What if Deku was given the power of Time, Space and Antimatter by Arceus himself

The wind howling across the rooftop of the nondescript apartment building was unusually cold for a spring afternoon in Musutafu. Or perhaps, Izuku Midoriya thought numbly, it was just the sudden, freezing absence of hope chilling him to his marrow.

A few feet away, the towering, indomitable figure of All Might—the Symbol of Peace, the man Izuku had worshipped since he could comprehend what a hero was—shimmered behind a veil of obscuring steam. The hissing sound of escaping vapor was loud in the quiet afternoon air. When the smoke finally cleared, the titan of justice was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man with hollow cheeks, baggy clothes, and eyes that held the exhausted weight of the world. 

Izuku’s mind was already spinning, fractured by the revelation of his idol’s crippling injury, but the true fatal blow was yet to come. The question he had held in his heart for a decade, the desperate, clawing need for validation that had driven him through years of bullying, isolation, and despair, had finally spilled from his lips. 

Can someone without a Quirk become a hero like you?

The skeletal man paused by the rooftop door, his hand resting on the rusted metal handle. He didn't look back. His voice, stripped of its booming, theatrical bravado, was raspy and horribly, devastatingly mortal.

"Pro Heroes are always risking their lives," Toshinori Yagi said, his tone not unkind, but heavy with a terrible pragmatism. "Some villains just can't be beaten without powers. So, can you be a hero? Not without a Quirk."

The words struck Izuku with the concussive force of a physical blow. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. 

"If you want to help people," All Might continued, finally turning his head slightly, his sunken blue eyes meeting Izuku's wide, trembling green ones, "there are plenty of other ways to do it. You can become a police officer. They get a lot of grief because the heroes capture the villains, but it’s a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you also have to consider what's realistic."

The door creaked open. 

"I'm sorry," All Might murmured. 

And then, he was gone. The heavy metal door slammed shut, the metallic clang echoing with grim finality across the empty roof. 

Izuku stood completely still. His throat was tight, choked by a sob that refused to fall, and his chest felt as though it had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon. Ten months. Ten years. His entire life, built upon a foundation of stubborn, foolish optimism, had just been pulverized into dust by the very man who had inspired it. 

Be realistic.

Izuku looked down at his trembling hands. They were just hands. Small, scarred by years of Kacchan’s explosions, entirely unremarkable. No sparks flew from his fingertips. No telekinetic aura wrapped around his palms. He was a baseline human in a world of gods and monsters. 

He didn't know how long he stood on that roof. When he finally moved, his legs felt like lead. He walked down the flights of stairs mechanically, his brain entirely unengaged with his surroundings. The notebook in his pocket—Hero Analysis for the Future, No. 13—felt like a cinderblock dragging him down. It was charred, waterlogged, and utterly worthless. Just like him.

“Take a swan dive off the roof of the building,” Katsuki Bakugo’s mocking voice echoed in his memory from just a few hours prior. “Maybe you’ll get a Quirk in your next life.”

Izuku shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself as he stumbled out of the alleyway and onto the bustling city streets. The afternoon sun was beginning to dip, casting long, mocking shadows across the pavement. He didn't know where he was going. He was just walking, letting the current of the crowd push him along, a ghost haunting his own life.

Boom.

The sound was distant, muffled by the ambient noise of the city, but Izuku’s trained ears caught it immediately. 

Boom. CRASH.

A plume of thick, acrid black smoke began to rise over the skyline a few blocks away. For a brief, intoxicating second, the old spark ignited in Izuku’s chest. A villain fight! He needed to get his notebook, he needed to analyze the heroes, he needed to—

The spark died as quickly as it had formed, suffocated by the cold reality of All Might's words. 

What’s the point? Izuku thought, his eyes dropping to the pavement. I can’t do anything with that information. I’m just a fanboy playing pretend.

Yet, despite his profound depression, his feet moved on their own. Muscle memory, built over a decade of chasing sirens, carried him toward the rising smoke. 

When he arrived at Tatoin Shopping District, the scene was one of utter chaos. The street was cordoned off by yellow police tape. Pro Heroes—Death Arms, Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady, and Backdraft—were struggling to maintain a perimeter against a roaring inferno. The heat was blistering, washing over the gathered crowd in suffocating waves. 

Izuku pushed his way to the front of the crowd, his eyes widening in horror as he took in the center of the devastation. 

It was a monstrosity of dark green, putrid sludge, shifting and roiling like a living tar pit. It was the same villain. The same monster that had attacked Izuku under the overpass, the one All Might had captured in two plastic soda bottles. 

Izuku’s hand shot to his pocket, his stomach dropping into a bottomless abyss. The bottles. When he had latched onto All Might’s leg, when they had flown through the air… they must have dropped them. 

This is my fault, Izuku realized, trembling violently. All Might dropped him because of me. He wasted his time on me, and now he can't fight.

"Why aren't the heroes doing anything?!" a civilian next to him shouted over the roar of the flames.

"They can't get close! The villain grabbed a middle schooler and is using him as a hostage! He's using the kid's Quirk to keep them at bay!"

Izuku’s breath hitched. He strained his eyes, peering through the thick, swirling smoke and the shifting mass of the slime villain. 

Explosions. Massive, indiscriminate detonations were tearing through the storefronts, shattering glass and setting the street ablaze. And there, trapped within the suffocating, acidic mass of the sludge, was a face. 

Ash-blonde hair. Ferocious, bloodshot crimson eyes, wide with unadulterated, primal terror. 

Kacchan.

Kacchan is suffocating.

Izuku couldn't breathe. The realization that Katsuki Bakugo—the strongest, bravest, most invincible person Izuku knew—was dying, and that it was entirely Izuku’s fault, broke something deep inside his mind. 

The heroes were shouting. Death Arms was yelling about lacking a suitable Quirk. Kamui Woods was backing away from the fire. Mt. Lady was complaining about the lack of space. They were waiting. They were waiting for someone with the right Quirk to show up. 

But Kacchan didn't have time.

Izuku didn't think. He didn't plan. He didn't consider what was realistic.

Before his brain could even process the command, his legs were moving. He burst past the yellow police tape, sprinting with every ounce of strength in his scrawny legs toward the inferno. 

"Hey! You fool! Stop!" Death Arms roared, reaching out to grab him, but Izuku slipped past. 

The heat was unbearable, singeing his eyebrows and forcing sweat from every pore, but Izuku kept his eyes locked on Bakugo. The Sludge Villain noticed him, its massive, liquid eyes narrowing in sadistic glee. 

"You again!" the villain gurgled, its voice wet and resonant. "Here for a second helping?!"

Izuku pulled his charred backpack off his shoulder, his arm winding back. With a primal yell, he hurled it directly at the villain's face. The heavy metal clasp of his pencil case struck the villain’s gelatinous eye. The monster shrieked, its grip loosening for a fraction of a second.

Bakugo gasped, pulling his mouth free. "Deku?! What the hell are you doing here?!" 

"I don't know!" Izuku screamed back, tears streaming down his face as he slammed into the sludge, his bare hands frantically clawing at the thick, foul-smelling mucus. It was like trying to dig a hole in a pool of molasses. His fingers slipped and burned, the acidic nature of the slime eating away at his skin. 

"My legs just moved!" Izuku sobbed, a desperate, broken smile cracking across his face as he looked into Bakugo’s stunned eyes. "You looked like... like you needed saving!"

For a moment, the world seemed to freeze. Bakugo’s expression morphed from anger to shock, and then the moment shattered.

"You brat!" the Sludge Villain roared, recovering from the blow. A massive, whip-like tendril of slime reared back. "I'll kill you!"

Izuku saw the strike coming, but he couldn't move. He was stuck. He closed his eyes, waiting for the impact. 

But the strike never came as a blunt force. Instead, the villain changed tactics. It surged forward like a tidal wave, entirely enveloping both Bakugo and Izuku.

Izuku’s world went dark green, and then pitch black. The sludge forced its way into his mouth, his nose, sliding down his throat with a horrific, violating pressure. The taste was unimaginable—like raw sewage and rotting meat. 

Panic, raw and absolute, seized him. He thrashed, kicking his legs, clawing at his own throat, but there was nothing to grip. He was suspended in a sensory deprivation tank of agony. His lungs burned, screaming for oxygen that wasn't there. His heart pounded in his ears like a bass drum, frantic, erratic, and then… slowing.

I'm dying, Izuku realized, the thought crystalline in the chaotic void of his mind. 

The panic began to recede, replaced by a cold, heavy lethargy. The burning in his chest dulled. His limbs went limp. 

I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry for leaving you alone.

He couldn't even save Kacchan. He had just added another body to the body count. All Might was right. He was just a Quirkless nobody, playing hero until it got him killed. 

As the last remnants of oxygen left his brain, Izuku Midoriya stopped fighting. He let the darkness take him.

Izuku expected death to be cold. He expected a void, or perhaps, if the religions were right, a bright light leading to an afterlife. 

He did not expect to wake up lying on a surface so cold and smooth it felt like polished diamond. 

With a violent gasp, Izuku shot up, his hands flying to his throat. He expected to cough up slime, to feel the burning acid in his lungs, but his breath was clear. The air he drew in was crisp, perfectly pure, and completely devoid of scent. 

He patted himself down. He was completely dry. His school uniform wasn't even wrinkled. The burns on his hands from the slime were gone. 

"Am I... dead?" he whispered, his voice sounding terribly small. 

He finally looked up, taking in his surroundings, and his breath caught in his throat.

He was not in a hospital. He was not on Earth. 

Izuku was sitting in the center of a colossal, crystalline platform that seemed to be made of translucent, glowing quartz. The platform floated in an infinite, boundless expanse of space. But it wasn't the dark, empty space of astronomy textbooks. The cosmos around him was a swirling masterpiece of vibrant nebulas—cyan, magenta, and deep, shadowy gold—dancing in a celestial ballet. Stars the size of pinpricks and galaxies the size of oceans rotated in silent majesty. 

It was terrifyingly beautiful. The sheer scale of it made Izuku feel like a singular atom in the ocean.

Before panic could truly set in, the ambient light in the space began to shift. The swirling nebulas above the platform began to coalesce, twisting and braiding together into a blinding pillar of pure, white light directly in front of him.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, shielding his face with his arms as a shockwave of energy washed over him. It wasn't kinetic force; it was a wave of pure presence. It was a gravity that did not pull on his body, but on his soul. 

When the light faded to a tolerable glow, Izuku slowly lowered his arms. 

Standing before him was a creature that defied mortal comprehension. It was towering, easily thirty feet tall, resembling a majestic, equine beast, yet fundamentally alien. Its body was a stark, brilliant white, seemingly woven from starlight itself. Its face was gray with green, piercing eyes that held the depth of a billion galaxies. Around its midsection was an intricate, gleaming golden wheel, tipped with emerald-like jewels that pulsed with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like cadence. 

It did not have wings, yet it floated slightly above the crystalline floor, exuding an aura of absolute, undisputed authority. 

Izuku’s knees gave out. He collapsed onto the crystal floor, his body acting on a primal, genetic instinct to bow before something infinitely greater than himself. His mind could not process the entity. Looking at it felt like trying to read a book where every word was written in a different language, yet he perfectly understood the meaning.

« DO NOT FEAR, CHILD OF MAN. »

The voice did not come from the creature's mouth. It resonated directly within Izuku’s mind. It was a chorus of a thousand voices—male, female, young, old, human, and beast—speaking in perfect, harmonic unison. It was as gentle as a summer breeze and as terrifying as a supernova.

Izuku trembled, his forehead pressed against the cool crystal. "W-Who... what are you? Am I in heaven?"

