I'm going to be slowing down now, especially since school is starting to kick my ass. Nevertheless, the chapters are probably going to get longer. This was, after all, meant to be a series of oneshots so I can't continue breaking Shattered!Midoriya forever. Don't worry, in other AUs I'll still be exploring the workings of BNHA and using my versions of Midoriya to break their various universes. In this one, we watch him destroy it from within the hero industry. In the next, he might be a vigilante that does more work than heroes. In the third, he might fix the world from an outside perspective. I don't know where I'm going. So hop on folks. It's going to be a wild ride for all of us.

Izuku knows that once Mei leaves, the ice in his bones and rooted deep in his soul will return worse than ever. No matter what her reasons were, his mother had not come to visit him despite the fact that he had been disconnected from the world for the better half of the day. Sure, he could argue that her job was important, but he believed that a proper mother was supposed to be more concerned about her child than her job, especially since they weren't about to fall into financial instability if she took one day or even half a day off to make sure that he was alright. It stung, and he had already done a fair bit of crying over it as Mei whispered words of comfort and tried to ground him using physical contact. He had thanked her afterwards, and now she was sleeping, using his chest as a pillow and was practically draped over him. He couldn't exactly blame her, considering the main source of her stress came from him. And that kind of made him feel guilty, because she had already done so much for him.

Sacrifice most of her spare time creating one of her babies just for him, and then watch him reduce it to pieces after clashing with both Bakugou and villains. Shoot Bakugou not once, not twice, but three times in order to stop him from collecting even more burn scars, and get a target painted on her back by Aizawa-sensei and maybe even Nedzu himself. It seemed that wherever he went after joining UA, trouble followed. It was like he was cursed. Within three days, he had managed to antagonise his teacher, draw a clear line in the sand to stand against his classmates and fight villains that were supposedly able to kill All Might. He tucked Mei's head under his chin and sighed softly, but smiled when she curled into him like he was some sort of safe haven instead of a broken entity that dripped with venom and rage from the cracks in his psyche. Izuku wraps his arms around her, and makes a silent prayer, hoping that he'll always manage to come back to her every time he throws himself into danger. Because from how she was reacting to something that Recovery Girl managed to patch, he had a gut instinct that if he ended up breaking his body(especially since One for All was threatening to kill him every time he used it), it would be equivalent to killing her with his own two hands. He couldn't do that to her.

Recovery Girl entered with a clipboard and an expression that makes him think of a person on a warpath. She froze in the doorway and narrowly avoided dropping the clipboard onto the floor. Catching herself, she hurries over to his bedside and attempts to wake Mei up. Before she can do so, he gently blocks her outstretched arm and puts a finger to his lips. Her eyes flash with understanding, and when he asks in a voice that makes him sound like he ran his vocal chords through sandpaper about his status, she gives it at the lowest volume she can muster and still be heard by Izuku even as his mind's tether to his body threatens to snap and he has to devote a portion of his brain to grounding himself even more. She lays out the details as clinically as possible, but he can see her hands tremble with each injury she recites. Broken ribs. A punctured lung and stomach. Stomach acid destroying several sections of his body from the inside, literally melting his organs. Blunt force trauma that resulted in internal bleeding, teetering at the edge of lethal. An arm that had been decimated by Shigaraki's disintegration Quirk, narrowly avoiding permanent damage to his nerves. Several shards of his hero suit wedged into his body, the body armour and shock absorbers having shattered. Concussion(most likely from the explosion he set off). Multiple fractured bones, mostly in his legs(it seems that even brief bursts of One for All were too much for him). In the end, she concludes, he's lucky to be alive and even luckier to have woken up after half a day of rest. She jokingly suggests that he has a hidden Quirk, and while the him from years ago would have jumped at the chance, the person he is now just chuckles at what the comment actually is. A joke. She prescribes him painkillers, politely requests(read:orders) that he actually takes some time off to rest and threatens to sic Mei on him if he refuses to do so. He nods, and the atmosphere in the room lightens enough for him to force the darkness creeping into his head back into its storage chest.

