Rating: T+

Pairing(s): Midoriya/Uraraka; Kirishima/Ashido; Todoroki/Yaoyorozu; Iida/Hatsume; Kaminari/Jirou; Shinsou/Asui; Ojiro/Toru; Mirio/Nejire.

Genre: Romance; Superhero Action; Thriller; Suspense; Dark Humor; Mature Themes

Notes:

Hello everyone! Zancrow here!

Welcome to my "What-If Story" about an Alternate Universe (AU) where how would things be if the world's greatest champion and bringer of peace and hope was the total complete opposite of that. Greatly inspired by similar tales like its namesake "Irredeemable" by Mark Waid and "Injustice: Gods Among Us" by Ed Boon; this story tells the tale of young Izuku Midoriya, who finds himself in a world where his once beloved mentor is now the greatest threat to freedom that had ever existed. Now it's up to Deku to find a way to right these massive wrong, with his only possible help being his once-upon-a-time classmates; who unfortunately don't share the same recollection of events as he does.

Also, if you can notice thanks to the pairing list up above, this will be a very romance/desire-heavy story. With a heavy dose of drama and dark themes, but I must point out, not overly so. Dark, yes, but I will try to keep the "My Hero Academia" charm and optimism in there. It will not be as dark as its inspirations, at least not always. So please, if any of this interests you, do give this little story a read. And of course, any and all comments and / or feedback is greatly appreciated!

Disclaimer: Don't own My Hero Academia, or Oumagadoki Zoo.

He had been dreaming mere moments before…

…He couldn't recall the dream very well, but it had felt lengthy. As if he had been dreaming for days, maybe weeks, maybe longer. He couldn't remember it well, but he could recall that he had been enjoying the dream. Most of it at least. It teetered on turning into a nightmare a few times, but it never did. He managed to turn it back, or his loved ones did. Most often than not, it was them who did so. So it was a good dream… Then the sound came.

A massive, jarring sound that engulfed his very being, one that shook him awake almost instantaneously, yet one he couldn't even begin to properly describe. It sounded like an explosion, but also like metal hitting against itself. It also sounded like screams. Screams of civilians, and screams of things he'd never want to see.

And when the sound became unbearable, it ended. A bright light took its place, blinding him completely as he felt a coldness brush against his skin. The temperature had dropped immensely, and his entire body was feeling its effects. It was here that the world stopped spinning; it was here he remembered how to breathe.

-0-

Chapter One

"Prologue"

-0-

Izuku Midoriya opened his eyes, slowly, softly, painfully.

He found himself in his room, yet it was much darker than he remembered. There was only a small light to the other side of him, small and wavering, like a nightlight on the verge of turning off. He tried to move, yet his body wouldn't obey. He couldn't move, despite his attempts.

'This… I haven't felt this in ages,' Midoriya thought to himself, forming a hypothesis of what was happening to his body. 'Mom took me to Dr. Tsubasa before because of this. Sleep paralysis, he called it… Just the body taking a little bit more time to receive the signal from the brain that I'm awake, nothing more…'

As he tried to calm himself, Midoriya remembered his Doctor's advice: to move his toes. He began to clench his feet into a "fist" of sorts, closing and opening to try to get his brain to register his awakened state. It became harder to breathe, but he knew this was only mentally and that his body was taking enough oxygen for him to survive. Plus, sleep paralysis usually lasted less than a minute for him, so he should wake up fast enough. At least, they used to. Ever since he got his Quirk he never had had sleep paralysis again.

'Wait? Quirk?' Midoriya asked himself, realizing that the mental image he had just conjured up didn't match his memories very well. 'Wait… That's right. I do have a Quirk. From All Might… Why did I forget that all of the sudden?'

His eyes slowly got used to the darkness, and he could begin to see a figure near him, seeming to be sitting down beside his bed, probably on his desk chair. He couldn't tell who it was, but he figured it probably wasn't anybody at all, as he recalled that he used to see his mother in his room talking to him when he had this "attacks", yet when he woke up he would realize she had never been there at all. Part of the whole half-awake half-asleep scenario.

Moving his toes seemed to work; within moments he felt himself regain control of his body, and in one sudden jolt, he threw himself into a seated position, his body now drenched in cold sweat. An in that instance, the whole scenery morphed drastically.