« YOU ARE IN THE HALL OF ORIGIN. THE NEXUS OF ALL REALITIES. AND YOU ARE NOT DEAD. THOUGH YOUR MORTAL VESSEL CURRENTLY HANGS ON THE PRECIPICE OF OBLIVION. »

The entity took a step forward. The sound of its hooves on the crystal was like a chime striking the exact resonant frequency of the universe.

« I AM CALLED MANY NAMES ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE. THE ORIGINAL ONE. THE CREATOR. IN YOUR TONGUE, I AM ARCEUS. »

Izuku gasped, his mind scrambling to catch up. "The Creator? You're... God?" 

« A CRUDE DEFINITION, BUT ACCURATE IN FUNCTION. STAND, IZUKU MIDORIYA. I HAVE NOT BROUGHT YOU HERE TO COWER. I HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE BECAUSE YOUR WORLD IS DYING. »

That snapped Izuku out of his reverie. He slowly raised his head, looking into those ancient, green eyes. "Dying? Earth? But... the heroes, All Might..."

« YOUR HEROES ARE BLIND TO THE TRUE FABRIC OF REALITY, » Arceus interrupted gently. « YOUR UNIVERSE IS AN ANOMALY. A FRACTURE IN THE MULTIVERSE. THE PHENOMENON YOU CALL 'QUIRKS' IS NOT A NATURAL EVOLUTION. IT IS A PARASITIC MUTATION OF REALITY ITSELF. »

Arceus gestured with its head, and the cosmos around them shifted. The nebulas faded, replaced by a massive, three-dimensional projection of Earth. But this Earth was covered in a network of glowing, pulsing fault lines. 

« EVERY TIME A QUIRK IS USED, IT BENDS THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. FIRE WITHOUT FUEL. CREATION OF MASS FROM NOTHING. MANIPULATION OF GRAVITY. INDIVIDUALLY, THEY ARE MINUTE TRANSGRESSIONS. BUT COLLECTIVELY, OVER GENERATIONS, THEY HAVE BEGUN TO TEAR THE CANVAS OF CREATION. »

The projection zoomed in. Izuku watched in horror as the fault lines grew wider, the edges of the universe fraying like burnt paper. 

« YOUR SCIENTISTS THEORIZE A 'QUIRK SINGULARITY DOOMSDAY THEORY.' THEY BELIEVE THE POWERS WILL BECOME TOO STRONG FOR HUMAN BODIES TO CONTAIN. THEY ARE ONLY HALF RIGHT. THE POWERS WILL BECOME TOO STRONG FOR YOUR UNIVERSE TO CONTAIN. WITHIN THREE GENERATIONS, YOUR REALITY WILL SHATTER, DRAGGING BILLIONS OF LIVES INTO THE VOID. »

Izuku felt sick. The sheer scale of the devastation was incomprehensible. "Why... why are you telling me this? I'm nobody. I don't even have a Quirk. I'm useless."

« IT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE YOU LACK A QUIRK THAT YOU ARE STANDING BEFORE ME, » Arceus declared, its tone shifting to one of profound respect. « YOUR WORLD NEEDS AN ANCHOR. A CHAMPION CAPABLE OF WEILDING THE PRIMORDIAL FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE TO STABILIZE THE TEARS IN REALITY. »

Arceus stepped closer, the golden wheel around its waist spinning slowly. 

« I CANNOT BESTOW THIS POWER UPON A QUIRKED HUMAN. THEIR GENETIC CODE IS ALREADY MUTATED, OVERFILLED WITH PARASITIC ENERGY. IF I WERE TO GRANT MY ESSENCE TO YOUR 'ALL MIGHT,' HIS BODY WOULD VAPORIZE IN AN INSTANT. BUT YOU, IZUKU MIDORIYA... YOU ARE A BLANK SLATE. YOUR BODY IS PURE, UNTAINTED BY THE MUTATION. YOU ARE THE PERFECT VESSEL. »

Izuku’s eyes widened. "A vessel? For what?"

« FOR THE PILLARS OF CREATION. »

Arceus reared back slightly, and the golden wheel flared with blinding light. From the center of the ring, three distinct objects emerged, floating down to hover in front of Izuku. 

The first was a gear, roughly the size of Izuku’s palm, glowing with an intense, icy cyan light. Just looking at it made Izuku feel as though he could see his own past and future flashing before his eyes. 

The second was a perfect, spherical pearl, radiating a deep, pulsing magenta aura. It hummed with a vibration that made the space around it warp and bend, like looking through a heat mirage. 

The third... the third was terrifying. It was a jagged, obsidian-like tendril, pulsing with a volatile black and gold energy. It emanated an aura of absolute cold and crushing gravity, feeling like the literal absence of existence. 

« THESE ARE FRAGMENTS OF MY FIRSTBORN. THE CREATION TRIO, » Arceus explained, its voice echoing with ancient weight. « THE CYAN GEAR HOLDS THE ESSENCE OF DIALGA, THE LORD OF TIME. THE MAGENTA PEARL HOLDS THE ESSENCE OF PALKIA, THE LORD OF SPACE. THE SHADOW TENDRIL HOLDS THE ESSENCE OF GIRATINA, THE LORD OF ANTIMATTER. »

Izuku swallowed hard, unable to look away from the divine artifacts. "Time, Space, and Antimatter... You want to give these to me?"

« I DO. BUT BE WARNED. THIS IS NOT A GIFT. IT IS A BURDEN. » Arceus lowered its great head until it was level with Izuku. « YOU WILL BECOME A GOD AMONG MORTALS. YOU WILL BEAR THE WEIGHT OF REALITY ITSELF. THE POWER WILL STRAIN YOUR MORTAL MIND, AND THE ANTIMATTER OF GIRATINA WILL CONSTANTLY TEMPT YOU WITH DESTRUCTION. IF YOU ACCEPT THIS, YOU CAN NO LONGER PLAY THE ROLE OF A SIMPLE HERO. YOU MUST BE THE SCALES OF BALANCE. »

Izuku stared at the three artifacts. A god among mortals. The power of Time, Space, and Antimatter. Just ten minutes ago, he had been crying on a rooftop because he was powerless. Now, the Creator of the universe was offering him the keys to reality.

He thought of All Might’s words. Be realistic.

He thought of Kacchan’s face, suffocating in the slime. 

He thought of his mother, crying because she couldn't give him the one thing he wanted. 

If I take this, Izuku thought, his hands clenching into fists, I can save Kacchan. I can save everyone. I can stop the universe from tearing apart.

He looked up, meeting Arceus's gaze with a newfound, steely resolve. The terror was still there, but it was overshadowed by a blazing, unyielding determination. 

"Will I be able to save people?" Izuku asked, his voice steady for the first time since he arrived.

« YOU WILL HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE ENTIRE WORLDS. »

Izuku took a deep breath, and stepped forward. "Then I accept."

Arceus did not smile—it had no mouth to do so—but the atmosphere in the Hall of Origin seemed to hum with approval. 

« VERY WELL. BRACE YOURSELF, CHILD OF MAN. THE FORGING OF A GOD IS NOT A GENTLE PROCESS. »

Arceus’s eyes flared brilliant white. The three artifacts shot forward, burying themselves directly into Izuku’s chest.

The pain was immediate, and it was absolute. 

Izuku threw his head back and screamed, but no sound came out. It felt as though every atom in his body was being ripped apart, dipped in liquid nitrogen, and forged back together in the heart of a dying star. 

Time rushed into his mind. He saw empires rise and fall. He saw the birth of the universe and its cold, inevitable death. He felt every second stretching into eternity and compressing into a nanosecond.

Space violently rewired his nervous system. He suddenly possessed a hyper-awareness of every millimeter of the Hall of Origin. He could feel the distance between the molecules of the air, the gravitational pull of distant galaxies, the warping of dimensions folding in on themselves.

And then, Antimatter struck. It was a cold, violent violation. A dark, abyssal hunger ripped through his veins, whispering promises of destruction, of tearing the fabric of existence down to absolute zero. It fought the Time and Space, clashing violently within his mortal shell, until a golden light—Arceus’s own energy—wrapped around the three forces, binding them together within his soul. 

« AWAKEN, IZUKU MIDORIYA. VESSEL OF THE COSMOS. »

The voice faded. The white light consumed everything.

GASP!

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. The oppressive, sickening taste of the Sludge Villain was back, choking him. The blistering heat of the alleyway fire washed over his skin. The deafening roar of explosions and the screams of the crowd hit his ears like a physical blow. 

He was back in the slime. He was dying. 

But something was profoundly different. 

Panic did not set in. Instead, a cold, crystalline calm washed over his mind. He could feel the sludge pressing against him, but he no longer felt trapped. He felt the exact spatial dimensions of the villain's body. He could feel Kacchan's frantic heartbeat next to him. 

Izuku opened his eyes within the murky darkness of the slime. 

His irises, once a plain, forest green, were now a swirling vortex of tri-color energy. His right eye burned with the icy cyan of Dialga. His left eye pulsed with the deep magenta of Palkia. And in the very center of his pupils, a ring of pitch black and gold—Giratina’s mark—spun slowly. 

Stop, Izuku commanded in his mind, tapping into the cyan energy residing in his chest.

The world obeyed. 

Instantly, the roaring fires froze, the flames suspended in mid-air like twisted orange glass. The screaming of the crowd ceased, cut off mid-syllable. The Sludge Villain’s shifting mass turned completely rigid. The falling debris from a shattered storefront hung motionless in the sky. 

Izuku pushed against the hardened slime. It didn't yield, but that didn't matter. He tapped into the magenta pearl within his soul. 

Move.

In a flash of magenta light, Izuku and Bakugo were no longer inside the villain. They were standing on the paved street, ten feet away. 

Izuku dropped to his hands and knees, violently coughing up the remaining sludge from his lungs, gasping for the sweet, oxygen-rich air. Bakugo collapsed next to him, hacking and wheezing, his eyes wide with utter confusion as he stared at the frozen world around them. 

"W-What the... what the hell?" Bakugo croaked, looking at the suspended flames and the frozen heroes. "Deku... what did you do?"

Izuku didn't answer. He couldn't. His body was on fire. The sheer strain of freezing time and folding space was tearing his mortal muscles apart. The power was too vast, too wild, barely contained by Arceus’s golden binding. He needed to release the pressure, or he was going to explode. 

He stood up, his legs shaking violently. He looked at the frozen mass of the Sludge Villain. Deep within his mind, a draconic, echoing roar vibrated. Palkia.

Izuku raised his right hand. The space around his fingers began to warp and distort, glowing with a blinding, violent magenta aura. The air itself seemed to crack, spiderweb fractures appearing in the empty space around his hand, glowing with cosmic energy.

He didn't know what the technique was called. He simply knew what it did. 

Izuku brought his hand down in a swift, diagonal chopping motion.

« SPACIAL REND. »

A crescent-shaped blade of pure, concentrated spatial energy erupted from his hand. It didn't fly through the air; it instantly appeared across the distance, completely bypassing the physical space between Izuku and the villain.

The attack hit the Sludge Villain. There was no explosion. There was no concussive shockwave. 

Instead, the very fabric of reality where the villain stood simply... split. A massive, gaping tear in space, bordered by jagged, glowing magenta lines, opened up. The Sludge Villain was perfectly, cleanly bisected down the middle, its liquid form separated by a void of absolute nothingness. The sheer force of the spatial tear snuffed out the fires in a fifty-foot radius, sucking the oxygen and heat into the dimensional rift before snapping shut. 

With the threat neutralized, Izuku’s concentration broke. The cyan energy in his right eye flickered and died. 

Time resumed. 

BOOM!

The sudden rush of displaced air returning to the area where the spatial tear had been created a massive thunderclap, blowing out the remaining windows of the street and sending the Pro Heroes tumbling backward. 

The Sludge Villain, now neatly sliced into two distinct, unmoving puddles of slime, collapsed to the pavement, utterly defeated and unconscious. 

