What If Deku Had an Overpowered Therizinosaurus Quirk With Deadly Claws

The afternoon sun cast a warm, golden hue over the local neighborhood park in Musutafu, illuminating the dust kicked up by a group of energetic four-year-olds. For most children, this age was the dawn of wonder, the magical epoch where biology defied physics and the impossible became mundane. It was the age of Quirk awakenings. 

Katsuki Bakugo had received his a few weeks prior. His palms sweat a nitroglycerin-like substance, crackling with miniature, popping explosions that sounded like firecrackers and smelled of burnt caramel. Naturally, he had become the undisputed king of the playground. He stood atop the brightly painted steel jungle gym, chest puffed out, a triumphant grin plastered across his face. 

Standing at the base of the metal structure was Izuku Midoriya. He was small, frail, with a mop of unruly green hair and large, emerald eyes that held nothing but unadulterated awe for his childhood friend. But beneath that awe lay a gnawing, desperate anxiety. Izuku hadn't manifested his Quirk yet. Every morning he woke up hoping to breathe fire like his father, or pull objects toward him like his mother. Every evening, he went to bed entirely, heartbreakingly normal.

"You're so lucky, Kacchan!" Izuku called out, watching Bakugo hop down from the structure, landing with a practiced bend of his knees. 

"Obviously," Bakugo scoffed, puffing smoke from his palms. "I’m gonna be the number one hero. Even better than All Might! And you guys are gonna be my sidekicks." 

The other kids cheered, but a younger boy who had accidentally bumped into Bakugo a moment earlier was cowering by the sandbox. Bakugo, fueled by the arrogance of early childhood power, marched over to the boy. "Hey, you didn't apologize for stepping on my shoe."

"I-I'm sorry!" the boy stammered, tears welling in his eyes. 

Bakugo raised a hand, a small, warning pop echoing from his palm. It wasn't meant to severely injure, just to intimidate, to establish the pecking order. But Izuku’s legs moved before his brain could process the danger. 

"Leave him alone, Kacchan!" Izuku shouted, throwing himself between Bakugo and the crying boy. He held his small, trembling arms out wide. 

Bakugo blinked, his crimson eyes narrowing. "Huh? What are you doing, Deku? You don't even have a Quirk yet. You're just a Quirkless nobody! Move, or I'll blast you too!"

"I won't let you be mean!" Izuku cried, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Bakugo lunged, his hand reared back. "Take this!"

Snap.

It didn’t happen slowly. There was no glowing aura, no magical girl transformation sequence, no warning. It was a violent, sudden eruption of biology.

A searing, blinding pain shot through Izuku’s forearms, so intense that it knocked the breath from his small lungs. It felt as though the bones in his arms were boiling, splitting apart, and reforming in the span of a millisecond. The skin on his forearms and hands tore—not with blood, but with a sudden, explosive growth of thick, iridescent, emerald-black scales. From between the scales burst stiff, downy proto-feathers. 

But that wasn't the terrifying part. 

From his fingertips, his nails elongated at a horrifying speed, darkening into an obsidian, metallic-keratin alloy. They shot outward, growing thicker, wider, and incredibly long until each of his fingers ended in a meter-long, curved, scythe-like blade. His arms ballooned with sudden, monstrous muscle mass just to support the sheer, crushing weight of the appendages. 

Izuku opened his eyes just as Bakugo’s palm thrust forward. 

Startled by the sudden weight pulling his arms down, Izuku flailed wildly, throwing his hands up to protect his face. 

SHNK.

The sound was shockingly quiet. It wasn't the loud clang of metal striking metal. It was the soft, terrifying whisper of a hot knife sliding through butter. 

Izuku's newly formed claws bypassed Bakugo entirely. Instead, the momentum of his flailing arms carried his right hand squarely into the thick, solid steel support beam of the jungle gym behind Bakugo. The three meter-long scythes effortlessly sheared through the four-inch-thick steel pipe. The top half of the structure groaned, entirely destabilized, and collapsed into the sandbox with a deafening CRASH. 

Silence descended upon the park. The dust settled.

Bakugo stood frozen, his hand still outstretched. The miniature explosion in his palm fizzled out. Slowly, mechanically, Bakugo turned his head to look at the sliced steel pillar. The cut was perfectly smooth, gleaming like a mirror in the sunlight. Had he been standing just a few inches to the left, those blades would have cleaved him into three neat pieces. 

Bakugo fell backward onto his rear, his eyes wide with an emotion he had never felt before: sheer, unadulterated terror. He looked at Izuku, his breath hitching.

Izuku stood trembling. The massive, feathered, scaled arms hung heavily at his sides. The three-foot-long scythes dug into the dirt of the park, anchoring him. He looked down at his own hands, at the monstrous weapons attached to his small body. He couldn't feel his fingers; he only felt the cold, heavy, lethal weight of the blades.

"M-Monster..." one of the children whispered.

Izuku burst into hysterical tears, the heavy blades dragging through the dirt as he sobbed, entirely incapable of reverting them back. "I-It hurts! Kacchan, it hurts! My hands are gone!"

Bakugo didn't answer. He just scrambled backward, unable to tear his eyes away from the weapons that had nearly ended his life before it even began.

"Therizinosaurus," Dr. Garaki said, adjusting his round glasses as he held up an x-ray to the fluorescent light of his office. 

Inko Midoriya sat in the padded chair, clutching her purse so tightly her knuckles were white. Izuku sat beside her, his arms wrapped in thick, protective medical gauze. He had managed to retract the transformation, but his arms were bruised and aching from the biological strain. 

"Theri... zino...?" Inko tried to pronounce, her voice trembling. 

"Therizinosaurus," the doctor repeated, turning to face them with a look of intense clinical fascination. "It translates roughly to 'Scythe Lizard.' It was a genus of massive theropod dinosaurs that lived during the Late Cretaceous period. Interestingly, despite descending from a lineage of carnivorous predators, the Therizinosaurus was a herbivore. However, it possessed the longest claws of any animal in the history of the planet."

Dr. Garaki tapped the x-ray. "Your son has a Transformation-Class Quirk, though it leans heavily into the Mutant classification due to the permanent changes in his bone density. Izuku can partially, and eventually, I suspect, fully transform his body into this prehistoric creature. Right now, his body instinctively localized the transformation to his arms as a defense mechanism."

"Are they... are they dangerous?" Inko asked, her eyes welling with tears. "He cut through solid steel, Doctor. He's only four."

"Dangerous is a relative term, Mrs. Midoriya," the doctor said dryly. "But speaking strictly on a physical level? Yes. Highly lethal. The material composing his claws is a biological marvel. It's a hyper-dense keratin structured with metallic alloys drawn from his diet. They are virtually indestructible and possess an edge on a molecular level. Furthermore, his musculature in his arms, chest, and back has already begun permanently altering to support the immense weight of the claws. If he trains this Quirk, he will possess prehistoric, devastating strength."

The doctor leaned forward, looking at the small, weeping boy. "Most Quirks manifest as tools. Fire to warm, water to quench, telekinesis to lift. But Izuku’s Quirk is not a tool, Mrs. Midoriya. It is a biological weapon. A weapon designed for severing, slashing, and butchering. He will need to exercise extreme caution."

Izuku looked down at his small hands. They looked normal now, soft and chubby. But beneath the skin, he could feel it. The sleeping beast. The cold, unfeeling urge of the scythes waiting to burst forth. 

A weapon for butchering.

From that day on, Izuku Midoriya made a silent, terrified vow. He would never, ever use his Quirk again.

Ten years is a long time to live in fear of your own body. 

By the time Izuku was fourteen, in his final year at Aldera Junior High, his life had settled into a tense, suffocating routine. The world of Quirks was one of flash and spectacle, where heroes proudly flaunted their powers to save the day, and citizens used their abilities to make life easier. Izuku, however, lived a life of deliberate, agonizing restraint.

His appearance had changed drastically from the frail boy he once was. Because his Quirk permanently altered his baseline biology to support his transformations, Izuku was heavily built. His shoulders were broad, his back muscles thick, and his legs carried a dense, coiled power. Yet, he slouched constantly, trying to make himself look as small and unassuming as possible. 

The most defining feature of his daily attire was his gloves. They were custom-made by a support company, requested by Inko at great expense. Thick, padded leather reinforced with carbon fiber plating. They looked like motorcycle gauntlets, extending halfway up his forearms. He never took them off in public. They were his safety net, a physical and psychological barrier to ensure that if he ever lost control, if the claws ever tried to burst forth on instinct, the reinforced gloves would bind his hands into fists and prevent the scythes from extending. 

Society praised powerful Quirks, but they judged the nature of the power. In elementary school, the whispers started. 

“Did you hear? He cut a jungle gym in half.”

“I heard his Quirk is just giant knives.”

“That’s a villain’s Quirk. What if he gets mad and chops someone’s head off?”

Izuku heard every whisper. They fueled his anxiety, solidifying his resolve to keep the beast caged. He poured all his heroic aspirations into his notebooks, Hero Analysis for the Future. If he couldn't use his Quirk safely, he would use his mind. He would learn everything about every other Hero. He would find a way to be a hero who saved people with a smile, not with slaughter. 

His dynamic with Katsuki Bakugo had warped into something complex and incredibly volatile. 

Before the awakening, Bakugo was a typical playground bully. But after the park incident, physical bullying ceased entirely. Bakugo never laid a finger on Izuku again. He didn't push him, didn't shove him into lockers, didn't use his explosions on him. 

But the verbal abuse escalated to astronomical levels. 

Bakugo's pride was his defining trait. He believed himself to be the absolute best. But deep in the recesses of his mind, he carried the traumatic memory of those three-foot obsidian scythes slicing through solid steel inches from his face. Bakugo knew, factually, that if it came to a deathmatch, Izuku’s Quirk would carve him into ribbons before his sweat could even ignite. 

To cope with this psychological inferiority, Bakugo went on the offensive. He despised Izuku’s restraint. He saw the thick gloves, the slouching posture, and the refusal to use his Quirk as the ultimate insult. In Bakugo's eyes, Izuku was looking down on him. 'He thinks he doesn't even need his Quirk to deal with me,' Bakugo would think, boiling with rage. He dubbed Izuku "Deku," meaning "Useless," not because Izuku lacked power, but because he was too cowardly to use it. 

"Since you're all third-years, it's time for you to think seriously about your futures!" the homeroom teacher announced, tossing a stack of career aspiration forms into the air. "I'll pass out these printouts for your desired life paths, but... you all want to be heroes, don't you?!"

The classroom erupted into cheers, students showing off their Quirks—stretchy necks, water manipulation, minor rock formations. 

Izuku kept his head down, gripping his pencil with padded fingers. 

"Hey, teach! Don't lump me in with this bunch of losers," Bakugo drawled, leaning back in his chair and resting his feet on his desk. "I'm not gonna be stuck at the bottom with the rest of these rejects."

The class erupted in outrage. 

"Oh, if I remember correctly, you want to go to U.A. High, right, Bakugo?" the teacher asked. 

The class fell silent, murmuring in awe about the national school's abysmal acceptance rate. Bakugo smirked, standing up on his desk. "That's right! I aced the mock test! I'm the only one here who has the stuff for U.A. I'll surpass All Might and become the top hero!"

"Oh, Midoriya wants to go to U.A. too, right?" the teacher added, looking at his clipboard. 

The entire class froze. All eyes turned to Izuku. There was no laughter. Only a tense, uncomfortable silence. The students looked at Izuku's thick gloves, at his broad shoulders, and shifted nervously. 

Bakugo froze. His eyes twitched. Slowly, he turned to look at Izuku. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. 

"Deku..." Bakugo growled, his voice low and vibrating with barely contained fury. He jumped off his desk and stalked over to Izuku’s row. He slammed his hands down on Izuku's desk, smoke wafting from his palms. He didn't use an explosion—he wouldn't dare risk triggering Izuku’s self-defense instincts—but the threat was palpable. 

Izuku flinched, shrinking back into his chair. 

"You think you can stand in the same ring as me?" Bakugo hissed, his crimson eyes boring into Izuku's emerald ones. "You've never used your Quirk once in ten years. You walk around with those stupid gloves, playing the victim. U.A. doesn't need a coward who's afraid of his own shadow. They need heroes."

"I-I'm not trying to compete with you, Kacchan!" Izuku stammered, waving his padded hands defensively. "I just... I've wanted to be a hero since I was little. I have to try. I have to figure out how to use... how to use this to help people."

"You can't help people with meat cleavers for hands!" Bakugo spat, leaning in close. "You'll just get in the way. Or worse, you'll snap and kill someone, and ruin the reputation of anyone associated with you. Do us all a favor and go to a regular high school. Leave the hero work to people who aren't ticking time bombs."

Bakugo snatched the charred-edged Hero Analysis notebook from Izuku's desk, glaring at the title. "Hero Analysis? Pathetic." With a swift motion, he tossed it out the open classroom window. "Know your place, Deku."

Bakugo turned and walked away. The bell rang, and the class rapidly emptied, leaving Izuku sitting alone in the deafening silence. 

Izuku stared at his gloved hands. He squeezed them into fists. Bakugo’s words hurt because they echoed the deepest, darkest fear in Izuku's own mind. You can't help people with meat cleavers for hands.

He wanted to save people with a fearless smile, like All Might. He wanted to pull people from rubble, to carry children out of burning buildings, to be a symbol of peace. But how could a creature designed for prehistoric slaughter be a symbol of peace? 

Izuku stood up, gathered his backpack, and walked out to retrieve his notebook. It had landed in a small koi pond beneath the window. He fished it out, brushing off the water and fish food. "Stupid Kacchan," he muttered, though there was no real anger in his voice. Just a profound, crushing sadness. 

He decided to take the long way home. He needed time to think. 

The pedestrian tunnel under the overpass was cool and shadowed, a brief respite from the afternoon sun. Izuku walked with his head down, muttering to himself as he mentally reviewed the patrol routes of local heroes. 

He didn't hear the wet, squelching sound from the manhole cover behind him until it was too late. 

"A medium-sized meat shield... with some decent muscle on him, too," a gurgling, watery voice echoed in the tunnel. 

Izuku spun around. Rising from the sewer grate was a monstrous mass of dark green, viscous sludge. It had two bulging eyes and a jagged mouth filled with foul-smelling fluid. It was a Villain. 

Before Izuku could react, the sludge lunged. 

A heavy, suffocating mass wrapped around Izuku’s legs and torso, lifting him off the ground. The sludge was surprisingly strong, pinning Izuku's arms to his sides. 

"Don't struggle, kid. It'll only hurt for about forty-five seconds," the villain rasped, forcing a tendril of sludge toward Izuku's mouth and nose. "I just need to hijack your body for a bit to escape a certain someone. You're my hero!"

Izuku clamped his mouth shut, holding his breath as the foul-tasting sludge forced its way up his nose. Panic, cold and primal, seized his heart. He was suffocating. He was dying. 

Fight back! his mind screamed. 

His biology responded. Beneath the thick leather of his gloves, Izuku felt the familiar, terrifying heat. His bones began to shift. The skin on his forearms hardened into scales. The claws were coming. They wanted to rip, to tear, to shred the sludge and the concrete and the world itself. 

No! Izuku thought, desperately fighting his own Quirk. If I transform, the blades will burst through the gloves! I'll slice him to pieces! I'll kill him!

Even now, suffocating to death in a dark tunnel, Izuku’s fear of becoming a murderer outweighed his will to survive. He clamped down on his Quirk with all his mental fortitude, refusing to let the transformation complete. Instead, he kicked his legs wildly, trying to tear the sludge away with his gloved hands. But it was useless. He was losing consciousness. His vision darkened at the edges. 

I'm sorry, Mom. I couldn't be a hero.

Suddenly, the manhole cover blew off entirely with a deafening CLANG. 

A massive figure stepped into the tunnel, casting a shadow that seemed to swallow the darkness itself. 

