Izuku Midoriya ate with a girl at a dinner table, in a memory long forgotten.
They ate in silence, until—
"Why'd you do that?" the girl asked.
"Do what?"
"Let me go, like that. Not even fighting me. Even giving me the option of surrendering."
"And you made the right decision. Surrendering, I mean." Izuku chewed on his meal thoughtfully. "Sure, winning is great, but getting someone to surrender to you? That's complete and utter domination. That's what I strive for."
"Complete and utter domination…?" the girl parroted. "… you're crazy."
Izuku shrugged. "No I'm not."He followed that up in his mind with: I just enjoy being the one doing the winning completely, not losing. Nothing more, nothing less.
The girl stayed silent. Her blonde hair, torn and tattered in some parts and matted down in others, could be said to be in a sorry state. Her hair used to be her pride, but it had been ripped out from the roots in some fights and was now uneven. As she sadly touched her ruined hair, Izuku spoke up:
"Why don't you do it up?" When met with a confused look from the girl, he clarified, "Your hair. It'd be better for you in the 'Arena' if you had it up. Less things for people to latch on to."
Taken aback by his question, the girl mumbled, "Uhm, I'm… not sure how to."
Izuku said, "If you don't mind, I could help. I always played with my mom's hair when I was little, so I'm confident in my abilities to do a simple bun."
Without waiting for a positive response, Izuku stood up, gathering the rubber bands that came with this dinner's packaged meals. Snaking around the table so that he was behind her, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"There's a large bit of hair ripped out in the middle," Izuku said casually, causing the girl to panic out of embarrassment. He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. "Relax. I'll just do this."
His hands were surprisingly soft for how merciless he'd been rumored to be in the "Arena" if one didn't surrender to him. They brushed over her wounds and bald spots with gentleness, working deftly to achieve his goal. When she heard the snap of rubber bands and felt his presence move from behind her, she knew it was over.
Izuku walked back to his seat and sat down. "I like this look. Looks good on you," Izuku commented offhandedly.
He had no idea how impactful his throwaway words were on the mind of the young girl.
After a brief pause, she couldn't help but ask, "Why did you do that for me?"
"Why did you trust me to do that in the first place?" he shot right back.
"I-I… don't know," she lied. It was because she wanted to be able to trust him, to have someone in this godforsaken place to latch on to, to not be hostile towards. And it seemed like, if she wasn't hostile towards him in the first place, he'd treat her like this: with kindness. That kindness… she wanted to hold onto it no matter what.
Even in this situation where they were forced to be so hostile to each other, he still… he still—
The words she kept bottled up spilled out. "Why are you so kind? Aren't you supposed to be the most savage of our group? You… you killed Kouzuki and Tama, aren't you supposed to be merciless? Why are you showing me this much kindness? I should be terrified of you, but I'm not—why is that? Why do you treat me like this? Why do I feel like this when I'm with you? Why, why, why? Why do you—"
"I never hold back when fighting someone here," Izuku interrupted. "You understand this, don't you? This is, quite literally, a life or death situation when it comes to food. I starved when I first came here because I couldn't use my Quirks, but now, well…" He gestured towards the feast before their eyes that Izuku had opted to share with her as a reward for surrendering to him.
"I just don't want to starve again, that's all—or, that's all that it should've been." Izuku thought very carefully on what to say. "Somewhere along the way, I guess I just came to enjoy it, the…"
He faltered, seeing the complicated expression on the girl's face. "… well, anyways. Let's just say that, in a serious fight, I have no intention of holding back."
He went back to ravenously munching on his food. No matter how much he ate, his Quirk usage always made him hungry. The girl, on the other hand, didn't touch the food that he had shared with her. Instead, she looked at her reflection on the glossy steel table.
On top of her head twin buns sat, tightly curled up.
She decided that she liked that hairstyle.
Unbreakable
Unrelenting Force
Ochaco Uraraka was not having a good time.
The same could be said for the others with her, though. Due to the bright lights and the fact that it was daytime, Fumikage's Dark Shadow was significantly weakened, and Rikido was running low on sugar packets and losing steam. Meanwhile, Mashirao's tail was all cut up by the weapons the villains were using, bleeding quite profusely in some parts, while Tenya was panting heavily due to overexertion of his Quirk.