Silence descended upon Tatoin Shopping District. 

Death Arms, slowly picking himself up off the ground, stared in naked horror at the bisected villain, and then at the small, green-haired boy standing a few feet away. Kamui Woods dropped his wooden branches, his jaw slack. Mt. Lady shrunk back to normal size, trembling as she felt the residual cosmic pressure lingering in the air. 

Even Bakugo, the boy who feared nothing, was sitting on the pavement, staring at Izuku's back with an expression of sheer, unadulterated terror. He had seen the air crack. He had felt the world stop. 

Izuku stood perfectly still for three seconds. The magenta glow faded from his left eye, returning it to its normal green. 

He looked at his hand. He looked at the defeated villain. He remembered the blinding light of Arceus, the crushing weight of the Distortion World, and the terrifying realization of what he had just become. 

"I..." Izuku whispered, his voice incredibly weak. 

His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed face-first onto the pavement, his mortal consciousness mercifully fading into black, shielding him from the overwhelming magnitude of his new reality. 

In the sky above, completely invisible to the mortal eyes of the stunned heroes and civilians, the clouds swirled in an unnatural pattern. For a fleeting second, the faint, ghostly outline of an enormous golden wheel shimmered against the sun, before vanishing into the ether. 

The Vessel had awakened. And the universe would never be the same.

Izuku Midoriya drifted in a sea of absolute, infinite static. 

There were no dreams, no nightmares, no residual memories of the Sludge Villain or the blinding majesty of the Hall of Origin. There was only a low, rhythmic thrumming, like the heartbeat of a sleeping leviathan, vibrating through his very marrow. 

When he finally opened his eyes, the transition from cosmic slumber to mortal wakefulness was violently jarring. 

He gasped, his back arching off a soft mattress as his eyes flew open. He expected to see the swirling nebulas of Arceus’s domain, or the horrific, putrid green of the villain’s slime. Instead, his vision focused on a popcorn ceiling plastered with glowing, faded All Might star stickers. 

His bedroom. 

Izuku collapsed back against his pillow, his chest heaving as sweat plastered his dark green curls to his forehead. His heart was hammering a frantic, human rhythm against his ribs. 

"Izuku!" 

The bedroom door flew open, hitting the wall with a sharp crack. Inko Midoriya stood in the doorway, her eyes red and puffy, clutching a hand towel to her chest. Before Izuku could even process her presence, she was across the room, wrapping her arms around him in a crushing, desperate hug.

"Oh, Izuku! Thank goodness, thank goodness," she sobbed, burying her face into his shoulder. "The hospital called, the heroes brought you home... they said you collapsed from Quirk Exhaustion and shock, but... but the doctors were so confused! They said your brainwaves were completely erratic! I was so scared!"

Izuku weakly raised his arms, hugging his mother back. Her warmth, her scent of vanilla and laundry detergent, grounded him. It pulled him back from the precipice of the infinite void he had been hovering over. 

"I'm okay, Mom," he croaked, though his throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. "I'm okay."

"What were you thinking, running into a fire like that?" she cried, pulling back to frame his face in her hands. "And... and since when do you have a Quirk, Izuku? The heroes, they told me what you did to that villain. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

Izuku’s breath hitched. He looked into his mother’s desperate, hopeful eyes. How could he possibly explain? How could he tell a mundane, loving woman that the universe was tearing itself apart, and that a divine, equine deity had shoved the literal concepts of Time, Space, and Antimatter into his mortal soul?

He couldn't. It would shatter her mind. Hell, it was currently shattering his. 

"It... it just woke up, Mom," Izuku lied, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "During the attack. The stress... I think it just finally activated."

Inko burst into fresh tears, hugging him again. "My brave boy. My hero."

After Inko finally left him to rest, insisting she go make him a massive bowl of katsudon to rebuild his strength, the silence of the room crashed down on Izuku. 

He sat up, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. His body felt heavy, wrong, like he was wearing a suit of armor made of lead. His muscles ached with a deep, bone-deep fatigue that transcended physical exertion. 

He needed water. His throat was agonizingly dry. 

Izuku stood up on shaky legs and padded out of his room, moving down the short hallway to the kitchen. His mother was bustling about the stove, humming a nervous, relieved tune. Izuku bypassed her, moving to the cupboards. He reached up with a trembling hand, pulling down a clear glass tumbler. 

He moved to the sink, turning the handle. The water flowed out in a steady, clear stream. Izuku stared at it, mesmerized by the simple physics of the fluid mechanics. 

It was just a dream, his exhausted mind tried to rationalize. The sludge villain... the lack of oxygen caused a hallucination. My Quirk just manifested. That’s all. It’s just a late-blooming spatial Quirk.

He filled the glass, lifting it to his lips. 

But as his fingers brushed the condensation on the outside of the glass, a sudden, violent spasm tore through his right arm. It wasn't a muscle cramp; it was a jolt of raw, freezing energy pulsing from the center of his chest, shooting down his nervous system. 

His fingers seized. The glass slipped from his grip. 

Izuku gasped, his eyes widening as he watched the glass plummet toward the tiled floor. He knew the sound it was going to make. He braced for the shatter, his mother turning her head at his sudden gasp. 

But the shatter never came. 

Instead, a faint, icy cyan glow flickered in Izuku’s right eye. 

« CHRONOS. »

The voice echoed in Izuku’s skull, not a word, but a concept. It was the sound of a grandfather clock ticking in an empty cathedral, blended with the primordial, guttural roar of a metallic dragon. 

The world stopped. 

Izuku blinked. He looked down. The glass was suspended mere millimeters above the linoleum floor. The water that had sloshed over the rim hung in the air like a cluster of perfect, floating diamonds. 

He looked toward his mother. Inko was frozen mid-turn, her expression stuck in a mask of mild alarm, a single droplet of sweat suspended on her brow. The steam rising from the boiling pot of broth was completely rigid, resembling twisted strands of white cotton. 

The silence was absolute. The ambient hum of the refrigerator, the distant sounds of traffic—everything was gone. 

Izuku fell back against the counter, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a hallucination. 

Time. I just stopped time.

As he stared at the frozen water droplets, a terrifying realization washed over him. The air in the room was beginning to feel thick, heavy. A searing, migratory migraine spiked behind his eyes. His human brain, built to process chronological cause-and-effect, was actively fighting the localized temporal stagnation.

He had to release it. 

Izuku squeezed his right eye shut, mentally picturing a clock's pendulum swinging forward. 

Tick.

CRASH!

The glass hit the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces, splashing water across Izuku’s socks. 

"Izuku!" Inko yelped, jolting from her frozen state. "Oh, honey, are you okay? Your hands are still shaking, let me get that—"

"I'm fine, Mom!" Izuku blurted out, his voice an octave too high. He practically sprinted out of the kitchen. "I'll clean it later, I just—I need to use the bathroom!"

He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him, locking it. He gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, his knuckles turning white as he stared at his reflection in the mirror above the vanity. 

He looked like hell. His skin was pale, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. But that wasn't what terrified him. 

He watched in horror as his reflection changed. The irises of his eyes bled away their normal green. The right flared cyan. The left burned magenta. And deep in the center, the encroaching, terrifying black-and-gold rings began to spin. 

The headache intensified, splitting his skull. Three distinct, titanic presences pushed against the confines of his consciousness. 

Dialga. Palkia. Giratina. 

They were not speaking to him in words. They were instinct, primordial forces trapped in a cage of flesh and blood. They were restless. They needed to expand, to stretch their divine muscles, but doing so in the mortal realm would rip the Earth to shreds. Izuku could feel the pressure building in his chest, a dam on the verge of breaking. 

I need space, Izuku thought desperately, clutching his head. I need somewhere empty. Somewhere I can let it out without hurting anyone!

As his panic peaked, the black-and-gold rings in his pupils flared violently. 

« RENEGADE. »

The third voice—a chilling, hollow shriek that sounded like tearing metal and absolute silence—echoed in his soul. 

The bathroom mirror in front of him suddenly warped. The reflection of his face dissolved. The glass turned pitch black, rippling like a pool of dark, thick oil. A freezing cold draft emanated from the mirror, carrying the scent of ozone and nothingness.

Without thinking, driven by the oppressive instinct of the shadow force within him, Izuku reached out and pressed his hand against the glass. 

His hand sank through the surface. 

There was no resistance. The gravity in the bathroom suddenly inverted. Izuku pitched forward, tumbling headfirst through the mirror, violently sucked into the abyss. 

He fell through total darkness for what felt like an eternity, and yet no time at all. Then, abruptly, his back slammed into solid ground, knocking the wind from his lungs. 

Izuku groaned, rolling onto his side. He opened his eyes, blinking away the spots of darkness. 

"Where... where am I?"

He pushed himself up and froze, his breath catching in his throat. 

He was no longer on Earth. He was standing on a floating chunk of jagged, grey bedrock, suspended in a boundless, hazy void of twilight purple and swirling black clouds. 

Above him, a massive waterfall cascaded upward, the water defying gravity to flow into the purple sky. In the distance, impossible, Escher-like structures of stone and crystal twisted into themselves, creating staircases that led nowhere and platforms that hung upside down. The air was eerily still, entirely devoid of wind, sound, or life. 

It was a realm of absolute broken physics. 

As Izuku stood up, his feet felt light. The gravity here was warped, pulling him at a slight diagonal angle, but his body naturally adjusted, anchored by the divine energy in his chest. 

Suddenly, the space in front of him distorted. A massive, horrifying shadow detached itself from the floating bedrock. It rose into the air, expanding into a colossal, serpentine entity. It possessed six ghostly, spectral wings that ended in red spikes, and a golden, helmet-like crest adorned a face with glowing, blood-red eyes. 

Giratina. The Lord of Antimatter.

The beast didn't attack. It simply floated there, its massive, unblinking eyes locked onto Izuku. It exuded an aura of oppressive, suffocating power, but also... a strange sense of solemn guardianship. 

« WELCOME TO THE DISTORTION WORLD, » the collective, harmonic voice of Arceus suddenly whispered in Izuku’s mind. « THE REALM OF ANTIMATTER, EXISTING ON THE REVERSE SIDE OF YOUR UNIVERSE. HERE, GRAVITY AND TIME ARE IRREGULAR. HERE, THERE IS NO REALITY TO SHATTER. »

Izuku stared at the ghostly leviathan hovering before him, his fear slowly evaporating, replaced by a profound sense of awe. 

"This is it," Izuku whispered, his tri-colored eyes glowing fiercely in the twilight. "This is where I learn to be a god."

Ten Months Later.

The chilly breeze of late February swept across the massive, sprawling campus of U.A. High School. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, casting long shadows across the concrete courtyard as thousands of prospective hero students swarmed toward the main entrance. 

Among the nervous, chattering teenagers, one figure stood out—not through flashy mutations or loud bravado, but through an aura of absolute, unsettling stillness.

Izuku Midoriya walked with slow, deliberate steps. He was no longer the scrawny, trembling boy who had stood on that rooftop with All Might ten months ago. 

His physical transformation was apparent. His shoulders were broader, his chest thicker, his posture impeccably straight. But it was his eyes that truly drew the wary glances of his peers. They were a vivid, piercing green, yet they held an ancient, detached depth. They were the eyes of someone who could see the space between atoms, someone who listened to the ticking of a clock that governed the stars. 

The ten months of training in the Distortion World had been a living hell. 

Izuku quickly learned that Arceus’s warning was violently accurate. He was a mortal vessel holding the power of creation. When he first tried to intentionally warp space, the recoil shattered three bones in his arm and ruptured a vessel in his eye. When he tried to accelerate time to move faster, his heart nearly burst from his chest, coughing up black blood onto the floating stones of Giratina’s realm.

He couldn't rely on the power alone. He needed a stronger container. 

