A/N: It was pointed out to me that the class rep election took place after the combat simulation, so I have made some edits. Just a quick chapter to transition.

Izuku struggled onto his feet, his skin felt like it was being stabbed with blades of ice. His hands, in spite of being shattered and missing fingers, felt numbly nonexistent.

"I'm not taking this from you again?" Izuku parroted the child's words with a confused inflection.

None of this made any sense. How did he go from being in a building with Uraraka and Iida to being here?

Did he pass out? Was this all just an extremely lucid dream?

The child didn't answer him, but simply turned away to leave.

Urgency came over Izuku immediately, and his mind burned with the fury of unsated confusion.

"Hold on! Don't leave!" He ran after the boy, a hand reaching out to grab him, to keep him from running away.

Yet, despite being sure that he ran forward, somehow he ended up exactly where he started off.

He was confused. No. To say he was confused would be an understatement.

He tried to run forward one more time, but the same thing happened. All the while, the young boy that he tried to chase after just kept getting further and further away.

"It is pointless. You will never catch me." The little boy's light, squeaky voice flowed into his ear. "This is a world of zeros and ones. What exists in one moment, can be reduced to nothing in another."

"You have got to be kidding me!" A strange determination flared up from within Izuku.

The lantern that the strange boy was carrying...That had to be the flames that contained One for All. There was no way Izuku could just stand by and let him walk away with it.

The flame of One for All was passed down from generation to generation. Now that it was passed down to him, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he just let it be extinguished.

"YAAAAAAARGH!" Izuku roared and rushed towards the little boy with all his might.

Midrun, he stopped himself when he forgot what he was so fired up. He stared into the ground with dilated pupils. In front of this strange oppressive power, he was absolutely powerless.

"Why am I even here?" He asked out loud, but no one answered him.

"How does it feel? To have your very will be reset to zero?" From a distant area of this endless plane, the boy stopped and looked at him with green eyes that shone with godly condescension. It was as if the boy was looking upon a mere flea.

"Like I said before…" The young boy raised the lantern up in the air tauntingly. "You are never going to take this from me again."

H-How did he do that? Izuku wiped a sweat off his face. He had kept his eyes on the boy from the very beginning. Not once did the boy manage to touch him or do anything other than walking away. Yet, there he was, stuck in a limbo of perpetuity. It was almost like a more perverse version of the spontaneous bursts of power that he managed to exhibit from time to time.

Every action that he took was simply rewound to a state where it never happened.

Izuku glared firmly at his enemy —at the reflection of his younger self. Is it simply resetting actions and thoughts? No, I have a feeling it is more than that. His mind flashed back to his encounter with the Slime Villain. This piece of shit might even be able to ignore innate bodily attributes. Can he do that too? By setting things to 'zero'?

"Why are you doing this?! Who even are you?!"

"Why am I doing this?" This time it was the younger boy's turn to parrot his words.

"I am simply you, Izuku Midoriya. I am the you, who once thought of the winners and losers of the world as being unfairly decided. The you, who wanted to decide who is cursed and blessed with his own hands. I am the you who wanted to decide who gets to move forward and who gets to stay behind. "

Izuku shook his head in denial. "What? I never wanted to do that!"

"Have you forgotten already? Has the flames of One for All already burned away your true self?"

"My true self?"

"Yes. The self who was in love with the number of zero. The number of nothing."

Zero is the number of nothing? Did I really think of it that way?

"No. The number of-"

"There's no need for you to speak anymore." The young child turned to leave again.

"As for the lantern..." He nuzzled his face against it. "This will be mine to keep. I need this because you have betrayed my trust. It will keep me warm."

"See you around, Izuku the King of Hypocrites."

At the drop of those words, the ground itself seemed to have shattered, sending Izuku spiraling down in the abyss that awaited him down underneath.

"Deku-kun?" He woke in the bed of the infirmary. Around him was Uraraka, Iida and All Might, all of them wearing an expression of concern on their face.

"Are you alright, young Midoriya?"

"Huh?" Izuku looked at All Might, who was still in his buffed, muscular form. "Yeah, I'm alright."

"You just passed out suddenly right after the simulation ended. I was worried that you were hurt" Uraraka said, her large brown eyes still packing a slight worried curve.

"Midoriya-kun! I'm sorry that I might have hit you a bit too hard!" Iida apologized as he bowed his body at a perfect 90 degree angle.

"Oh no! It is not your fault, Iida-kun!" Izuku held out his hands and lifted Iida up. "It seems that I have just overexerted myself, that's all."

"Are you sure, young Midoriya?"

"Yup. I'm sure!" Midoriya assured enthusiastically. He hopped off his bed and threw off his bed sheet just to prove his point. "Let's get back to class!"

"If you say so, young Midoriya. Don't you think you might need more rest?"

"Nope. Not at all." Izuku shook his head and ushered them towards the exit along with himself.

None of this were the faults of anyone but himself. Next time, when he meets that boy again he would for sure tell him the words that he couldn't convey.

The true meaning of the word "zero."