She tells him that the police are still waiting for his testimony(and her eyes flick to the door while saying this), and he nods to acknowledge the little bit of information she has given her. He asks for her phone number("In case of emergency. No, I am not going to use you as my private nurse.") and after a little bit of pestering, actually gets it. She ruffles his hair almost endearingly, and his heart aches for a time when his mom used to do the exact same thing whenever he hugged her. He asks her to tell them that he'll provide the details of his side of the situation when he recovers enough to get out of bed without someone's support. She nods approvingly, before stepping out after recommending slipping a pillow under Mei's head so she wouldn't get neck cramps and soon enough, he hears the sound of bickering. All Might's voice is easily pinpointed, and so is that of Kayama-sensei and Yamada-sensei. The first probably worries over his Quirk more than he does over Izuku himself. The other two however, are a mystery to him. He knows that they are probably the only two people Aizawa-sensei considers close friends. Kayama-sensei seems to have taken a vested interest in him after the second while he has barely interacted with Yamada-sensei due to his tendency to fade into the background. Another useful trick, both for lessons and combat. Coupled with the girl slightly drooling on him, it was like he was a shadow concealed by light that burned as brightly as the sun. For people who had met by complete accident(for if he was more bright-eyed, more ignorant, he wouldn't have been at the beach at four in the morning), it was almost as if they were two parts of the same whole. Light and dark. Order and chaos. One day, he had mentioned to her that they would have made an excellent hero team if she had decided to go down a different path. She responded by saying that they were always a team, and always would be. He would fight, and she would provide him with the means to do so. In a sense, he was her sword, and she was his shield. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head and continued listening to the faint snatches of conversation that he could hear, Izuku had half a mind to use his mask to isolate and eavesdrop on, but it's over by his bedside table and it was best that no one knew the capabilities of it, especially the police. Plus, there were plenty of files on it that were borderline or legitimately illegal. With the police right outside and Nedzu probably still watching his every move even now, the only two individuals that should know about the data at his fingertips were in this bed, and it would continue to stay that way.

The sounds of arguing died down to murmuring, and there were two sharp knocks on the door to the infirmary before it opened. Yamada-sensei walked in with a smile on his lips that spluttered and died as soon as he saw the "compromising" position that they were in. Midoriya offered one of the few real smiles that he could give, the ones reminiscent of the smiles that he saw on his face in photos of the past, mostly before the age of four. Rather than relax his teacher, it seemed to make him even more uncomfortable and he continued to shuffle his feet in the doorway before he was pushed aside by Kayama-sensei. The woman was not as fazed by the sight of him and Mei practically wrapped around each other as her fellow employee or perhaps her friend judging from how the two immediately started squabbling after the push had almost sent him face first into the wall. He watched them with mild curiosity and more than a little envy at how casual they were with each other. But even as he thought about how his life was far different from the lives of the people around him, he also wondered with some amusement if that was how he and Mei looked like to others. His smile grew a little more genuine, and his teachers finally stopped their banter after a couple of minutes. Yamada-sensei tells him that he's here in place of "Shouta", and he felt his mood sour despite the fact that his smile never changed. Much to his surprise, he reports that Aizawa-sensei has told him to say these exact words("Tell the problem child that he saved my life and that I'm sorry for what I did."). He raises a single eyebrow, pinning Yamada-sensei with a stare while searching his face for any hints of deceit. Still, with the loud blond as transparent as a piece of glass, he allows himself the slightest bit of hope that he has misjudged his sensei(even though a part of his brain whispers that while he isn't perfect, he has never read a person incorrectly) before telling Yamada-sensei to give his constantly tired teacher his regards and well wishes. While he has his own thoughts and opinions on the man, Aizawa-sensei had been willing to throw himself into danger for his students and had even gotten his arm broken and face slightly crushed because of it.