So, while he spent his nights slipping through the mirror into the Distortion World to learn the fundamental laws of Time, Space, and Antimatter, he spent his days brutally conditioning his physical body in the real world. He ran until his feet bled. He lifted until his muscles tore, only to use a microscopic fraction of Dialga's power to rewind the muscular damage, accelerating his body's natural hypertrophic growth to insane levels. 

He hadn't spent ten months learning to punch harder. He had spent ten months learning to exist without exploding. 

"Out of my way, Deku!" 

A gruff, angry voice snapped Izuku out of his inner monologue. He stopped walking and turned his head. 

Katsuki Bakugo stomped toward him, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his crimson eyes narrowed into a fierce, suspicious glare. Ever since the incident with the Sludge Villain, Bakugo’s attitude toward Izuku had violently shifted. The arrogant mockery had vanished, replaced by an obsessive, angry confusion. Bakugo had seen reality split open. He knew, on a primal level, that Izuku was hiding something utterly monstrous. 

Izuku looked at Bakugo. Ten months ago, he would have flinched, stuttered, and curled in on himself. 

Now, Izuku simply blinked. He didn't see just Katsuki Bakugo. He saw the microscopic vibrations of the nitroglycerin sweat on the boy's palms. He saw the exact, three-dimensional space Bakugo occupied. 

"Good morning, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice smooth, calm, and entirely devoid of inflection. 

Bakugo stopped a few feet away, his jaw clenching. He hated that look. He hated that Deku was looking at him like a human looks at a particularly loud insect. 

"Don't give me that dead-eyed stare, you damn nerd," Bakugo growled, small pops of explosions crackling in his palms. "I don't know what kind of freakish Quirk you awakened that day, or why you hid it for a decade. But if you think you're better than me, you're dead wrong. I'm going to crush this exam, and I'm going to crush you."

Bakugo expected a reaction. A flinch, a denial, a challenge. 

Izuku merely nodded once. "I look forward to seeing your performance, Kacchan. Good luck."

Without another word, Izuku turned and continued walking toward the auditorium, leaving Bakugo standing in the courtyard, his fists trembling with a mix of fury and an inexplicable, creeping dread. 

As Izuku approached the massive doors, a girl with a round face and short brown hair suddenly tripped over her own feet right next to him. She pitched forward, a yelp escaping her lips as she braced for the concrete. 

Izuku didn't lunge to catch her. He didn't panic. 

He casually raised his right index finger. A microscopic pulse of magenta energy flickered at his fingertip. 

The girl stopped falling. She hung suspended in the air, exactly two inches above the pavement, her eyes wide with shock. 

Izuku gently rotated his finger upward. The space beneath the girl folded, seamlessly lifting her back onto her feet. The spatial warp dissolved without a sound.

"Woah!" the girl gasped, patting herself down. "Did... did I just float? Wait, my Quirk doesn't work on myself!" She turned to look at Izuku, beaming brightly. "Did you do that? Thank you so much! I'm Ochaco Uraraka! That's a super cool telekinesis Quirk!"

Izuku offered a small, polite smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes. "You're welcome, Uraraka. Be careful where you step. Gravity can be unforgiving."

Before she could ask him his name, he had already slipped into the crowd, heading into the dark auditorium. 

The written exam was trivial. With a mere fraction of Dialga's power, Izuku could slow his perception of time, giving himself hours to solve complex algebraic equations and historical essays while only seconds passed in the real world. 

The real test was the practical. 

Izuku stood in front of the massive gates of Test Center B, clad in a simple black tracksuit. Around him, dozens of other examinees were stretching, hyperventilating, and psyching themselves up. Present Mic had just finished explaining the rules—three types of villain robots worth varying points, and a massive Zero Pointer obstacle to avoid. 

High above the mock city, in a darkened observation room overlooking a bank of massive monitors, the faculty of U.A. gathered. 

"We have quite a promising crop this year," Principal Nezu noted cheerfully, taking a sip of tea. 

"There are a few standouts," Eraserhead (Shota Aizawa) muttered, his tired eyes scanning the screens. He paused, his gaze locking onto a specific monitor showing Test Center B. "Wait. Pull up the file for Examinee 7111."

A holographic file popped up on the screen. 

Midoriya, Izuku. Quirk: Unregistered/Late Bloomer.

"Unregistered?" Midnight raised an eyebrow. "That's incredibly rare at his age. What is his power?"

"We don't know," Nezu hummed, his beady eyes narrowing slightly. "His medical records state he was Quirkless until ten months ago. The incident report from Tatoin Shopping District claims he manifested a 'spatial anomaly,' but the details are heavily redacted by Detective Tsukauchi. Let us see what this boy can do."

Back at the gates, the booming voice of Present Mic suddenly echoed over the speakers. 

"START!"

The other examinees hesitated for a split second, confused by the lack of a countdown. But Izuku was already moving. 

He didn't sprint. He didn't activate a flashy, explosive power. He simply took a step forward. 

Magenta.

In a flash of warping light, Izuku vanished from the front of the gates. 

"What the—?!" A boy with engines in his legs gasped, halting his sprint. 

Deep within the fake city, a massive, three-point robot was rolling down a main avenue, its optical sensors scanning for targets. 

With a soft, rippling sound, the air ten feet in front of the robot distorted, and Izuku stepped out of the spatial fold, perfectly balanced. 

The robot's sensors locked on. "TARGET ACQUIRED." It raised its heavy metallic arms, preparing to fire its rubber bullets. 

Izuku didn't take a fighting stance. He raised his left hand, his palm open. His left eye ignited with the brilliant magenta glow of Palkia. 

"Collapse," Izuku whispered. 

He slowly closed his hand into a fist. 

He didn't touch the robot. He didn't use telekinesis to crush the metal. He simply grasped the cubic volume of space that the robot occupied, and shrank it. 

With a horrifying, screeching crunch of grinding metal, the three-point robot was violently compacted into a sphere the size of a basketball. The space around it returned to normal, and the dense, crushed ball of scrap metal dropped to the concrete with a heavy thud. 

Three points.

In the observation room, Aizawa leaned forward so quickly his chair squeaked. "Did you see that? Gravity manipulation? Telekinesis?"

"No," Nezu said softly, his paw lowering his teacup. "Look at the telemetry data on the right screen. The atmospheric pressure didn't change. The gravitational constant remained stable. He didn't crush the robot with force. He altered the physical dimensions of the space the robot was sitting in."

Before the teachers could fully process the implication, the screen shifted. 

Two more robots—a one-pointer and a two-pointer—flanked Izuku in an alleyway. They lunged at him simultaneously. 

Izuku turned his head. The magenta faded from his left eye, and his right eye flared with the icy cyan light of Dialga. 

He snapped his fingers. 

A wave of cyan ripples emanated from his hand, washing over the two robots. 

The machines didn't explode. They didn't crush. Instead, they began to move backward. Their charging animations reversed. The paint on their armor began to look newer, shinier, and then suddenly, the bolts holding them together began to unscrew themselves at a blinding speed. 

Within three seconds, the two robots had been temporally reverted to their unassembled, manufactured state. A neat pile of pristine metal plates, wires, and unpowered motherboards clattered harmlessly to the ground. 

Six points.

"Rewinding time," All Might whispered from the back of the observation room, his skeletal hands gripping the railing tight enough to bend the metal. "He can manipulate time and space."

"That's... that's god-tier," Midnight breathed, her eyes wide. "If he can do that to machinery, what could he do to a living person? He could rewind a villain out of existence."

Aizawa’s eyes were narrowed to slits. He reached up, activating his Quirk, Erasure. His hair flared up, his eyes glowing red as he stared at the screen, trying to lock onto Izuku’s Quirk factor. 

A split second later, Aizawa cried out, violently clapping his hands over his eyes. He stumbled back, his knees hitting the floor. 

"Eraser!" Present Mic yelled, rushing to his friend's side. "What happened?!"

"My head..." Aizawa groaned, blood trickling from his left nostril. "I tried to look at his Quirk factor. There's nothing there. No biological mechanism. It was like... it was like staring directly into a black hole. It pushed me back."

Nezu’s fur stood on end. "He doesn't have a Quirk factor? Then what are we looking at?"

Down in the test center, Izuku moved like a ghost. He was utterly untouchable. He didn't run; he warped. He didn't strike; he manipulated. He was a cosmic surgeon operating on a battlefield of toys. 

Within six minutes, he had amassed eighty-five points, cleanly dismantling robots without breaking a sweat. But despite his dominance, the toll was mounting. 

Izuku leaned against a brick wall in a quiet alley, coughing softly into his hand. When he pulled it away, there were crimson flecks on his palm. 

My blood vessels are bursting, Izuku analyzed clinically, wiping his hand on his pants. I’m filtering too much divine energy through my nervous system. I need to cool down.

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet violently shuddered. 

An apocalyptic grinding noise echoed through the city, followed by the sound of crumbling concrete and shattering glass. A shadow fell over the entire sector. 

Izuku stepped out of the alleyway and looked down the main street. 

Towering above the buildings, easily the size of a skyscraper, was the Zero Pointer. Its massive, singular red optic glared down at the fleeing students. With a casual swipe of its arm, it leveled a four-story building, sending a tidal wave of dust and debris washing over the street. 

"Run! It's the Zero Pointer!" a student screamed, bolting past Izuku. 

Izuku remained perfectly still, watching the behemoth. He had no intention of fighting it. It was worth zero points, and his body needed rest. He turned to walk away. 

"Ow! Please, help!"

The desperate cry cut through the sound of grinding metal. 

Izuku stopped. He turned his head, his enhanced spatial awareness instantly pinpointing the source. 

Fifty yards away, sitting helplessly in the path of the colossal machine’s crushing treads, was Uraraka. Her leg was trapped beneath a massive slab of rubble from the destroyed building. The Zero Pointer was bearing down on her, completely unconcerned with the collateral damage. 

The other examinees were running away. No one was looking back. 

Izuku looked at the girl. He remembered her catching him at the gate, her bright, innocent smile. 

« A HERO DOES NOT CALCULATE RISK. A HERO ACTS. » 

The faint memory of All Might’s old interviews crossed his mind, blending with the eternal, stoic mandate of his divine duty. He was the scales of balance. And allowing an innocent girl to be crushed because of a test was an unacceptable imbalance. 

Izuku took a deep breath. He let the restraints go. 

He didn't warp this time. He wanted the machine to see him. He wanted everyone to see him. 

Izuku walked toward the Zero Pointer. 

In the observation room, the faculty fell dead silent. 

"What is he doing?" Midnight gasped. "He has enough points! He needs to evacuate!"

"He's going for the girl," All Might said, his skeletal frame trembling. He recognized that walk. It was the walk of someone who had entirely discarded their own safety for the sake of another. Can someone without a Quirk be a hero? The memory of the boy's desperate question haunted him. 

Izuku stopped ten yards away from Uraraka. The Zero Pointer was looming directly over them, its massive tread raising to crush them both into the pavement. 

Uraraka looked up, tears streaming down her face. "W-What are you doing? Run!"

Izuku didn't look at her. His gaze was locked on the sky-scraping machine. 

He raised his right arm, extending it out to his side. 

The air around him didn't just distort; it broke. The ambient light in the street was sucked away, replaced by a blinding, violent magenta aura that erupted from Izuku’s body like a geyser. The sheer cosmic pressure forced Uraraka flat against the ground, unable to breathe. 

In the observation room, the monitors tracking Test Center B began to violently glitch, screeching with static as their sensors were overwhelmed by an impossible influx of energy. 

Izuku’s left eye burned with the fury of a dying star. 

Forgive me, Arceus, Izuku thought, feeling the flesh of his arm tearing under the strain. But I need to break it.

Izuku brought his hand down in a brutal, sweeping arc. 

« SPACIAL REND. »

It happened in absolute silence. 

