Hello everyone! Titanmaster 117 speaking!
Yes, welcome to a new series of wonders and wonderland! A myriad of concepts and possibilities that only need to be given word and life to become great! A grand wash of worlds and words that hold within them the greatest possibilities of-
Okay, I'm going to stop right there! Yikes, who wrote this thing?
Oh wait, I did.
Huh.
…
{COUGH} Anyways, welcome to the MHA Idea Pool! For those of you who have stuck around with me since the beginning, or at least have seen my other works before and have read my RWBY Idea Pool, you all know how this works, and what this little piece of fiction. However, for all of you newcomers out there who have no idea what's going on, allow me to explain: this is not a story. This is simply a collection of concepts and story prompts that I do not have the time or desire to work on or explore on my own.
All of these ideas are free for everyone to use (they're free! Free I tell you!). I'm not planning on working on any of these ideas, and I'm putting them all up here for adoption and inspiration for others. Any of you can take up these ideas. As long as you send me a PM and tell me you're using the idea (as well as maybe give me a little credit for it please thank you), then it's all yours! Go nutty! Go nuts! Go nutty with nuts!
(Just to let you all know, I don't take prompts from other people. These are purely my ideas, nothing more.)
But anyways, let's get started with the first idea...
Dreamwalker
(Inspired by Scorpions and Chains by SevenRenny, RWBY: Ice Queendom, and Destiny 2: Season of the Haunted)
It's an average day for Class 1-A. They're just strolling through a shopping district, having fun, buying gifts and food, defending themselves from a gang of villains.
Yep, an average day for Class 1-A.
Except no. Except it's not. Because something happens. Izuku fights the villains, but is swatted to the side by one of them and into a random civilian girl trying to flee. There's a jolt of light between them, and then they both fall into a deep slumber.
In the aftermath, the two are taken to one of the hospitals, but the doctors find that not only are the two - both Izuku and the girl - in a seemingly permanent vegetative state, but they cannot keep the two apart without causing physical pain to the both of them.
Class 1-A worry about their friend, and then even more so when they learn about the girl - who's name is Ayumu Tachi - and her quirk, Dreamwalker, allowing her to place people into a deep slumber and interact with their dreams. Supposedly, at least.
The only problem is that she shouldn't be able to use it. She hadn't been using it since she turned six years old.
Class 1-A's fears continue to grow. One of their friends being under the affect of a quirk is one thing, but being under the influence of an untrained and untested quirk is another. There's no way to understand how Dreamwalker works nowadays, and there's no proof to say that either of them will wake up anytime soon, or even ever.
Ochako, in particular, fears for Izuku's safety and takes his hand into her own...
And then collapses onto the floor, falling into the same sleep as Izuku and Ayumu.
When she opens her eyes, she finds herself in a world unlike anything that she had ever seen. The sky was green and black and red, the grand buildings around her were golden and riddled with statues of All Might and heroes and Class 1-A themselves, and the rest of the world was of rolling verdant hills and fields... but they were all covered in smoke and fog. Fungal overgrowths covered the fields and buildings, and the entire world had fallen to rot and decay. Glowing purple chains latched the world together and kept everything in place like a possessive prison, and constant murmur of despair and sorrow flowed with the wind that flowed between the buildings and pushed through the smoke.
She was in Izuku Midoriya's mind, having made contact with him and inadvertently interacting with Ayumu's Dreamwalker quirk.
She wonders the world, lost in the fog and fungus and trying to find her way through the decadent ruins mottled with disease and rot. Everything was falling to decay, the rot constantly growing around her, slowly inching up the shallow rivers and broken golden walls. Whenever she approached the rot, she felt sick and fatigued, so she made an effort to avoid them. Eventually, she comes across a spectre - a shadow of Izuku - and when she gives chase to the fleeing spectre, she comes across a cloudy echo floating in the middle of the ichor mottled street, coloured red and black and pulsating like a heart.
She presses herself against the echo, and finds herself in a memory, standing in a room with a young Izuku and his mother as they watch All Might's debut for the hundredth time, only for it to shift to the doctor's office, where Ochako's finds out that Izuku, much to her confusion, was designated as quirkless.
Then, she's back in his room, and she's sobbing alongside him and his mother when he asks if he can still be a hero.
Ochako says that he can, and is shocked when her mother just apologises.
