?"

Hawks chuckled, walking toward the greenhouse exit. "I can't force you to do anything, kid. And honestly, the Commission wouldn't want a pacifist weighing down the rankings. I'll tell the suits that the internet blew the video out of proportion. You're just a kid with a flashy Quirk and a green thumb. Case closed."

Izuku stared at the hero's back. He wasn't stupid. He had seen the way Hawks looked at the feathers. He knew Hawks was lying to protect him. 

"Mr. Hawks," Izuku called out, causing the hero to pause at the door. 

"Yeah, kid?"

"When I harvest the corn in late August... it's really good. The sugar content is incredible. If you're ever flying by... you don't have to be on duty to stop by. We always have extra for guests."

Hawks looked over his shoulder. The golden eyes behind the visor were soft. 

"I might just take you up on that, Midoriya. Keep your hands in the dirt."

With a sharp thrust of his massive red wings, Hawks launched himself out of the greenhouse doors and shot into the sky. He climbed higher and higher, piercing the cloud layer, feeling the freezing air rush over his face. 

For the first time in a long time, the Wing Hero didn't feel like a weapon. He felt light. 

Down below, Izuku Midoriya watched the red speck disappear into the blue sky. He smiled, picked up his hoe, and walked back out into the sun to finish his trench.

The crisp, biting chill of late February hung over the city of Musutafu like a heavy blanket. The sky was an unforgiving, cloudless gray, mirroring the severe, monolithic architecture of U.A. High School. 

Today was the day of the National Entrance Exams. 

Before the towering, H-shaped gates of the most prestigious hero academy in the country, a sea of thousands of anxious teenagers shifted nervously. The air was thick with the scent of adrenaline, sweat, and ozone from nervously leaking Quirks. News vans were parked along the perimeter, their cameras zooming in on the fresh crop of hopefuls who wished to bleed for their country. 

Katsuki Bakugo walked through the gates with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black middle-school uniform. He didn't look at the cameras, and he didn't look at the other examinees. To him, they were already background noise. Pedestrians. Extras. 

He cracked his neck, feeling the familiar, volatile spark of nitroglycerin pooling in his palms. He was ready. He was going to utterly dismantle the practical exam. He was going to shred the robots, claim the highest score in U.A. history, and carve his name into the bedrock of hero society. 

But as he stood in the courtyard, listening to Present Mic’s booming voice echoing from the orientation auditorium, Katsuki paused. He glanced over his shoulder, his crimson eyes scanning the crowd of applicants. 

For a fraction of a second, he looked for a mop of unruly green hair. He looked for the flash of massive, intimidating red wings. 

Bakugo scoffed, turning back toward the auditorium. Idiot, he thought, though the word lacked its usual venom. He actually went through with it.

Eighty miles away, nestled deep within the fertile valleys of the Shizuoka Prefecture, the atmosphere could not have been more different. 

There were no media vans. There were no towering glass skyscrapers, and there were certainly no giant, militarized robots waiting to be destroyed. Instead, the campus of Totsuka Agricultural High School spread out like a beautiful patchwork quilt of terraced fields, massive, glittering glass greenhouses, and rustic, timber-framed classrooms. The air smelled of pine needles, damp earth, and blooming winter plum blossoms. 

Izuku Midoriya stood before the humble wooden gates of the school, wearing a thick, oversized green winter coat with specially tailored slits in the back to accommodate his wings. His red plumage was folded neatly, relaxed and resting comfortably against his spine. 

He took a deep breath, letting the clean, frigid country air fill his lungs. He wasn't nervous. For the first time in his entire life, standing in an educational setting, he felt a profound sense of peace. 

The practical exam at Totsuka was nothing like U.A.’s combat arena. 

The applicants were divided into small groups and led into a massive, humid greenhouse. The proctors were older, sun-baked men and women with calloused hands and gentle eyes. 