There was no explosion. There was no concussive shockwave. 

A crescent blade of pure, concentrated nothingness, radiating a neon magenta glow, erupted from Izuku’s hand. It extended upward, cutting through the very fabric of reality itself. 

The blade passed directly through the center of the Zero Pointer. 

For three agonizingly long seconds, nothing happened. The massive robot remained standing, its red eye glowing. 

And then, the laws of physics snapped back into place. 

A horrific, deafening screech of tearing metal echoed across the entire U.A. campus. 

The Zero Pointer, hundreds of tons of reinforced steel and circuitry, cleanly separated down the middle. A perfect, microscopic gap of missing space bisected the machine from its head down to its treads. 

The two halves of the colossal titan slowly, agonizingly pitched outward. 

BOOM!

The left half crashed into the empty street to the west. The right half crashed into the buildings to the east. A massive shockwave of dust and displaced air blasted through the avenue, tearing up chunks of asphalt and shattering the remaining windows in a mile radius. 

When the dust finally cleared, the street was a scene of apocalyptic devastation. The remains of the Zero Pointer lay in ruins, completely neutralized. 

In the center of the destruction, Izuku Midoriya stood completely still, his arm still extended in a sweeping arc. 

Behind him, Uraraka was staring at his back, her jaw entirely unhinged in absolute, mind-numbing shock. She wasn't the only one. Every examinee in Test Center B had stopped running, frozen in place as they witnessed a boy cut a skyscraper in half with a wave of his hand. 

Slowly, the magenta aura faded from Izuku’s body. The terrifying pressure lifted. 

Izuku lowered his arm. His sleeve was shredded, and dark crimson blood was steadily dripping from his nose, painting his chin red. The recoil had fractured his radius and ulna, but he didn't flinch. 

He turned around, his expression entirely placid, and walked over to Uraraka. He looked down at the rubble pinning her leg. He tapped his foot, utilizing a micro-fraction of space manipulation to teleport the boulder a few feet away. 

He offered his uninjured left hand to the trembling girl. 

"Are you alright, Uraraka?" he asked softly, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the ruined city. 

"I..." Uraraka stammered, unable to comprehend the being standing before her. "Y-Yes."

"Good." 

A loud siren blared across the campus. 

"TIME'S UP!" Present Mic’s voice echoed, though it sounded shaky and hesitant. 

Izuku closed his eyes. The adrenaline faded, and the bone-crushing exhaustion of his mortal vessel caught up with him. He swayed on his feet, let out a slow breath, and collapsed backward onto the concrete, slipping into unconsciousness before he hit the ground. 

In the observation room, no one moved. No one spoke. 

Nezu stared at the glitching monitors, his teacup shattered on the floor by his feet. 

"Eraser," Nezu whispered, his voice devoid of its usual cheer. "When you said his power felt like a black hole... I believe you were underselling it. We haven't just found a prodigy."

All Might stared at the screen, his heart pounding in his skeletal chest as he recognized the boy he had abandoned on a rooftop ten months ago. 

"We've found a god."

To hold the power of gods is not merely to possess strength; it is to endure a constant, agonizing state of hyper-awareness. 

Izuku Midoriya sat at his desk in the back of Class 1-A, his posture impeccably straight, his eyes focused on the chalkboard. But his mind was not fully in the room. It was everywhere. 

He could hear the rhythmic, biological ticking of twenty different hearts. He could feel the exact atmospheric pressure of the room shifting as Tenya Iida passionately chopped his arms through the air. He could sense the spatial curvature of the U.A. building, a grand architectural construct that felt as fragile as a house of cards to the magenta pearl burning within his chest. 

It had been weeks since the Entrance Exam. His shattered arm had healed in a matter of hours, accelerated by a localized temporal rewind he had performed in the privacy of his bedroom. Yet, the phantom ache of the recoil remained—a stark reminder from Arceus that his flesh was still mortal, even if his soul was not. 

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

The gruff, lethargic voice cut through the chatter of the classroom. Izuku blinked, his tri-colored eyes dimming back to their baseline emerald green as he focused on the man wriggling out of a yellow sleeping bag at the front of the room. 

Shota Aizawa. Pro Hero: Eraserhead. 

Izuku analyzed the teacher instantly. He didn't just see a tired man; he saw the subtle kinetic energy coiled in the capture weapon around Aizawa’s neck. He saw the specific biological mechanisms in the man's eyes that allowed him to nullify Quirk factors. 

"Put these on and head out to the training grounds," Aizawa instructed, tossing a blue-and-white P.E. uniform onto the front desk. 

As the class shuffled toward the locker rooms, a heavy, oppressive presence matched Izuku’s stride. He didn't need to look to know who it was. The microscopic explosions of nitroglycerin popping in the sweat glands gave Katsuki Bakugo away instantly. 

"You've been holding out on me, Deku," Bakugo hissed, his voice dropping to a lethal, vibrating whisper that only Izuku could hear. "Ten years. You played the pathetic, Quirkless loser for ten years, making a fool out of me. Did you think it was funny?"

Izuku stopped walking. He turned his head, meeting Bakugo’s furious crimson eyes. 

"I never lied to you, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice entirely devoid of the stuttering fear that used to define it. "I was Quirkless. I still am."

Bakugo’s teeth ground together audibly. "Don't screw with me! I saw what you did at the exam! I saw you cut that robot in half!"

"That wasn't a Quirk," Izuku replied softly. "I'll see you on the field, Kacchan."

He walked away, leaving Bakugo seething in the hallway, his fists trembling with a rage born entirely of incomprehension. 

The sun beat down on the dirt field as Class 1-A lined up. Aizawa stood before them, holding a small digital device. 

"A Quirk Apprehension Test?" the class echoed in unison. 

"What about the entrance ceremony? The orientation?" Uraraka asked, her eyes wide with worry. 

"If you're going to become a hero, you don't have time for such leisurely events," Aizawa deadpanned. He tossed a softball to Bakugo. "Bakugo. You finished first in the practical exam. What was your farthest throw in junior high?"

"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugo scoffed. 

"Try doing it with your Quirk."

Bakugo stepped into the pitching circle. He stretched his arms, a feral grin splitting his face. He wound back, and with a roaring scream of "DIE!", he unleashed a massive explosion from his palm, launching the ball into the stratosphere. 

705.2 meters. 

The class erupted in awe, but Izuku remained silent. He mentally calculated the trajectory, the wind resistance, the kinetic force. It was impressive for a mortal. 

"Today, you'll be competing in eight physical tests to gauge your potential," Aizawa continued, his dark eyes sweeping over the students. They lingered on Izuku for a fraction of a second longer than the others. "Whoever comes in last has no potential and will be expelled."

Panic rippled through the teenagers, but Izuku felt nothing. Expulsion from a mortal school was irrelevant in the grand calculus of the universe. If he was expelled, he would simply spend all his time in the Distortion World, preparing for the dimensional rifts Arceus had warned him about. But he knew he wouldn't be expelled. 

The tests began. 

Test 1: 50-Meter Dash.

Izuku lined up against Tenya Iida. Iida dropped into a sprinter's stance, the engines in his calves revving with blue exhaust. Izuku simply stood up straight, his arms relaxed at his sides. 

"On your marks... Get set..." the robotic camera announced. 

BANG.

Iida blasted forward, a blur of speed. But he was alone. 

At the starting line, Izuku closed his left eye. The magenta pearl in his chest hummed. He didn't run. He took a single, casual step forward. 

Space folded around him like origami. To the onlookers, Izuku didn't move fast; he simply ceased to exist at the starting line and simultaneously popped into existence at the finish line, perfectly balanced on his front foot. 

"Time: 0.00 Seconds," the robotic voice chimed. 

Iida crossed the line a moment later at 3.04 seconds, tumbling to a halt. He whipped his head around, his glasses nearly sliding off his face as he stared at Izuku, who wasn't even breathing hard. 

"H-How?!" Iida sputtered. "I didn't even see you move!"

"I didn't," Izuku answered honestly, walking back toward the group. 

Aizawa frowned, writing down the score. Instantaneous teleportation without a designated warp gate? The Entrance Exam footage showed him bending space to crush a robot. The versatility is absurd.

Test 2: Grip Strength.

A towering student with multiple arms, Shoji, squeezed the digital meter to a staggering 540 kilograms. 

Izuku held his meter in his right hand. He didn't squeeze his fingers. If he used his mortal muscles, he would score slightly above average. Instead, he visualized the space immediately surrounding the sensor mechanism inside the device. 

Collapse.

He manipulated the localized spatial pressure, forcing the air itself to crush inward on the sensor. The digital numbers on the screen skyrocketed until the screen cracked, flashing 9,999 kg before short-circuiting in a puff of smoke. Izuku politely handed the broken machine to a bewildered Aizawa.

Test 5: The Ball Throw.

The atmosphere on the field had shifted from competitive excitement to a quiet, palpable dread. Every time Izuku Midoriya took a turn, the laws of physics seemed to weep. The other students were beginning to realize that whoever this boy was, he was not playing the same game as them. 

Finally, it was Izuku’s turn in the pitching circle. Uraraka had just scored an 'Infinity' by removing the ball's gravity entirely. 

Izuku stood in the circle, the baseball resting lightly in his palm. 

I need a score that secures my place, but I cannot use too much energy, Izuku calculated. I will use a standard dimensional rift. Minimal physical recoil.

In the distance, Aizawa narrowed his eyes. The underground hero had been analyzing Midoriya all day. The boy's power was terrifying, but there was a detachment to him that bothered Aizawa. He didn't move like a hero. He moved like an executioner. 

Let's see what your Quirk factor actually looks like, Aizawa thought. 

Izuku wound his arm back. His left eye flared magenta. 

Aizawa activated his Quirk. His hair floated into the air, and his eyes glowed a fierce red as he locked his vision directly onto Izuku, attempting to erase the boy's power before he could throw. 

The moment Aizawa's Quirk connected with Izuku, the world went wrong. 

Aizawa didn't feel the familiar 'click' of shutting down a biological Quirk factor. Instead, his mind was violently yanked forward. It felt as though he had just pried open a door, only to find himself staring directly into the heart of a collapsing star. 

An agonizing, blinding pressure slammed into Aizawa’s optic nerves. He didn't see a Quirk; he saw a golden, spinning wheel of divine light, flanked by a roaring cosmic dragon, a spatial leviathan, and a shadow-draped demon of absolute nothingness. 

"AGH!" 

Aizawa cried out, violently breaking his line of sight. He stumbled backward, clapping his hands over his bleeding eyes. A migraine of apocalyptic proportions split his skull, forcing him to one knee. 

"Mr. Aizawa!" Uraraka gasped, rushing forward. 

Izuku stopped his throwing motion. The magenta glow faded from his eye. He turned around, his expression softening with genuine concern as he looked at his teacher. 

"You tried to erase me," Izuku said, his voice carrying clearly across the silent field. 

Aizawa gritted his teeth, wiping a streak of blood from his eye as he looked up. "What... what the hell are you, Midoriya? There is no Quirk factor. I looked inside you, and there was... there was no biology. It was just weight."

The class muttered in confusion. No Quirk factor? What did that mean?

"I apologize, Sensei. I should have warned you," Izuku bowed his head respectfully. "My ability is not a Quirk. It is not genetic. It is an external authority placed upon me. You cannot erase it, because it does not belong to the physical laws of this world."

"Not a Quirk?" Bakugo muttered, his hands trembling. "Stop lying, you bastard!"

Izuku ignored Bakugo. He turned back toward the field. "May I take my turn now, Sensei?"

Aizawa, still clutching his head, nodded weakly. "Just... do it."

Izuku faced the open field. He didn't wind up this time. He simply tossed the ball gently into the air in front of him. 

As the ball reached the apex of its short arc, Izuku casually swiped his left hand horizontally through the air. 