The memory ends, and suddenly, Ochako wants to know more. He was quirkless? But he had one of the strongest quirks she'd seen? What the hell did that mean that he suddenly didn't?
She goes for another echo, but stops herself. She needs to find the spectre of her friend. She needs to help him...
But she can't, because a shadowy figure with glowing purple eyes grabs hold of her, and forces her out of Izuku's mind.
She wakes up once more, slumping upwards next to Izuku and Ayumu, surrounded by her classmates who all fret and worry over her.
She explains what she has seen to them, and they realise that they themselves can enter Izuku's mind via the Dreamwalker semblance, by making contact with Izuku, and possibly anyone who was connected to the Dreamwalker quirk. The only thing that they needed to worry about, though, was the strange spectre within Izuku's mind that had forced Ochako out.
So, with determination in their hearts and a mission to save their friend right before them, they press their hands against Midoriya and each other, and entered into his mind - into his dream world - once more.
From there, the class would go on to explore the strange dream world, sifting through the rotting corpse of the grand kingdom, moving through the spoke, and melding themselves to the strange geometry and physics of the new world that they had stepped into, avoiding spectres and chasing ghosts.
And time after time, they would begin to piece Izuku's life together through the echoes, looking through the cloudy bubbles and walking through the projections and seeing his life laid bare before them piece by piece. Slowly, through random memories through different corners of his life, they would begin to understand Izuku, seeing his struggles, and the damage that he has accumulated all his life.
And with the eight ghosts shrouded in shadow guiding them along - the ghosts of the power that they know now not to be Superpower, but One for All - they are sure that they can save their friend.
But tensions begin to flare in the group when Bakugo's past treatment of Izuku is revealed to the class, and they begin to divide on the subject, causing old resentments within their group to flare up. However, despite their distain, they are forced to swallow it down and move on.
But then they are confronted by the angry spectre with purple eyes from before, which proceeds to thrash them all in a fight. Worse yet, she is aided by her following of Midoriya's nightmares made manifest, the phantoms of Stain, All for One, Shigiraki, and Overhaul fighting alongside the mysterious spectre of shadow as Class 1-A charged at the nightmare villains...
And are promptly beaten solid.
They are left bloody and broken on the ground, but a clear strike from one of the students is able to clear the mist away from the spectre, and reveal the foe that stands before them.
Ayumu Tachi, draped in moonlight and standing firmly against them, with a simple demand: leave them alone.
They were wrong. Ayumu has full control over her quirk. Ayumu is in full control of the dream world.
Ayumu is this story's villain, not a victim.
And with that, the class are expelled once more from the dream world.
We cut over to Ayumu, who returns to a small cottage in the middle of a land of rolling plains atop a tall hill, giant purple chains flowing out from the roof and stretching across the sky. Inside the cottage is Izuku, sitting alone in a chair, looking down with his eyes dulled over.
Ayumu is holding him here, in the dream world, fondling over him and treating him as if he is an old friend - a lover, even. Here, in this world of her that she can change and mould with the snap of her finger, she has made her gilded cage around her captive - a heaven within a broken hell, a slice of healthy flesh underneath peeled layers of truth and diseased skin. She holds him here, and treats him to theatre shows where she is the actor and he is the audience. She showers him with gifts of the mind and the greatest presents.
All she asks for in return is for him to stay with her, for as long as they live.
A few seconds later, something begins to fill in the vials next to her. Blue liquid. Taking them, Ayumu pulls out a sample of the fungus from before, and pours the blue liquid onto it.
It has no affect.
Suddenly, something begins pounding on the door, and Ayumu grabs her weapon, promising Izuku that she would be back in a few minutes, and leaving him in darkness once more.
Meanwhile, Aizawa and All Might find the class waking up from their forceful slumber, and the former begins to chastise them for once more running into a situation without any understanding of what is actually going on. He has the class share their information with him and All Might, and when the class leave, he prepares to have a group of specialised Pro Heroes go into Izuku's mind and pull him out. All Might wants to go, but he's lost his power - he won't be of any help, and Aizawa would like to just open up Ayumu's eyes and negate her quirk, but she needs to be awake for that to happen, and even if he did, her quirk is still relatively unknown. For all he knew, he could shut down her quirk and leave Midoriya braindead as a result.