Izuku reassures them that he is fine when Kayama-sensei asks if he had gotten better, and he has an inkling that the two of them don't see a suspiciously calm and level-headed boy sitting in bed with his friend asleep against him, but the bloodied monster walking with the aid of a student that had somehow gotten to the USJ before them, uncaring of the way his ribs had burst through flesh and the blood dripping consistently from his wounds. He wonders if they believe his words about how he had driven the villains away or had just chalked it up to the half-coherent state he was in at that point of time. Probably the first, considering there was at least one witness to the things he had done(Aizawa-sensei) and the fact that he had left his knife in the head of the Nomu, if it was still there, would have cemented the fact. He asks if he is about to get arrested and the two of them were to ensure his compliance. Izuku is met with two identical bewildered stares, followed by many exclaimations of denial. He decides to humour them for the time being until he can get their true intentions, if they are hiding any, and as a buffer so that Nedzu can't barge in and call him a murderer. When asked about why he thought he was going to be arrested, he ticks the points off on one hand just to watch their reactions. There was how he had immediately electrocuted the villains in the Shipwreck Zone without hesitation, then his intentional mutilation of Shigaraki's hand to cripple his Quirk. After that was duelling the Nomu, driving his knife into its brain the first chance he got even though he hadn't known that it had regeneration. Then there was the situation with the (somehow legal)explosives and the death of the Nomu in a fiery explosion plus the smack with his staff afterwards to prevent the monster from coming back. Lastly was breaking Shigaraki's other hand(or rather, his finger). Placing all the facts on the table painted him in a bad light, a very bad light that Nedzu would definitely have spotted.

Although that was his trump card to play. Only a few people knew what had truly happened in the USJ, and the number had just doubled when he had confessed his sins as a test. Kayama-sensei laughed awkwardly, before saying that he was technically fine because he had been acting in self-defence. He knows that it's an excuse that won't exactly hold up to scrutiny, especially if Nedzu was so determined to get him on a leash. Although, that had given him several ideas, some that would most likely come into play in the next couple of days. Izuku thanks the teachers for caring enough to visit him, and they laugh before quickly realizing he wasn't joking, The mood dies when Yamada-sensei questions him about the meaning of that comment, and he takes the opportunity to start building his own little squad against UA. Play on their sympathies. Mention the mom that never came. Let slip that your previous teachers never cared, and neither did your classmates. Act unaffected by it, well you are truly unaffected, but that was because you were damaged a long time ago. The adults exchange looks of horror intermixed with pity, taking their leave shortly afterwards. He calls out for them to come back and visit later as a parting joke and returns to being Mei's pillow. It's rather comfortable actually. He closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep, knowing that once he was out of this bed and on his feet, it would be back to fighting against the world. Despite that, his mind was already up and running since it had been jump-started by Recovery Girl's warning. Sighing to himself, he suppressed the urge to grab his mask and hide himself from the world. Just like how he had gotten attached to Mei, the mask was now something comforting. It concealed him, aided him and most of all, it represented him. Or at least the image he had of himself. Mei would kill him if she figured out the detail he put into the sketch of the mask she had used as reference was because of the hours, the days he had spent thinking about how he would look like reduced to a single image.