« SPACIAL REND: MICRO. »

A jagged, glowing magenta tear in reality ripped open in mid-air, right in the ball's path. It looked like a scar on the canvas of the sky, revealing a swirling, infinite cosmos on the other side. The baseball fell into the rift, and instantly, the spatial tear snapped shut, leaving behind only the faint smell of ozone. 

Aizawa looked down at his digital meter. It was trying to calculate the distance of a ball that had just been banished to an endless, looping dimensional void between universes. 

The screen flashed twice, and then displayed a sideways figure-eight. 

Infinity.

"He... he got infinity too?!" Kaminari yelled, grabbing his hair. "He didn't even throw it! He just opened a black hole!"

"Deku!" 

A roar of pure, unfiltered fury shattered the awe. Bakugo lunged from the crowd, explosive sweat detonating rapidly in his palms as he charged directly at Izuku. "Tell me what you did! Tell me how you got this power, you damn nerd!"

Izuku didn't turn around. He didn't even flinch. 

Before Bakugo could reach him, Aizawa's capture weapon shot out, wrapping tightly around Bakugo’s torso and binding his arms. 

"Stand down, Bakugo," Aizawa growled, his eyes glowing red once more as he erased Bakugo's Quirk. "Unless you want to be expelled on the first day."

Bakugo thrashed against the bindings, his eyes locked onto the back of Izuku’s head. Izuku slowly turned around, meeting Bakugo’s gaze with those ancient, detached green eyes. 

"I told you, Kacchan," Izuku whispered, the sound carrying effortlessly to Bakugo's ears. "It's a responsibility."

The transition from the physical exams to the afternoon’s Battle Trial felt like stepping from a frying pan into a forge. 

"I AM HERE!" 

All Might burst through the door of Class 1-A, striking a heroic pose that sent the students into a frenzy of cheers. But sitting in the back, Izuku felt a strange melancholy. He looked at the massive, smiling hero, and with his newly attuned senses, he could clearly see the sickening, swirling black aura of necrotic energy radiating from the man's left side. All Might was dying. His time was running out. 

I could rewind his injury, Izuku thought analytically. I could use Dialga's power to restore his stomach and respiratory system to how they were six years ago. 

But almost instantly, Arceus's warning echoed in his mind. « YOU MUST BE THE SCALES OF BALANCE. » 

If he healed All Might, he would be altering the natural fate of this universe. He would be using divine power to play favorites. To heal one man, no matter how great, was to abuse the authority of God. Izuku closed his eyes, accepting the cold, bitter logic. He could not heal him. 

"Proceed to Ground Beta!" All Might boomed, pointing toward the door. "And don't forget to wear your hero costumes!"

Twenty minutes later, Class 1-A emerged from the tunnel into the mock city. 

Most of the costumes were flashy, colorful, and highly stylized. Bakugo marched out in his aggressive black and orange suit, massive grenade gauntlets weighing down his arms. Uraraka wore her pink and black spacesuit. 

Then, Izuku stepped out of the tunnel. 

He had declined to use the bright green, rabbit-eared jumpsuit his mother had lovingly sewn for him. It felt wrong to wear something so childish while bearing the weight of the cosmos. Instead, he had submitted a specific, minimalist design to the support company. 

Izuku wore a sleek, form-fitting tactical suit that was entirely pitch black, absorbing the light around it. It lacked a cape, bulky armor, or a mask. The only details were three distinct, glowing lines that ran down his chest and arms, converging at a metallic circle over his heart: one line of icy cyan, one of deep magenta, and one of shimmering gold. 

It was silent. It was imposing. It looked less like a hero costume and more like the uniform of a celestial judge. 

All Might drew lots from a box. "Team A will be Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka! You will be the Heroes! Team D will be Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida! You will be the Villains!"

Bakugo’s head snapped toward Izuku, a savage, predatory grin spreading across his face. 

Finally, Bakugo thought. An excuse to beat the truth out of him.

As Bakugo and Iida headed into the building to guard the mock nuclear weapon, Uraraka walked up to Izuku, nervously tapping her fingers together. 

"So, Midoriya," she smiled tentatively. "We're a team! Do you have a plan? Bakugo seems really... intense about you."

"He is," Izuku nodded calmly. "He will ignore the objective and ambush me immediately. He wants to prove his superiority. It is a fundamental flaw in his psychology."

Uraraka blinked, taken aback by the clinical, almost robotic assessment. "Oh... okay. What should I do?"

"When he attacks me, he will tunnel-vision," Izuku instructed, looking up at the multi-story concrete building. "I will handle Kacchan. You proceed to the top floor and secure the weapon from Iida. The building's structural integrity is poor, so I will attempt to minimize collateral damage."

"Right!" Uraraka nodded, feeling strangely secure under his command. 

"START!" All Might's voice echoed over the PA system. 

Izuku and Uraraka entered the building through a ground-floor window. The corridors were dark, illuminated only by the faint sunlight filtering through the cracks. Izuku walked with his hands in his pockets, his footsteps entirely silent. 

As they rounded the first corner, the hairs on the back of Izuku's neck stood up. 

He didn't need enhanced spatial awareness to know what was coming. He knew Katsuki Bakugo. 

From the shadows of the ceiling above, a figure dropped down, palms crackling with violent orange light. 

"DIE, DEKU!" Bakugo roared, thrusting his right hand forward to unleash a blinding explosion directly at Izuku's face. 

"Midoriya!" Uraraka screamed. 

Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't blink. 

The cyan line on his black suit pulsed. His right eye flared with the brilliant, icy light of Dialga. 

« CHRONOS: FORESIGHT. »

To Bakugo and Uraraka, the world was moving at normal speed. To Izuku, time fractured into a prism. He didn't just see Bakugo's attack; he saw the next three seconds of the future laid out before him in translucent, ghostly afterimages. 

He saw the explosion expanding. He saw the exact trajectory of the shrapnel and heat. He saw the follow-up right hook Bakugo was already preparing. 

Moving with the absolute minimum effort required, Izuku casually tilted his head two inches to the left. 

The explosion tore through the hallway, blowing a hole in the adjacent wall, but it missed Izuku completely. The heat washed over his face, but his expression remained utterly bored. 

As the smoke cleared, Bakugo was already swinging a savage right hook at Izuku's jaw. 

Izuku stepped backward. Exactly half an inch out of Bakugo’s reach. The fist cut through empty air. 

"What?!" Bakugo snarled, immediately spinning into a sweeping roundhouse kick. 

Izuku ducked by a millimeter. The kick sailed over his hair. 

Bakugo unleashed a flurry of explosions, punches, and kicks, moving faster than the eye could track. It was a beautiful, terrifying display of martial arts and Quirk mastery. 

And Izuku dodged every single one of them without taking his hands out of his pockets. 

He wove through the explosions like a ghost drifting through a storm. He knew exactly where Bakugo was going to be before Bakugo even formulated the thought. 

"Go, Uraraka," Izuku said calmly, side-stepping a blast that scorched the wall behind him. 

"R-Right!" Uraraka sprinted past the chaotic melee, heading for the stairs. Bakugo didn't even look at her. His eyes were bloodshot, fixated entirely on the boy who was effortlessly treating him like a sparring dummy. 

"FIGHT BACK!" Bakugo screamed, his voice cracking with desperation. He launched himself forward, grabbing Izuku by the collar of his suit. "USE YOUR DAMN QUIRK, YOU COWARD! LOOK AT ME!"

Izuku allowed himself to be grabbed. He looked directly into Bakugo's tear-filled, furious eyes. 

"I am looking at you, Kacchan," Izuku said softly. "But you are not fighting a Quirk. You are fighting the concept of Time."

Izuku slowly raised his right hand. He placed a single finger on Bakugo's chest. 

Pulse.

A micro-burst of temporal acceleration shot into Bakugo's nervous system. It didn't hurt him, but it instantly exhausted his muscles, making his body believe it had just sprinted a marathon in a fraction of a second. 

Bakugo gasped, his grip failing as his legs turned to jelly. He stumbled backward, panting heavily, clutching his chest. 

In the monitor room, the class was watching in absolute, stunned silence. 

"He's not even attacking," Kirishima whispered, his jaw dropped. "He's just... dodging. Bakugo is going all out, and Midoriya looks like he's on a Sunday stroll."

"It's a psychological dismantling," Aizawa muttered, leaning against the wall. "Bakugo's entire identity is built on his superiority. Midoriya isn't just beating him physically; he's showing Bakugo that they aren't even playing the same sport."

Back in the hallway, Bakugo was slowly standing up. His pride was shattered, his worldview violently cracking. Deku wasn't just stronger. Deku was untouchable. 

"No," Bakugo wheezed, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated madness. He raised his right arm, grabbing the metal pin on his massive, grenade-shaped gauntlet. "No! I'm the best! I'm going to be Number One! You're just a Quirkless pebble!"

Izuku’s eyes widened slightly. His spatial awareness scanned the gauntlet. He could feel the sheer volume of nitroglycerin stored inside. If Bakugo pulled that pin in this confined space, it wouldn't just kill Izuku; it would vaporize the entire floor and collapse the building, killing Iida and Uraraka above. 

"Young Bakugo, stop!" All Might's panicked voice screamed over the comms in Bakugo's ear. "Are you trying to kill him?!"

"IF HE DODGES IT, HE WON'T DIE!" Bakugo roared, and yanked the pin. 

The trigger mechanism clicked. The spark ignited. 

A massive, blinding pillar of apocalyptic fire and concussive force erupted from the gauntlet, filling the entire hallway. It was a localized nuke, a roaring beast of destruction surging forward to consume everything in its path. 

Izuku didn't dodge. He couldn't, or the building would fall. 

He didn't have time to hold back. 

Izuku threw both of his hands forward, his palms facing the incoming inferno. His left eye ignited into a blinding magenta star. The pressure in the air violently inverted. 

« SPACIAL REND: BARRICADE! »

The space directly in front of Izuku shattered like a pane of glass. A massive, swirling portal of magenta energy and infinite, starry void ripped open, spanning the entire width and height of the corridor. 

The towering inferno of Bakugo's explosion slammed into the spatial tear—and was instantly swallowed whole. 

The portal absorbed every ounce of the heat, the fire, and the kinetic force, transferring it harmlessly into the vacuum of space, millions of lightyears away from Earth. 

Bakugo fell to his knees, panting, his arm smoking. He stared at the swirling, cosmic vortex in front of him, his mind completely unable to process how his ultimate move had simply vanished into thin air. 

As the last embers of the explosion were sucked into the void, the portal snapped shut. 

Silence returned to the corridor. 

Izuku stood there, smoke curling off his black suit. His nose was bleeding freely now, and a thin trail of crimson leaked from his left eye. The physical toll of opening a dimensional rift that large was staggering. 

But he didn't stop. 

Magenta.

In a flash of light, Izuku vanished from the end of the hallway. 

Less than a millisecond later, he materialized directly behind Bakugo. 

Before Bakugo could even register the movement, Izuku kicked the back of Bakugo's knees, forcing him to the ground. In one fluid, brutal motion, Izuku grabbed Bakugo's arm, twisting it behind his back and pinning him face-down against the concrete floor. 

Izuku drove his knee into the center of Bakugo’s back, locking him completely in place with absolute, immovable force. 

Bakugo struggled, thrashing wildly against the hold, but it was like trying to push a mountain. 

"Get off me!" Bakugo screamed, tears of frustration and terror spilling down his cheeks. "Get off me, you freak! What are you?!"

Izuku leaned down, his lips inches from Bakugo's ear. He didn't shout. He didn't boast. He spoke with the cold, unyielding weight of a god passing judgment. 

"I am the vessel, Kacchan," Izuku whispered. "You spent your whole life looking down on me because I didn't have a Quirk. Because I was weak. But your Quirks are a mistake. A disease slowly tearing this universe apart. I was chosen to hold it together."