"Alright, applicants," a proctor with a plant-growth Quirk called out, holding a clipboard. "Your practical exam consists of three stations. Station one: Soil Diagnostics. You will be given three mystery soil samples and must identify the pH imbalance and suggest the correct organic amendment. Station two: Grafting. You must successfully graft a scion of an apple tree onto a provided rootstock. Station three: Pest Identification and Remediation without the use of synthetic chemicals. You have two hours. Begin."

Izuku walked to his first station. There were no explosions here. There was no screaming. There was just the quiet, focused energy of creation. 

He looked at the boy next to him—a tall, lanky kid whose fingers ended in specialized root-like nodules. The boy plunged his fingers into the soil sample, closing his eyes in deep concentration. To Izuku's right, a girl was quietly humming, her Quirk pulling microscopic droplets of moisture from the air to water a wilting fern. 

Izuku smiled. These are my people, he thought. 

He stepped up to the grafting station. He was provided with a sharp knife, grafting tape, a dormant apple scion, and a rootstock. 

Izuku didn't reach for the knife. Instead, he let his coat slip down slightly, exposing the base of his wings. A single, incredibly sharp primary feather detached. It hovered in the air, glowing with a faint, telekinetic red aura. 

With surgical, breathtaking precision, the feather sliced through the rootstock at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. It then turned to the scion, making a mirroring cut so flawless it looked like it had been done by a laser. Three softer, downy covert feathers fluttered forward, holding the two pieces of wood together with exact, unwavering pressure. Finally, a pair of rigid feathers spun around the joined wood, wrapping the grafting tape tightly and securely in a matter of seconds. 

The proctor, who was walking down the aisle to grade the students, stopped dead in her tracks. 

She stared at the perfectly grafted sapling, and then at the massive red wings on Izuku's back. She had read his file. She knew he possessed a mutant-emitter hybrid Quirk classed by the Commission as a weapon of mass destruction. 

"Midoriya-kun," the proctor whispered, her eyes wide. "The cellular alignment on this graft... it's mathematically perfect. The cambium layers are perfectly matched. Did you... did you just use a high-velocity combat Quirk to perform micro-botanical surgery?"

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, a bashful smile spreading across his freckled face. "Well, sensei, feathers are just really precise tools if you calibrate the telekinetic frequency right. It’s a lot faster than using a knife, and the clean cut prevents localized tissue necrosis."

The proctor slowly shook her head, a massive grin breaking across her weathered face. "Son, I don't know why the hero schools let you slip away, but their loss is the agricultural world's greatest gain. Full marks."

Izuku beamed. He didn't have to break a single thing to pass. He only had to help something grow. 

Three Years Later.

The Japanese countryside in late spring was a symphony of color and life, but nowhere was it more vibrant than the sprawling, fifty-acre expanse of Midoriya Organic Farms. 

Seventeen-year-old Izuku Midoriya stood at the edge of a massive, freshly tilled field. The boy had vanished. In his place stood a young man forged by the elements. He was taller now, his shoulders broad and corded with the dense, functional muscle required to haul fifty-pound bags of fertilizer and maneuver a tractor. His skin was deeply tanned by the relentless sun, a dusting of dark freckles standing out against his bronze complexion. He wore his signature faded denim overalls, the legs tucked into heavy, mud-caked rubber boots. 

But the most striking feature remained his wings. They had grown even larger, spanning nearly ten feet across, the red plumage so vibrant it seemed to burn against the azure sky. 

Izuku wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, pushing his straw hat back on his head. He looked out over the two-acre plot of dark, overturned earth. 

"Alright," Izuku murmured to himself, stretching his arms over his head. "Let's get the soybeans in before the afternoon heat peaks."

He closed his eyes. He didn't tense his muscles for a fight. He relaxed them for a harvest. 

FWOOSH.

With a sound like the unfurling of a massive sail, his wings opened. Over four hundred primary and covert feathers detached simultaneously, swarming into the air above him like a localized red tornado. 

Next to him sat five massive, fifty-pound burlap sacks filled with soybean seeds. 

With a subtle, conductor-like wave of his hand, the swarm of feathers dove into the open sacks. When they rose again, every single feather carried a small, pale seed resting in its rigid groove. 