However, he plans to go in with the Pro Hero team into Izuku's mind and shut down the villain. All he needs to do is get a good look at Ayumu when she appears to repel them, and that might get the results they need.
"Or leave Young Midoriya braindead, like you said."
"Either way, I don't have any other plan, and I'm not dragging the problem children into this. They've already done enough on their own, without my permission. I won't risk it."
Soon, the Pro Hero team of mind specialists and combat retrieval experts arrive, and with Eraserhead, they all connect with the Dreamwalker quirk, and go in.
However, right from the start, everything goes wrong.
Izuku's mind begins to turn against the Pro Heroes. The spectres of Midoriya that had once guided his classmates begin to attack the Pros, and things only get worse when Ayumu and her collection of nightmares appear, which begin to overwhelm the Pros.
But then, everything goes wrong when Ayumu peers into Eraserhead's mind, and pulls out his biggest nightmare.
The massive villain known as Garvey, the one who had killed his best friend Shirakumo.
The Pro Heroes attempt to flee from Izuku's mind, but Ayumu does it for them. By the time that they are expelled from Izuku's mind, they are far worse off than Class 1-A, tired and traumatised.
Meanwhile, Class 1-A, now knowledgeable of Izuku's history, begin to argue amongst themselves about what to do, as well as Bakugo's past and One for All. However, when they learn of Aizawa and the Pro Heroes' failure, they compile all that they already know and have recently learnt about Izuku, and realised that the reason that the spectres assisted them and turned against Aizawa and the Pros was because Izuku simply didn't trust adults: he had been hurt by them so much that as soon as they had entered his mind, he had worked to expel them.
But those of Class 1-A, he trusted. He trusted them with his life, even. That was why they had let him in.
Realising that there is no other way that they are going to get Izuku out of Ayumu's grasp, Aizawa, with a healthy degree of reluctance, agrees to allow Class 1-A to enter into Izuku's mind once more, and though All Might wishes to enter with him, Aizawa orders him to stay behind.
They made contact, and entered into Izuku's mind once more.
Except they didn't. Class 1-A open their eyes, and suddenly find themselves in another world, one of rolling hills and grassy plains under what should've been a clear blue sky, with white pillars and towers piercing the heavens like knives, and islands that hovered in the air and created great waterfalls that turned into twisting rivers that slithered through the atmosphere. But it was covered with the same fungus from before, the same perpetual rot, and the sky, instead of being a clear baby blue, was mottled with smoke and fog. Giant purple chains filled the spaces between the clouds.
They were in Ayumu's mind.
Seeing the opportunity to learn of the villain that they face, Class 1-A, guided along by the spirits of the past One for All users - able to cross over into Ayumu's mind thanks to Izuku's connection to her - begin to pilfer the echoes and seek their secrets out, and with that, the life of Ayumu Tachi was laid bare before them:
When Ayumu Tachi was born, she was an incredibly sociable child. She had always interacted well with other children, and had been eager to talk and socialise, as well as comfort those around her who felt pain and sorrow.
When her parents took her to see a quirk specialist, they discovered that she had some sort of mental quirk, though they do not know what it is. At best, they believe that it is something to do with dreams, though they are still unsure.
However, that wouldn't matter, as soon Ayumu would begin to interact and share her semblance with another girl. A lone quirkless child by the name of Eiko Kase.
Ayumu and Eiko stayed as best friends for all their lives, playing and living their lives together for as long as they could remember. Eiko would help Ayumu with her studies and deliver to her sweet treats, and Ayumu would allow Eiko the chance to offload her stress and trauma from her torment of being born quirkless, before the two of them would be connected via Ayumu's Dreamwalker quirk (which Ayumu kept to herself and Eiko, and never revealed to anyone else out of solidarity with her friend), and they would dance in the dreams that they made with each other all throughout the night.
However, as they continued to grow up, Eiko began to face more and more discrimination at the hands of bullies and thugs because of her and her parents' quirklessness. Ayumu would do her best to try and protect her friend - shield her from harm - but it would begin to wear on the poor quirkless girl. The constant harassment and bullying that she suffered under would begin to break her down, and soon she would begin to grow more depressed and bitter about the world around her. The fact that the teachers didn't do anything about it, because of the customs of their culture, didn't help at all.