They needed a plan. Ochaco knew this. They had been fighting aimlessly, neither side gaining the upper hand. They managed to shake the villains, and while the group hid behind an outcropping of rocks in the beach zone, Ochaco endeavored to better their situation. Dimly, in the distance, blasts and explosions could be heard somewhere in the city section. A bright light shined somewhere far to their left.
"Iida," she said quietly, "there's something that I need you to do."
Tenya looked back at her, though he didn't stop paying attention to his surroundings. "What is it?"
"Use your speed and run around the U.S.J. to tell everyone to fight their way to the blasts in the city section," she said. When she saw Tenya begin to open his mouth to protest, she shushed him by continuing, "Then, you run to the school, tell them what's happening, and ask for backup."
"No! I can't leave you all behind—"
"We'll be fine," Mashirao said strongly, despite his battered appearance suggesting otherwise. It seemed like he recognized the viability of Ohaco's plan.
"Fighting as a group will prevent any unnecessary injuries from happening," Fumikage reasoned with Tenya. "Only you can get us to that condition."
Tenya remained silent. While he didn't like the fact that he had to abandon his friends, he'd begun to realize this was something that only he could do. But, as he was coming up with his decision, they were interrupted by rowdy laughter.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here~" a crocodile-like villain barked, coming into their field of view. His sharp claws glinted in the bright lights of the U.S.J. Behind him, nine other villains appeared, each armed with either claws or sharp weapons. "Five soon-to-be heroes cowering? Not very upstanding of you, gahahahaha!"
The other villains guffawed along with the crocodile villain. Ochaco, along with the four other students, got prepared to fight. They were outnumbered two to one, and they were essentially trapped between the villains and the rocks, all but forcing them to fight.
"Brief change of plans," Ochaco stated. The rest of her classmates nodded.
"This is my last sugar packet," Rikido warned, gulping it down without any hesitation. He growled after doing so, roaring, "Come and get me, you villains!"
Rikido charged forward, fueled by Sugar Rush. The others immediately rushed after him, earning laughter from the villains.
Their clash was fast and brutal. Ochaco deftly wove in between the strikes of her two attackers, using her Quirk to touch them and cause them weightlessness. After doing so, she kicked them high into the sky, dropping them at about fifteen feet in the air. However, due to them landing on the sandy beach, the damage sustained was not as great as it would have been if she dropped them on concrete.
Still, she bought herself a precious few moments of reprieve. She used this time to quickly observe the fight of her classmates, deciding which one to join.
Tenya was running circles around his three opponents with his speed, but he wasn't landing any clean blows either. Fumikage seemed to be doing alright, being protected by his sentient Quirk enough to not warrant any special attention. Rikido was engaging in an all out brawl while under the effects of Sugar Rush, taking hits but withstanding it. It seemed that Mashirao was having the greatest trouble; with his tail cut up and bleeding, it significantly hampered the usage of his Quirk.
She instantly rushed over to his side, swiftly avoiding the claws of an avian villain and tapping him with her hand, granting him weightlessness. Then, as he lost balance, she kicked him towards another villain wielding a katana, removing the weightlessness and causing the clawed villain to crash into the other one.
As they tumbled to the ground, Ochaco looked toward Mashirao and said, "Ojiro, are you alright—"
"Uraraka watch out!" Mashirao instantly shoved Ochaco to the side with his tail and instantly cried out in pain.
As Ochaco looked up , her face paled. A blade was directly piercing Mashirao's tail, a strike that was likely meant for her. It was sunk up to its hilt, and when the villain ripped it out, its serrated edge left a stream of red blood in its wake. Mashirao's tail went limp, the owner collapsing to the ground in a mixture of pain and accumulated fatigue.
As the villain went to finish Mashirao off, a blur raced forth and tackled him to the ground. Tenya had pumped his Quirk into maximum overdrive to cover the distance that quickly, but now he was entangled with the villain on the ground. As Ochaco quickly got to her feet in order to provide some aid, Fumikage beat her to it, Dark Shadow roaring forth to grab the villain and throw him off of Tenya.
Ochaco and Rikido both moved to cover Fumikage's defenseless human body, panting heavily. The villains' attacks were relentless, but their attacks weren't lethal; it seemed as if they were content on toying with their food for now. As Ochaco dodged one blow, the crocodile villain's attack caught her off guard, his claws scratching her.