Izuku opened his eyes. They glowed with an intense, focused telekinetic light. He envisioned the grid of the field in his mind—the exact spacing required for optimal root growth, the exact depth required for germination. 

He thrust both hands forward. 

The crimson cloud shot out over the two-acre field. It was a breathtaking spectacle of agricultural mastery. The feathers fanned out, forming a massive, mathematically perfect grid in the sky. In absolute unison, they dove toward the earth. 

Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip.

Four hundred seeds were driven exactly two inches into the soil, spaced exactly six inches apart. The feathers instantly ripped back up into the sky, returned to the sacks, reloaded, and shot out to the next section of the grid. 

What would have taken a team of men with mechanized tractors an entire afternoon to plant, Izuku Midoriya accomplished in exactly three minutes and forty seconds. 

He recalled the feathers, letting them slide seamlessly back into his wings. He didn't even sound winded. Over the last three years, he had trained his Quirk with the same grueling, relentless dedication as any Pro Hero, but his training weights were soil, seed, and water. 

Izuku knelt down at the edge of the field. He detached three specialized, highly sensitive covert feathers and plunged them deep into the soil. He closed his eyes, tapping into the neural feedback loop of his mutation. 

He didn't feel pain or impact. He felt the micro-vibrations of the earth. He felt the granular friction of the dirt, and more importantly, he felt the ambient moisture levels pooling around the roots. 

"Hmm. Subsoil is sitting at about thirty percent moisture," Izuku mumbled to himself, opening his eyes. "We'll need to run the drip irrigation for an hour tonight, but we can hold off until dusk to prevent evaporation."

"Izuku!" 

Izuku turned at the sound of his name. Down the dirt path, driving a heavily modified, electric utility cart, was his mother. 

Inko Midoriya had changed, too. The constant, gnawing anxiety that had plagued her in the city had completely evaporated. She wore a comfortable linen dress, a wide sun hat, and possessed a radiant, healthy glow. She was the logistics manager of Midoriya Farms, running the accounts, managing the farm stand, and negotiating contracts with high-end Tokyo restaurants who paid top yen for her son's impossibly perfect produce. 

Inko brought the cart to a stop, holding out an insulated thermos. "I brought you some cold barley tea, sweetheart. You've been out here since dawn."

"Thanks, Mom," Izuku smiled, taking the thermos and drinking deeply. The icy liquid was a godsend. "I just finished seeding the south plot. We're on schedule."

"You always are," Inko beamed, looking at the massive, perfectly planted field. She reached out, affectionately patting a few of the feathers on his left wing. "Oh, by the way, you need to head back up to the main farm stand. Your... regular is here. And he’s already yelling at the tomatoes."

Izuku sighed, a fond, exasperated smile crossing his face. "I'll go handle him."

The main farm stand of Midoriya Farms was a beautiful, open-air wooden structure situated near the main country highway. It was lined with woven baskets overflowing with vibrant, flawless produce: eggplants as dark as the night sky, blindingly red tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, and fragrant bundles of fresh herbs. 

Parked recklessly on the gravel shoulder, taking up two spaces and glinting obnoxiously in the sun, was a bright orange, custom-built sports car that cost more than a small house. 

Standing in front of the bell pepper display, wearing a black designer tank top, dark sunglasses, and a scowl that could curdle milk, was the Number Four Pro Hero in Japan: Dynamight. 

Katsuki Bakugo had shot up the Billboard charts like a rocket. He was violent, abrasive, aggressively competent, and the media absolutely loved him. 

But right now, the explosive hero was poking a green bell pepper with a heavily calloused finger, looking thoroughly offended by its existence. 

"Oi! Deku!" Bakugo barked as Izuku walked up the path, his boots crunching on the gravel. "Where are the ghost peppers?! You said the new hybrid yield would be ready by this week! Don't tell me you let the aphids get them!"

Izuku walked behind the wooden counter, picking up a clean rag to wipe down the register. He looked entirely unfazed by the screaming Pro Hero. 