Soon, Eiko would grow to become an unpleasant person to be around, but Ayumu would be the only one to realise that it was just a front to protect herself. Her parents would be fired from their jobs because of their quirklessness, and would be left poor and destitute. Ayumu would offer Eiko the chance to stay at her place, but Eiko would break contact with her, out of fear of her bullies targeting her only friend as well.
But it was too late, and Ayumu would begin to suffer at the hand of Eiko's bullies as well, finding red spider lilies on her desk and facing mocking gestures and beatings from the thugs.
Sometime later, a fire breaks out in Eiko's home, but Ayumu would be the only one to intervene. Thankfully, no one saw her pull her friend out of the fire, but no other hero had been there to save his parents. No one else had intervened because of the law, and after saving her friend, the police had actually held Ayumu back from saving Eiko's parents, demanding that she wait for a hero to come and save them. Apparently All Might was nearby. He would save them.
But he didn't. By the time that he arrived on the scene, Eiko's parents were already dead.
Ayumu is traumatised by the event, and Eiko even more so. When All Might tries to comfort them, the two don't respond.
Ayumu brings Eiko to her house, but her parents don't want her friend there. They want nothing to do with the useless quirkless girl. Ayumu disregards them and allows her in regardless.
But Eiko heard their words. Oh, how she heard them...
Soon, Eiko would say that she felt sick and stayed home. Ayumu would go to school in the meantime, but when she got back home, she found it in silence.
She opened the door to Eiko's room, and found her hanging from the ceiling, a noose around her neck and her shoes on the floor.
Ayumu screamed.
When the ambulance arrived, it was already too late. Eiko was dead, and Ayumu could do nothing about it. Worse yet was the fact that one of the paramedics seemed to dismiss her dead friend entirely because of her quirklessness.
But then All Might showed up once again, and tried to comfort her.
He didn't even remember her.
Ayumu explodes at him. She demands that he leave her, and he reluctantly does. Worse yet, she begins to gain scorn and ridicule from the people around her for daring to push aside the number one hero himself...
The next day, she is back at school. No therapy, no comfort.
She heard a group of her fellow students - the same group that had bullied both her and Eiko - laughing about the death of Eiko, saying that it was good that another quirkless stain on the world learnt their place and offed themselves for the betterment of the world.
They even implied that they were the ones that started the fire that killed Eiko's parents.
Ayumu, in a blind fit of rage, grabbed the nearest blunt object and beat them bloody with it.
The police are called, but in order to protect their image, the school cover up the incident and the charges are dropped. Ayumu is still sent home, and her parents harangue her for wasting her time on the memory of the quirkless girl.
Ayumu is left alone, traumatised by what she saw, and punished by others for simply trying to do the right thing. She is left to wander the world after her parents threaten to kick her out into the streets if she ever tries something like that ever again. All she does now is spend her days wandering the city, listlessly and uselessly.
When All Might retires, she can't help but feel a little happy.
But then, when the inciting incident of this story occurs and the strange green-haired boy is thrown into Ayumu, her quirk activates on reflex.
She hadn't meant to draw him into her mind and dreams. It had been purely accidental.
But what happened next wasn't. Waking up into a strange new world of shadows and darkness that she didn't recognise, Ayumu found herself surrounded by seven and a half shadowy figures, Ayumu sought to protect herself from them, trying to drudge up as much of her quirk as she could...
Until she found herself surrounded by a million echoes... and then she knew everything.
Everything about Izuku Midoriya.
As Ayumu's quirk changed and evolved around her, amped up as a side effect of Izuku's connection to One for All, it began to muddy and block Izuku's connection to One for All, and soon they found themselves in the middle of Ayumu's mind, their dreamworlds both plagued by the dark fungal growths that threatened to consume them all.
And she saw him. She saw the real Izuku Midoriya. Not the cheerful helpful boy with a strong quirk and a perpetual smile on his face, but a broken, depressed child with no power of his own, slumped over, catatonic, dead eyed, and haunted by his own nightmares.
"You're like her... so much like her. A broken boy of a system that exploits him, of a world that abuses and kills him simply for being himself, for being born the way that he is. The way that you are... you've had no one your entire life. No one to comfort you, no one to love you, no one to protect you, no one to tell you that it will all be okay."
Izuku says nothing.
Ayumu smiles, her own eyes dead as well, and she wraps him into a tight hug.