Mei stirred briefly, and he freezes until she stopped shifting around before slowly relaxing. He looked at the clock and noted that he would probably be staying here overnight. Izuku would give Mei another hour of sleep before he forced her to go home. It wasn't fair that he had dragged her into this just due to their relationship. She had already sacrificed part of her school day launching herself via makeshift ballista into the USJ in order to put a bullet through Shigaraki's neck. For that, she might as well have signed away her life as a target of the "League of Villains" because she was the one who had almost killed their leader. Izuku didn't exactly count. Getting into UA meant that his life was forfeit to the system. It didn't exactly matter to him that it was his knife, that he had used a weapon in order to cripple and kill because he had been expecting to have to do something like that in the name of duty and "justice". Not everyone could be an All Might, and as much as the power of his gifted Quirk was intoxicating and so much more than he could have ever imagined, he was still breaking his body with every moment he used it. Arm? Gone. Fingers? Gone. As much as the false Symbol would enjoy knowing that his dear pupil was willing to "do the heroic thing" and sacrifice his own body in the name of justice, he rather enjoyed having his limbs attached to his body. He couldn't exactly count it in exact figures, but if his instincts were to be trusted, the brief bursts he had used to propel himself around the Nomu like a demented pinball were at about fifteen to twenty percent while the constant stream he had used to run was about five to ten percent. In theory, that meant he could flood himself with ten percent power, and if he could figure some way to keep the surge constant while getting hit and dishing out hits, it would make future fights a lot easier. While it still irked him to rely on a Quirk so much when he had done just fine without one, Izuku knew that he was fighting on unequal footing. And as much as he hated to compare himself to Aizawa-sensei, he would take a leaf out of the man's book. Level the playing field. Unlike his teacher, he couldn't erase Quirks, so he just had to raise the bar and add the legacy of One for All into the mix.

Perhaps in another life, he would have been grateful to receive this Quirk. Treated it like a great honour. In a third, maybe he would have shunned this Quirk entirely, refusing to use it even as he died at the hands of a villain or another. However, this life he led, this path he walked, was neither of the two. He would use this Quirk. But it was just a tool. Not a legacy. Not some grand power that was supposed to be used to drag the darkness back into the light. Just like his weapons, his mask and anything else that he wielded in battle, it was a means to an end. He wondered whether he would have fallen into the darkness if he hadn't met Mei, using the Quirk he had gotten to snuff out the light instead of drown out the darkness. Izuku almost snickered at how ironic that would have been. A villain with the Quirk that made the Number One Hero who he was. But he was not a monster. Well, he was a monster, but not that kind of monster. Not like Shigaraki, who clawed and screamed at the world around him because of some trauma that no one but he knew. He stood between the darkness and the light. Using everything he had learned from the shattered parts of himself coupled together with the things the people around him had given him. And now he was most likely going to be accused of murder, or maybe Nedzu would cook up some charge that ended with him as one of the lapdogs of heroism. He smiled to himself, and for the third time, he resisted the urge to slip on his mask. They would attempt to make him kneel. Beg for mercy and plea for salvation. Today it was Nedzu, but tomorrow it might be someone else. The police. The Public Safety Commission. The multitude of villains out there, Shigaraki only being one of the cogs that had fallen through the gaps in the machine. Maybe even All Might, one day, if the man decided that his successor wasn't the right person for his Quirk anymore.

And he would be ready. He would smile as he marched to his death. Because he would never bow.

He wakes Mei up about thirty minutes later when the sounds of people talking outside the door start up again. Izuku can already see the argument brewing in her eyes when he carefully points out that her parents would be worried. He catches a brief glimpse of sadness and something that regular people would call pity, but Mei doesn't do pity, moreso with him. If she pitied him because of the things that had happened to him, or the circumstances that surrounded his life, they would have remained acquaintances rather than friends. The concept of pity didn't exist to the one person in his life that just kept running forward, because she never looked down on others. Mei knew the truth that people were not born equal. And for some reason he still couldn't figure out, she took that in stride and made sure to treat everyone with the same brand of Hatsume Mei Insanity. He reassures her that he'll be fine(and that he's probably just going to go back to bed), and a few minutes later which involves her trying various ways to convince him that it was the right idea for her to stay, Recovery Girl's appearance was enough to tip the scales in his favour. The elderly nurse pulled a move only kindly adults could pull, and acted disappointed enough that the pinkette relented just to wipe the judging look from her face. He made an effort to stand up, but Mei pushed him back into the bed before wrapping him in one final hug, extra long this time, and then said a brief goodbye before exiting the room. The nurse looks at the door as it closes behind his friend, several emotions flickering across her face before she turns to him.