His familiar dimly lit bedroom transformed into a broken, wooden storage facilities of sorts. The dim nightlight he had seen turned out to be from a cable that was emitting electrical sparks near to where his body had been. His bed was nothing more that the cold, hard ground. And worst of all, there really was someone else right next to him.

Realizing this, Midoriya quickly bounced up on his feet and landed in a fighting pose, arms stretched and ready to defend himself, yet the moment his eyes managed to register the figure before him all the blood drained from his face.

The figure was sitting down on the floor, not his desk chair as he had "dreamed", resting its back against the wall. Its body was burned to a crisp, and its face was nothing more that the skeletal remains of what was once probably a man. The one thing that made him somewhat recognizable was the headdress he was wearing, one which Midoriya recognized.

"Power Loader!" he shouted out, yet immediately covered his mouth with his hands. If someone, something had done that to a Hero, an instructor no less, it would not be wise to give out his location like that, assuming whoever did that to him was not responsible for bringing Midoriya out here in the first place, which would be likely. 'Oh God, how?' Midoriya thought to himself, keeping his mouth shut and scanning the entire area from where he stood. He could not see anyone else. 'Power Loader was killed! No, it can't be! It looks like him, similar built and all, but it had to be a trap! There's no way he'd be killed so quickly without anyone realizing it. Also, whoever did this brought me here somehow, yet they didn't outright kill me… Which means there must be a reason for this. Do they want to frame me? But if that were the case, then it really would have to be Power Loader who died… Unless they made a civilian look like him and they want to frame me for the civilian's death…'his mind raced, but he knew he had to force himself to act, 'Damn it, I can't just stay here and think. I need to find someone with authority and get myself out of here! I need to know with what we're dealing with!'

And he began to move.

He ran past the corpse on the floor, mentally praying for the person and hoping against reason it was simply a very convincing dummy, and made his way towards the only door he saw. He also scanned his entire area once he opened the door, realizing he was in a small building of sorts, just three flood in total, made of a very decrepit wood which seemed to be falling into pieces without any outside assistance needed.

As he ran through the hallways, each looking more abandoned and filthy that the last, he also noticed that he was effectively wearing only a shirt and his boxers, which caused him a small case of hysteria and embarrassment of equal measure. Had his kidnapper stripped him? Where was his costume, or his school uniform for that matter? Unless he had been taken directly from his room, which would in turn explain the attire, but how gifted must his kidnapper be.

'Gifted enough to slay an instructor with ease,' the darkest part of his mind explained, yet he shook his head and decided to ignore it. He had confronted terrifyingly powerful villains before, he would be alright. He would get to the bottom of this, and he would find assistance.

'It'll be alright,' he assured himself, as he made his way down another corridor, managing to see a flight of stairs at the end. 'All Might will know what to do. I just hope it's only me and whoever is behind this hasn't tried to take anyone el-"

A sudden explosion right next to him caught Midoriya completely off-guard, canceling his train of thoughts and sending him flying from the corridor and into one of the building's many rooms, smashing right through the wooden wall and crashing against the floor, which in turn gave way and cause him to fall from one floor to the next. Finding himself dazed and buried in a heap of wood and pipes, Midoriya could only mutter to himself how he should have broken the floor and gone down himself from the start. It would have been a smarter option and it would have saved him from getting smacked like that.

Clenching his fists and resolve, Midoriya punched right through all the debris that had fallen on him, one swift punch clearing the room and his entire body became engulfed by the legendary power gifted to him by the greatest Hero the world had ever seen. The legendary power known as "One For All".

Midoriya quickly scanned his now new surroundings. Much of it was the same, dirt, wood and a stench of burned everything filling out his nostrils. But now he knew he wasn't alone. 'That blast was not a trap. Not a grenade or sensory bomb. It was a Quirk. But, really, such an explosive power… It was almost as if being hit again by Ka-"

Another explosion erupted, this time from right over him. Luckily, with his Quirk activated, the power running through every cell of his body, Midoriya managed to dodge the explosion and the resulting shrapnel created by the blast by jumping to the side and landing a safe distance away. His thought were halted yet again, but this time not by the explosion itself. But rather, by the one responsible.