"Don't be afraid, my dear. I'm here now. I'll be the one to comfort you. I'll be the one to love you. I'll be the one to protect you. I'll be the one to tell you that it will all be okay. I'll be the one there for you, for now and forever."
She let go of him, and smiled down at the boy.
"All I ask is that you stay with me, in this little slice of heaven... forever."
Ayumu kissed him, before trapping them both in the strange world that encompassed them, with their nightmares as their wardens.
When the echoes ended, the students were left in shock. They now shocked at the torment that she had gone through, the horrors that her quirkless friend had suffered, the fact that there had been so much discrimination against the quirkless and those who associated with them, the fact that Ayumu's friend had killed herself, the fact that All Might hadn't even remembered her...
But more than that, they now knew who Ayumu was.
She was a villain now, to be sure, but almost everything that had led her to this point had hardly been her fault. She was a villain, but she was also a scared girl who was damaged, broken, and trying to fill the gap in her heart where her friend once was.
But she was still a villain, and was holding their friend captive, and she needed to be taken down.
That being said, they did realise one fact: Ayumu didn't have nearly as much control over this world as they, and even she, thought she did. One for All, through Ayumu's new connection to Izuku, had evolved her quirk in ways none of them had ever imagined, and that meant that there were now strengths and weaknesses in the foundations, ones which the spirits of the past One for All users could help them exploit.
Furthermore, they remember Aizawa's account of his battle in Izuku's mind, and how Ayumu had pulled his nightmare of Garvey out of his mind, and realise that their minds were also connected to Ayumu's quirk.
So, they reason, is it not possible for them to use the same powers as Ayumu in the dream world?
With the help of the past One for All users, the class are able to unlock the powers of the dream world needed to overcome Ayumu and the seemingly invincible nightmares - gaining some new snazzy outfits as well - and, with the knowledge of where to find them thanks to the memory echoes they had been pilfering, come up with a plan:
Half of the class (the ones not that close to their comatose friend, that being Shoji, Ojiro, Sato, Koji, Hagakure, Jiro, Denki, Sero, Mina, and Tokoyami) would go to what seemed like the most important parts of Ayumu's mind and reign hell alongside the seven spirits, drawing her attention to them and away from Izuku, while the rest of the class (those closer to Izuku and thereby having the better chance of reaching out to him and breaking him out of whatever vegetative state he was in, being Aoyama, Ochako, Momo, Tsuyu, Iida, Todoroki, Bakugo, Kirishima, and Mineta) would follow the purple chains and make their way to the cottage where Izuku was being held, freeing him and getting him and the rest of them out of this nightmare.
The only problem with that plan was that they didn't know how to leave the dream world. They had only left before because Ayumu had ejected them from the mindscape.
With no other choice, the class agree to carry out the plan.
Meanwhile, Ayumu has transformed the cottage that she holds Izuku in into a colosseum, with the two of them (just Ayumu really) watching the nightmarish projections of Nine and Muscular battling each other below, the two mindless phantoms tearing into each other only to heal immediately afterwards.
Ayumu tries her best to enjoy the show, but can't help but keep her attention on Izuku, still in his comatose state, not saying a word, not saying or doing much of anything at all.
Why? Why was it that was keeping him in that state? Did he not want to be there? It shouldn't be. He shouldn't want to go. This was their piece of heaven, and even if he did want to leave he would've been vocal about it, so it had to be something else? Had separating him from One for All (a horrible quirk by the way. Why one would consider a quirk that did nothing but break their bones a blessing, she would never know) somehow damaged his mental state?
Or was he suffering from waking nightmares of his own?
The phantoms around her began to close in and whisper horrid things into her ear. With a shaky breath, she waved them away.
Then, something called to her, and the colosseum turned into a cottage of chains once more. Apologising to Izuku, Ayumu vacated the cottage, and left him on his own once more.
And then, we see what has been haunting Izuku this entire time.
Himself.
A malicious, villainous version of himself, made from all his deepest regrets and fears.
It prods at him, mocking his beliefs and ideals, and threatens to break him in twain for his failures and weaknesses. Izuku tries to defend himself - oh how he tries - but the malevolent image of himself is relentless.
It will have what it wants, in time.
It will have Izuku broken.
In Ayumu's mind, the class that had been sent away to cause chaos were doing just that. With the assistance of the One for All spirits, the spectres from Izuku's mind, and the new powers that they had unlocked within the dream world, they began to tear apart the landscape, destroying hilltops and burning fields and leaving devastation in their wake.