A nasty gash appeared on her chest, ripping through her outfit. Ochaco grunted in pain but endured it. She tapped the crocodile villain's exposed arms and kicked him far away to give herself some breathing space. There was a brief pause in the action, the villains backing off to reassess the situation.
The students were definitely worse off. Not only were they outnumbered, they had also sustained more serious injuries. Mashirao was put out of the picture by that direct stab wound and the accumulated blows to his body. Fumikage was safe, but Dark Shadow was petering out. Same with Rikido; while he only had relatively minor scratches, his Sugar Rush was coming to an end. Tenya had sustained an injury to his arm while he was tusselling with the villain that stabbed Mashirao, and Ochaco had that cut across her chest.
But still, they weren't going to go down without a fight. As the students' minds began to accept the reality of their situation, the crocodile villain, who seemed to be this group's leader, laughed heartily. "Seems like you've come to terms with your situation. Ah, mou~! I love seeing that expression—the expression one makes when they realize they're going to die but is determined to fight to the death!"
The villains all laughed at his statement.
"Please show me how delicious your death cries will be~"
As he moved in to reinitiate the fight, a strand of darkness latched on to the back of his head. The villain, perplexed, grabbed what had attached itself to his head and brought it before his eyes. "What the fuck is—"
He never got the chance to finish the sentence.
A streak of green light catapulted itself directly into him, delivering a furious blow straight to his skull. After a nasty sounding crack, the crocodile villain was immediately sent, crushed, into the sand beneath him.
As the rest of the villains tried to process what happened, Ochaco focused on the source of that green light: Izuku Midoriya. Green arcs of electricity pulsed around him, and as she was about to celebrate his arrival and call out to him, she saw the expression on his face and was immediately silenced.
That look on his face… it was one of—
She didn't even really see what had happened next. Izuku had moved, in a blur, around three of the still-in-shock villains, and they were immediately sent flying. One flew right past the students and crashed, headfirst, into the rocks behind them, falling over limply. Another was launched into the air to a ridiculous height before crashing down into the beach, unmoving. The last one was sent flying into the water some thirty feet away.
The remaining six villains, still in abject shock over the sudden turn of events, finally began to move. They panickedly attempted to attack Izuku, but their blows could never hope to reach him. Izuku was moving faster than she'd ever seen him move, as if his whole body had been amped up.
The first victim of Izuku's final assault, the avian villain from earlier, tried to swipe at Izuku, but the boy easily dodged to the left, using his foe's momentum against him and grabbing his shirt. With a fierce tug, the villain was sent tumbling to the ground, where Izuku took hold of the villain's wings, one in each hand. Then he… then he—
Ochaco resisted the urge to vomit.
He crunched them in half. The break wasn't clean, either—it was a messy sounding affair, sounds of splintering bones ringing out rather than a clean snap. As the villain screamed in agony, Ochaco noticed that Izuku's hands seemed to turn purple, and his fingers were bent in weird directions. He delivered a kick to the still screaming villain's head, silencing him with the vicious stomp.
One of the five remaining villains began to say, "Holy shit, this kid's crazy—"
He was silenced with a spinning back heel kick to the jaw, dislocating it and causing fragments of teeth to fly out. As he collapsed limply to the ground, the other villains began to run for their very lives.
But Izuku was not about to let them go. Immediately, he was before one of them, delivering a solid Spartan kick straight to the victim's sternum. He flew back tens of feet with his whole chest caved in, hacking up blood when he landed before falling silent. Then, he ran with lightning speed and appeared before a pair of two villains attempting to flee together.
A blisteringly quick roundhouse kick sent one of them flying into the other, colliding and sending them both sprawling to the sandy beach. Without giving them a chance to recover, Izuku was instantly upon them, delivering two vicious kicks to each of their heads without a single shred of mercy. Then, he turned towards the last remaining villain.
The villain, having decided that escape was no longer an option, gave a scream and charged at Izuku. Izuku was instantly in his face, bringing his hands together to strike, open palmed, both of the villain's ears. For the brief moment the villain was dazed, just standing still, Midoriya spun, delivering a heel to the man's cranium. The force of the blow sent the man crashing to the ground, not even moving as he landed.