His suspicions confirmed, in the least imaginable way.

"K-Kacchan!" Midoriya screamed out, a mixture of surprise and outright relief at seeing the familiar spiky-haired teen before him. The boy known as Katsuki Bakugou. His classmate was decked out in an attire he had never seen the boy wear, like a mix of his old costume and his current street attire. He now sported only one grenade-like gauntlet on his right arm, and he seemed to lack the metal-like collar he used to wear. It also looked torn in places, as if he had been fighting moments before. Before trying to blast Midoriya into next week, that is. "Wait! Kacchan!" Midoriya placed his arms before him, trying to keep his hotheaded rival from starting their fight all over again. "It's me! Deku! There's a situation here! It's Power Loader, or at least someone made to look like him! There's-"

Instincts caused him to jump aside, as another powerful explosion erupted before him, shattering the floor beneath them and causing most of the area to begin to catch on fire. Landing nearby, Midoriya was at a loss at what to do. 'I know Kacchan can be violent, but not like this!' he thought, trying to make sense of this all. 'Is he being controlled? Or is someone being held hostage and they're forcing him to fight me? Maybe it's an illusion type Quirk, where he doesn't see it's me… Or I see him when it's really not!'

Seeing Bakugou launch himself at him, Midoriya once again went on the defensive, dodging an onslaught of explosions hurled his way, while also keeping himself from falling into the ever expanding fire that was beginning to consume the area. 'No, there' no illusion powerful enough on Earth to mimic the force of those explosions. That's Kacchan alright, so I need to make him see reason. If this keeps up, Power Loader's body will be burn to a crisp, and they won't be able to identify him. I can't let that happen!'

"Snap out of it Kacchan!" Midoriya roared as he took on the full-cowl of his powers, raising it to the twenty percent he had gotten used to. Bakugou launched himself at him without a spare thought, no hesitation whatsoever on his movements, but at the same time, no defense either. Midoriya moved quickly, positioning himself to the side so that the moment Bakugou entered his range, he gave the boy a swift and powerful kick in the abdomen before Bakugou could set of another explosion. The kick sent the ash-blond boy hurling to the side, crashing against and through a wall very much like Midoriya had before.

Midoriya kept his eyes on him, trying to see if or how he could "wake him up", so to speak. "…He's alright, right?" Midoriya asked himself out loud, hoping he had not his Bakugou too hard.

"Fuck!" Bakugou roared as he blasted the debris off himself and charged right back to Midoriya.

"Yeah, he's fine-oh shit!" Midoriya screamed as Bakugou barely missed blowing half of his face off, having swung his left arm mere inches from Midoriya's right eye. At this Midoriya kicked upwards, hoping to land a solid blow to Bakugou's chin and hopefully knocking the boy out, but Bakugou dodged it effortlessly by back flipping away, landing on his hands, and then igniting another explosion on his fists which blasted him feet first into Midoriya. His feet landed squarely on Midoriya's torso, knocking the wind out of him and blasting him backwards alongside Bakugou.

He then had seconds to spare before Bakugou proceeded to blast his face at such short range, which Midoriya countered by digging his fingers into the floor, stopping his momentum cold and causing Bakugou to lose his balance. Immediately, Midoriya followed by lunging himself at Bakugou, grabbing his "friend" by the waist and throwing both of them towards a nearby wall.

"Say something!" Midoriya demanded, as he proceeded to try and punch him square in the jaw, but Bakugou was swift and managed to not only dodge the punch, but also grab his arm, flip him over, and blast him away with a short-ranged explosion that Midoriya had no choice but to shield himself with his arms in order to avoid getting his chest busted open.

He landed several feet away, right through another wall and directly onto a street, letting him see the outside world for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. It was all dark an empty, much to his dismay and utter frustration.

"Damn it, talk to me!" Midoriya demanded again, his lips now bleeding and his breathing erratic. His attire had now been reduced to just his boxers and a single thing strap of what was once his shirt, but on the plus side, he was no longer cold.