Bakugo stopped struggling. His breath hitched. 

"I didn't lie to you," Izuku continued, his voice dripping with ancient sorrow. "I don't have a Quirk. I have the power of the Creator. And compared to that... we are all powerless."

Over the PA system, All Might's voice broke the silence, sounding deeply shaken. 

"H-Hero Team... WINS!" 

Uraraka had successfully captured the weapon while Iida was distracted by the seismic tremors of the fight below. 

Izuku released his grip. He stood up, wiping the blood from his eye with the back of his hand. He looked down at the boy who had tormented him for a decade. 

Katsuki Bakugo didn't get up. He lay on the concrete, staring blankly at the wall, his eyes devoid of their fiery pride. His mind was shattered, completely overwhelmed by the terrifying realization that the hierarchy he had built his entire life upon was entirely, laughably insignificant. 

Izuku turned and walked away, his footsteps silent in the ruins of the mock city. He had won the battle. But as the dull ache in his bones throbbed, and the whispers of Giratina clawed at the edges of his sanity, Izuku knew that his true war was only just beginning.

The Unforeseen Simulation Joint—U.S.J. for short—was an architectural marvel. A colossal, domed facility encompassing multiple artificial biomes, designed to simulate every conceivable natural disaster a hero might face. 

Standing near the entrance plaza with Class 1-A, Izuku Midoriya looked out over the sprawling zones. His eyes, glowing faintly with a residual cyan hue, did not just see steel, dirt, and water. He saw the structural integrity of the dome, the artificial weather patterns generated by hidden turbines, and the massive amount of electrical energy coursing beneath the floorboards. 

"Listen closely, everyone," the Pro Hero Thirteen announced, their voice muffled by their astronaut-like suit. "I am sure you are all aware of my Quirk, Black Hole. It can suck up and tear apart anything. However, it is a power that can easily kill."

Izuku’s attention snapped to Thirteen. 

"In our superhuman society," Thirteen continued, raising a gloved hand, "Quirks are heavily restricted and monitored. But never forget that many of you possess powers that can completely destroy a human body with one wrong move. This class is not about fighting. It is about learning to use your Quirks to save lives. You must understand that your powers are not meant to inflict harm, but to help."

Izuku closed his eyes. Thirteen’s speech was a painfully oblivious echo of Arceus's warning. Your Quirks are a mistake. A disease slowly tearing this universe apart. The heroes believed they could control the Quirk Singularity with laws and regulations. They didn't understand that the very act of using these powers, even to save lives, was adding weight to the cosmic fracture. 

Suddenly, the cyan energy in Izuku’s right eye violently flared. 

A sharp, stabbing pain pierced his temple. Dialga’s presence roared in his mind, a warning echoing from a few seconds in the future. 

« ANOMALY DETECTED. SPATIAL RUPTURE. »

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. The massive lights illuminating the dome violently flickered, buzzing with a chaotic electrical surge before blowing out in a shower of sparks. The facility was plunged into dim, emergency lighting. 

Down in the central plaza, directly in front of the central fountain, the air began to tear. 

It was not a clean, surgical cut like Izuku’s Spacial Rend. It was a jagged, swirling vortex of dark purple mist, chaotic and unstable. It looked like a bruised wound in the fabric of the physical world. 

"Gather together and don't move!" Aizawa barked, his lethargy instantly vanishing. He stepped in front of the class, his capture weapon unfurling like a nest of vipers. "Thirteen, protect the students!"

"What is that?" Eijiro Kirishima asked, squinting into the gloom. "Is this like the Entrance Exam? Has the training started already?"

"Don't move," Aizawa ordered, his voice dropping to a terrifying register. He slipped on his yellow goggles. "Those are villains."

From the swirling purple mist, an army emerged. Dozens of thugs, mutants, and criminals poured into the plaza. But Izuku’s gaze bypassed the fodder. He focused on the three figures standing at the center. 

A man covered in disembodied, grayish hands, scratching frantically at his own neck. 

A physical entity made entirely of the purple mist, wearing a sophisticated bartender's suit. 

And a monster. 

Izuku’s spatial awareness violently recoiled as it brushed against the third creature. It was a hulking, muscular behemoth, its skin a sickly, bruised purple. Its brain was entirely exposed, protruding from the top of its skull, and its eyes were dead, vacant, and soulless. 

But what disturbed Izuku wasn't its appearance. It was its biology. 

The creature possessed no natural equilibrium. Its cellular density was impossibly high, shifting and mutating at a microscopic level every millisecond. It was a biological singularity, a perversion of life that shouldn't logically exist in the natural universe. 

"Eraserhead and Thirteen," the hand-covered man rasped, his voice echoing across the plaza. "According to the teacher's schedule we received, All Might was supposed to be here. Where is he? I went through all this trouble to bring this crowd... and the Symbol of Peace isn't even here?" 

The man paused, his red eyes peering through the fingers clutching his face. "Maybe if I kill some kids, he'll come out to play."

The mist villain, Kurogiri, suddenly expanded. 

Izuku recognized the spatial shift a fraction of a second before it happened. The villain was a warp gate, using coordinates to fold space. 

"He's warping us," Izuku said, his voice terrifyingly calm amid the screaming of his classmates. 

The purple mist engulfed the class, tearing them away from the entrance and scattering them across the massive facility. Izuku felt the spatial current pull at him. He could have resisted it. He could have anchored himself with Palkia's power. But he calculated that separating himself from the main group would give him the freedom to fight without revealing the full extent of his godhood. 

He let the mist take him. 

Splash.

Izuku fell out of the portal, immediately plunging into the freezing waters of the Shipwreck Zone. 

He didn't panic. Beneath the water, he opened his eyes, the dual glow of cyan and magenta cutting through the murky depths. He saw aquatic villains darting toward him like torpedoes, armed with blades and bone-crushing jaws. 

Above him, a massive splash indicated two of his classmates—Tsuyu Asui and Minoru Mineta—had also been dropped into the lake. Tsuyu, a frog-mutant, swiftly grabbed the panicking Mineta and kicked toward the surface. 

The villains ignored them, converging entirely on Izuku. 

« PALKIA. »

Izuku didn't swim. He raised a hand under the water. He pinched his thumb and index finger together. 

The water around the five closest villains suddenly hardened, the space compressing until the water pressure mimicked the crushing depths of the Mariana Trench. The villains’ eyes rolled back in their heads as they instantly blacked out, their bodies trapped in invisible, spatial vices. 

With a flick of his wrist, Izuku folded the space between the bottom of the lake and the surface. He bypassed the water entirely, instantly teleporting himself onto the deck of the rusted ship at the center of the zone. 

Tsuyu landed beside him a second later, dropping a sobbing Mineta onto the deck. 

"Midoriya," Tsuyu croaked, her wide eyes blinking. "How did you get here so fast? I didn't see you swim."

"I took a shortcut," Izuku replied vaguely, looking out over the water. The remaining aquatic villains were circling the ship, waiting for them to make a move. 

"They're waiting to drown us!" Mineta wailed, pulling one of his sticky purple hairballs off his head. "We're going to die! They're going to eat us!"

"They are irrelevant," Izuku stated flatly. "The true threat is in the central plaza. The creature with the exposed brain. We need to leave this zone."

"But how?" Tsuyu asked, pointing to the water. "There are dozens of them."

Izuku sighed. He hated showing off, but time was of the essence. He walked to the edge of the ship’s railing and raised his right hand. 

Cyan.

He tapped into Dialga’s power. He didn't freeze time completely; that would strain his heart too much. Instead, he targeted the specific chronological flow of the water surrounding the ship. 

Rewind.

The water began to move backward. The ripples caused by the villains reversed. The currents shifted. To the absolute horror of the villains in the lake, the water was violently pulled away from the ship, reversing its flow to create a massive, dry crater in the center of the zone. The aquatic villains flopped helplessly onto the exposed concrete floor of the pool, gasping for air like beached fish. 

Tsuyu’s jaw dropped. Mineta stopped crying, his eyes bulging out of his skull. 

"Jump to the shore," Izuku commanded, his voice echoing with an unnatural resonance. 

Without waiting for them, Izuku vanished in a flash of magenta light, teleporting to the edge of the plaza. 

When Izuku arrived, the battle had already taken a catastrophic turn. 

Aizawa had fought brilliantly, taking down dozens of low-level thugs with martial arts and his Erasure Quirk. But he had made a fatal miscalculation. He had tried to fight the Nomu. 

Izuku watched in grim silence from the shadows of a ruined building as the Nomu pinned Aizawa to the ground. The creature raised its massive arm and brought it down on Aizawa’s elbow. 

CRACK.

The sound of shattering bone echoed across the plaza. Aizawa screamed in agony. 

"You can erase Quirks," Tomura Shigaraki laughed, casually scratching his neck. "But against raw, overwhelming physical might, you're just a Quirkless human. Meet the anti-Symbol of Peace. I call him... Nomu."

The Nomu grabbed Aizawa’s face and smashed his head into the concrete pavement. Blood pooled around the Pro Hero’s shattered goggles. 

Tsuyu and Mineta arrived, hiding behind a bush near Izuku. Tsuyu covered her mouth in horror, tears welling in her eyes. "Mr. Aizawa..."

"We have to run," Mineta whimpered, retreating. 

Izuku didn't retreat. He analyzed the Nomu. 

It does not have a Quirk factor that can be erased, Izuku realized. It has been biologically engineered. Multiple Quirks spliced into a single, mutated DNA strand. It is the physical embodiment of the Quirk Singularity. It is a cancer on reality.

Shigaraki suddenly turned his head. His red eyes locked onto the bush where Tsuyu and Mineta were hiding. 

"Ah. More lives to extinguish," Shigaraki whispered. In a burst of terrifying speed, the villain crossed the distance, his hand reaching out to grab Tsuyu’s face. "Let's see if All Might cares when his students turn to dust."

Tsuyu froze, paralyzed by the encroaching death. 

Shigaraki’s fingers were a millimeter away from her skin. 

Tick.

The world froze. 

The color bled out of the plaza, washed in a pale, icy cyan filter. The dust hanging in the air solidified. Shigaraki’s hand was suspended in mid-strike, his maniacal grin frozen in time. 

Izuku walked out of the shadows. His right eye was burning like a blue sun. He felt the familiar, crushing pressure in his skull, the resistance of the mortal world fighting against Dialga's temporal lock. 

Izuku walked up to Shigaraki, grabbed the villain by the wrist, and casually tossed him twenty feet backward. 

Izuku then turned to the Nomu, which was still pinning Aizawa’s broken body. 

This creature cannot be allowed to exist, Izuku decided. 

He released the temporal lock. 

Tock.

Time resumed. 

Shigaraki blinked, suddenly finding himself flying backward through the air. He crashed into the ground, tumbling wildly before skidding to a halt. He looked up, utterly bewildered. "What...? How did I get over here? My hand was right on her!"

Tsuyu gasped, collapsing to her knees, realizing she was still alive. She looked up and saw the black-clad back of Izuku Midoriya standing between her and the villains. 

"Midoriya!" Tsuyu cried out. 

"Stay back, Asui," Izuku ordered, his voice cold. 

Shigaraki stood up, dusting himself off. He glared at Izuku, his eyes twitching. "You... you're a fast one. A speed Quirk? Or teleportation? Kurogiri, what is this NPC?"

"He is the student who scored infinity on the physical exams, Tomura Shigaraki," the warp gate warned. "Do not underestimate him."

"Nomu," Shigaraki pointed at Izuku. "Kill the brat."

The Nomu released Aizawa. It slowly stood up, its massive muscles bulging. It let out a horrific, screeching roar that sounded like two pieces of metal grinding together. 

In a fraction of a second, the pavement beneath the Nomu shattered. 