"Have no fear, you are safe," a voice boomed, rich, deep, and vibrating with unimaginable power. "Why? Because I am here!"

The sludge villain shrieked in terror. "All Might?!"

The number one hero pulled his fist back. Izuku, through his fading vision, saw the massive muscles coil. 

"TEXAS... SMASH!"

All Might threw a punch at the empty air. The sheer kinetic force generated by the strike created a localized hurricane within the tunnel. The wind pressure hit the sludge villain like a freight train, instantly blowing the liquid body apart into a thousand splattering droplets, freeing Izuku. 

Izuku fell to the ground, gasping violently for air. He looked up, his blurry vision resolving into the smiling face of his lifelong idol. All Might. In the flesh. 

Then, the darkness took him. 

"Hey! Hey! Wake up!"

Izuku gasped, sitting bolt upright. He was on the roof of a three-story building. Standing over him, holding two two-liter soda bottles filled with the captured sludge villain, was All Might. 

"Ah! Good! You're awake!" All Might boomed. "Apologies for the rough treatment back there, young man, but I had to make sure you were alright! Now, I must be off to deliver this villain to the police!"

Izuku scrambled to his feet, his mind racing a million miles an hour. All Might was here. He was leaving. This was his only chance. He had to ask the question that had haunted him his entire life. 

"Wait! All Might! Please!" Izuku cried out. 

"Pro Heroes are constantly fighting time as well as enemies!" All Might said, crouching down to leap. 

"Can someone with a Villain's Quirk become a Hero like you?!" Izuku screamed, squeezing his eyes shut. 

All Might paused. He stood up slowly, looking at the trembling boy. 

Izuku couldn't stop the words from pouring out. "My Quirk... it's a mutation. Therizinosaurus. I can turn my arms into three-meter-long scythes. They can cut through anything. Steel, concrete... flesh. Everyone says it's a quirk meant for slaughter. A villain's quirk. I've spent my whole life too terrified to use it because I don't want to hurt anyone."

Izuku looked down at his heavy, padded gloves. Tears spilled onto the leather. "I want to save people. I want to smile and make them feel safe, like you do. But how can I make people feel safe when my hands are weapons of mass destruction? Can a monster... can a monster become a hero?"

The silence stretched. The wind whipped across the rooftop. 

Suddenly, a plume of steam erupted from All Might's body. Izuku coughed, waving the smoke away. When it cleared, the towering, muscular symbol of peace was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man in baggy clothes, coughing up a small amount of blood. 

Izuku screamed. "Who are you?! What happened to All Might?!"

The man wiped his mouth, sighing. "I am All Might. And I'm trusting you with a secret, young man." He lifted his shirt, revealing a horrifying, jagged scar covering the left side of his chest. "Five years ago, a villain did this to me. My respiratory system was nearly destroyed. I can only do hero work for about three hours a day now."

Izuku stared in shock. The invincible hero... was broken.

All Might sat down against the railing, his blue eyes tired but kind. "You asked if you can be a hero with a lethal Quirk. I will not lie to you, kid. The world of Pro Heroes is not a comic book. It is dangerous, violent, and often cruel. There are heroes with lethal Quirks—Snipe uses firearms, Hawks uses bladed feathers. But they possess immense control and distance."

All Might looked at Izuku's heavy gloves. "If your Quirk is as devastating as you say, and requires close combat... the risk of collateral damage, of accidentally taking a life, is astronomical. A hero's job is to save. If you lose control in the heat of battle, if you give in to fear or anger with weapons like that, you won't be a hero. You'll be a butcher."

Izuku felt his heart shatter into a million pieces. The words mirrored his own darkest thoughts, but hearing them from All Might made them an undeniable, absolute truth. 

"I cannot simply tell you 'yes'," All Might continued softly. "It is good that you have a kind heart and fear your own power. That restraint makes you a good person. But hero work requires absolute control in the face of death. If you are too afraid to use your power, you will die. If you use it without restraint, others will die. Perhaps... look into becoming a police officer. Or a rescue worker where your strength can be utilized without drawing your blades. It's not a bad way to help people."

All Might stood up, patting his pockets. He froze. His skeletal face went pale. 

The soda bottles were gone. They must have slipped out when he landed on the roof. 

"I must go," All Might said urgently, moving toward the stairwell door. "Keep my secret safe, young man. And... think realistically about your future."

The door clicked shut. Izuku was alone. 

He fell to his knees on the rooftop, the tears flowing freely now. It was over. His dream was dead. The greatest hero in the world had confirmed his curse. He was meant to be a monster in a cage, or nothing at all. 

The walk home was a blur of misery. Izuku dragged his feet, his mind numb. He clutched his damp, slightly charred notebook to his chest. He should just throw it away. What was the point? 

A loud explosion snapped him out of his reverie. 

He looked up. A few blocks away, thick black smoke was billowing into the sky in the shopping district. Fire alarms blared. Sirens wailed in the distance. 

Without thinking, driven by years of ingrained habit, Izuku’s feet moved. He ran toward the commotion, squeezing through the gathering crowd of onlookers. 

When he reached the front, his breath caught in his throat. 

Tatooin Shopping District was a warzone. Fires raged across the storefronts. Pro Heroes Death Arms, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady stood at the perimeter, looking utterly helpless. 

And in the center of the inferno, thrashing wildly, was the sludge villain. 

No, Izuku thought, his stomach plummeting. It dropped when All Might saved me. This is my fault.

The villain had grown massive, absorbing the fires around it. But that wasn't what horrified Izuku. 

Trapped within the center of the viscous sludge, struggling violently, was a teenager. The teenager was thrashing, his palms unleashing massive explosions that only fueled the fires around them. The sludge villain was trying to hijack his body to use his Quirk. 

It was Katsuki Bakugo. 

"Why aren't the heroes doing anything?!" someone in the crowd shouted. 

"The sludge guy grabbed a middle schooler with a strong Quirk!" Death Arms yelled, holding back the crowd. "There's no opening! Kamui's wood will burn, and I can't punch liquid! We have to wait for someone with a suitable Quirk!"

Izuku stared in horror. Bakugo was suffocating. His explosions were growing weaker. His eyes, normally filled with arrogant fury, were wide, bloodshot, and terrified. 

For a fraction of a second, through the smoke and the chaos, Bakugo’s eyes locked onto Izuku’s. 

It wasn't a glare. It was a plea. 

Help me.

Before Izuku could process what he was doing, before he could remember All Might's warning or the fear of his own claws, his body moved. 

He burst through the hero barricade, sprinting full tilt into the blazing inferno. 

"Hey, kid! Stop! You'll die!" Death Arms roared. 

Izuku couldn't hear him. The roaring of the flames and the pounding of his own heart drowned out the world. He was running toward certain death. He had no plan. He only knew he couldn't stand there and watch someone die. 

I need power! Izuku’s mind screamed. I need to save him!

For the first time in ten years, Izuku Midoriya stopped holding back. He threw open the gates to his biology, welcoming the beast he had spent a decade locking away. 

RRRR-RIP!

The thick, reinforced leather gloves exploded into shreds. 

Izuku let out a primal, guttural roar of pain and exertion. His forearms swelled massively, tearing the sleeves of his school uniform to the shoulder. Thick, iridescent black and emerald scales erupted across his skin, acting as biological armor against the intense heat of the surrounding fires. Stiff, shimmering feathers burst from his elbows and triceps. 

And then came the claws. 

With a sickening, metallic shing, three massive blades shot out from each of his hands. They were three feet long, curving slightly, gleaming with a terrifying, obsidian luster. The sheer weight of them dug into the concrete as he ran, but his newly formed, monstrous musculature handled the load with prehistoric ease. 

The crowd gasped. The heroes froze. 

"What the hell is that Quirk?!" Kamui Woods shouted. 

The sludge villain turned, its massive eyes widening in recognition. "You! The kid from the tunnel! You think those giant knives can hurt me?! I'm liquid, you idiot! You'll just slice the kid in half!"

Izuku closed the distance in a fraction of a second, his digitigrade legs granting him explosive speed. The sludge villain was right. If Izuku slashed, he would cut right through the liquid and bisect Bakugo. 

A hero is not defined by the danger of their weapon, but by the kindness of their heart! 

Izuku didn't slash. 

As he reached the towering mass of sludge, Izuku leapt into the air, his heavy tail—which had burst from his tailbone for balance—whipping behind him. 

He brought his arms wide, as if going for a massive bear hug. But right before impact, Izuku twisted his wrists inward at an excruciating angle. 

He wasn't using the razor-sharp edges. He was using the flat broadsides of the three-meter blades. 

SLAM!

Izuku brought both arms crashing together. The six massive, flat blades acted like a solid steel cage. He bypassed Bakugo entirely, slamming the flats of his claws into the sludge villain's mass on either side of the captive boy. 

The sheer physical force of Izuku's prehistoric strength was devastating. The impact sent a shockwave through the plaza. The sludge villain screamed as the immense pressure clamped down on its liquid body. Izuku drove his feet into the cracked asphalt, using every ounce of his monstrous muscle to squeeze the flat blades together, compressing the sludge like a vise. 

"Let... him... GO!" Izuku roared, his eyes glowing with a feral, slit-pupil intensity. 

The pressure was too much. The sludge villain's hold ruptured. With a violent squelch, Bakugo was spat out of the liquid mass, coughing up sludge and gasping for air. 

Izuku held the villain in his makeshift blade-cage, his arms screaming in protest. The sludge villain thrashed, trying to expand, but Izuku’s claws were indestructible, and his grip was unyielding. 

"Kid! Hold him!" Death Arms yelled, finally snapping out of his stupor. 

But Izuku didn't need to hold him long. 

A shadow fell over the plaza. 

"I am pathetic," a booming voice echoed. 

Izuku looked up. Standing in the center of the flames, muscles bulging, steam rolling off his immense frame, was All Might. 

"I told you the traits that make a great champion," All Might said, looking directly into Izuku’s feral, glowing eyes. "But I didn't live up to my own ideals! Pro Heroes must always risk their lives!"

All Might pulled his right arm back, blood dripping from his mouth. 

"DETROIT... SMASH!"

He punched the sludge villain perfectly between Izuku's restraining claws. The wind pressure generated was apocalyptic. It ripped through the plaza, extinguishing the fires in an instant and atomizing the sludge villain into a fine mist. The shockwave sent clouds spiraling into the sky, creating a massive updraft. 

It began to rain. All Might had changed the weather with a single punch. 

Izuku stood frozen, his massive, terrifying claws embedded in the concrete to keep himself from being blown away. He looked at All Might. All Might looked back. 

Then, the adrenaline faded. The overwhelming pain of the transformation hit Izuku like a tidal wave. He forcibly retracted the Quirk. The scales vanished, the feathers dissolved, and the massive scythes shrank back into normal fingernails. Izuku’s arms were left bruised, bleeding, and trembling violently. He collapsed onto his knees, exhausted.

The aftermath was chaotic. 

The Pro Heroes immediately swarmed Izuku. Death Arms and Kamui Woods scolded him mercilessly. 

"Are you insane, kid?! You could have gotten yourself killed!" Death Arms yelled. "Running in blindly like that was incredibly reckless!"

"But... look at the structural damage to the concrete where he clamped down," Kamui Woods muttered, eyeing the deep gouges in the road. "That Quirk... it’s terrifyingly powerful. If he had sliced instead of clamped..."

A few yards away, Bakugo was being praised for his resilience and his powerful Quirk. But Bakugo wasn't listening to the heroes. He was staring at Izuku. The arrogant, furious glint in his eye was gone, replaced by a complex storm of frustration, awe, and lingering terror. He had seen Izuku’s face in the flames. He hadn't seen a monster. He had seen a hero. 

Eventually, Izuku was allowed to leave. He walked home in the twilight, his arms bandaged, his ruined sleeves flapping in the cool breeze. He felt empty. He had finally used his Quirk, and all he got was a scolding. 

"Deku!"

Izuku turned. Bakugo was jogging toward him, stopping a few feet away. He was panting, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. 

"Listen to me, you nerd," Bakugo ground out, refusing to meet Izuku's eyes. "I didn't need your help. I had it under control. I wasn't asking for you to come running in with those... those freakish meat-cleavers."

Izuku sighed. "I know, Kacchan."

"But..." Bakugo swallowed hard, his jaw clenching. "You didn't cut him. You could have just slashed the guy and risked hitting me, but you didn't. You used the flat sides." Bakugo finally looked up, his crimson eyes burning. "Don't think this makes us even. You're still a weak coward. But... whatever."

Bakugo turned and stomped away, leaving Izuku utterly bewildered. That was the closest thing to a compliment Bakugo had given him in ten years. 

"I AM HERE!"

Izuku shrieked as All Might suddenly slid out from a side alley, striking a dramatic pose. 

"A-All Might?! What are you doing here? Were you followed by reporters?"

All Might suddenly deflated with a burst of steam, coughing up a small spray of blood. "No. I lost them. I came here... to find you, young man."

Izuku lowered his head. "To scold me too? I know I shouldn't have run in. I know my Quirk is dangerous. I just... my legs moved on their own."

"Exactly," All Might said softly. He stepped forward, placing a skeletal hand on Izuku's shoulder. "The top heroes... they all have stories about their school days. And most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think."

Izuku’s breath hitched. Tears welled in his eyes. 

"I was wrong about you," All Might said, his blue eyes piercing through the twilight. "I saw a Quirk of unimaginable lethality, and I assumed the worst. But today, I watched a young man with a weapon designed for slaughter choose to use it as a shield. You twisted your wrists to avoid cutting the villain. You took the physical strain upon yourself to create a cage, purely to protect the hostage. That requires immense restraint. It requires the heart of a true hero."

Tears streamed down Izuku's face. He fell to his knees, his hands covering his face. The words he had waited his entire life to hear were finally being spoken. 

"You can become a hero," All Might declared. 

Izuku sobbed, the heavy burden of ten years of fear and self-hatred finally cracking. 

All Might knelt beside him. "Your Quirk is immensely powerful. It is wild, ancient, and dangerous. If you do not learn to control it perfectly, it will consume you. But I believe in your heart. UA High School’s entrance exams are in ten months. I am proposing a regimen. Let me train you, young man. Let me help you master the beast within you, so you can become the greatest hero this world has ever seen."

Izuku wiped his eyes, looking at his bruised, normal hands. They were the hands of a monster. But with All Might's help, they could be the hands that saved the world. 

He looked up at the Symbol of Peace, a fierce, unwavering determination burning in his emerald eyes. 

"Yes, sir. I'll do it."

The human body is an incredibly adaptable machine. When subjected to immense, continuous stress, bones calcify and thicken, muscles tear and rebuild denser than before, and the nervous system rewires itself to accommodate new thresholds of pain. 

For ten agonizing months, Izuku Midoriya subjected his body to a crucible of biological torment at the Dagobah Municipal Beach. 

"Again, young Midoriya!" All Might’s voice boomed over the crashing waves. 

Izuku stood waist-deep in a pile of rusted refrigerators, crushed cars, and heavy washing machines. He didn't just look different; he was fundamentally transformed. Gone was the frail, trembling boy who constantly hunched his shoulders to hide from the world. In his place stood a fourteen-year-old built like a heavyweight wrestler. His shoulders were incredibly broad, his neck thick and corded with muscle, and his legs were pillars of coiled power. 

This drastic physical evolution wasn't just the result of lifting trash. It was the baseline biological requirement for his Quirk. When his arms transformed, they gained hundreds of pounds of dense muscle, metallic scales, and three-meter-long solid keratin blades. If his human core couldn't support that localized weight, his own Quirk would dislocate his shoulders and snap his spine.

Izuku let out a deep, steadying breath. He closed his eyes and reached inward, feeling for the lock on the cage he had built inside his mind. He turned the key.