"Hello to you too, Kacchan. And no, the aphids didn't get them. I deployed a squadron of ladybugs last week. Natural pest control." Izuku reached beneath the counter, pulling up a small, temperature-controlled wooden crate. He opened the lid, revealing dozens of small, wrinkly, terrifyingly red peppers. "They just needed a few extra days of sun stress to maximize the capsaicin oil production. Be careful with these. The Scoville rating is off the charts."

Bakugo peered into the crate, a terrifying, predatory grin spreading across his face. "Perfect. The idiot sidekicks at my agency keep stealing my lunch from the communal fridge. Let's see them try to eat my mapo tofu after I dice a dozen of these into it. Their tears will season my rice."

Izuku shook his head slowly. "You're a menace to society, Kacchan."

"I'm a beloved public icon, you dirt-eating nerd," Bakugo shot back, pulling out a sleek black wallet. He tossed a stack of high-denomination yen bills onto the counter, far more than the peppers cost. "Keep the change. Put it toward buying a tractor so you don't have to do everything with those stupid feathers."

"My feathers are more fuel-efficient than a tractor," Izuku countered, bagging the peppers carefully with a pair of tongs. He handed the bag over. "How are things in the city? I saw the news about the sludge-villain raid in Kamino. Looked messy."

Bakugo scoffed, leaning against the wooden post of the farm stand. "Messy is an understatement. Shoto froze half the sewage lines, and I had to blow up a city block just to corner the bastard. The paperwork is a nightmare. I haven't slept more than four hours a night all week."

Izuku looked at his childhood friend. Beneath the bravado and the expensive sunglasses, Bakugo did look exhausted. There were faint, dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders carried the invisible, crushing weight of public expectation. 

Izuku reached over to a display of fresh, chilled cucumbers. He snapped one in half and handed the larger piece to Bakugo. "Eat. It helps with hydration and lowers blood pressure."

Bakugo glared at the cucumber, but he took it, taking an aggressive, crunching bite. He chewed in silence for a moment, looking out over the sprawling green fields, the rustling trees, and the total, profound lack of concrete. 

"It's quiet out here," Bakugo muttered, his voice dropping its abrasive edge for just a fraction of a second. 

"That's the point," Izuku said softly. 

Before Bakugo could respond, a massive shadow swept over the farm stand. The sound of displaced air caused Bakugo to tense, his hand instantly sparking with a reflex explosion. 

"Relax, Sparky. I'm off the clock," a lazy, melodic voice drifted down from above. 

With a soft rustle of massive crimson wings, Hawks landed lightly on the gravel driveway next to the sports car. The Number Two Pro Hero was dressed down in civilian clothes—a pair of loose cargo pants, an oversized aviator jacket, and his signature visor. He looked just as exhausted as Bakugo, if not more so, carrying the bureaucratic weight of the Commission on his back. 

"Hawks," Bakugo grunted, relaxing his posture, though he still looked annoyed. "What are you doing all the way out in the sticks?"

"Same thing as you, apparently. Getting my groceries from the Number One Farmer in Japan," Hawks smirked, walking up to the counter. He leaned over, spotting Inko carrying a basket of fresh eggs from the coop. "Mama Midoriya! Please tell me you saved me one of those smoked chickens."

Inko’s face lit up. Over the past three years, Hawks had become a permanent fixture at the farm. What started as a lie to the Commission to protect Izuku had turned into a genuine, deep-seated bond. Hawks visited at least once a week, finding a desperate, necessary sanctuary in the peace of the farm. 

"Of course I did, Keigo," Inko smiled warmly, using his given name. She set the eggs down and handed him a brown paper package that smelled divine. "Though I still say it's a bit ironic, the Wing Hero eating poultry."

"Birds of prey eat other birds, Mama Midoriya. It's the circle of life," Hawks laughed, paying for the chicken. He turned to Izuku, reaching out to playfully punch the teenager's shoulder. "Look at you, kid. You're getting broader than Endeavor. Keep lifting those fertilizer bags."

Izuku smiled, leaning against the counter. "It's good to see you, Hawks. Commission giving you a hard time?"