Then Izuku turned towards them, his classmates. Judging that they were not opponents to fight, he made to move on and continue to the next area, but as he began to move, his right leg, which he'd been using to perform all the kicks, collapsed under him.
Ochaco found, on closer inspection, that his entire anklelooked like it was completely shattered, bending in the complete and utterly wrong direction.
As he sat in the sand, Ochaco decided to approach him. The villains… they didn't look like they were going to get up anytime soon. She called out to him, "Midoriya!"
He was staring blankly into space.
"Midoriya!" Ochaco cried again. "Midoriya!"
His eyes, previously unfocused and blank, quickly regained their sharpness for a brief moment before fading away. "U-Uraraka…?"
Then he grabbed his head with both hands as if he were in agony. "Why can't I control it? No—don't think, don't think about it…"
His strange behavior aside, Ochaco approached him. "We need to get your ankle treated. Guys, come help!"
Tenya, clutching his injured arm, quickly appeared by their side. Mashirao was being supported by Fumikage and Rikido, and they slowly hobbled over to them. They gave uneasy glances at the still villains lying in the sand. Even after some time had elapsed, they did not look like they were about to get up.
As she went about preparing a splint for his ankle with the remnants of her torn shirt and some wood, Tenya stopped her in her tracks with an outstretched hand. With sick fascination, he said, "That won't be necessary. Look."
She looked at the thing that Tenya was pointing at. Izuku's ankle—it was unsnapping itself. It slowly, with a multitude of crunches and cracks, realigned itself to the proper position. The whole process only took one, two minutes max, and with a start, she realized that that's what Izuku must've done to his fingers as well. During the fight, they were bent and twisted and purple, but now, they were back to their normal shade and weren't bent.
But, whatever physical injury disappeared, it still seemed like Izuku was under mental duress. He hadn't stopped mumbling don't think about it, until—
It was a terrifying visual, Ochaco decided. It was like a switch had been flipped on in Izuku's head, like he had just gone and killed the part of him that was panicking. He took one, two deep breaths, but his eyes seemed unfocused, as if he were taking a mental back seat.
But, regardless of Izuku's mental state, they didn't have time to wait. "Midoriya, we have a plan."
A slow nod was all the indication she got that her statement was heard.
"We're having Iida run to the school to get us some back up since, we think at least, they're using a jammer of some sort. Meanwhile, we're gonna find and regroup with the rest of the class." Ochaco swallowed, worried that her words weren't really getting through to Izuku. "Did you… see anyone on your way here?"
A nod. "In the forest area."
"Okay." Ochaco wracked her brain for things to say, orders to give. This had never been her forte, but this wasn't a situation where she could afford to be lax. "Iida, you know what to do. Midoriya, can you loop back and tell the people you saw to head towards the city area—that's where I think Bakugo is, just follow the sounds of explosions. And tell that to anyone else you come across. We'll then fight our way back towards the entrance as a group. Any… complaints? Suggestions?"
No counterpoints were raised.
"Okay, then. Stay safe, Iida, Midoriya." Ochaco looked at the two boys. "We'll see you guys soon."
With a stiff nod, Iida took off, heading for the direction of the entrance. After a few moments, Izuku staggered to his feet, and, still with that blank expression on his face, he leapt off in the direction that he came from, propelled by strands of pure darkness.
Ochaco let loose a breath.
"Well, let's get a move on."
.:.
Well, I can certainly say that things are chill right now.
Momo wanted to smack herself for making that pun, especially considering the situation that they were in.
Currently, Momo was in a haphazardly built ice castle, courtesy of Shoto Todoroki, slowly freezing to death with Toru and Bakugo. The four of them had been teleported right into the city section of the U.S.J. and were immediately surrounded by villains. Thanks to Shoto's quick thinking, an ice fortress was immediately built underneath them, much to Katsuki's chagrin.
The hot-tempered boy seemed like he was itching to go out and fight, but Momo convinced him to stay. There was good defensive utility in using this fort, where they could theoretically keep the villains at bay with long range projectiles and blasts. In fact, Momo told Katsuki to make his blasts as loud as possible to potentially attract the attention of the classmates that they had been separated from and lead them here.