With a sickening, wet sound of flesh and bone rapidly expanding, Izuku’s arms morphed. The sleeves of his compression shirt stretched to their absolute limit. Iridescent, emerald-black scales rippled down his skin, violently pushing through his pores. Stiff, shimmering prehistoric feathers burst from his triceps, and with a metallic SHING, the obsidian scythes slid from his fingertips, gleaming in the morning sun. 

"Control the angle!" All Might shouted from atop a rusted truck. "You are not just swinging wildly! A blade is only as good as the mind that directs it! If you strike a villain with the edge, you kill them. If you strike with the flat, you subdue them. Show me the flat!"

Izuku roared, the sound deeper, more guttural than a human should be capable of producing. He lunged at a stacked pillar of three crushed sedans. He twisted his massive wrists inward, enduring the screaming protest of his joints. He didn't slash. He brought the broad, flat sides of his three-foot blades crashing into the steel.

The impact sounded like a bomb going off. 

The flat of the blades hit the cars with such prehistoric, devastating kinetic force that the metal completely crumpled. The sheer shockwave sent the three cars flying twenty feet through the air, landing in the ocean with massive splashes. 

Izuku immediately retracted the Quirk. The blades sucked back into his fingers, the scales dissolving into his skin, leaving his forearms smoking and covered in minor, bleeding abrasions where the biology had violently shifted. He fell to his knees in the sand, gasping for air, his muscles twitching spasmodically. 

All Might leaped down, landing with a soft thud next to him. He handed Izuku a towel and a massive protein shake. Izuku’s Quirk required an astronomical caloric intake to constantly generate the metallic-keratin alloys of his claws. 

"Well done," All Might said gently, his muscular form steaming as he reverted to his skeletal, true form, Toshinori Yagi. He coughed slightly into his hand. "Ten months ago, partially manifesting your arms took you a full ten seconds and caused you to pass out from shock. Now, you can deploy them in less than a second, and you can control the lethality. You’re ready, kid."

Izuku wiped the sweat and blood from his arms, looking out at the perfectly clean beach. The rising sun reflected off the pristine ocean. 

"I still feel it, All Might," Izuku whispered, staring at his scarred, calloused hands. "When the claws come out... my brain changes. I can feel the predator. It wants to hunt. It wants to shred. It takes everything I have just to twist my wrists and use the blunt sides."

Toshinori sat down next to him in the sand. "A Hero's greatest battle is never against the villain in front of them, Izuku. It is against the darkness within themselves. A man who feels no urge to kill does not have to exercise restraint. Your restraint is what makes you magnificent. Do not fear the predator. Master it."

Izuku nodded slowly, clenching his fists. Today was the day. The U.A. High School Entrance Exam. 

The towering H-shaped building of U.A. High School loomed against the clear blue sky, an architectural marvel of glass and steel representing the pinnacle of heroic society. 

Izuku walked through the main gates, his posture straight. He wore a custom, dark green athletic tracksuit. It was slightly baggy, specifically tailored with stretchable, tear-resistant fabric around the arms, back, and legs to accommodate sudden, violent biological shifts. 

He felt a strange, quiet calm settling over him. For ten years, he had walked into schools expecting mockery, expecting fear, expecting Katsuki Bakugo's wrath. But today, he was a different person. He was a weapon, yes, but he was a weapon on a leash held tightly by his own indomitable will.

"Out of my way, Deku."

The familiar, gravelly voice came from behind. Izuku stopped and turned around. Katsuki Bakugo stood there, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his school uniform, a perpetual scowl on his face. 

Ten months ago, Izuku would have flinched, stammered, and practically thrown himself into the bushes to make way. 

Today, Izuku simply looked at his childhood rival. He saw the tension in Bakugo's shoulders, the slight narrowing of his crimson eyes. Bakugo wasn't just angry; he was fiercely, intensely focused. Ever since the sludge villain incident, Bakugo had stopped treating Izuku like garbage and started treating him like a threat. 

"Morning, Kacchan," Izuku said calmly. He didn't scurry away. He merely took one deliberate step to the side, leaving enough room for Bakugo to pass. 

Bakugo stopped. He glared at Izuku’s broad shoulders, his eyes dropping to Izuku's bare, un-gloved hands. The absence of the thick, padded leather gloves that Izuku used to wear was a blaring alarm in Bakugo's mind. He took the training wheels off.

"Don't think you're hot shit just because you got a little bigger," Bakugo growled, his voice low. "I'm going to crush this exam, and I'm going to crush you. If you get in my way with those freakish scythes, I'll blow them to ash."

"I'll do my best, Kacchan," Izuku replied evenly, his face completely devoid of intimidation. 

Bakugo clicked his tongue, highly irritated by Izuku's lack of fear, and stormed past him toward the auditorium. 

Izuku let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He took a step forward, but his heavy, steel-toed combat boot caught the edge of an uneven paving stone. With his center of gravity thrown off by his dense upper body, Izuku tipped forward, bracing his face for the concrete. 

He didn't hit the ground. 

He was suddenly floating in mid-air, suspended just inches above the pavement. 

"Are you okay?" a bright, cheerful voice asked. 

Izuku managed to right himself, his boots gently touching back down as the zero-gravity effect faded. He turned to see a girl with a short brown bob, rosy cheeks, and a warm smile. 

"I-I'm sorry!" she said, bringing her hands together in a slight bow. "I used my Quirk on you without asking. But it'd be bad luck to fall right before the exam, right?"

Izuku blinked. Despite his grueling physical training and his mastery over a prehistoric biological weapon, he was still, at his core, a teenager who had never spoken to a girl outside of his mother. His calm, apex-predator demeanor shattered instantly. 

"O-Oh! Um! Yes! Thank you! I mean, I'm fine! You saved me! Thanks!" Izuku stammered, his face flushing violently red, waving his hands in a frantic, entirely human gesture. 

The girl giggled, adjusting the strap of her bag. "I'm super nervous, but let's both do our best! See ya!" She jogged off toward the entrance. 

Izuku stood there, completely frozen, his heart pounding faster than it had during the entirety of his ten-month training. I just talked to a girl!

The orientation auditorium was massive, completely plunged in darkness until the stage lit up. The Voice Hero, Present Mic, stood behind a podium, throwing his arms out wide. 

"WELCOME TO MY LIVE SHOW, EVERYBODY! SAY HEY!"

Silence. 

Izuku sat quietly, a small notebook resting on his lap. He had stopped bringing Hero Analysis notebooks after Bakugo threw the last one out the window, but old habits died hard. 

"Tough crowd!" Present Mic recovered seamlessly. "Then I'll just jump right in! As it says in the application requirements, you listeners will be conducting a ten-minute mock urban battle! After this presentation, you'll head to your assigned battle centers!"

Izuku looked down at his card. Examinee Number: 2234. Battle Center B. He glanced over at Bakugo's card. Battle Center A. They were splitting up students from the same middle schools to prevent cooperation. Smart. 

Present Mic clicked a button, and the massive screen behind him lit up, displaying pixelated graphics of a cityscape. 

"Three different types of faux villains are stationed in each battle center! You earn points for each of them based on their difficulty level! Your goal, dear listeners, is to use your Quirks to earn your keep by immobilizing these faux villains!"

Present Mic struck a pose. "Of course, attacking other examinees and any other unheroic actions are strictly prohibited!"

Izuku stared at the screen. The pixelated graphics showed small, tank-like robots. 

Faux villains.

Immobilizing. 

Machines.

The words echoed in Izuku’s mind. Slowly, a profound realization began to dawn on him. It started as a tingle at the base of his neck and spread down his spine, settling deep into his bones. 

For ten years, his greatest fear was his own power. He had suffered through nightmares of his obsidian blades sliding through human flesh, of accidentally severing a villain's limb, of becoming the butcher everyone whispered he was. During his training with All Might, every single strike required agonizing mental restraint to use the blunt, flat sides of his claws. 

But these weren't people. They weren't living flesh. They didn't have blood. 

They were robots. They were solid metal, wiring, and circuitry. 

A physical shudder wracked Izuku’s body. He looked down at his calloused, scarred hands. He wouldn't have to twist his wrists. He wouldn't have to endure the joint-tearing pain of fighting his own momentum. He wouldn't have to hold back. 

For the first time in his life, Izuku Midoriya could unleash the beast completely. 

A slow, terrifyingly calm smile crept onto Izuku’s face. His emerald eyes, usually wide and anxious, narrowed slightly, the pupils dilating in the dark auditorium. 

"Excuse me! May I ask a question?" 

A tall, broad-shouldered boy with glasses suddenly stood up a few rows ahead of Izuku, a spotlight snapping onto him. 

"On the printout, there are four types of villains! If this is a misprint, then U.A., the most prominent school in Japan, should be ashamed of that foolish mistake!" The boy turned sharply, pointing a stiff finger directly at Izuku. "And you! In the curly hair! You've been muttering this entire time, and now you're sitting there grinning like a maniac! It's distracting! If you're here on a pleasure trip, then you should leave immediately!"

The auditorium went dead silent. A few kids snickered. 

Izuku looked at the boy with glasses. The old Izuku would have shrunk down in his seat, stammered out an apology, and hidden his face in his hands. 

But the boy sitting in that chair was no longer a victim. He was an apex predator who had just been told he was allowed off the leash. 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't drop his smile. He simply met the boy's gaze with an unsettling, unblinking intensity. 

"I apologize if I was distracting you," Izuku said, his voice completely calm, devoid of any tremble. "I was just... looking forward to the exam."

The boy with the glasses faltered. He expected a flustered apology, not the quiet, unnerving confidence radiating from Izuku. He cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses hastily. "A-Ah. Well. Just... see that you maintain your focus." He sat down quickly. 

Present Mic coughed into his microphone. "Okay, okay! Thanks for the keen eye, Examinee 7111! The fourth type of villain is worth zero points! That guy's an obstacle, so to speak! There's one in every battle center—a gimmick that will rampage around in narrow spaces! It's not impossible to defeat, but there's no reason to, so I recommend you listeners try to avoid it!"

Izuku wrote down: Zero Pointer = Obstacle. Avoid.

"That's all from me!" Present Mic cheered. "Finally, I'll give you listeners a present—our school motto! The hero Napoleon Bonaparte once said: 'A true hero is one who overcomes life's misfortunes.' Go beyond. PLUS ULTRA! Now, everyone, good luck suffering!"

Battle Center B

The faux city was massive, a sprawling metropolis of pristine buildings, wide streets, and perfectly paved roads. It was a multi-billion-yen arena designed for one purpose: destruction. 

Hundreds of nervous examinees were gathered before the massive, towering gates. Some were stretching, some were taking deep breaths, and others were hyping themselves up. 

Izuku stood at the very front of the pack, right up against the line. 

He had altered his outfit slightly. He had unzipped the lower half of his tracksuit pants, tearing away the fabric from the knees down, revealing heavy-duty, steel-toed combat boots. He rolled up his sleeves to his shoulders. 

He closed his eyes. He didn't need to stretch his human muscles. He needed to prepare his mind. He envisioned the lock in his mind. He didn't just turn the key; he shattered the padlock entirely. 

"AND... START!" Present Mic's voice suddenly blasted from hidden speakers. 

The other examinees jumped, looking around in confusion. There was no countdown? 

"What are you waiting for?! There are no countdowns in real battles! Run! Run!"

Before Present Mic even finished his sentence, Izuku exploded. 

He didn't just run; he transformed on the move. The biological shift was instantaneous and violently fast. A guttural, tearing sound echoed at the front of the pack as Izuku’s body morphed. 

His boots exploded into shreds as his human feet elongated, the bones snapping and reshaping into massive, three-toed dinosaur talons covered in thick, dark green scales. His knees inverted, his legs shifting into a digitigrade structure, granting him the terrifying, explosive leaping power of a theropod. 

His back hunched slightly as his spine thickened, a heavy, muscular, scale-covered tail bursting through the slit in the back of his tracksuit pants to act as a counterbalance. 

And then, his arms. They ballooned in size, feathers bursting from the skin, right before the six obsidian scythes—each a full meter long—slid from his fingertips with a terrifying, metallic SCHWINK. 

Izuku hit the ground with his new taloned feet and launched himself forward. The sheer kinetic torque of his dinosaur legs shattered the concrete at the starting line, leaving a spiderweb crater behind him. He rocketed through the open gates, moving at a speed that left a blur of green and black in his wake. 

The other examinees at the gate stared in stunned silence. 

"What... what the hell was that?!" a boy with spiky red hair yelled. 

"Less talking, more running!" the boy with glasses shouted, activating engines in his calves and sprinting after him. 

Izuku was already three blocks deep into the faux city. 

He skidded to a halt, his talons tearing deep trenches into the asphalt. His senses were heightened. His pupils had turned into feral slits, processing motion at an accelerated rate. 

From an intersecting alleyway, a massive, tread-based robot rolled out. It had a single, glowing red optic and a large painted '1' on its chassis. It locked onto Izuku. 

TARGET ACQUIRED. 

The 1-Pointer raised a mechanical arm, aiming a blunt-force projectile launcher at Izuku. 

Izuku didn't brace for impact. He didn't look for cover. He leaned forward, his heavy tail whipping behind him for balance, and charged straight at the machine. 

The robot fired. Izuku ducked, his digitigrade legs allowing him to slide incredibly low to the ground. As he slid under the projectile, he spun. He didn't twist his wrists to the flat side. He kept the razors facing forward. 

With a roar, Izuku swung his right arm in a wide, upward arc. 

The three-foot obsidian scythes met the reinforced steel chassis of the robot. There was no resistance. There was no jarring impact. The hyper-dense keratin blades sheared through the metal, circuitry, and thick armor plating like a hot knife gliding through silk. 

Izuku followed through, landing in a crouch behind the robot. 

For a second, nothing happened. Then, with a screech of sparking wires, the 1-Pointer slid cleanly apart into three perfectly separated diagonal slices, the top sections thudding heavily onto the asphalt. 

Izuku looked at his blades. There wasn't a single chip, scratch, or dent on the obsidian surface. 

He threw his head back and let out a triumphant, echoing roar that rattled the windows of the surrounding buildings. 

One point.

He took off again. 

The exam quickly turned into a slaughter. Izuku was an apex predator let loose in a playground of fragile toys. 

A group of three 2-Pointers surrounded him in a central plaza. They fired simultaneously. Izuku used his incredible leg strength to leap twenty feet into the air, completely evading the crossfire. As he descended, he flipped, bringing his heavy tail down on the camera optic of the first robot, crushing its sensor. 

He landed on the chassis of the second robot, driving his talons through the top armor to anchor himself. He raised both arms and brought all six scythes down in a brutal, stabbing motion, impaling the machine through its core processor. He wrenched his arms outward, violently tearing the robot completely in half from the inside out. 

The third robot tried to retreat. Izuku didn't give it the chance. He lunged, closing the distance in a single bound. He did a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, using the momentum of his heavy body to execute a horizontal slash. The three blades sliced clean through the robot's neck joint, decapitating it. The mechanical head went flying through the air, crashing through a faux-glass window. 

"T-Twenty-eight... thirty... thirty-two points..." Izuku muttered, his breath coming in hot, heavy pants. 

Other examinees were starting to catch up to the deeper parts of the city. They rounded the corners, ready to fight, only to stop dead in their tracks. 

The streets looked like a metallic abattoir. Dismembered robots, perfectly bisected chassis, and severed treads littered the roads. Sparks flew from sparking wires. 

In the center of the carnage stood Izuku. He was panting, his broad chest heaving, his massive, feathered arms dripping with hydraulic fluid. He looked like a prehistoric god of war. 

A 3-Pointer suddenly burst from the wall of a nearby building, aiming its twin cannons directly at a paralyzed examinee—the girl with the rosy cheeks who had saved Izuku from tripping. She had used her Quirk to float a piece of debris, but she was exhausted, and the robot had outflanked her. 

"Look out!" she screamed, trying to scramble backward. 