The creature crossed the plaza at a speed that broke the sound barrier, throwing a punch directly at Izuku’s chest. The sheer kinetic force of the punch was comparable to a missile strike. 

Izuku didn't blink. He activated Dialga. 

Freeze.

The cyan energy washed over the Nomu. But something went horribly wrong. 

Instead of stopping completely, the Nomu... slowed down. It moved like it was trapped in thick honey, groaning as its hyper-dense muscles literally fought through the frozen time. Its biological mass was so heavily condensed, and its kinetic energy so immense, that it was actively resisting the temporal lock. 

Izuku’s eyes went wide. The mass is too dense. It’s anchoring itself to the physical reality!

To force a complete time-stop on an entity with that much kinetic mass would require Izuku to channel more of Dialga’s power than his human heart could pump. 

Izuku gasped as a sharp pain lanced through his chest. He dropped the time manipulation and immediately switched to space. 

Magenta.

Izuku warped ten feet into the air, dodging the Nomu’s slowed punch just as time resumed. The shockwave of the Nomu’s fist hitting the empty air tore a trench through the plaza. 

Hanging in the air, Izuku brought his right hand down in a swift, chopping arc. 

« SPACIAL REND. »

A jagged blade of magenta nothingness sliced through the space directly across the Nomu’s torso. 

It was a perfect hit. The spatial rift cleanly bisected the Nomu, separating its upper half from its lower half. The rift snapped shut, leaving a void of missing flesh. 

Izuku landed on his feet, panting heavily. A thin stream of blood dripped from his nose. It's over.

But it wasn't. 

"Is that it?" Shigaraki laughed, a dry, rasping sound. "You cut him in half. Impressive attack power. But you don't understand, kid. Nomu doesn't just have Shock Absorption. He has Hyper-Regeneration."

Izuku watched in growing horror as the Nomu’s severed upper body didn't fall to the ground. Instead, a violently explosive mass of muscle, veins, and bone erupted from the stump. In less than a second, the Nomu had completely regenerated its lower half, and the lower half regenerated its upper half, fusing back together into a pristine, unblemished monstrosity. 

Earthly physics, Izuku realized, his heart sinking. 

Spacial Rend cut the space. But once the attack ended, the space existed normally again. The Nomu’s cells simply multiplied across the newly repaired space instantly. Unless Izuku kept the spatial rift open indefinitely—which would rip his own arms off from the recoil—he couldn't put the beast down with Palkia. 

And he couldn't use Dialga to rewind the beast into nothingness without his heart exploding from the sheer biological resistance the Nomu possessed. 

The Nomu screeched and lunged again. 

Izuku threw up a spatial barricade, a flat wall of folded space. The Nomu slammed into it. The barrier held, but the sheer force of the impact rattled Izuku’s bones. He slid backward, his boots carving grooves into the concrete. 

"He's a cheat code," Shigaraki muttered, watching Izuku block the unstoppable force. "Nomu, change targets. The ones behind him. Make him drop his shield."

The Nomu disengaged from the spatial shield. It crouched, its muscles coiling, and its vacant eyes locked onto Tsuyu and Mineta. 

Izuku’s blood ran cold. 

He couldn't freeze time. He couldn't cut it. He couldn't shield them without dropping his own defense. 

The physical laws of the universe were failing him. The biological perversion of the Nomu was winning because it played by the rules of this rotting, fractured reality. 

If the rules of the physical world couldn't kill it... then he had to use the force that destroyed physical worlds. 

« RENEGADE. »

The third voice spoke in his mind. It wasn't the majestic ticking of Dialga or the echoing roar of Palkia. It was a sound like shattering glass and screaming souls. 

« LET ME OUT. »

Izuku had spent ten months in the Distortion World, but he had never tapped into Giratina’s power in the mortal realm. Arceus had warned him. Antimatter was volatile. It was the antithesis of existence. It did not create; it consumed. If he lost control, he wouldn't just kill the Nomu—he would erase the U.S.J. and everyone in it. 

But as the Nomu launched itself into the air, hurtling toward the terrified Tsuyu and Mineta, Izuku made his choice. 

Forgive me, Izuku prayed to Arceus. But balance must be restored.

Izuku dropped his hands. He closed his eyes. 

The cyan and magenta lights in the facility completely died. 

The temperature in the plaza plummeted instantly. Frost crept across the concrete floor, rapidly freezing the water in the central fountain solid. The air became so cold, so agonizingly devoid of thermal energy, that every breath taken by the students and villains plumed into thick white fog. 

The Nomu, mid-air, suddenly slowed, gravity acting strangely upon its dense mass. 

"What's going on?" Shigaraki shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. "Why is it freezing?"

In the center of the plaza, Izuku Midoriya opened his eyes. 

The green was gone. The cyan and magenta were gone. His entire sclera had turned pitch black, and his irises glowed with a sickening, radioactive gold. 

A shadow—thicker than darkness, resembling a pool of liquid void—began to seep from Izuku’s body, pooling at his feet. The light around him literally bent and distorted, sucked into the aura of pure Antimatter. 

From Izuku’s back, the fabric of his tactical suit didn't tear; it dissolved. 

Six massive, spectral wings erupted from his spine. They were not made of feathers or flesh. They were made of the black-and-gold void, ending in ghostly red spikes. They drifted ethereally in the air, unaffected by earthly wind, casting an oppressive, terrifying shadow over the plaza. 

When Izuku spoke, it was not the voice of a teenage boy. It was a distorted, dual-layered resonance, echoing from the bottom of an infinite abyss. 

"You rely on the rules of flesh and blood." 

Izuku took a step forward. He didn't walk on the ground; he hovered an inch above it, his body having completely severed its connection to Earth's gravity. 

"There is no flesh where you are going."

"Kill him!" Shigaraki screamed, a primal, unexplainable terror gripping his heart as he looked at the demonic, winged entity. "Nomu, smash him into paste!"

The Nomu roared, dropping from the sky like a meteor, its massive fists aimed directly at Izuku’s head. 

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

The Nomu’s fists slammed into Izuku. 

But there was no impact. 

The Nomu’s arms passed entirely through Izuku’s body, as if Izuku was a mirage. 

« SHADOW FORCE. »

Izuku had made himself completely intangible by shifting his molecular structure halfway into the Distortion World. He existed in both realms simultaneously, untouchable by physical matter. 

The Nomu stumbled, completely disoriented by the lack of physical resistance. 

Before the beast could recover, Izuku raised his right hand. His hand was coated in a swirling mass of black and gold Antimatter. He didn't punch the Nomu. He gently placed his palm against the center of the Nomu’s exposed chest. 

The moment Izuku’s hand made contact, the Nomu let out a sound it had never made before: a screech of pure, biological agony. 

The Antimatter began to consume the Nomu’s cellular structure at a molecular level. It bypassed the hyper-regeneration because it wasn't damaging the cells; it was completely negating their existence. The Nomu’s flesh turned gray, then translucent, then dissolved into black ash. 

Izuku grabbed the screeching beast by the neck. His six shadow wings flared, extending fully. 

"Return to the void."

Izuku tore his left hand through the air. 

He didn't open a spatial rift to another location on Earth. He tore open the dimensional boundary itself. 

A massive vortex of swirling black and purple clouds ripped open in the center of the U.S.J. It exerted an immense, unnatural gravitational pull, but it only pulled on the Nomu. Through the portal, the villains and students caught a horrifying glimpse of the Distortion World—a realm of floating islands, reversed waterfalls, and absolute, maddening emptiness. 

Izuku shoved the hulking bioweapon backward, directly into the vortex. 

The Nomu thrashed, its remaining arm grabbing the edges of the portal, its immense physical strength fighting against the dimensional suction. It roared, trying to pull itself back into reality. 

Izuku hovered before the struggling monster, his golden eyes devoid of mercy. 

"Begone."

Izuku clapped his hands together. 

The vortex violently collapsed. It imploded with a sound like a thunderclap in a vacuum, shrinking from a massive gateway into a singular point of black light, and then vanishing entirely. 

The Nomu was gone. It wasn't dead. It wasn't destroyed. It was banished to an eternity in a dimension where time did not flow, where space was broken, and where it could regenerate forever in absolute isolation. 

The ultimate biological weapon, designed to kill the Symbol of Peace, had been discarded like a piece of lint. 

The black and gold wings protruding from Izuku’s back began to writhe, the Antimatter hungering for more. The golden rings in Izuku’s eyes flickered toward Shigaraki and Kurogiri. 

Shigaraki fell backward onto his hands, his eyes wide with an incomprehensible dread. He scratched furiously at his neck, tearing the skin, drawing blood. 

"What... what is that?" Shigaraki babbled, his gamer mindset completely shattered. "That's not a hero. That's a raid boss. That's a cheat code! You deleted him! You just deleted my Nomu!"

Kurogiri expanded his mist, wrapping around Shigaraki. "Tomura Shigaraki, we must retreat. The Nomu is gone, and that entity is not something we can fight. We have severely miscalculated."

"NO!" Shigaraki screamed, but Kurogiri forced him into the warp gate. In a matter of seconds, the remaining villains, terrified by the display of cosmic erasure, leaped into the mist. 

The portal collapsed, leaving the plaza entirely empty of enemies. 

Silence descended upon the U.S.J. The frost began to melt. 

Up by the entrance, the rest of Class 1-A stood paralyzed. Bakugo, who had fought his way back to the main group, stared down at the plaza, his hands shaking so violently he couldn't form a fist. He had seen the black wings. He had felt the absolute zero chill in his bones. Deku wasn't just untouchable. Deku was a monster. 

Down in the plaza, the battle was won. 

But the Vessel was paying the price. 

« SEAL THE BREACH. » Arceus’s voice boomed in Izuku’s mind, filled with urgency. 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. The golden light in his irises fought desperately against the consuming black. He focused all his willpower, envisioning the golden wheel of the Creator, forcing the Antimatter back into its cage within his soul. 

The six shadow wings violently dissipated into smoke. The pitch-black aura faded. 

The moment the Antimatter receded, Izuku’s mortal body registered what he had just done. 

He didn't hover to the ground; he fell like a stone. 

Izuku hit the concrete hard on his hands and knees. A horrific, tearing agony ripped through his nervous system. Channeling the essence of Giratina in the mortal realm had essentially poisoned his human cells with necrotic, anti-existence energy. 

Izuku violently retched, coughing up a terrifying amount of thick, black blood onto the pavement. His vision blurred, swimming with dark spots. His heart fluttered irregularly, struggling to pump oxygen through veins that had just been coated in void. 

"Midoriya!" 

Tsuyu sprinted toward him, sliding on her knees next to him. Mineta followed, crying hysterically. 

"Don't... touch me," Izuku gasped, his voice returning to its normal, human pitch, though weak and raspy. "Residual... energy. It will burn you."

Tsuyu stopped her hand inches from his shoulder, her eyes filled with tears of gratitude and fear. "You saved us. You saved everyone."

Izuku slowly tilted his head up. He looked at the massive crater where the Nomu had been. He looked at Aizawa, who was barely conscious a few yards away. 

I didn't save them, Izuku thought, his consciousness rapidly fading as the physical backlash overwhelmed him. I just pushed the destruction somewhere else. The scales are still tipping.

Before he could form another thought, the doors to the U.S.J. burst open. 

"HAVE NO FEAR, STUDENTS!" All Might's booming voice echoed across the dome, entirely lacking its usual smile. The Number One Hero stood at the entrance, his massive form exuding raw, furious power. "BECAUSE I AM HERE!"

All Might looked down at the plaza. He expected to see a terrifying villain holding his students hostage. 

Instead, he saw his battered colleague, a blood-stained plaza, and a fragile, green-haired boy collapsing into a pool of his own black blood. 

Izuku’s eyes rolled back, and he embraced the dark.