In the wake of their destruction, Ayumu arrives to rain hell upon them, pulling nightmares of villains out of Izuku's mind to stop them. In the ensuing fight, Ayumu would find herself suddenly overwhelmed by the sudden leap in power that the students were showing, and it was only when she pulled the nightmare of Gigantomachia out of Mina's mind did the fight finally begin to stalemate...
Only for Mina, thanks to the powers of the dream world, to grow herself to enormous size and begin to deck it out with the phantom of the giant villain.
"Oh my god, she just punched that kaiju in the face!"
Go nuts with the dream world fights.
But then, Ayumu senses something else, and leaves the nightmares to keep the heroes busy.
Meanwhile, the other half of the class are busy following the purple chains in the sky to the cottage, but had to contend with the nightmares that were wandering the lands and trying to get in their way.
Soon, they reached the cottage, but had to sneak past the lumbering nightmares that were trying to break down the walls. Upon getting into the cottage, they find Izuku in his catatonic state, but no matter what they do, nothing is able to get him out of whatever slump he is in.
"He won't respond," they look to the side to see Ayumu standing near them, a fierce glare on her face, "He never does."
Using her quirk and the powers of the dream world to restrain the nine students, Ayumu explains that she has been trying to heal and care for Izuku since she accidentally brought him into the dream world, doing her best to treat whatever wounds he seemed to have been inflicted with, whether it be by others or himself, but so far nothing seemed to be working. He was still in the same depressed state as he was since they first arrived, and Ayumu didn't understand why.
But that was okay. No healing process was quick. She smiled, and says that she doesn't care how long it takes: she would heal her love and the damage that had been done to him, and she would leave him happier than ever.
Nearby, the empty vials filled with that same blue liquid. As Ayumu takes the vials and pours their contents into a series of syringes, one of the students asks what the blue stuff is.
"It's my love."
Or rather, it's positive emotions, as scant as they are around here, turned into liquid. A few seconds later, she injected the blue liquid into the fungal overgrowth that had begun to creep into the house, only for it to have no effect, just like before.
The students make the connection:
The fungus isn't just some sort of malicious corruption. It's Izuku and Ayumu's despair given rotten form, their depression, grief, and regret made manifest.
The students try to convince Ayumu to let Izuku go, but she refuses. As the phantoms around her begin to grow their forms and whisper to her, Ayumu declares that she will not let Izuku go. Not while he's still in pain. Not while he still needed her care.
And when he doesn't?
Ayumu has no answer. She simply takes Izuku into her arms and slips out of the cottage, content to let the nightmares of Himiko, Wolfram, the exam robots, and the Sludge Villain deal with the students, before attempting to remove them once more from the dream world, as she and her captive slipped down into the deepest reaches of their minds for protection.
All the while, Izuku's dark double began to grow in power, feasting on the despairing fungus around them and growing in strength as it continued to torment him, and Ayumu's nightmares continued to grow in tandem.
After defeating the nightmares in the cottage, the students are saved from being forced out of the nightmare by the seven One for All spirits, and they contact their fellows and order them to regroup. Now, they would give chase into the deepest part of Izuku and Ayumu's shared connection, into a fortress of black steel and stone, guarded by the worst of their nightmares, including Overhaul, Shigiraki, the Nomu, Kurogiri, Muscular, All for One, Stain... and a mutated, monstrous Bakugo Katsuki.
In a two pronged assault, those students from before - the ones not that close to Izuku, launched multiple attacks around the fortress, drawing out the guards and forcing them into distracting confrontations, all the while the other half of the students - those more close to Izuku - breached the fortress gates, fighting their way past the mutated nightmare of Bakugo to get into the fort and rescue their friend from within.
Inside the deepest depths of the fort, Ayumu's nightmares begin to take form and torment her more, taking the shapes of her former bullies and those who had led to her friends' death, and even Eiko herself, all of them blaming her for her friend's death, to which all she can do is scream and cry for them to stop.
Meanwhile, all Izuku does - all he can do - is watch as the monstrous form of himself - the villain he could've been and still could be - begins to form before him, whilst another nightmare begins to take a monstrous, yet familiar shape...
As the students that fought the nightmare of Bakugo continue to push through the fortress and climb down into its murky depths, they realise that the fungal growths from outside are beginning to spread, putting all of them at risk.