A blur of green and black intercepted the robot's path. 

Izuku slammed into the 3-Pointer shoulder-first. The sheer physical weight of his denser bones and muscular mass was enough to stagger the massive machine. Before it could recover, Izuku drove his left claws deep into the robot's tread housing, anchoring it to the spot. With his right arm, he reeled back and delivered a devastating, diagonal slash across its main weapon systems. 

The cannons fell to the ground, neatly severed. Izuku finished the job with a brutal thrust of his tail, shattering the central optic. 

"Sixty-two points," Izuku breathed, his feral, slit-pupil eyes darting around for the next target. 

Uraraka sat on the ground, staring up at the terrifying, monstrous boy in absolute awe. "Y-You're the boy from the gates..." she whispered, looking at the meter-long obsidian scythes protruding from his hands. 

Izuku glanced down at her, his feral eyes softening for a fraction of a second, returning to round, human pupils. He gave her a sharp, quick nod, then violently pushed off the ground, rocketing down the street in search of more prey. 

Observation Deck, U.A. High School

Deep within the darkened observation room, the faculty of U.A. sat before a massive wall of monitors, watching the hundreds of examinees fight. 

"In this practical exam, the examinees have not been informed of the number of villains or their locations," a small, white animal in a tailored suit—Principal Nezu—said, sipping a cup of tea. "They have a limited amount of time in a vast area. They have to draw out the villains and gather information quickly. Mobility, intelligence, and sheer combat ability... it separates the wheat from the chaff."

"We have an interesting crop this year," Midnight, the R-Rated Hero, noted, crossing her legs. "That boy in Center A with the explosion Quirk... his combat sense is phenomenal. He's destroying everything in sight."

"Indeed. But look at Center B," Snipe pointed a gloved finger at a center monitor. 

The screen showed Izuku Midoriya. He was mid-air, spinning like a buzzsaw, instantly reducing a cluster of four 2-Pointers into a shower of cleanly sliced scrap metal. 

Silence fell over the observation deck. 

"Good lord," Ectoplasm muttered. "Those aren't strikes. He's not bludgeoning them. He is completely severing military-grade steel with biological appendages. What is the structural integrity of those claws?"

"Therizinosaurus," a dry, exhausted voice drawled from the corner. Shota Aizawa, Eraser Head, stood wrapped in his yellow sleeping bag, his bloodshot eyes locked onto Izuku. "A Transformation/Mutant hybrid. The boy has permanently altered his skeletal structure and musculature to handle the localized weight of those scythes. If those blades hit a human, they wouldn't just cut; they would cleave a person in two with zero resistance."

"It's a highly lethal Quirk," Vlad King noted, frowning. "Almost inherently villainous in its design. It's meant for slaughter."

Standing in the back of the room, Toshinori Yagi—in his skeletal form—gripped the railing tightly. He couldn't speak up, but his heart swelled with immense pride. Look closely, everyone! he thought. Look at the restraint!

"Perhaps," Nezu said softly, leaning forward. "But look closely at his movements, Vlad. When he strikes, he is hyper-aware of his surroundings. In monitor four, he deliberately altered the trajectory of his swing to avoid deflecting a piece of shrapnel toward another examinee. He is cutting with lethal precision, yes, but his mind is completely rational. He is not losing control. He is in absolute mastery of the beast."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "He's treating the robots like tall grass. He's racked up seventy-four points in six minutes. He's at the top of the leaderboard."

"Let us see how they handle the true test," Nezu said, his paw hovering over a large red button on his control console. "A true hero must not only excel in combat but must also know when to retreat... or when to stand their ground against impossible odds."

Nezu pressed the button. 

Battle Center B

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

A blaring klaxon echoed through the faux city, followed by a violent tremor that shook the ground. 

Izuku stopped, his blades dripping with oil. He had just breached eighty-five points. He was exhausted. The partial transformation was draining his stamina rapidly, and his arms felt like they were filled with lead. He was ready to retract the Quirk and ride out the final two minutes of the exam in human form. 

Then, the sun was blotted out. 

At the far end of the central avenue, the buildings exploded outward. A colossal, towering machine burst through the concrete infrastructure as if it were made of cardboard. It was easily a hundred feet tall, a monolithic titan of steel, treads, and glowing red optics. 

The Zero Pointer. 

The sheer scale of the machine was horrifying. It raised a massive fist and slammed it down into a nearby skyscraper, shattering the building into dust and sending a shockwave of debris sweeping down the street. 

Examinees screamed, turning and fleeing in absolute terror. 

"Run! It's the Zero Pointer!" the boy with the engine legs yelled, sprinting past Izuku. "There's no point in fighting it! Get away!"

Izuku stared up at the mechanical titan. The rational, human part of his brain agreed completely. Avoid it. That's what Present Mic said. There's no reason to fight. 

He began to retract his claws, the obsidian slipping back into his fingers as he turned to run with the others. 

"Oww... my leg..."

Izuku froze. The sound was faint, barely audible over the grinding treads of the giant robot, but Izuku’s heightened, dinosaur-adjacent hearing caught it. 

He whipped his head around. 

Through the dust and debris, seventy yards away, directly in the path of the colossal treads, was the rosy-cheeked girl. A massive chunk of rubble had pinned her right leg to the asphalt. She was desperately pushing at the concrete, crying out in pain, but it was too heavy. 

The Zero Pointer advanced, utterly uncaring, its treads slowly chewing up the road toward her. 

Izuku looked around. The other examinees were gone. They had all run away. 

He looked at his hands. The partial transformation—just his arms and legs—wasn't enough. The Zero Pointer's armor was too thick, its mass too immense. If he tried to slash its treads with his three-foot claws, he would be crushed under the weight of the machine before he could do enough structural damage. 

He needed more size. He needed more mass. He needed the one thing he had only ever attempted once on the beach, an act that had left him bedridden in agony for three days. 

He needed the Full Transformation. 

Izuku Midoriya didn't think about the pain. He didn't think about his score. He didn't think about the risk of losing control. He only saw a girl who was going to die, and he knew he had the power to stop it. 

He planted his feet. He took a massive breath, pulling oxygen deep into his lungs, and visualized the beast. He didn't just unlock the cage; he tore it completely out of his mind. 

"AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH!"

Izuku screamed as his body underwent a violent, catastrophic biological expansion. 

The tearing of his clothes was the least of his problems. His bones shattered and instantly remade themselves, expanding outward at a horrifying rate. His spine violently arched and elongated. The muscles in his chest, back, and legs swelled, packing on literal tons of hyper-dense biological mass in a matter of seconds. 

Thick, impenetrable emerald and obsidian scales erupted across his entire body, overlapping like knight's armor. A massive mane of stiff, black proto-feathers burst from his neck, shoulders, and tail. His jaw elongated, his teeth sharpening into serrated edges, though his diet remained strictly herbivorous by genetic design. 

He grew. Ten feet. Twenty feet. 

When the agonizing, steam-filled transformation ceased, Izuku Midoriya was gone. 

Standing in the middle of the ruined street was a towering, thirty-foot-tall bipedal behemoth. It was a terrifying fusion of avian grace and reptilian brutality. But its most defining, horrifying feature was its hands. The three-foot claws of his partial form had scaled up with his body. Hanging from the creature's massive, heavily muscled arms were six indestructible, obsidian scythes—each one measuring a staggering eight feet in length. 

Uraraka, trapped under the rubble, stared up in absolute, paralyzing terror as the prehistoric god of blades eclipsed the sun. 

Inside the beast, Izuku’s human mind was drowning in a sea of primal instinct, but one single thought pierced the feral red haze: SAVE HER.

The Therizinosaurus threw its heavy, feathered head back and unleashed a roar that defied physics. The sheer decibel level shattered every remaining pane of glass in a three-block radius and visibly distorted the air. 

The Zero Pointer registered the new obstacle. It raised its colossal fist, bringing it down toward the dinosaur with the force of a falling meteor. 

Izuku didn't dodge. He sank into a deep, digitigrade crouch, the asphalt completely giving way under his multi-ton weight, cratering the street. 

He leapt. 

The kinetic force of the thirty-foot dinosaur launching itself upward defied gravity. Izuku soared through the air, intercepting the Zero Pointer's descending fist. 

He swung his right arm. The eight-foot scythes effortlessly cleaved through the reinforced armor of the robot's forearm, severing the hand completely. The giant metal fist plummeted to the ground, missing Uraraka by mere yards. 

But Izuku wasn't done. He used the momentum of his leap to land squarely on the chest plate of the towering machine. His talons dug deep into the metal, anchoring him to the titan. 

The robot's internal alarms blared. It tried to swat him off with its remaining arm. 

Izuku reared back, crossing his massive, heavily muscled arms in front of his chest. The eight-foot obsidian blades gleamed, crackling with raw, kinetic energy. 

X-SLASH.

Izuku unleashed everything. He swung both arms outward in a massive, devastating cross-cleave. 

The hyper-dense keratin blades met the central chassis of the Zero Pointer. The resistance was slightly more than the smaller robots, but the result was exactly the same. The screech of tearing metal was deafening. The blades sheared through the outer armor, the internal infrastructure, the main power core, and the spinal strut of the monolithic machine. 

Izuku pushed off the robot, back-flipping gracefully through the air despite his massive size. 

Behind him, the Zero Pointer froze. A perfect, glowing 'X' was etched deep into its chest. 

Then, the colossal machine slowly, agonizingly, slid apart into four massive, severed quadrants. Explosions ripped through the severed sections as the immense robot collapsed backward in a rain of fire and shattered steel, completely obliterated. 

Izuku hit the ground, landing in a heavy crouch, shaking the earth. 

He had done it. He had killed the apex machine. 

But the victory was short-lived. The sheer biological toll of the Full Transformation caught up to him instantly. His vision swam. His heart felt like it was going to explode from pumping blood to a thirty-foot frame. 

I have to revert. Now.

If he passed out in this form, he would crush Uraraka and half the street in his sleep. 

Izuku clamped down on his biology, forcing the reversal. It was just as violent and painful as the expansion. The scales hissed, dissolving into steam. The massive bones rapidly shrank, compacting inward. The eight-foot blades rapidly withdrew into his fingertips. 

Within seconds, the thirty-foot behemoth vanished in a cloud of dense steam, depositing a frail, fourteen-year-old human boy into the air, ten feet above the hard asphalt. 

Izuku had no strength left. He plummeted, crashing onto the pavement with a sickening crack. Both of his human arms and his right leg shattered on impact. 

He lay there, staring up at the sky, his limbs twisted at unnatural angles. The pain was absolute, but his mind was strangely at peace. 

I saved her.

Through his fading vision, he saw Uraraka, having dragged herself free from the rubble, limping frantically toward him. 

"You... you saved me!" she cried, kneeling beside his broken body, tears streaming down her face. 

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic's voice echoed across the city. 

The exam was over. Izuku let out a small, bloody sigh, and allowed the darkness to pull him under. 

One Week Later

The wait had been agonizing. 

Izuku sat at the small dining table in his apartment, staring blankly at the wall. Both of his arms were in heavy casts, a testament to the fall and the extreme biological whiplash of his Full Transformation. Recovery Girl had healed the worst of the bone breaks, but the muscular tearing required time. 

He hadn't spoken much. He was convinced he had failed. Yes, he had racked up eighty-five points in the first phase, but he had lost his mind at the end. He had destroyed the Zero Pointer, an obstacle worth zero points, and destroyed his own body in the process. All Might's warning echoed in his head: A hero must possess absolute control. Had he lost control by unleashing the beast?

"Izuku!" Inko Midoriya screamed, sprinting down the hallway, waving a plain white envelope sealed with a red wax stamp. "It's here! The letter from U.A. is here!"

Izuku's heart stopped. He shakily stood up, taking the envelope with his cast-bound hands. He walked into his bedroom and shut the door. 

He sat at his desk, staring at the seal. Taking a deep breath, he clumsily tore the envelope open with his teeth. 

A small, metal disc fell out onto the desk. It whirred to life, projecting a massive hologram against his bedroom wall. 

"I AM HERE AS A PROJECTION!" All Might’s booming voice filled the room. The hero was wearing a bright yellow pinstripe suit. 

Izuku gasped. "All Might?!"

"Surprise, young Midoriya! I know it's been a week, but I had to wrap up some paperwork regarding my new position! That's right, I am officially a teacher at U.A. High School!" 

All Might cleared his throat, his expression turning serious. "You did excellently in the written exam, Izuku. But the practical... you took a massive risk. You scored eighty-five villain points. A phenomenal score. That alone would have passed you."

Izuku closed his eyes. I passed.

"But," All Might continued, pressing a button on a remote. The projection shifted, showing a video of Uraraka sitting in the principal's office. 

"Um, excuse me!" Uraraka's voice echoed in the room. "The boy with the curly hair and the giant claws... can I give him some of my points? He saved me! He sacrificed himself to stop that giant robot! Please!"

Izuku stared, his eyes widening. 

"You see, young Midoriya," All Might said gently, "a hero course that rejects those who do the right thing is no hero course at all. How can we call ourselves educators if we don't reward self-sacrifice?"

The hologram shifted to a massive leaderboard. 

"There was a hidden metric in the exam. Rescue Points! A panel of judges assigns points based on heroic acts. Izuku Midoriya... Sixty Rescue Points!"

Izuku's name shot to the absolute top of the leaderboard, sitting squarely at 145 points. The second place was Katsuki Bakugo with 77 points. 

"One hundred and forty-five points," All Might whispered, a proud, watery sheen in his eyes. "You didn't just pass, young man. You shattered my previous all-time record. You unleashed your power, not to slaughter, but to shield. You are a hero."

All Might extended a hand toward the camera. 

"Come, Izuku Midoriya. This is your Hero Academia."

Izuku fell to his knees in his bedroom, weeping uncontrollably into his casts. The fear, the trauma, the self-hatred of ten long years finally washed away, leaving only the unyielding conviction of an apex predator ready to protect his pride. 

He was going to U.A.

The morning sun filtered through the blinds of Izuku Midoriya’s bedroom, casting long, barred shadows across the floor. The alarm clock buzzed—a harsh, mechanical sound that broke the silence of the early dawn. 

Izuku reached out with a bare, calloused hand and slammed the snooze button. 

For a long moment, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the steady, thumping rhythm of his own heart. He cataloged the sensations in his body. His arms, having been broken and miraculously knitted back together by Recovery Girl’s Quirk a few weeks prior, ached with a dull, phantom soreness. But beyond the ache, there was a profound, undeniable heaviness to his physical form. 

He threw off the covers and sat up, his bare feet hitting the hardwood floor with a heavy, solid thud. He walked over to the full-length mirror attached to his closet door and stared at his reflection. 

He didn't look like a typical fifteen-year-old high school freshman. The baseline biological requirements to house and operate his Therizinosaurus Quirk had fundamentally altered his human anatomy. To keep his spine from snapping under the sheer, immense weight of his massive, three-meter-long keratin blades when transformed, his body had naturally packed on an absurd amount of dense, coiled muscle. His shoulders were remarkably broad, his chest deep and thick. Faint, silvery stretch marks webbed across his biceps and shoulders—a testament to the violent, rapid biological expansion of his Full Transformation during the entrance exam. 

Izuku opened his top drawer. Sitting neatly folded inside was his old pair of heavy-duty, reinforced leather gloves. The padded gauntlets that had defined his entire childhood. The physical manifestation of his fear. 

He reached down, his fingers hovering over the leather. Then, with a quiet exhale, he closed the drawer, leaving them inside. 

He didn't need the cage anymore. 

Instead, he pulled on a pair of simple, fingerless weightlifting gloves—just enough to protect his palms from friction, but leaving his fingertips entirely free. He slid into his brand-new U.A. High School uniform. The dark green blazer was a tight fit around his broad shoulders, and he had to leave the top button of his white shirt undone to accommodate the thick musculature of his neck, but he had never felt more comfortable in his own skin. 