Momo had fashioned marksman rifles for Toru's and her use. Using sleeping darts, the two of them slowly picked off villains from range while Katsuki and Shoto took care of any villains that got within their range. It was overall a pretty effective operation, but the one downside of it was that they had a range limit. Once the villains figured that out, they parked themselves just out of range and sat, staring at them.
"This is fucking boring," Katsuki snarled, firing a blast up into the air. The sound made her ears ring, but hopefully, it reached the others. "Can I just go out and fight them?"
"Not yet," Momo said. "There's no reason to. It's a waiting game, and we've just got to stall until the—"
The words died in her throat as she saw a green blur launch a beefy villain high in the air towards their direction. The villain landed with a sickly crunch about twenty feet from their ice walls.
"… until the reinforcements come," she finished lamely.
"Reinforcements came. I'm heading out," Katsuki declared, pointing his hands behind him and blasting off. Wordlessly, Shoto went to join the fight.
Momo looked helplessly at the invisible girl beside her. Or she tried to, at least.
"Boys will be boys," Toru sighed. "Might as well join them. Got any more darts for me?"
As Momo made darts from her abdomen, she grew distinctly aware of Toru—stripping! She was stripping, here and now?!
Then Momo remembered that Toru was invisible, and she wanted to hit herself.
"Aww, don't start blushing," Toru said playfully. Now completely invisible, she took the darts out of Momo's outstretched palm and picked up one of the rifles. "See you on the battlefield."
The marksman rifle floating off into the distance and eventually over the wall was the only sign of Toru's disappearance. After a brief moment of reining in her emotions, Momo fashioned a staff out of her Quirk and slid down the ice fort's walls to join the battle.
Well, join the battle was… an inaccurate usage of words. It was more like: observe the massacre from a distance.
A green and black blur utterly pulverized a villain with a fist straight to the face, sending him flying tens of feet straight into the side of a building, where the force of the impact left a crater in the wall. The blur slowed down to reveal Izuku Midoriya, and relief flooded through her… until she saw his face. His expression. His blank, unfocused eyes.
What… what happened to him?
As Momo approached the scene, she saw that many villains met the same fate. Their unmoving bodies laid on the ground, and blood pooled around them. For a brief moment, Momo pondered whether or not they were still breathing.
She quickly shook her head to clear her mind of such thoughts.
"Izuku! Izuku! IZUKU!"
As Momo turned toward the person shouting Izuku's name, what happened next was certainly not something Momo had been expecting.
Katsuki marched up to Izuku and, without missing a beat, slugged him across the face.
Momo reacted first: "What are you doing?"
"Beating some sense into this fucker! Snap out of it, Izuku!" Katsuki snapped. As he raised back his fist, Momo caught it just as he was about to slam a second blow into Izuku's face.
"Get off of me!" Katsuki roared, shaking Momo off. The second he did so, Katsuki reared back another fist and slammed it into Izuku's chin, sending him stumbling back a bit.
Katsuki walked up to Izuku, who seemed like he hadn't even registered what happened, hadn't even attempted to block the blows. "Focus. Focus on the now, the moment."
Momo held her breath.
Silence.
Then…
Izuku's eyes finally focused.
He looked at Katsuki.
"He…"
"… what was that?" Katsuki stuck his ear out toward Izuku.
Izuku muttered something only the two of them could hear.
A beat passed.
Katsuki cracked a savage grin. "Then survive 'til you can revenge on that fucking bastard! Who gives a damn about whether or not he beat you—what matters is that you're still standing, aren't you?"
Izuku swallowed.
"This animalistic style of fighting doesn't suit you," Katsuki stated, grabbing Izuku's arm. He raised it, and much to Momo's horror, it appeared that it was shattered at the wrist, his hand falling down limply. Momo quickly rushed to his side, creating a medical kit out of her body.
"Sorry," Izuku said slowly, "I don't know what came over me. And thanks, Yaoyorozu, but that won't be necessary."
"What do you mean?" Momo asked, not fully believing in his words.
"I… don't know how, but…" Izuku pointed to his broken wrist with his free hand, and after a few moments, the impossible began to happen: his wrist slowly realigned itself without any need for a splint, and after a few moments, the discoloration faded, turning from black to blue to his normal skin tone.