Hawks sighed, running a hand through his messy blonde hair. The breezy facade slipped, revealing the tired, overworked man beneath. "You have no idea. The media cycles, the political hearings, the constant patrols... it's a meat grinder out there. Sometimes, when I'm flying over the Tokyo gridlock, I close my eyes and just think about this place. The smell of the dirt. The quiet." 

Hawks looked at Izuku, his golden eyes filled with a deep, unspoken gratitude. "You made the right choice, kid. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

Bakugo grunted, popping the last of the cucumber into his mouth. "He's still a freak. But... the peppers are good. See you next week, Deku." 

Bakugo stalked back to his car, throwing the door open. He paused, looking over the roof of the car at Izuku. "Hey. Good job with the south field. Looks mathematically sound. Your rows are straight."

Coming from Katsuki Bakugo, it was the equivalent of a tearful, poetic declaration of respect. 

"Thanks, Kacchan," Izuku laughed. 

With a roar of its engine, the orange sports car tore down the country road, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Hawks chuckled, picking up his package of smoked chicken. 

"I better get back to the city before the suits realize I disabled my GPS tracker," Hawks said, stretching his wings. He looked at Izuku, offering a genuine, warm smile. "See you later, farmer."

"Fly safe, Hawks." 

With a powerful thrust, Hawks took to the sky, a crimson streak cutting through the blue, heading back to the endless war of the city. 

By the time the day's work was finally done, the sun was beginning its slow, fiery descent beneath the horizon. The sky transformed into a breathtaking canvas of bruised violet, burning amber, and soft, peach-colored clouds. The heat of the day broke, replaced by a cool, gentle evening breeze that rustled through the acres of cornstalks like a whispering ocean. 

The crickets began their twilight symphony. 

Izuku walked alone down the dirt path cutting through the center of his property. He had showered, but he had put a clean pair of denim overalls right back on. His boots crunched softly on the gravel. 

He reached the center of the farm, where a massive, fifty-foot-tall aluminum grain silo stood, gleaming like a silver monolith in the sunset. 

Izuku didn't bother with the maintenance ladder. 

He bent his knees, his massive red wings snapping open to their full, glorious ten-foot span. With a single, earth-shaking downward thrust of his plumage, Izuku launched himself straight up into the air. 

He soared upward, the wind rushing past his face, completely weightless, completely free. He crested the top of the silo, flared his wings to stall his momentum, and touched down lightly on the curved metal roof. 

He walked to the edge, sat down, and let his legs dangle over the side. He pushed his straw hat back, letting it hang around his neck by its string. He folded his wings, wrapping them slightly around himself like a warm, familiar blanket against the evening chill. 

From up here, he could see everything. 

He could see the miles of irrigation ditches he had dug with his own feathers. He could see the massive greenhouses where he cultivated life in the dead of winter. He could see the dark, rich soil of the fields that would soon burst with green shoots, ready to feed hundreds of families in the city. 

He looked toward the distant horizon, where the jagged, neon-lit skyline of Tokyo glowed faintly against the darkening sky. 

He knew what was happening over there. He knew heroes were clashing with villains. He knew concrete was shattering, glass was breaking, and people were screaming. He knew that society would always need swords to fight the monsters in the dark. 

But as Izuku looked down at his own hands—hands calloused from the plow, stained with chlorophyll, and strong enough to nurture a seedling without breaking its stem—he felt no regret. 

He hadn't let the world turn him into a weapon. He hadn't let a society obsessed with destruction dictate the value of his mutation. He had taken a Quirk built for war, a terrifying force of kinetic violence, and he had forged it into a plowshare. 

Izuku Midoriya leaned back against the cool metal of the silo, watching the last sliver of the sun dip below the horizon. A deep, unshakable smile settled on his face. 

He wasn't the Symbol of Peace. He wasn't the Number One Hero. 

But as he watched the fireflies begin to dance over his thriving, living fields, Izuku knew he was exactly who he was meant to be. He was the Sky-High Farmer, and he had grown a beautiful life.