She tells Izuku that All Might(or rather, she uses the name Yagi Toshinori) was looking for him. He allows himself a brief moment of surprise before his mind helpfully made the logic leap that an injury as serious as the one All Might struggled with would have been explained to all the teachers, especially the one responsible for the health and wellbeing of those in UA. He guesses that he wants to check if his successor is intact, but doesn't say that out loud. The fact that she hadn't allowed the Number One Hero to visit him but let two other teachers do so already told him that his reasons weren't actually the best. He thanks her for not allowing him to enter. She smiles and inclines her head, but says nothing as she fiddles with the machines next to his bed. He once again contemplates whether it was really worth it lying here in bed with an IV drip in him. Adjusting the pillow under his head, Izuku starts sorting through the information he had gathered from the USJ incident. He mutters a good night when she finishes whatever diagnostic checks she was working on and leaves the room, the gears in his head already turning. When the echo of her footsteps stop reaching his ears, he finally succumbs to the urge of picking up his mask. Slipping it on and listening to the clicking of the device unfolding, he ensures that nothing is attempting to hack into the software(and sets up the defense protocol just in case) before pulling the files Mei has sent to him. Interviews with each and every member of his class. A testimony from Aizawa-sensei himself. An autopsy report on the remains of the Nomu he killed. Slowly, he starts to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

He places an image of Shigaraki, creepy severed hands and all. Each one shows signs of once coming from a living person. Almost perfectly preserved, and the discolouration indicated chemical means rather than the usage of a Quirk. Positioned in locations across his body, and some obscure fact in the back of his mind demanded for attention. A little time spent stewing in the depths of his brain gave him a page from a document about psychology. Each hand was placed in a position where a parent would place their hand in order to comfort their child. All except for the one on his face, which Shigaraki called "Father". If that was really the hand of his father, that was both disgusting and saddening at the same time. Perhaps an accident that left him with only a single appendage to remember his father? Shigaraki Tomura is obviously an alias. One must question who he originally was then. A Quirk so unique would stick out like a sore thumb in the Quirk Registery, but Mei was already risking a lot pulling files from the police servers. If they tried to extract records, it was practically begging for Nedzu to pick up on the illegal things they were doing. On that note, his mindset was that of a person who never grew up. Despite the intelligence he possessed(although mixed with plenty of game terminology), he clearly wasn't in the right state of mind to plan out an attack at USJ and organize all those villains to come along with him. His plan was to literally fight All Might with an All Might killer.

Kurogiri was probably the brains of the operation. Teleportation Quirk allowing him to create portals of multiple sizes(but probably with a limit to the number and in the end, size). According to Shigaraki, he was their exit strategy. Responsible for scattering the students of class 1-A and disabling Thirteen with his own Quirk. Also intelligent. Responsible for Shigaraki, maybe a handler? Another alias, with his Quirk masking whatever physical body he may or may not have, protected as well. How were the two of them connected? Shigaraki clearly had no respect for the other villain, having threatened to kill him. So Kurogiri wasn't the person who had picked him up after whatever misfortune had befallen the man-child. That indicated a third party, powerful enough to earn the loyalty of a man with a warp Quirk, one that would be prized by anyone and everyone, and persuasive enough to manipulate an unstable man into doing what they want. Unsettling.

Finally, the Nomu. Appeared to possess multiple Quirks, or one that was outrageously all rounded. Looked more like an experiment than anything else, with purple skin, an exposed brain and dead eyes. To be considered a match for All Might, it would indicate that the strength and speed had to be on par with the man himself, or at least enough so that it would be fair game. Regeneration to take care of any injuries from those devastating punches, but considering they could change the weather and the regeneration hadn't been enough to regrow a head(or maybe that was because he destroyed the brain), some form of shock or blunt force absorption had also been thrown into the mix. That made for at least four Quirks, maybe even more if you considered how bird-like the Nomu looked. So that made for someone who was able to give Quirks.