Izuku gripped his head with his mysteriously healed hand, breathing slowly. Just as Momo grew worried that he was about to have a panic attack, he said, "You're right, Kacchan." Noticing his slip, he quickly amended, "Er, I meant Bakugo. Focus on the now. I can't afford to freeze up. Thank you for reminding me of that."
To Momo's relief, more students from their class rounded the city streets. Some looked more beat up than others, and she immediately started creating medical supplies to aid in helping treat the injured students.
From snippets she heard in their conversations, Momo surmised the story to be this: the class had been split into four groups when they were teleported. The first group, the one that she was a part of, consisted of Katsuki, Shoto, Toru, and Momo. The second group, Mina, Kyoka, Tsuyu, Denki, and Eijiro, was teleported into the forest area where they had been cornered by a group of villains. The third group, Ochaco, Tenya, Fumikage, Mashirao, and Rikido, appeared in the seaside/beach zone. They, just like the second group, were being toyed with by a bunch of villains. Both groups named the same person as being their savior: Izuku Midoriya.
Meanwhile, the fourth group—Yuga, Koji, Mezo, Hanta, and Minoru—were trapped in the landslide zone. They had Yuga fire lasers into the sky periodically to achieve the same effect that Momo was going for by having Katsuki fire off his explosions; they were trying to attract their classmates to them. Apparently, Ochaco's group rendezvoused with them, and then, both groups decided to make their way towards Katsuki's explosions.
Ochaco explained that she had Tenya run to U.A.'s campus to inform the teachers of what was happening, so now, with all of the class gathered sans Tenya, they could formulate a strategy.
"Sorry about how I acted earlier," Izuku immediately apologized to the group, lowering his head. "I… I wasn't myself."
"Don't apologize, Midoriya," Mina admonished him. "You… saved us. Who knows what would've happened if you hadn't showed up."
Voices of agreement echoed around their circle.
"Thanks, guys. But, to steal the words from Bakugo, focus on the present." Izuku looked up and met their gazes. His eyes were present, focused. "Now that we are all here, I believe that we should all travel together to the entrance as a group. Staying on the move will ensure that the villains can't coordinate a planned attack against us while enabling us to pick them off."
He paused, and looked at Ochaco. "Uraraka, you sent Iida off to get reinforcements, correct?"
She nodded.
"Okay. We should shoot for the main entrance, then. That'll be our final destination—that's most likely where the reinforcements will show up. Once we're there, we can look into possibly escaping to the outside, but we can decide that once we're there."
"Izuku then turned toward Shoto. "Todoroki, how confident are you in your ice abilities?"
"Whatever you need, I will manage."
Izuku nodded. "I'm thinking we create a platform to walk on. It doesn't have to be anything crazy—I'm talking like … six feet wide and six feet off the ground? As long as we're off the ground, anything works."
"Got it."
"Yaoyorozu, did you create this?" Izuku pointed at the marksman rifle that was floating in the air.
"Yes, I gave one to Hagakure."
"How many more can you create?"
Momo thought for a moment. "Probably one for everyone here. The sleeper darts are easy, the rifle itself takes some time."
"Can you start making some?" Izuku asked. "About ten more should be good enough. We have some injured people who need help walking, so not everyone needs one. We should do this: we keep the injured near Todoroki, who is focusing on making the ice bridge that you will all be walking on. That spot will be the most heavily defended; each person there will have a rifle and shoot anyone who gets too close. Meanwhile, Bakugo and I are on the ground keeping an eye out for any stragglers that you guys might have missed. Together, we make our way towards the main entrance. Any thoughts?"
The students all voiced their approval of the plan. They didn't have any better alternative.
Izuku looked like a completely different person, Momo observed. Ever since Katsuki, well, beat some sense into him, he was like and acted like the Izuku she knew, not like the living, mindless ball of destruction she had first witnessed when he showed up. From the relieved faces she saw when glancing around, her classmates likely noticed the change as well.
But still… what had been bothering him so much? What was on his mind? What… nearly broke him?
And was it even healthy for him to switch mindsets this quickly?
"Wait," Izuku said suddenly, "do we know of Aizawa-sensei or Thirteen's whereabouts?"
An uneasy silence.
"Now that I think about it, they're probably in some deep shit," Katsuki muttered.