Soon, they come across a massive hall, surrounded by dark pillars and shapes around a central podium. They find Ayumu and Izuku on the ground, their heads in their hands and their bodies writhing as the agony of the nightmares continue to weight down on them. The students try to save Izuku and get him out of the dream world, but neither he nor Ayumu hear them. Their nightmares are too strong.
Then, one of the nightmares looks to them, and smiles.
It introduces itself as Izuku Midoriya.
The superior Izuku Midoriya.
Behind him, the nightmare of All Might emerged, and they began to spew the most toxic speech that they had ever heard. All of the worst aspect of quirkless hate, disparaging, and villainous talk.
These nightmares are representations of the worst parts of Izuku and Ayumu's minds: the villainous Izuku for the original's internal quirkism, lack of self-worth, and self-sacrificial tendencies, and All Might for Ayumu's regret, self-loathing, and guilt for not preventing her friend's death.
And then the two nightmares combine into a horrid amalgamation of a monster, fused together into the worst aspects of both hero and villain, and representative of all that is wrong with their world.
The students go to war with the amalgamation, but it proves to be too powerful for them. It is as if the monster itself is invincible, unable to be deterred by any force or blow.
Everything begins to go wrong. The students outside the fort are almost entirely consumed by the fungal rot, and are forced to retreat into the fortress for protection. Within the crumbling fort, the battle is going even worse than ever, and the amalgamation of nightmares proves to be too much for the students inside to handle, even when the rest join in the fight, and the class attack on a united front.
The amalgamation of nightmares is just too much for them to bare.
That's when they realise why they can't defeat the nightmare amalgamation of the villainous Izuku and All Might like they could the other nightmares: it isn't just some sort of trauma, but a collection of all of their regrets and negative traits. It is Ayumu and Izuku given a new form.
And as such, Ayumu and Izuku are the only ones that can defeat it, not the others.
So Class 1-A reach out to Izuku. They begin to share their happiest memories of him, the ways in which he has helped them, inspired them, made them into the people that they are now, but when it proves to not be enough, the spirits of One for All lend their support, and pull a memory out of the ether.
A memory of his sixteenth birthday, surrounded by his new friends in Class 1-A, with his mother at his side and Eri hugging him, Hatsume and Shinso celebrating with him alongside his new mentor, Yagi Toshinori.
Slowly, Izuku begins to pick himself up.
But Ayumu doesn't. She can't. She's too consumed by her own regrets to-
"I know about Eiko!"
Ayumu stops. So do the nightmares around her.
"I know that your friend died, and I know that you wish that you'd saved her. I know that you're scared, and alone, and angry, and in pain, and that you just want your friend back! But Ayumu... trapping someone in your own mind is not going to bring her back! Nothing will! She's gone, Ayumu! I'm sorry, but Eiko's gone, and we both know that she would not want her dearest friend - her only friend! - to do this to herself and others!"
Nothing.
"Ayumu, please!"
Nothing at all.
So the class and spirits pull another echo of memory from the girl's mind, and throw her into it. However, before they do, the memory begins to change and form around one of her nightmares, and it begins to change.
Not into a nightmare... but into a living memory.
"Ayumu?"
"Eiko?"
The living memory of Eiko.
As the dream world burns and collapses around them, Ayumu and Eiko have one last conversation, exchanging the goodbyes that they never got to share. Ayumu is tearful, knowing that the girl before her is not the real Eiko, just a collection of memories pulled from her mind. But the memory of Eiko tells her that it is enough: that she is real enough to tell Ayumu that this is not what she wants of her best friend. When Ayumu asks why she left her alone then, Eiko says that she didn't die because she was angry at Ayumu. She could never be angry at Ayumu, but she couldn't see the same anger consume her friend. She couldn't see the same pain kill her too.
Ayumu cries in her arms. She can't let go. She can't let go of the pain. She's come too far. She's gone too far. She's not strong enough to do so.
"Yes you can. Ayumu. I know you can. You're one of the strongest, kindest people that I know, and I'll be damned if you can't break out of this. This isn't you, Ayumu, and we both know this. You're better than this. You're better than them. You're better than the people who hurt you. Don't pull yourself down to their level just because you're in pain. Be better than them. Be stronger than them."
"I... I don't think I can."