"Izuku! Breakfast is ready! You don't want to be late for your first day!" his mother called from the kitchen. 

"Coming, Mom!" 

As he ate his massive, calorie-dense breakfast—required to maintain the metallic alloys in his claws—he felt a quiet, simmering excitement. Today, he was stepping into a world where his power wasn't a curse. It was a tool. 

The commute to U.A. High was an exercise in ignoring the stares of the public. At five-foot-nine and built like a junior heavyweight boxer, Izuku stood out among the standard middle-school-aged commuters on the train. He kept his head down, reading through his notes on the U.A. curriculum, but he could feel the eyes on him. A few months ago, those stares would have sent him into a spiral of anxiety. Today, he merely focused on the steady rhythm of the train on the tracks. 

The sprawling U.A. campus was just as intimidating the second time around. Izuku navigated the labyrinthine hallways, his steel-toed combat boots clicking rhythmically against the polished floors. He was looking for Class 1-A. 

When he finally found the massive door—comically oversized, perhaps to accommodate gigantification Quirks—he paused. 

He could hear yelling from the other side. 

"Take your feet off of that desk immediately!" a stern, robotic voice demanded. 

"Huh? Who the hell do you think you are, Four-Eyes?" a familiar, gravelly, arrogant voice shot back. 

Izuku sighed. Kacchan.

He slid the massive door open. The classroom immediately went silent. 

Standing near the front was the tall boy with glasses who had interrupted Present Mic during the orientation—Tenya Iida, Izuku recalled from the leaderboards. Sitting at a desk near the back, his feet propped up disrespectfully, was Katsuki Bakugo. 

But as Izuku stepped into the room, both of their arguments died in their throats. In fact, the entire classroom turned to stare at him. 

The silence wasn't born of malice; it was born of sheer, unadulterated awe. Every single person in this room had seen the Entrance Exam leaderboards. They knew who held the all-time high score. And those who had been in Battle Center B remembered the terrifying, thirty-foot prehistoric behemoth that had cleaved the Zero Pointer into scrap metal. 

"It's him," a boy with spiky red hair whispered. 

"The beast from Center B," a boy with multiple arms muttered. 

Tenya Iida immediately abandoned his argument with Bakugo and marched straight toward Izuku. He stopped a foot away, his posture rigid, and bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle. 

"I am Tenya Iida from Somei Private Academy!" he announced loudly. "I must formally apologize to you! I misjudged you during the orientation! You realized there was a practical, hidden metric to the exam, while I ran away blindly! I hated to admit it, but you are the superior student!"

Izuku blinked, slightly overwhelmed. He waved his bare hands frantically. "O-Oh! No! I didn't figure anything out, really! I just... I saw someone in trouble and my body moved on its own! Please, you don't need to apologize!"

"Oh! It's the curly-haired boy!" 

Izuku looked over Iida's shoulder to see Ochaco Uraraka standing in the doorway behind him, beaming brightly. She practically skipped into the room. "I've been looking for you! I wanted to say thank you again for saving me! You were amazing! When you turned into that giant dinosaur and went slash and boom! It was so cool!"

Izuku's face flushed a deep crimson. The apex predator mentality vanished, replaced instantly by a stuttering, flustered fifteen-year-old. "A-Ah! Uraraka! It's good to see you! I, uh, I'm just glad you didn't get crushed!"

"Deku."

The single word cut through the lighthearted atmosphere like a physical blade. 

The students turned toward the back of the room. Katsuki Bakugo was still in his seat, but his feet were on the floor now. He was leaning forward, his crimson eyes locked onto Izuku with a terrifying intensity. Small pops of nitroglycerin crackled in his palms, smoking slightly. 

Bakugo didn't see the stuttering, flustered boy. Bakugo saw the massive shoulders, the thick neck, and most importantly, the absence of the heavy leather gloves. 

Bakugo stood up, ignoring the nervous glances of his new classmates, and walked down the aisle until he stood face-to-face with Izuku. Despite Izuku’s newfound muscular bulk, Bakugo’s sheer presence was suffocating. 

"One hundred and forty-five points," Bakugo growled, his voice barely above a whisper, meant only for Izuku. "You think you're at the top of the food chain now? You think because you finally took the training wheels off and played monster, you can look down on me?"

Izuku’s stutter vanished. The flush faded from his cheeks. He met Bakugo’s furious crimson eyes with calm, steady emerald ones. 

"I'm not looking down on anyone, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice quiet but carrying a heavy, resonant timbre. "I just realized that if I want to save people, I can't afford to be afraid of my own hands anymore."

Bakugo’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He looked at Izuku’s bare, calloused fingers. The memory of the three-foot obsidian scythes slicing through the jungle gym flashed in his mind. He hated that memory. He hated the fear it instilled in him. 

"I'll kill you," Bakugo hissed softly. "I don't care how big your claws are, or how heavy you hit. I'm going to prove that my explosions can turn your scales to ash. Watch your back, Deku."

Bakugo shoved his shoulder roughly into Izuku’s chest as he walked past him back to his desk. Izuku didn't budge an inch from the impact, standing like a solid wall of stone. 

"If you're just here to make friends and play hero, you can pack up your stuff and leave."

The voice came from the floor. 

The entire class jumped, looking down at the doorway. A man resembling a giant yellow caterpillar was wriggling into the room. Slowly, a pale, exhausted face with deep bags under bloodshot eyes emerged from the sleeping bag, slurping a jelly pouch. 

"It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down," the man said, stepping out of the sleeping bag. He was dressed in baggy, all-black clothing, with a long, gray scarf wrapped around his neck. "Time is a precious resource. You lot aren't very rational, are you?"

The class was paralyzed. This is our teacher? 

"I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Nice to meet you." He reached into his sleeping bag and pulled out a stack of blue and white tracksuits. "Change into your P.E. uniforms and head out to the grounds. We're doing a Quirk Apprehension Test."

The girls' and boys' locker rooms were a flurry of activity. The boys were quickly changing into their blue and white U.A. tracksuits, chattering excitedly about their Quirks and the upcoming test. 

Izuku stood by his locker, pulling his uniform shirt over his head. 

"Whoa, Midoriya!" the red-haired boy, Eijiro Kirishima, exclaimed, stopping mid-stretch to stare. "Dude, you're built like a tank! What kind of Quirk requires that much muscle mass at our age?"

The other boys turned to look. Izuku felt a brief spike of self-consciousness as eyes roamed over his thick back, his broad shoulders, and the silvery stretch marks spiderwebbing across his biceps. 

"I-It's a Transformation-Mutant hybrid," Izuku explained, hastily pulling the U.A. P.E. shirt over his torso. The shirt was supposed to be loose-fitting, but it clung tightly to his chest and arms. "My Quirk... it localized heavy biological mass to my arms and legs. My body naturally had to dense up to support the sheer weight of the appendages, otherwise my spine would break."

"Manly!" Kirishima grinned, flexing his own arms. "I've got a Hardening Quirk, so I know a bit about body strain. I'm Kirishima, by the way!"

"Nice to meet you," Izuku smiled, zipping up his jacket. As he did, he caught Bakugo glaring at him from across the locker room, a silent promise of violence in his eyes. 

Out on the massive dirt field behind the school, the twenty students of Class 1-A gathered around Aizawa. The sun was bright, the air crisp. 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" Uraraka asked, tilting her head. "But what about the entrance ceremony? Or guidance counseling?"

"If you want to be pro heroes, you don't have time for leisurely events," Aizawa said flatly, his hands buried in his pockets. "U.A.'s selling point is its unrestricted traditions. That goes for how the teachers run their classes as well. You've been taking standardized tests your whole lives, but the country still forbids the use of Quirks in physical records. It's irrational. The Department of Education is procrastinating."

Aizawa turned his tired eyes to Bakugo. "Bakugo, you finished second in the practical exam. What was your best softball pitch in junior high?"

"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugo scoffed. 

"Try doing it with your Quirk." Aizawa tossed Bakugo a standard baseball. "Do whatever you want, just don't leave the circle."

Bakugo stepped up to the white chalk circle drawn in the dirt. He rolled his shoulders, a savage, predatory grin spreading across his face. He wound his arm back, his muscles coiling tightly. 

"DIE!" Bakugo roared. 

As he threw the ball, he ignited a massive, concussive explosion perfectly timed from his palm. The sheer kinetic shockwave propelled the ball into the stratosphere, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake. 

The class watched in awe as the ball vanished into the clouds. 

Beep.

Aizawa held up a digital device. "It's important for us to know our limits. That's the first rational step to figuring out what kind of heroes you'll be."

The screen read: 705.2m. 

"Seven hundred meters?! Are you kidding me?!" an electric-blonde boy named Kaminari yelled. 

"This looks like so much fun!" a pink-skinned girl, Ashido, cheered. 

"Using our Quirks as much as we want! As expected of the hero course!" a boy with tape-dispenser elbows laughed. 

The air grew instantly heavy. Aizawa’s hair seemed to defy gravity for a split second, and his bloodshot eyes darkened. 

"'It looks like fun,' you say?" Aizawa's voice was a low, terrifying rasp. "You have three years here to become heroes. Are you going to have an attitude of 'fun' the whole time? Very well. Whoever comes in last place in all eight tests will be judged to have no potential... and will be punished with expulsion."

The class erupted in shock. 

"Expulsion?! On the first day?!" Uraraka cried. "That's completely unfair!"

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, and selfish villains. Calamities whose time or place cannot be predicted," Aizawa countered, running a hand through his unkempt hair. "Japan is covered with unfairness. Heroes are the ones who reverse those situations. If you wanted to go talk with your friends at McDonald's after school, too bad. For the next three years, U.A. will inflict hardship after hardship upon you. Go beyond. Plus Ultra. Overcome it with everything you have."

Izuku swallowed hard. His heart hammered in his chest, but he didn't feel the paralyzing panic he used to. He felt a sharp, crystalline focus. This was it. No more hiding. He had to adapt, and he had to win. 

"All right, demonstration's over," Aizawa said. "Test one: the 50-meter dash."

The students lined up in pairs at the starting line. Izuku watched closely as Iida blew past his opponent with his engine legs, scoring a 3.04 seconds. Asui, a girl with a frog Quirk, hopped her way to an impressive 5.58 seconds. 

"Midoriya. Bakugo. You're up," Aizawa called out. 

The class went dead silent. The tension between the two boys from junior high was palpable. 

Izuku stepped up to the starting line next to Bakugo. 

"I don't care how hard you hit robots, Deku," Bakugo muttered, crouching down and aiming his palms backward. "You're heavy. You're slow. I'm going to leave you in the dust."

Izuku didn't respond. He looked down the 50-meter track. If he ran in his human form, his heavy muscle mass would slow him down. He needed explosive, forward momentum. He needed the Therizinosaurus legs. 

Izuku closed his eyes and breathed in. 

Crack. Snap. Squelch.

The students gasped as Izuku’s lower half violently morphed. His U.A. track pants tore at the seams as his calves doubled in size. Thick, iridescent green scales covered his legs. His knees inverted slightly, forming the powerful digitigrade structure of a predatory theropod. His feet burst through his sneakers, revealing three massive, heavy-duty talons that dug deep into the dirt. 

To counterbalance the heavy shift in his center of gravity, a thick, muscular, scaly tail burst from his lower back, hovering just above the ground. 

His upper half remained completely human. 

Izuku leaned deeply forward, almost parallel to the ground, his heavy tail whipping upward to hold him in perfect aerodynamic equilibrium. His digitigrade legs coiled like massive, biological springs. 

Bakugo glanced sideways, his eyes widening slightly at the monstrous leg structure. 

"On your marks..." a robot camera announced. "Get set..."

BANG.

Bakugo fired massive explosions from his palms, rocketing himself forward like a human missile. "Explosive Speed!" he yelled. 

But Izuku didn't fly. He launched. 

The sheer torque generated by the Therizinosaurus legs was astronomical. When Izuku pushed off, the earth literally cratered beneath his talons. The sound was like a cannon going off. He didn't take many steps; he took massive, terrifyingly fast leaps, his heavy tail acting as a rudder to keep his momentum entirely horizontal. 

He crossed the finish line in a blur of green and black scales, a massive cloud of dust kicking up behind him. He dug his talons into the earth to decelerate, sliding an extra twenty feet past the line before coming to a halt. 

"3.02 seconds," the robot announced for Izuku. 

"4.13 seconds," it announced for Bakugo. 

Bakugo landed hard, skidding to a stop. He looked up at the board, then at Izuku, who was already retracting his legs back into human form, panting slightly from the strain. Bakugo’s teeth ground together audibly, small explosions popping involuntarily from his palms. 

"Did you see that?" Kaminari whispered to Kirishima. "He just out-sped Bakugo's explosions with pure leg strength."

"That Quirk is insane," Kirishima agreed, eyes wide. 

Test 2: Grip Strength

The students moved inside a small gymnasium holding digital grip meters. 

Shoji, the boy with multiple arms, easily maxed out a machine at 540 kilograms, drawing gasps from the class. 

Izuku stood in the corner, holding his meter. He looked at it. If he transformed his arm and manifested his claws, the metallic keratin would effortlessly slice through the machine, destroying it and resulting in a zero. He had to be careful. 

He didn't manifest the claws or the scales. Instead, he simply tapped into the muscular density of his Quirk, bulking his human forearm. The veins in his arm bulged against his skin, thick as cables. He squeezed. 

The machine groaned under the pressure, the plastic casing audibly cracking. Izuku quickly let go before it shattered. 

The screen blinked: 810 kg. 

Izuku sighed in relief, writing down his score. 

Test 3: Standing Long Jump

Izuku stepped up to the sandbox. Once again, he manifested only his digitigrade dinosaur legs and his heavy tail. But this time, he allowed the claws on his toes to fully extend, acting like massive steel spikes. He dug them deep into the dirt at the edge of the sandbox to prevent slipping. 

He coiled his legs, letting his tail drop, and then sprang. 

He cleared the entire sandbox with ease, landing softly on the grass on the other side, much like Asui and Bakugo had done. 

Test 4: Repeated Side-Steps

This was where the reality of biology caught up with him. 

The test required rapidly jumping from left to right over a center line. Mineta, a short boy with purple spheres on his head, was dominating the test by bouncing endlessly between his sticky balls. 

Izuku tried to use his human form, but his dense, heavily muscled frame was built for forward kinetic transfer and absorbing heavy impacts, not rapid, weightless lateral movement. He was sluggish. 

Then he tried his partial leg transformation. It was even worse. The sheer momentum of his heavy tail, which was designed for straight-line sprinting balance, completely threw off his center of gravity when moving sideways. Every time he jumped left, his tail swung right, dragging him off balance. 

He scored abysmally, finishing near the bottom of the class for that specific test. 

He stood on the sidelines, wiping sweat from his forehead, breathing heavily. The transformations, even partial ones, required an absurd amount of caloric energy. His stomach rumbled violently. 

"Don't let it get to you," Uraraka said, walking up beside him with a water bottle. "You dominated the first three tests! You're doing great, Midoriya!"

Izuku offered a tired smile. "Thanks, Uraraka. My body just isn't built for agility. It's built for... well, impact."

"All right, quiet down," Aizawa called out, standing by the pitcher's circle. "Test 5. The softball throw."

The tension in the air ratcheted up instantly. This was the test Bakugo had set the baseline for. 

Uraraka went first. She applied her Zero Gravity Quirk to the ball and tossed it into the sky. It kept going until it was a mere speck, and then vanished. 

Aizawa held up his screen. It read the infinity symbol. 

The class cheered. 

"Midoriya. You're up," Aizawa said flatly. 

Izuku stepped into the white circle, holding the small leather baseball in his calloused hand. He looked out over the massive, empty field. 

This is it, he thought. To get the maximum distance, I need maximum leverage and power. 