Ochaco said, "As we're traveling, we should look out for signs of any battling."
Murmurs of agreement rounded the circle. But, it seemed like the vast majority of them were thinking what Momo was thinking: if they hadn't heard or seen any sight of their teachers, couldn't they just be—
Don't think about it, Momo chided herself.
Don't think about it.
.:.
In a bar somewhere, Kurogiri and Tomura sat and watched a series of monitors.
On it, the screens constantly switched to follow a green-haired boy.
"What do you think they're doing now?"
Tomura sighed. "Some generic shounen 'let's work together' bullshit. I will say, though, it's pretty damn effective."
The two men watched as an ice bridge was slowly created and the people on it moved forward. Armed with what appeared to be guns firing tranquilizer agents of some sort, they made short work of any villains they came across. Any villain that was… unfortunate enough to make it past the darts met a quick end from a pissed off blonde boy or Izuku.
"Yes, you could say that. Whose idea do you think it was?"
"Who else could it be?" Tomura snapped.
"Point taken."
They watched as the entourage of students slowly made their way towards the main entrance.
"Well, at least he's heading in the direction I wanted him to go," Tomura sighed. "Saves our buddy the effort of having to run off and find Izuku, at least. He's almost done with his playthings."
He momentarily glanced at a screen that depicted the Nomu's fight against the two teachers that Izuku had come with. The astronaut had proven to be an unsatisfactory opponent, quickly being taken out, but the dark haired teacher truly was something else. Even after suffering a broken arm, he continued to fight against a vastly superior opponent.
"Are you sure we want to use one of the finished Nomu to test Midoriya?" Kurogiri asked. "I mean, I could always warp back and retrieve it."
"Orders from above," Tomura answered, yawning. Watching Izuku decimate cannon fodder was boring to him; the only real thing of interest was that new Quirk that he had. If his hunch was correct…
Tomura turned, looking at Kurogiri. The man was evidently waiting for him to elaborate.
"You remember, don't you?" Tomura asked. "We all should. The 'Arena.' I think he wants to emulate the same situation with Izuku, have him fight a fellow 'monster' and see whether or not that kickstarts any old Quirks or memories. But, even more so than that, I think that he just wants to see if Izuku has that same analytical mind for Quirks that fascinated him in the past."
"There's no guarantee that Midoriya will even fight him, though."
"You're absolutely right. This is somewhat of a gamble," Tomura admitted. "But… imagine. Imagine if Izuku seeks out our dear Nomu and engages in a good ol' 1v1 with him. Then that's proof that the memory wipe wasn't as complete as we thought or he's getting his memories back, subconsciously or consciously; it doesn't really matter."
Kurogiri sighed. "So we're essentially sacrificing the Nomu."
"Yep. We're sacin' the Nomu. Don't feel too bad about it," Tomura laughed. "It was meant to be a foot soldier anyways. That's why it didn't get named like you or me."
The wisp of a man turned to stare at the screen. "It seems that he's found the Nomu."
"Hmm. And now we wait," Tomura declared.
Will you fight it with your friends? Or will something compel you to face it alone?
Tomura couldn't help but unleash a crooked smile.
.:.
As he arrived by the main entrance, Izuku spotted a massive, hulking villain fighting Aizawa.
His teacher was desperately fighting to protect what seemed to be a downed Thirteen, but his strikes didn't seem to have any impact on the villain. A throng of villains cheered on the scene, completely oblivious to the students' arrival. They seemed content with watching the far larger villain all but toy with his teacher. His breathing quickened when he further analyzed Aizawa's state. Aside from panting heavily, his arm was clearly broken.
Putting one hundred percent into his legs and shooting forth, Izuku barreled through two unsuspecting villains and crashed into the side of Aizawa's opponent. But, very surprisingly, it seemed to have zero effect. The villain looked down to see Izuku by his side, and it—
It smiled.
Izuku, a bit shaken by that reaction, quickly hopped backwards to get out of its range.
Quickly, his classmates arrived on the scene. As his classmates descended from the ice bridge and raced to cover Aizawa and Thirteen, squaring off against the remaining villains, Izuku stared down the hulking beast before him. Its muscular frame and exposed brain gave off the impression that it was something… inhuman, something created, like it was Frankenstein or something. Its dark eyes had been trained on Izuku, completely and utterly focused, the second he came into view.