He clenched his now aching side, as he glared at Bakugou who calmly (or, as calmly as a homicidal maniac about to kill someone can manage) walking out of the now burning building and towards the street where Midoriya was. "This isn't funny! Something is seriously wrong here! You're attacking me without any constraints in the lightest! We're going to kill each other Kacchan!"

"Why the hell do you keep calling me that?!" Bakugou finally spoke a full sentence, yet not what Midoriya had expected to hear from him. "If you want to be so chatty, then tell me where they are! Where is Power Loader and the weird girl?!"

"Weird girl?" Midoriya repeated, confused as hell and now even more concerned. Did this mean that had really been Power Loader up there? Was he actually dead? And who was the "weird girl"? And why didn't Bakugou even know the name of the people he was trying to save? Granted, that last question wasn't as surprising as the others. "Kacchan, what's going on? I told you Power Loader was up there! Or, well, someone who looked like him. But, but, he was… he was dead Kacchan! And I was-"

"Responsible, I'd bet!" Bakugou accused, and Midoriya felt his soul leave his body. Something was definitely wrong in this entire scenario. For all his faults, and they were many, Bakugou would never accuse anyone of something so serious without actual proof. "So stop giving me stupid nicknames and talk! Otherwise I'll blow you straight to hell!"

"We have a massive situation and you're concerned I keep calling you "Kacchan"?!"

"I said to stop that!" he roared again, creating continues explosions on his palms, as if readying himself to pounce.

"Alright, fine!" Midoriya roared back, tired of going back and forth with such pressing matters at hand. "Then tell me what's going on Bakugou!"

In that sudden moment, Bakugou's face drained of color, and his Quirk was seemingly deactivated on the spot. Midoriya looked at him for a moment, utterly baffled, as his "rival" seemed to be taken aback by the sudden use of his family name. "H…"

"Are you alright?" a confused Midoriya asked.

"H-How the hell do you know my name?!"

"Do you seriously not remember who I am?!" Midoriya screamed in desperation. This couldn't be real, it just couldn't. It made no sense. However it was he was fighting against, it wasn't Bakugou. Not the one he knew. He needed to get out of here. Find someone else. If there really was another person in danger, he couldn't waste his time fighting here. So he bit his lip, and ran. Took the change at how distracted Bakugou looked. And it worked, as he heard Bakugou curse in three different languages and begin to chase after him, but Midoriya had the advantage. From the look of the city, he was still in Japan, even if he couldn't exactly pin-point where. It was nighttime at least, so it made blending into the surroundings that much easier. Or it would have, had he not been hit mid jump.

Not by Bakugou, either.

He fell right back onto the empty street, which in itself caused him to realize just how empty this entire city felt. So incredibly eerie. But he quickly picked himself back up, just in time for his attacker to land in front of him, and for Bakugou to land right behind him. He was screwed.

"Hey! I had him right where I wanted him!" Bakugou told his attacker, despite even Midoriya doubted the validity of his claims. "Weren't you supposed to be elsewhere?"

"And weren't you supposed to be quiet?" a familiar voice asked the explosive teen, and it took Midoriya less than a second to recognize her.

"Uraraka!" his tone betrayed the immense relief he felt at seeing the heroine to-be.

"Wait! What? Did you seriously give him my name?!" she accused Bakugou, seemingly just as shocked as the other at the fact that Midoriya knew them by name. Just what was going on? But, it really was her. It looked just like her at least. Ochako Uraraka, who, just like Bakugou, was wearing what seemed to be an edited version of her Hero costume, helmet and all. He face was serious, and her gaze was staring intently at Midoriya, poised to attack as well.

"Please don't attack me and listen to me!" Midoriya begged, waving his hands frantically trying to explain himself. "Please tell me you remember me Uraraka! I have no idea what's going on, but I'm your friend! I'm friends with both of you! One more than the other, granted, but still!"

"What's going on here?" Uraraka seemed perplexed, looking at Midoriya as if he were an alien instead of a close friend, but at least she was more open to conversation than a certain other individual.

"I didn't tell him shit," Bakugou explained, edging closer to Midoriya, who kept his guard up despite his pleas. He did not want to get blown up again. "He knew my name too. I have a theory on who this fucker might be, but I'll save that for later. For now, let's restrain him. Grab hold of him!"