He closed his eyes. He unlocked the cage in his mind and channeled the Quirk directly into his right arm. 

The biological shift began. His right shoulder expanded violently, tearing the right sleeve of his U.A. P.E. jacket completely off. Thick, dark green scales erupted down his bicep. Stiff feathers burst from his elbow. His forearm swelled to the size of a tree trunk, heavily muscled to support the lethal weapons waiting at his fingertips. 

He didn't extend the three-meter scythes—that would just slice the ball into ribbons—but he allowed his fingers to harden into thick, metallic talons to grip the ball securely. 

The sheer size of his monstrous, transformed right arm was horrifying to look at. It hung heavily by his side, completely disproportionate to his human body, a prehistoric club capable of devastating destruction. 

Izuku planted his feet. He drew his massive right arm back, winding up for a throw that would shatter the sound barrier. 

"Grrrraaaahhh!" Izuku roared, throwing his entire body weight forward, snapping his monstrous arm toward the horizon. 

Fzzt.

A split second before his arm reached the apex of the throw, a sharp, terrifying sensation washed over Izuku. The connection to his Quirk—the biological fire burning in his blood—was instantly, violently severed. 

Without the Quirk sustaining the massive biological structure, his arm instantly reverted to human form mid-swing. The sudden loss of mass threw his equilibrium completely off. The ball slipped from his normal, human fingers, pathetically plopping onto the dirt a mere forty-six meters away. 

Izuku stumbled forward, catching himself on his knees, gasping in pain. The forced, instant retraction of his Quirk felt like his muscles had been shocked with a taser. 

"Forty-six meters," the robot announced. 

Izuku looked up, wide-eyed, staring at his human hand. "W-What? I was trying to use it... I felt it..."

"I erased your Quirk."

Izuku turned his head. Shota Aizawa stood a few yards away. His long gray scarf was floating around him like a nest of angry snakes. His hair was standing on end, and his eyes glowed a piercing, demonic red. 

"The entrance exam was definitely not rational enough," Aizawa said, his voice dripping with icy disdain. "Even a kid with a butcher's Quirk like yours made it in."

Izuku froze. The words hit him like a physical blow. A butcher's Quirk. It was the whisper that had haunted his entire childhood, now spoken aloud by a Pro Hero. 

The other students murmured nervously, sensing the sudden hostility. 

"Those goggles..." Izuku breathed, recognizing the gear around Aizawa's neck. "You can erase Quirks just by looking at them! You're the Erasure Hero: Eraser Head!"

"Eraser Head? I don't think I've heard of him," someone whispered. 

"He's an underground hero," another replied. 

Aizawa’s scarf suddenly shot forward. It wrapped tightly around Izuku’s torso and arms, lifting him off the ground and pulling him forward until he was face-to-face with the glowing red eyes of his teacher. 

"I watched your performance in the entrance exam, Midoriya," Aizawa said softly, his voice meant only for the two of them. "You think you're a hero because you sliced a giant robot into scrap metal to save a girl. But what happens when the enemy isn't a mindless, unfeeling machine? What happens when it's a living, breathing person?"

Izuku struggled against the bindings, but the capture weapon was incredibly strong. 

"Your Quirk is inherently lethal," Aizawa continued relentlessly. "It is a biological weapon designed for severing and slaughter. You try to use the flat of your blades, you try to hold back, but in a real crisis, in the heat of a life-or-death battle where civilians are in the crossfire, a single slip of your control means you bisect a hostage. If you lose control of that beast for even a fraction of a second, you won't be a hero. You will be a murderer."

Tears pricked the corners of Izuku’s eyes, not from physical pain, but from the terrifying truth of Aizawa’s words. It was the exact fear All Might had warned him about on the rooftop. 

"You were about to throw that ball using an arm that carries the physical force to demolish a building," Aizawa hissed. "If you do that, you run the risk of breaking your own human spine from the torque, or worse, losing control of the projectile and killing a civilian miles away. You have zero tactical application for a lethal weapon in a non-lethal scenario. From what I can tell, you can't be a hero. You are a liability."

Aizawa blinked. His eyes returned to normal, and his hair fell flat. The capture weapon unwound, dropping Izuku roughly into the dirt. 

"I've returned your Quirk," Aizawa said coldly, turning his back. "You have one more throw. Get it over with."

Izuku stayed on his hands and knees in the dirt. The silence of the class was deafening. He could feel Bakugo’s mocking gaze burning a hole in the back of his head. He could feel the pity from Uraraka and Iida. 

He's right, Izuku thought, his hands shaking. If I use my arm like a club, it's just raw, uncontrollable destruction. That's all I am. Destruction.

He squeezed his eyes shut. 

No.

All Might’s words on the beach echoed through his mind. 'A man who feels no urge to kill does not have to exercise restraint. Your restraint is what makes you magnificent. Do not fear the predator. Master it.'

Aizawa wasn't telling him to give up. Aizawa was challenging him. He was asking Izuku: How do you use a lethal weapon safely?

Izuku stood up. He brushed the dirt off his knees. He didn't look at the class. He didn't look at Aizawa. He looked at the ball in his hand. 

He didn't need to turn his arm into a massive, uncontrollable club to throw a ball. A baseball pitch wasn't about the arm. 

Izuku remembered reading a sports biomechanics book when trying to figure out how to maximize his human body's potential before meeting All Might. A pitch is a kinetic chain. The power is generated in the legs, transferred through the hips, torqued by the core and back, and finally, whipped through the human arm. 

He walked back to the center of the circle. 

He took a deep breath and unlocked the cage. But this time, he didn't flood his arms. He directed the biological shift with absolute, surgical precision. 

Crunch. 

His legs exploded into the massive, digitigrade Therizinosaurus pillars, his talons digging deep into the earth for an immovable foundation. His heavy, scaled tail slammed into the dirt behind him, acting as a structural anchor. 

But he didn't stop there. He pushed the Quirk up his spine. 

He didn't grow the arms or the blades, but the thick, impenetrable green scales erupted across his back and obliques. His core muscles expanded rapidly, densifying into a heavily armored, prehistoric torso designed to handle immense kinetic stress. 

His right arm, however, remained entirely, completely human. 

Aizawa watched from the sidelines, his eyes narrowing. He's not manifesting his primary weapon. He's isolating the support musculature.

Izuku dug his dinosaur talons into the dirt. He lowered his center of gravity. He twisted his scaled, armored torso back, pointing his human left arm toward the horizon. 

He didn't roar this time. He was completely silent, his focus absolute. 

Izuku fired. 

He pushed off with his Therizinosaurus legs, generating an astronomical amount of kinetic energy. He twisted his armored core, the dense muscles snapping forward like a coiled steel spring. The energy transferred flawlessly up his reinforced spine, bypassing his human shoulder, and whipping down his perfectly normal, human right arm. 

His human arm acted like a trebuchet, propelled by the engine of a dinosaur. 

As Izuku released the ball, the air cracked. 

BOOM!

A literal sonic boom rippled out from the pitcher's circle, kicking up a massive shockwave of dust and dirt that forced the other students to cover their faces. 

The baseball vanished. It didn't arc; it tore a straight line through the sky, ripping the clouds apart in a localized shockwave before disappearing completely from view. 

The kinetic backlash of the throw tore the sleeve of Izuku’s human arm completely off, but his arm wasn't broken. His heavily armored back and dinosaur legs had absorbed the devastating recoil. 

Izuku slowly retracted the Quirk. The scales hissed and dissolved, his legs shifting back to human form. The tail receded. He stood in the center of the circle, breathing heavily, his right arm stinging intensely from the wind friction, but entirely functional. 

He turned around to face Shota Aizawa. 

Izuku clenched his right fist—his human fist. 

"I'm not a butcher, Aizawa-sensei," Izuku said, his voice ringing out clear and strong across the silent field. "I can control it. I can still move."

Aizawa stared at the boy. For a long, tense moment, the underground hero's face remained entirely stoic. 

Then, slowly, a wide, almost manic grin stretched across Aizawa’s face, hidden slightly beneath his scarf. He held up his digital device so the rest of the class could see. 

912.4m

"He threw it over nine hundred meters?!" Kaminari screamed, grabbing his head. "Without even transforming his arms?!"

"He used his mutant legs and back to generate the torque, but kept his arm human to maintain perfect control of the projectile," Yaoyorozu, a tall girl with a ponytail, analyzed, her eyes wide with respect. "That is... an incredibly high-level application of biomechanics."

"Awesome!" Uraraka cheered, pumping her fists. 

Behind the crowd, Katsuki Bakugo stood frozen, his eyes wide, his pupils dilated in shock. 

He threw it farther than me. 

It wasn't just the distance that shattered Bakugo’s reality. It was the fact that Deku had done it without even using his massive claws. He had used the sheer, baseline physical strength of his body to surpass Bakugo's most powerful explosion. 

"DEKU!" 

Bakugo snapped. The rational part of his brain shut down, completely overridden by ten years of complex inferiority and blinding rage. He ignited massive explosions in both palms and charged straight at Izuku, screaming. "Tell me how you did that! You've been hiding your power from me for ten years, you bastard!"

Izuku turned, his eyes locking onto the charging Bakugo. Instinct took over. Before Bakugo could close the distance, Izuku’s right arm twitched, ready to burst into a massive, feathered appendage to defend himself. 

But he didn't have to. 

Suddenly, thick bands of gray cloth wrapped around Bakugo’s torso, binding his arms to his sides. He was yanked backward, tripping over his own feet and landing hard on his back. 

"What the...?! This cloth is stiff!" Bakugo yelled, struggling against the bindings. 

"It's a capture weapon made of carbon fibers woven with metal wire," Aizawa said, his eyes glowing red, his hair floating wildly. "Stop using your Quirk, Bakugo. You're giving me dry eye."

Aizawa blinked, letting his hair fall. He released the capture weapon. "We're wasting time. Whoever is next, step up."

As Bakugo begrudgingly stood up, glaring daggers at Izuku, Izuku walked past him to rejoin the class. He didn't gloat. He didn't cower. He just offered a quiet nod of acknowledgment to Iida and Uraraka, who were looking at him like he was a superstar. 

End of the Day

The rest of the physical tests went by in a blur of exertion. Izuku performed reasonably well in the distance run, using his Therizinosaurus legs for a steady, powerful jog, though his heavy mass exhausted him quickly. He did decently in the seated toe-touch, and managed an average score in the sit-ups. 

When all eight tests were completed, Aizawa stood before the exhausted class, holding up a holographic projector. 

"I'll quickly present the total results," Aizawa said. "The total is simply the marks you got from each test. It's a waste of time to explain verbally, so I'll just show you all at once."

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. He had done poorly in the side-steps, and average in a few others, but his 50-meter dash, grip strength, long jump, and ball throw were phenomenal. 

He opened his eyes and scanned the hologram. 

1. Momo Yaoyorozu

2. Shoto Todoroki

3. Izuku Midoriya

4. Katsuki Bakugo

Izuku let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in his lungs for ten years. He was third. He wasn't just surviving; he was thriving. He looked down the list. Bakugo was right beneath him at fourth. Uraraka was tenth. And at the very bottom, in twentieth place, was Minoru Mineta. 

Mineta collapsed to his knees, sobbing hysterically. "I'm expelled! My heroic career is over before it even began! I never even got to touch a girl's—"

"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion," Aizawa interrupted flatly. 

The entire class froze. 

Aizawa smirked, pulling his sleeping bag out of nowhere. "It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your Quirks. If you aren't pushed to the brink of despair, you won't give it your all."

"WHAT?!" half the class screamed. 

"Of course it was a lie," Yaoyorozu sighed, shaking her head. "It was obvious if you just thought it through."

Izuku chuckled softly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was a cruel trick, but it had worked. It had forced him to think outside the box, to find a way to use his lethal Quirk in a non-lethal, controlled manner. He had learned more about his own body in one afternoon with Aizawa than he had in ten years of hiding in his room. 

"With that, we're done here," Aizawa said, turning to walk away. "There are handouts with the syllabus in the classroom. When you get back, look them over."

As Aizawa walked past Izuku, he paused for a fraction of a second. He didn't look at the boy, but he spoke just loud enough for Izuku to hear. 

"You controlled the beast today, Midoriya. But tomorrow, the beast will be hungry again. Keep it on a tight leash, or I'll expel you for real."

Izuku bowed deeply. "Yes, Aizawa-sensei. Thank you."

The sun was setting, casting a warm, orange glow over the U.A. campus as the students made their way to the front gates to head home. 

Izuku was exhausted. His human arm was bandaged and in a sling—Recovery Girl had scolded him mercilessly for putting so much torque on human bones—but his spirit was incredibly light. 

"Midoriya! Wait up!" 

Izuku turned to see Tenya Iida jogging toward him, his backpack strapped tightly over both shoulders. 

"Iida! Are you heading to the station too?" Izuku asked. 

"Indeed! I must say, your performance today was nothing short of spectacular," Iida said, chopping the air with his hand. "To deduce the mechanics of your own physiology to maximize output without sacrificing control... it was a brilliant display of heroic adaptability!"

"Oh, it wasn't that brilliant," Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks warming. "I was just terrified Aizawa-sensei was actually going to expel me."

"Hey! You two!" 

They both turned. Ochaco Uraraka was running to catch up with them, her blazer unbuttoned and her tie loose. "Going to the station? Let's walk together!"

"Uraraka!" Izuku smiled, genuinely happy to see her. 

"Man, today was crazy," Uraraka laughed, falling into step beside them. "Aizawa-sensei really tricked us! But hey, Midoriya... I realized I don't really know what to call you. During the tests, Bakugo kept calling you 'Deku'. Is that your nickname?"

Izuku flinched slightly. The name 'Deku' carried ten years of venom, mockery, and isolation. It was the name given to the boy who was too afraid of his own shadow to fight back. 

"Uh, well..." Izuku looked down at his combat boots. "My real name is Izuku. 'Deku' is... it's what Kacchan calls me to make fun of me. It means 'Useless' or 'One who can't do anything'."

Iida frowned deeply. "An insult? That is highly unsportsmanlike! I will speak to Bakugo about his atrocious behavior!"

"No, really, it's fine!" Izuku said quickly. 

"But you know," Uraraka hummed, tapping her chin with a finger, "when I hear 'Deku', I don't think 'Useless' at all. I think it sounds like the Japanese word for 'You can do it'! It has a really supportive, 'never-give-up' vibe to it!"

Izuku stopped walking. He stared at Uraraka, his emerald eyes wide. 

You can do it. 

He looked at his bandaged human arm. He thought about the three-meter scythes waiting just beneath his skin. He thought about the terror he had felt his whole life, and how today, he had finally begun to master it. He wasn't useless anymore. He was a hero in training. 

A slow, bright smile spread across Izuku's face. It was the first genuinely carefree smile he had worn in a decade. 

"Deku," Izuku said, his voice firm and filled with a newfound pride. "You can call me Deku."

"Wait, Midoriya, are you sure?" Iida asked, bewildered. "You just said it was an insult!"

"It was," Izuku said, looking out toward the setting sun. "But it's not anymore. It's like my Quirk. For a long time, I thought it was a curse. I thought it was only meant to hurt people. But it's not. It's whatever I choose to make of it."

Unbeknownst to the trio, standing a few dozen yards behind them in the shadow of the school gates, Katsuki Bakugo watched them walk away. 

His fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. The image of the ball breaking the sound barrier replayed in his mind over and over again. He didn't understand it. Deku was supposed to be a pebble on his path. Even with the terrifying dinosaur Quirk, Deku was supposed to be a slow, heavy target that Bakugo could easily outmaneuver and blast away. 

But Deku was adapting. Deku was getting stronger. And worse, Deku wasn't afraid of him anymore. 

"You're not looking down on me," Bakugo whispered to the empty air, his crimson eyes burning with a dark, obsessive fire. "I'll make you use those claws against me, Deku. And when you do, I'll snap them in half."