"Yes you can... you're strong. So much stronger than any of us. All you need to do is accept it."
Eiko smiles, and takes Ayumu's hands into her own.
"Ayumu... it's time to let go."
"...Okay."
Ayumu and Eiko smile, and they press their foreheads against each other.
"Eiko, my friend... I'm letting you go."
The memory of Eiko begins to flicker and dissolve into light.
"Goodbye, Ayumu."
"Goodbye, Eiko..."
The amalgamation continues its battle against Class 1-A, and it is winning. The students, despite all their new powers and all the help from the spirits, are completely overwhelmed and begin to drown in the fungal rot. The nightmares begin to tear them apart. Everything is lost...
But then the fungus begins to change, transforming from black ichor into blue liquid...
And in the centre of the growing pool, Izuku and Ayumu stand, side by side, wrapped in clouds of blue positive light, the sparks of One for All returning to the former once more as Ayumu restores his connection to the quirk.
The amalgamation panics, and summons its nightmares to stop them, but it's not enough to stop the two. With Class 1-A, now recovered and ready to fight again, and the spirits of One for All at their back, Izuku and Ayumu, hero and villain, charge forward.
The final battle is one, dreams vs nightmares, and it is a gruelling battle. The nightmares and their amalgamation master are a force to be reckoned with, but the students and spirits are so much more.
Especially when they begin to bring forth their own memories into the fray.
Ayumu teaches them all the method to conjure memories from the world around them, and from their own minds they begin to pull not nightmares, but positive memories bathed in blue light to battle the nightmares in front of them. For Uraraka it is Gunhead, Ryukyu, and Nejire. For Kirishima, it is Fat Gum, Crimson Riot, Tamaki, and Tetsutetsu. For Momo, it is Majestic and Kendo. For Bakugo, it is Best Jeanist. For Tokoyami, it is Hawks. For Iida, it is Manual and Tensei. For Tsuyu, it is Selkie and Sirius. For Mineta, it is Midnight, Mount Lady, Kamui Woods, and Edgeshot. For Mina, it is Yoroi Musha and even Gigantomachia. The list goes on.
An army of memories, born from positive experiences, against another army of nightmares.
It is a war of memories, and in the centre of it all, Izuku and Ayumu stand against the amalgamation and do battle.
It is a long and gruelling confrontation, and it is one that beats them almost entirely in the ground. But almost, because soon, with the power of their memories and allies at their back, they are finally able to split the amalgamation in two, separating the villainous Izuku from the monstrous All Might, and then, finally...
Ending them.
The nightmares begin to fade, as does the dream world. Izuku and Ayumu's minds begin to heal, and as Class 1-A wave goodbye to the fading memories, Ayumu says one last goodbye to her first and only friend, and then, finally, lets them all go back to the real world.
They all wake up in the hospital room, and Class 1-A is quick to celebrate their victory, joyous in the knowledge that they had saved their friend.
However, Ayumu is not in the mood for festivities. She knows what is to come.
Some time later, she is being processed by police officers, and is escorted away to be arrested for her crimes. Upon passing All Might in the corridor, Ayumu can't help but ask, almost rhetorically, if he even knew who she was.
"Yes. You're the girl who saved her friend from that fire when I couldn't... and the girl who had to witness her friend..."
Ayumu's eyes widened. He... he hadn't forgotten...
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"...I'm sorry for yours, too."
Before she is led away though, Class 1-A catches up to her, and Izuku promises to put in a good word for her in court.
"What...? Why? I hurt you."
"Yeah, you did... but you were also hurting as well, and no one else was doing anything about it and... and I can't sit back when someone needs help."
"..."
"...For Eiko."
Ayumu smiled.
"For Eiko... thank you."
And with that, Ayumu is led away, and Izuku and Class 1-A promise to not stand aside while someone is in pain, or when someone is hurting, no matter who they are.
They wouldn't let anymore Eikos and Ayumus wander the world alone.
They would be the sweet dreams that banished the nightmares.
This they, and the spirits that protected them, decreed.
And here we are, the first idea! Holy crap this thing came out so much longer than I thought it would be, like holy heck!
I swear, I'm not always like this.
But anyways, if you want to use this idea, then feel free to send me a PM or leave a review, and with that, I'll see you all next time I get some creative juice in my brain!
Titanmaster 117 out!