"Hey wait!" Midoriya shut back. "Just listen to me! I'm not your enemy! Whoever did this is still out there! Just hear me out!"

"Fine! You want us to hear you out, then just let us restrain you and then I'll be more willing to let you talk!" Bakugou told him as he edged closer, giving Midoriya an offer he was definitely going to refuse. "Don't let his looks fool you, he packs quite a punch despite his lanky appearance!"

"Lanky?" Midoriya repeated, insulted.

"…Why are you not grabbing him?!" Bakugou questioned Uraraka, shouting at the girl who had not moved an inch after she landed. "He's clearly guarded against me, yet showing his back to you! Are you going to do anything?"

"…Well," she began, and both Midoriya and Bakugou cocked their eyebrows at her, both of them unsure of why she was acting the way she was. Then she spoke. "H-He's sort-of half-naked, you know…"

"He's a villain, he doesn't care!" Bakugou reprimanded her.

"Ah! She's right! This is so humiliating!" Midoriya quickly covered himself with his hands, his face brightly burning with embarrassment.

"You're a villain, you shouldn't care!" Bakugou reprimanded him.

"I'm not a villain!" he defended, feeling so humiliated that it made even controlling his Quirk harder. Out of every single person in the world who could see in in his underwear, why did it have to be her? The biggest crush he had ever had, standing mere feet away while averting her eyes from his exposed body. He had to shake his head and force himself to try to focus on the situation at hand, modesty be damned. A Hero has to sacrifice himself, so in a way he could interpret this as that. "But, please, you need to believe me! My name's Izuku Midoriya! I'm a classmate of yours, and your friend! We've been training together for months now! I'd never lie to you two! Please, guys, you've got to believe me!"

"Your name's Midoriya?"

"Yeah, that's right, I'm-" he stopped mid-sentence, recognizing that voice as neither Bakugou nor Uraraka. It was still familiar, however, and the alarm bells on his head began to ring like crazy. "Wait! Shinsou!"

Standing behind him, having gone completely unnoticed to him, stood the young man who he had fought against in the U.A. Sports Festival. Hitoshi Shinsou, also wearing a modified version of his Hero costume. And it was hear, upon seeing the muzzle adorning his mouth, that he realized his mistake. He had replied to him.

"Don't move," Shinsou instructed, freezing Midoriya under his command before the boy could utter a single word.

And within moments, before Midoriya could even hope to get assistance from the ghosts of One For All's past, Bakugou launched himself at him with a resounding chop to the back of his head.

The last thing Midoriya heard was Uraraka say something he couldn't understand, before the darkness overtook him once more.

-0-

Elsewhere, far from where Midoriya had found himself in, rain was pouring without stop.

A police car was stationed by the entrance of a driveway, with two cops standing right by it, drenched in the rain. It was cold. It was a cold night overall. And as they stood there, trying their best to drown out the screams, the begging, the sobbing. They tried to focus on the rain, on the grass, on the sky. On anything, but the screams were impossible to ignore. They could tell, they could feel how many people were screaming, and how after each crunching sound, how fewer and fewer people kept on screaming. Kept on crying.

Three cracks followed. Then silence.

One of the cops wanted to throw up, because he had never seen him "work". At least, not in person. Not this close.

The other wanted to cry, right then and there, because the woman who had been crying sounded identical to his wife. Just like how she cried.

"Gentlemen," a voice spoke to them, and they both realized that that man had appeared before them in a blink of an eye. His Hero costume, the most famous of them all, fully drenched in the blood of every single living being that had been in that house that night. The rain failed to wash the blood away. Almost as if the rain itself was refusing to touch the stained person below it. "Tell the clean-up crew to get to work," his powerful voice demanded, and all they could do was stare and faintly nod. "It's five in total this time."

They nodded again, and he began to walk past them. One of them spoke up, against his own will, simply out necessity to try and justify what he had just witnessed. What he had failed to act upon. "…W-Was he among them? Where they hiding him?"

"…Yes," the man once called All Might replied, stopping momentarily to address the officer, even if he did not turn to face him. "After all, to execute absolute justice and to keep the streets safe from any Quirk user is the reason why…"

They both begged any celestial being not to hear him say it.

"…I am here."

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