The afternoon sun baked the concrete of the U.A. High School courtyard, but inside the classroom of 1-A, the atmosphere was electrified with a completely different kind of heat. 

Morning classes had been a surreal return to normalcy—English with Present Mic, mathematics with Ectoplasm—but every student was vibrating with anticipation for the afternoon block. Foundational Hero Studies. The core of the U.A. curriculum. 

Izuku sat at his desk, idly spinning a pencil between his calloused fingers. His right arm was no longer in a sling, thanks to a final, exhausting session with Recovery Girl that morning. His muscles were fully repaired, tightly coiled, and ready. He glanced over at Bakugo, who was staring out the window with an unblinking, murderous intensity. Ever since the Quirk Apprehension Test, Bakugo had retreated into a volatile silence. He didn't yell. He didn't mock. He just watched Izuku like a hawk waiting for a rabbit to make a wrong move. 

Suddenly, the massive door to the classroom didn't just slide open; it was practically blown off its hinges. 

"I AM..." a booming voice echoed down the hall, rattling the glass of the windows. 

A massive, muscular figure in a Silver Age, red-white-and-blue hero suit leaned through the doorway, gripping the frame. 

"...COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!" 

The class erupted. 

"It's All Might!" Kaminari cheered, jumping out of his seat. 

"Wow, he really is a teacher!" Ashido gasped, her eyes wide with starry adoration. 

"That's a costume from the Silver Age, isn't it? The retro vibe is incredibly manly!" Kirishima grinned, leaning over his desk. 

Izuku’s heart did a familiar flip of fanboyish joy, but beneath it lay a deep, steadying warmth. He shared a secret with the number one hero. He knew the frail, exhausted man beneath the towering muscle, and he knew exactly how much physical agony it cost Toshinori Yagi to maintain that brilliant, unwavering smile. 

All Might marched to the podium, his cape billowing behind him despite the lack of wind in the room. "Foundational Hero Studies! For this class, we'll be building up your heroic foundations through various trials! You'll earn a lot of credits here! And to jump right in, today's activity is..." 

He whipped out a small, remote-controlled placard. "COMBAT TRAINING!"

Bakugo’s head snapped away from the window. A savage, predatory grin finally broke through his days of furious silence. "Combat..."

"...Training!" Izuku finished in a whisper, his knuckles tightening around his pencil. 

"And to go with that!" All Might pointed to the back wall of the classroom. "Behold!"

With the whir of hidden machinery, panels in the wall slid open to reveal rows of numbered, metallic suitcases. 

"Costumes made based on your Quirk registrations and the requests you sent in before school started!" All Might announced. "After you change, gather in Ground Beta! The garb you wear into the battlefield is vital, young men and women! From today on, you are heroes!"

Izuku stood up, walking toward suitcase number 18. He ran his hand over the cold metal surface. 

When Izuku had submitted his costume request, it had been a masterclass in anxiety-driven engineering. He had spent weeks designing it, not based on aesthetics, but on absolute, unforgiving functionality. He had to account for violent biological expansion, the localized weight of his limbs, and most importantly, the lethal nature of his claws. 

He popped the latches on the suitcase. It was time to see if the U.A. Support Department could deliver the cage he needed. 

Ground Beta was a sprawling, multi-block replica of a dense urban environment, towering with skyscrapers, narrow alleyways, and complex road systems. 

All Might stood at the entrance to a dark tunnel, waiting for his students. Slowly, Class 1-A began to emerge into the light, dressed in a vibrant array of spandex, armor, capes, and support gear. 

"Looking good is very important, ladies and gentlemen!" All Might boomed. "Look alive, now! Let's see what you've got!"

Iida emerged in a bulky, white-and-blue suit of armor that looked like an exhaust manifold. Uraraka stepped out in a sleek, pink-and-black astronaut-inspired suit, though she looked slightly embarrassed by how tight it was. Bakugo stalked out of the tunnel looking like a walking war crime—black tank top, heavy combat boots, and massive, grenade-shaped gauntlets strapped to his forearms. 

As the class gathered, Uraraka looked around. "Hey, where's Deku?"

"Right here."

Heavy, rhythmic thuds echoed from the darkness of the tunnel. The footsteps sounded less like a teenager walking and more like industrial machinery hitting the concrete. 

Izuku stepped into the sunlight, and the chatter of the class instantly died. 

Izuku Midoriya did not look like a comic book hero. He looked like a high-threat tactical response unit. 

His base suit was a deep, matte-green combat uniform made of a highly advanced, ultra-stretch ballistic polymer. It was sleeveless, exposing his heavily muscled arms, and the pants were baggy, secured with heavy-duty straps that would snap open to accommodate the violent expansion of his digitigrade dinosaur legs and tail. Thick, shock-absorbing combat boots covered his feet. 

Around his waist was a heavy utility belt, equipped with medical supplies and restraint tape. 

But it was his arms that drew every eye in the courtyard. 

Strapped to the back of his forearms, extending from his elbows down past his knuckles, were two massive, rectangular mechanisms. They looked like thick, brutalist gauntlets made of dark gray carbon-fiber and titanium alloy. They were easily a foot wide and incredibly bulky, featuring heavily padded, blunt striking surfaces on the outside. 

"Whoa, Midoriya," Kirishima breathed, walking up to him. "That is... intense. It looks like military riot gear. What's up with the massive arm guards?"

Izuku offered a small, slightly nervous smile, adjusting a strap on his chest. "Thanks, Kirishima. They're not just arm guards. They're Support Sheaths."

"Support Sheaths?" Yaoyorozu asked, stepping closer to analyze the engineering. "For your claws?"

"Exactly," Izuku nodded. "My Quirk produces three-meter-long, hyper-dense keratin blades. They are incredibly sharp and practically indestructible. In a rescue scenario against robots or debris, they're great. But against human opponents..." 

Izuku’s expression sobered, his emerald eyes hardening. "They're a lethal liability. If I use my Quirk in a fight, I run the risk of accidentally dismembering someone. So, I asked the Support Company to build these."

Izuku raised his hands. He took a deep breath, and triggered a partial transformation. 

Crunch. Squelch.

The biological shift was instantaneous. The muscles in his arms swelled, the thick green and black scales erupting across his skin. Stiff feathers burst from his biceps. And from his fingertips, the obsidian scythes shot forward. 

But they didn't extend into the open air. 

As the three-meter blades erupted from his hands, they shot directly into the internal housing of the massive metal gauntlets. The sheer force of the biological growth acted as a deployment mechanism. The carbon-fiber gauntlets violently extended outward, riding the length of Izuku's claws. Heavy steel locking pins snapped into place with a series of loud, mechanical CLACKS. 

When the transformation was complete, Izuku’s claws were completely encased. Instead of wielding three-meter razor-sharp scythes, his arms now ended in three-meter-long, blunt, shock-absorbing metal pillars. 

He swung his right arm down, slamming the heavily padded sheath into the concrete street. 

BOOM.

The impact cratered the asphalt, spider-webbing the ground for ten feet in every direction, but the concrete was bludgeoned, not sliced. 

Izuku stood back up, the massive blunt weapons hanging heavily from his monstrous, scaled arms. "When I transform, the claws act as the internal skeletal structure for the sheaths. It turns my lethal blades into non-lethal, blunt-force clubs. I can hit as hard as I want without shedding a single drop of blood."

The class stared in absolute awe. 

"That is..." Iida adjusted his glasses, his eyes wide. "...a phenomenally rational and ethical application of support technology! You have artificially restrained your lethal potential to ensure the safety of villains! A true hero's mindset!"

"It's so smart, Deku!" Uraraka cheered. 

In the back of the crowd, Bakugo’s eyes were locked on the blunt sheaths. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth audibly ground together. 

Training wheels. He put the training wheels back on.

Bakugo’s blood boiled. In his twisted mindset, Izuku putting restraints on his Quirk was the ultimate insult. It was Izuku saying, I don't need my real power to beat you. It was pity. It was arrogance. It was unforgivable. 

"Now that you're all geared up!" All Might interrupted, holding up a script. "It's time for combat training! The setup is simple! You'll be split into teams of two! One team will be the Heroes, the other the Villains! The Villains have hidden a nuclear weapon somewhere in their hideout! The Heroes must either capture the Villains or secure the weapon within the time limit! The Villains must protect the weapon or capture the Heroes!"

All Might pulled out a yellow lottery box. "Teams will be determined by drawing lots! Real pros often have to team up with whoever is available on the scene!"

Izuku walked up and pulled a ball. Letter A. 

He looked around. "I'm Team A. Anyone else?"

"Me too!" Uraraka beamed, holding up her ball. "We're a team, Deku! This is great!"

Izuku felt a wave of relief. Uraraka was grounded, smart, and her Quirk offered incredible mobility and support. With his heavy offense and her tactical floating, they were a solid pair. 

"Excellent! Now, for the first match!" All Might reached into two separate boxes, pulling out two balls. 

"Team A will be the Heroes!" All Might announced. "And Team D will be the Villains!"

Izuku froze. The heavy sheaths on his arms felt like they weighed ten tons. 

Team D. 

He slowly turned his head. Across the courtyard, Bakugo stood completely still. The blonde boy slowly raised his head, his crimson eyes locking onto Izuku with a look of pure, unadulterated malice. Beside Bakugo stood Tenya Iida, looking highly uncomfortable but resolute. 

"Villain Team, go inside and set up!" All Might instructed. "Hero Team, you have five minutes to strategize before your infiltration begins!"

Inside the surveillance room, the rest of the class gathered around a wall of massive monitors. 

"This is a heavy matchup right out of the gate," Kirishima muttered, crossing his arms. "Bakugo's been glaring at Midoriya like he wants to eat him alive since day one."

"It is highly anticipated," Yaoyorozu agreed, her eyes fixed on the screen showing the exterior of the building where Izuku and Uraraka were strategizing. "Midoriya possesses overwhelming physical power and a tactical mind, but his equipment makes him heavy and close-ranged. Bakugo is incredibly agile, possesses devastating ranged attacks, and has zero hesitation."

"I'm worried about Midoriya," Ashido said, biting her lip. "Bakugo looks actually insane."

On the screen, outside the building, Uraraka was looking at a floor plan. 

"Okay, so it's a five-story building," she said. "If I were them, I'd put the bomb on the top floor to maximize the time it takes us to get there."

Izuku was standing perfectly still, his eyes closed, his human hands currently un-transformed. He was regulating his breathing. 

"That's exactly what Iida will do," Izuku said, his voice calm, dropping an octave. "Iida is playing the role of the villain, which means he'll fortify his position and guard the objective perfectly. He'll be on the fifth floor."

"What about Bakugo?" Uraraka asked. 

Izuku opened his eyes. They were intensely focused. "Kacchan doesn't care about the bomb. He doesn't care about the objective. He only cares about one thing." Izuku looked up at the windows of the building. "Me."

"He's going to ambush us?" 

"He's going to ambush me," Izuku corrected. "Uraraka, listen closely. When we go in, I'll take the lead. Kacchan is going to come straight for me. He is entirely driven by his pride. He will completely ignore you. When he engages me, you run. Use your Quirk to make yourself light, bypass the fight, and find Iida."

"Wait, you're going to fight him alone?!" Uraraka gasped. "Deku, his explosions are massive! And you're basically a giant target in these tight hallways!"

"I have to fight him alone," Izuku said softly, gripping his utility belt. "If you stay, you'll get caught in the crossfire. And besides... Kacchan and I have ten years of things to work out. I can handle it."

"HERO TEAM! INFILTRATE!" All Might's voice echoed over the PA system. 

Izuku and Uraraka slipped through a first-floor window, dropping silently into the dim, dusty corridors of the faux building. 

The air was stale. Izuku took a deep breath through his nose. His Therizinosaurus Quirk subtly altered his baseline biology, giving him an acute sense of smell and hearing, akin to a predator. 

Beneath the smell of dust and old concrete, a faint, sweet, chemical scent drifted down the hallway. 

Burnt caramel. Nitroglycerin.

"He's close," Izuku whispered, his muscles tensing. "Stay behind me."

They rounded a corner into a long hallway. At the far end, shadows stretched across the floor. 

Suddenly, the shadows moved. 

"DEKU!" 

A terrifying roar echoed down the hall. A spark ignited in the darkness, immediately followed by a blinding flash of light and a massive, concussive roar. 

A fireball the size of a van barreled down the hallway, eating up the oxygen and scorching the wallpaper as it hurtled straight toward Izuku and Uraraka. 

Izuku didn't flinch. 

Crunch. Squelch. CLANG!

In a fraction of a second, Izuku triggered the transformation in his arms. The thick scales erupted, the feathers burst forth, and the three-meter claws shot into the carbon-fiber housings, snapping the Support Sheaths to their full, massive extension. 

Izuku crossed his three-meter-long, blunt sheathed arms in front of his face, forming a thick, X-shaped wall of titanium and carbon fiber. He planted his combat boots firmly into the floor. 

The explosion hit him dead on. 

The flames washed over the sheaths, the kinetic shockwave pushing Izuku back two full inches, the rubber of his boots squealing against the tile. But the thick, shock-absorbing padding of his support gear completely negated the concussive force. 

When the smoke cleared, Izuku stood completely unharmed, his massive sheaths smoking slightly. Behind him, Uraraka was perfectly safe, shielded by his massive frame. 

"Go!" Izuku barked, not taking his eyes off the smoke ahead. 

Uraraka hesitated for a split second, then tapped her fingers together, making herself weightless. She sprinted down a side corridor, bypassing the hallway entirely. 

From the dissipating smoke, Katsuki Bakugo stepped forward. His face was twisted into a snarl of absolute fury, smoke wafting from his palms. 

"You dodged my ambush," Bakugo growled, his eyes locking onto the massive, blunt sheaths extending from Izuku's arms. "And you brought your stupid toys. I told you not to look down on me, you Quirkless wannabe."

"I'm not looking down on you, Kacchan," Izuku said, shifting into a low, defensive stance. The sheer weight of the sheaths required him to hunch slightly, his broad shoulders carrying the load. "I brought these so I wouldn't have to hold back. I brought these so I can fight you."

"FIGHT ME WITH YOUR CLAWS!" Bakugo roared, lunging forward with explosive speed, a blast from his rear hand propelling him like a rocket. "Take the training wheels off and fight me to kill, Deku!"

Bakugo closed the distance in a millisecond, raising his right palm for a point-blank blast to Izuku's face. 

Izuku’s feral, slit-pupil eyes tracked the movement effortlessly. 

He didn't try to dodge. With the sheaths deployed, he couldn't move quickly in tight spaces. Instead, he used the length of his weapons. 

Izuku swung his left sheath in a short, brutal arc. 

SMACK.

The heavy, padded metal slammed directly into Bakugo's right forearm right before the explosion could fully ignite. The blunt force batted Bakugo's arm completely off trajectory. The explosion fired, but it blasted harmlessly into the ceiling, raining plaster down on them. 

Bakugo spun with the momentum, bringing his left hand around for a blindside blast. 

Izuku stepped into the attack. He drove the flat surface of his right sheath forward, pinning Bakugo's left arm against the wall of the corridor with a heavy thud. 

"Let go of me!" Bakugo snarled, igniting small pops against the carbon-fiber, but the material was built to withstand far worse. 

Izuku stared down at his childhood rival. "You want me to use my claws? You want me to fight to kill? That's not what heroes do, Kacchan. Heroes restrain themselves. Heroes protect. I'm not going to be the monster you want me to be!"

Izuku twisted his hips and forcefully shoved, using the sheath to launch Bakugo backward down the hallway. 

Bakugo hit the ground, flipping backward and landing on his feet, skidding across the tile. He was panting, his crimson eyes wild and bloodshot. The realization was sinking in, and it tasted like ash. 