Rumours of such a person were written throughout history. The king of the underworld, a boogeyman who could give and take Quirks, stories that came from the first days. A myth, but Midoriya knew that all myths held a grain of truth. All Might was the most recent in a long line of people with a Quirk that he said stockpiled power. No reports of people with startling similar Quirks over the years. The fact that passing down a legacy that just got stronger meant that the previous one had failed. A villain destroyed half of his respiratory organs in a fight, but it never appeared on the news. Conclusion: A fated battle between justice and evil. In order to fight a Quirk as powerful as One for All wielded at one hundred percent, one would need to have a Quirk just as powerful(or multiple Quirks). That was bad news. It meant that the title of All Might's successor wasn't just a title. Or a promise to be the next Symbol of Peace. It meant that he had signed up to be the next person to face whoever this mysterious person was, when everyone else had failed. Considering the damage done to All Might, the previous holders had died. He clenched his fists and did his best not to scream into the darkness.

All Might was looking for a sacrifice to take his place. Someone to continue the legacy. He, a teenager, was supposed to fight a man who had decimated the most powerful hero in the world. He turned off the mask and pulled it down to rest in front of his neck. Ran a hand down his face and tried to restrain the boiling anger in his chest as another piece of himself snapped. Not only was he an incompetent, biased buffoon of a teacher, but he had given a Quirk to a teenager without telling him that it came with the unfortunate problem of inheriting the burden of fighting whatever multi-Quirked asshole that had killed the previous users. It seemed like with each thing he learnend about Mr Yagi Toshinori, the more things he had to hate about heroes, and even society in general. Another thing to add to the list of why this world needed to be dismantled and rebuilt.

For all the things he had managed to do, for all the things he would do in the future, it was actually pretty depressing to realize that he was essentially a child soldier. Already racking up kills. Shutting off that line of thought, he tried to empty his mind. It was not an easy task, but he had already been through one hell of a day, and the last thing Midoriya needed was for his mind to ruin his chances of some sleep. Closing his eyes, he tried to get some sleep. Eventually, he felt the faint whispers of fatigue, and welcomed it. His last thought before drifting off was that Mei was probably going to kill him for real this time once he told her what she had figured out.

Well, that was a problem for future him.

Apologies for how long it took to drag this out of my head. I've been rushing a few projects for the past few days, and have already sacrificed two days of sleep to do so. Thought I should at least put the next chapter first. Sorry if this seems a little rushed or passive, it's a chapter that's allowing me to reset my brain. Can't constantly be filled with anger. Just leaves you numb in the end. Continue reading for a little bit more on my thoughts about BNHA.

To the commentor who talked about how you might need fics like this as a dose of realism. I can't exactly disagree. I like to think that fictional universes are just as real as our universe, but with different rules. Nevertheless, I will never condone the "redemption" of abusers, especially if it's done shittly. I mean, no therapy, no counselling and definitely no punishment for it. If a single fight/heart-to-heart talk was enough for abusers to stop and victims to forgive, life would be so much easier. Take it from a person with some experience in the matter. My own issues aside, I suggest keeping this fic as a reality check. It's pretty depressing, even for me.

And the other one who talked about BNHA's original direction. I know that. Did a little digging a while back cause I was confused who Akatani was. Just saying, I would have loved a story like that. Still, he changed the plot. While he may have been forced(I highly doubt it), I think it's just to prevent any potential...complaints. If fics like mine were actual stories, people would call us rebels. Maybe we are. The point is, participating in a flawed system, whether forced or not, is much different from encouraging that system. With a single change in the plotline, you remove what could have been a story about overcoming disabilities and exposing the system for what it is, a giant lie, and turn it into a glorification of "Might equals Right".

I'm not saying it's not a good story. It just makes me sad that a person can write about a boy abusing his friend for years and the friend just taking it, then suddenly all the shitty behaviour is blamed on an inferiority complex and that somehow makes it better? I can't say that I'm not familiar with abuse. Maybe that's why this irritates me so much. Because "forgive and forget" isn't exactly something that comes to mind when I think of the things I've been through.

Apologies for that info dump. Catch you next time.