Deku wasn't just defending. Deku was parrying him. With three-meter-long, incredibly heavy clubs on his arms, Deku was demonstrating martial arts. He was reading Bakugo's movements, anticipating the explosions, and using the sheer reach and weight of the sheaths to shut down the offense before it could even start. 

"You think..." Bakugo’s voice trembled with rage. "You think you can just swat me away? You think you're better than me?!"

Bakugo let out a primal scream. He didn't charge straight in this time. He unleashed a barrage of rapid-fire explosions, propelling himself off the walls, the ceiling, moving in a chaotic, unpredictable zig-zag pattern. 

"Stun Grenade!" Bakugo yelled, clapping his hands together. 

A blinding flash of light filled the hallway. 

Izuku shut his eyes, his retinas burning. He was temporarily blinded, relying entirely on his heightened hearing and the change in air pressure. 

He heard the crackle of a blast directly above him. Bakugo was going for a downward strike. 

Izuku didn't raise his sheaths. He knew he couldn't track a mid-air target blind with heavy arms. Instead, he tapped into the lower half of his Quirk. 

Crunch. 

His human legs instantly morphed into the massive, digitigrade talons, tearing through the release straps on his pants. His heavy, scaled tail burst from his lower back with a violent swish. 

As Bakugo descended through the blinding light, palms primed to blow Izuku's head off, Izuku dropped low to the ground. 

He spun on his talons, whipping his massive, muscular tail in a sweeping arc. 

WHAM.

The thick, scaly tail slammed directly into Bakugo's ribs mid-air. It wasn't a lethal blow—the tail was a blunt instrument—but the sheer kinetic force of a dinosaur's counterbalance hitting a human body was devastating. 

Bakugo coughed up saliva, his breath entirely knocked out of his lungs. He was swatted out of the air like a fly, crashing through the drywall of the corridor and landing in an empty office room on the other side. 

Izuku blinked rapidly, his vision slowly returning. He stood in the hallway, his digitigrade legs coiled, his heavy tail swishing slowly behind him, his three-meter sheaths resting against the floor. He looked into the hole in the wall. 

Bakugo was struggling to his knees amidst overturned desks and scattered papers. He was clutching his ribs, wheezing heavily. 

"Are you done, Kacchan?" Izuku asked gently. "You can't get past my reach. And if you try to outmaneuver me, my legs are too fast. Surrender. Let's finish the exercise."

In the surveillance room, the class was dead silent. 

"He's completely dominating him," Kirishima whispered, awe-struck. "Bakugo is a beast, but Midoriya... he's fighting like a seasoned pro. He's not even attacking. He's just systematically shutting Bakugo down."

"It's the psychological warfare," Aizawa noted from the back of the room, sipping a juice pouch. "Bakugo's ego requires him to dominate with overwhelming force. Midoriya is denying him that. By refusing to use his lethal claws and fighting entirely defensively, Midoriya is implicitly stating that he is in total control of the situation. It's driving Bakugo insane."

All Might watched the screen, his hands gripping the console tightly. Izuku... you truly have mastered your fear. But do not underestimate his pride.

In the dusty office room, Bakugo stood up. His shoulders were trembling. His head was bowed, his blonde spikes casting a dark shadow over his eyes. 

"Surrender?" Bakugo whispered, the word sounding foreign and vile on his tongue. 

He slowly raised his head. His eyes weren't just angry anymore. They were hollow, manic, pushed to the absolute brink of his psychological breaking point. 

Bakugo reached over to the massive, grenade-shaped gauntlet on his right arm. He curled his fingers around the metal pin protruding from the side. 

"They asked me to submit a design for my costume," Bakugo said, his voice eerily calm, though his hands shook. "My Quirk secretes nitroglycerin sweat. The more I sweat, the stronger the blast. If I use too much, it blows my own arms off. But these gauntlets..." 

He pulled the pin slightly. A mechanical whirring sound echoed in the room. 

"...they store the sweat. And they let me fire it all at once. Safely."

Up in the surveillance room, All Might’s eyes widened in horror. "Young Bakugo! Stop! Are you trying to kill him?!"

Bakugo ignored the earpiece. He stared at Izuku, who was standing in the hallway, his sheaths deployed. 

"If you won't take the training wheels off, Deku..." Bakugo screamed, his face twisting into a mask of pure, desperate fury. "...THEN I'LL MELT THEM TO SLAG!"

Bakugo yanked the pin. 

Time seemed to slow down for Izuku. 

His feral, heightened senses processed the threat instantly. The sheer volume of concentrated nitroglycerin igniting in the gauntlet was astronomical. It wasn't a standard explosion. It was a localized thermobaric weapon. 

Izuku analyzed the hallway. It was narrow. The blast radius would consume the entire corridor. 

Option 1: Block it with the sheaths. 

Result: The padding will burn away. The carbon-fiber will hold, but the sheer thermal shockwave will bake me alive inside my suit. Critical injury.

Option 2: Dodge. 

Result: I use my digitigrade legs to leap to the floor above. But if I move, the blast travels unimpeded down the hallway, hits the load-bearing pillar at the end, and collapses the entire left wing of the building. Uraraka is on the upper floors. She could be crushed.

He couldn't block. He couldn't run. 

Izuku took a deep breath. His pupils narrowed into absolute, terrifying slits. 

He didn't have to block the fire. He had to redirect the pressure. 

"Deku! Run!" Uraraka screamed through the comms. 

Izuku reached his left hand over to his right forearm. His fingers found the small, recessed manual override switch on the side of the massive Support Sheath. 

He pressed it. 

CLANK. HISS.

The heavy steel locking pins disengaged. The massive carbon-fiber sheath detached from his right arm and hit the floor with a heavy thud, rolling away. 

For the first time since the entrance exam, the beast was unleashed in front of a human. 

Izuku’s right arm was fully transformed, massive and heavily muscled, ending in three, bare, obsidian scythes. They were a meter long each, curving slightly, gleaming with a terrifying, razor-sharp edge that looked capable of cutting through the fabric of reality itself. 

Bakugo’s gauntlet fired. 

It was like staring into the heart of a dying sun. A massive, roaring pillar of blinding orange and white fire erupted from the gauntlet, completely filling the hallway, incinerating the floorboards and melting the wallpaper instantly. The heat wave hit Izuku a microsecond before the flames. 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't step back. 

He firmly planted his digitigrade talons into the concrete, shattering the floor to anchor his lower body. He drew his massive right arm back, the obsidian blades pointing behind him. 

He didn't aim at Bakugo. He aimed directly at the center of the incoming inferno. 

With a roar that shook the entire building, Izuku swung his right arm forward in a devastating, horizontal slash. 

He swung the blades so fast, driven by the prehistoric density of his musculature, that he broke the sound barrier inside the hallway. The sheer kinetic velocity of the massive, hyper-dense blades swinging through the air created a high-pressure vacuum wave—a literal blade of compressed air. 

SHNK-BOOOOM!

The visual was incomprehensible to the surveillance room. 

When Izuku’s air-slash met the pillar of fire, it didn't block it. It cleaved it. 

The three-foot obsidian blades sliced through the center of the explosion perfectly. The vacuum wave parted the thermobaric blast like Moses parting the Red Sea. The fire was forced violently to the left and right, completely bypassing Izuku. 

The redirected flames blew out the exterior walls of the building on both sides, shattering the windows and sending massive plumes of fire out into the faux city streets. 

Izuku stood in the center of the hallway, perfectly untouched, his combat uniform lightly singed by the ambient heat. The air around his right arm was visibly distorted from the heat and pressure of the swing. The obsidian blades hummed with kinetic energy, pristine and untouched. 

Bakugo stood in the ruined office room, his gauntlet smoking, his arm trembling from the recoil. He stared through the gaping hole in the wall, his jaw slack, his eyes wide with a terror he hadn't felt since he was four years old. 

Deku had cut an explosion in half. 

The sheer physical impossibility of it broke something deep inside Bakugo’s mind. He looked at the three-foot obsidian scythes gleaming in the smoke. If Deku had aimed that swing at him instead of the fire... Bakugo would have been bisected before he even registered the movement. 

"You..." Bakugo whispered, stumbling backward, his balance shot. 

Izuku didn't give him a chance to recover. The beast was out, and Izuku had to end the fight immediately before the adrenaline made him lose his grip on the cage. 

Izuku launched forward, his digitigrade legs propelling him across the gap in a millisecond. 

Bakugo panicked. He wildly threw his left hand up to fire a defensive blast. 

Izuku didn't slash. He dropped his right shoulder, leading with his armored back, and spun on his heel. 

His heavy, scaled tail whipped around with the speed of a bullet. 

CRACK.

The thick tail struck Bakugo squarely in the side of the head. It was a perfectly measured, blunt-force strike—enough to scramble the brain's electrical signals without fracturing the skull. 

Bakugo’s eyes rolled back into his head. He crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, entirely unconscious. 

Izuku stood over him, panting heavily. The adrenaline was roaring in his ears. His right hand twitched, the feral instincts demanding that he finish the prey. 

Izuku gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and slammed the mental cage shut. 

Squelch.

The massive arm rapidly shrank, the scales dissolving, the obsidian blades sucking back into his fingertips. His legs reverted, forcing him to catch himself on his human knees as his balance shifted. The tail receded into his spine. 

He was human again. Sweaty, exhausted, and covered in drywall dust, but human. 

He reached down and checked Bakugo's pulse. It was strong and steady. 

"Uraraka," Izuku gasped into his earpiece. "Kacchan is down. How are you doing?"

"Deku! That explosion was massive! Are you okay?!" Uraraka's voice was frantic. 

"I'm fine. Have you found Iida?"

"I found him! He's monologuing about being a villain! I'm going to secure the weapon now!"

A few moments of silence passed, punctuated by the faint sound of Iida yelling in shock from the floor above. 

"I got it! I touched the weapon!" Uraraka cheered. 

"HERO TEAM WINS!" All Might’s voice bellowed through the building, a mixture of immense relief and profound pride evident in his tone. 

Izuku slumped against the ruined wall of the hallway. He looked at the massive carbon-fiber sheath lying on the floor, and then at his bare, calloused human hands. 

He had faced the ultimate test of his restraint. He had been pushed to the absolute brink by an opponent trying to kill him, forced to unsheathe the lethal weapons he feared so much. And yet, he had found a way to use them not to destroy a life, but to preserve one. 

Surveillance Room

The silence in the observation deck was absolute. Twenty students stared at the frozen image of Izuku Midoriya standing over the unconscious body of Katsuki Bakugo. 

Kirishima swallowed hard. "Did... did he just slice fire?"

"He swung his arm with enough kinetic velocity to create a localized high-pressure zone," Yaoyorozu explained, though her voice was trembling slightly. "The air pressure acted as a wedge, splitting the thermal expansion of the explosion. It requires an incomprehensible amount of physical strength and precision to execute without tearing your own arm off."

"He dropped his shield because he knew the blast was too wide to block," Shoto Todoroki, a boy with half-white, half-red hair, noted quietly, his mismatched eyes narrowed in deep calculation. "If he dodged, the building would have collapsed. He used an offensive lethal weapon purely as a defensive deflection."

All Might let out a breath he felt he had been holding for ten minutes. 

When Aizawa had warned Izuku on the field that a single slip in control would make him a murderer, All Might had worried that the fear would paralyze the boy again. But Izuku hadn't paralyzed. He had calculated. He had adapted. 

You truly are worthy, young Midoriya, All Might thought, smiling brightly. Absolute power, restrained by absolute morality.

"Alright, class!" All Might turned around, clapping his large hands together. "The Hero team wins! Let's head down to the medical bay to check on young Bakugo, and then we will review the match! There is much to learn here!"

When Bakugo woke up, he was lying on a crisp white bed in Recovery Girl’s infirmary. The harsh fluorescent lights made his head pound. He groaned, reaching up to touch the side of his head. It was tender, but unbroken. 

"Ah, you're awake," Recovery Girl said, walking over with a clipboard. "No concussion, remarkably. For a boy who hit you with a tail that has the bone density of a wrecking ball, he exhibited phenomenal restraint. You're free to go."

Bakugo didn't say anything. He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The memories of the fight flooded back. 

The blunt parries. The sheer reach of the sheaths. And then... the air-slash. 

Bakugo stood up and walked out of the infirmary. He didn't go back to class. The school day was over anyway. He walked out to the front gates, the afternoon sun casting long shadows across the pavement. 

He felt entirely hollow. 

For ten years, he had justified his bullying, his anger, and his superiority complex by telling himself that Deku was a coward. Deku was a freak with a monster's Quirk who was too pathetic to use it. Bakugo believed that because Deku held back, Deku was looking down on him. 

But today, Deku didn't hold back. Deku had unequipped his training wheels. Deku had unleashed the claws. 

And when the three-meter blades were bared, Deku hadn't attacked him. He had protected the building. He had protected Uraraka. He had even protected Bakugo from the collateral damage of his own blast. 

Deku wasn't looking down on him. Deku was just looking out for him. 

"Kacchan."

Bakugo stopped. He turned his head slowly. 

Standing a few yards away, waiting by the gates, was Izuku Midoriya. His right arm was carrying the massive carbon-fiber sheath, and he looked incredibly tired. 

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," Izuku said, his voice quiet. 

Bakugo stared at him. The old Bakugo would have screamed, ignited his palms, and demanded a rematch. He would have called it a fluke. He would have spat venom. 

But Bakugo was empty. The illusion of his absolute superiority had been cleanly bisected by a blade of compressed air. 

"You didn't swing at me," Bakugo said, his voice raspy and devoid of its usual explosive heat. "When you dropped the armor. You had a clear shot at my chest before I fired. But you waited."

"I told you," Izuku replied evenly, stepping forward. "I'm not fighting to kill. I'm fighting to save."

Bakugo looked at Izuku’s bare hands. He looked at the scars, the calluses, the heavy musculature that spoke of a decade of agonizing, terrifying preparation. 

"I lost," Bakugo whispered, the words physically hurting to force out of his throat. "I went all out... I tried to kill you... and you swatted me like a bug without even trying to hurt me."

Tears, hot and furious, pricked the corners of Bakugo’s eyes. He viciously wiped them away with his wrist. "Don't think this changes anything, Deku! I'm not going to be some pathetic stepping stone for you! I'll figure out a way around your stupid armor! I'll get faster! I'll get stronger! I'll beat you!"

Izuku smiled. It wasn't a mocking smile. It was a genuine, relieved smile. The manic, psychotic edge was gone from Bakugo's eyes, replaced by the familiar, fiery determination of a rival. 

"I know you will, Kacchan," Izuku said, adjusting the heavy sheath on his shoulder. "I'll be waiting."

Bakugo gritted his teeth, turning his back and marching down the street toward the station, leaving Izuku alone by the gates. 

Izuku took a deep breath, feeling the cool evening breeze against his face. The beast inside him was quiet, satiated by the exertion of the fight, securely locked back inside its mental cage. 

He had survived his first true battle. He had protected his friends, defeated his rival, and proven to himself that he could wield the tools of a monster with the heart of a hero. 

He was ready for whatever U.A. threw at him next. 

Or so he thought. 

Miles away, in a dark, dilapidated bar on the edge of the Kamino Ward, a pale, emaciated young man with light blue hair sat at a counter, scratching his neck violently. 

"The curriculum for U.A. was acquired, Tomura," a swirling mass of dark purple mist reported from behind the bar. "All Might is scheduled to teach Rescue Training at the Unforeseen Simulation Joint tomorrow afternoon."

Tomura Shigaraki smiled, his chapped lips cracking, a thin line of blood trickling down his chin. "Perfect. The Symbol of Peace... reduced to a teacher. It's time to show those little heroes what the real world looks like. Get the Nomu ready." 

Shigaraki reached out, his five fingers resting on a photograph of All Might. The paper instantly decayed, crumbling into gray dust that slipped through his fingers. 

"Tomorrow, the Symbol dies."