And, just like the first time he laid eyes upon it, it seemed familiar to him. Like he was… like he was—
"Let's get this fucking bastard," Katsuki snarled as Shoto lined up next to them. The two got in a battle-ready stance, but Izuku stayed in a relaxed pose. Izuku could… he could tell, inherently, what the beast wanted.
"It… wants a one on one with me."
"The fuck are you talking about?" Katsuki raged. "Who gives three shits about that? Let's take it down, together—"
Izuku interrupted with: "Your efforts would be wasted. Bakugo. Todoroki. Go help our classmates out. Let me take on this villain alone."
"HAH?" Katsuki screeched. "This thing nearly took out both of our teachers on its own! Get it through your thick fucking skull—"
"You two's attacks would just hurt me more than it hurts the villain," Izuku stated.
Shoto looked at Izuku pointedly. "Are you saying that we would just get in the way?"
The reply came without any hesitation. "Yes."
The heterochromatic boy nodded. "Understood. I'll trust your judgement. Bakugo, let's go—"
"I'm supposed to be the one protecting you, godammit!" Katsuki roared suddenly, reaching out to grab Izuku. He was stopped by Shoto's quick reflexes, the boy grasping Katsuki's wrists before he could latch on to Izuku.
"Where is this coming from?" Shoto questioned before shaking his head. "This isn't a situation where we can afford to air out our personal issues."
Right as Katsuki seemed like he was about to erupt in front of both of them, Izuku said, "You will be protecting me. Make sure the other villains can't reach me, and I will take it down. I swear it."
Bakugo looked like he was having a war within himself. After a brief moment of silence, he relented, "Fine. But remember: a true hero never lies. So if you end up losing, I swear to God that if it didn't kill you, I'm coming to finish the job, alright? You better not fucking die on me."
"Nice reference. But okay, I will not lose," Izuku nodded. Plus, I have yet to properly thank you for getting me back to my senses. The two punches he sustained really helped re-tether him to reality.
He watched as Shoto and Katsuki raced off to join their classmates in their fight. They seemed to be doing a good job of protecting their wounded teachers, so with those two joining the fray, their victory was all but guaranteed. It would only be a matter of time before all of the villains were cleaned up.
Which meant his one on onetime was limited.
Izuku pondered very briefly why he had, subconsciously (or, if he was being honest, consciously) orchestrated events so that they had ended up this way.
Because he was pretty sure that Shoto's ice would have been able to distract the villain for a split second, and Katsuki's explosions could have been helpful in blinding it. So—why had he convinced them to back off, to let him fight the villain alone?
He didn't know the answer to that. All he knew was that the beast wanted to fight him alone just as much as he did, and it felt… correct to face it on this way. This one particular thought just couldn't get itself out of his mind, it couldn't get itself out of his mind since his encounter with Tomura Shigaraki:
I want to utterly—
The beast pounded the ground with its lanky arms, creating cracks through the force of its blows on the cement. It seemed like it was getting impatient. Izuku walked towards the overly muscular villain, its eyes trained on him the entire time. To it, nothing else in the world seemed to matter; its focus was solely on Izuku.
"Can you speak?" Izuku asked lowly as he approached.
The creature shook its head. It opened its mouth, showing Izuku the insides. It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at, but eventually, he understood—the villain lacked a tongue. It seemed to have been cut off, leaving behind only a stump.
"I see that you can understand, though."
A nod.
The words that came next were like water from a broken pipe; Izuku could not stop them from flowing out of him. "That makes this simple, then. Will you surrender to me?"
The villain tilted its monstrous head, as if it was confused by what it had just been asked. If Izuku was telling the truth, he wasn't… quite sure where his previous question had come from, either.
"Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask."
Izuku finally got into his battle-ready stance. The villain reacted in kind, raising its arms.
He could tell that this wasn't a villain he could take lightly; it nearly took out both Aizawa and Thirteen. He didn't really see how it happened, but the fact still stands. It was nothing like the villains he took on prior to it; in fact, it was possibly comparable to Tomura—no, something was instinctively telling him that it wasn't on his level just yet.
Izuku had no backing to his claim, and it could possibly even be just his butthurt refusal to think of the one who bested him as weak. But he thought that, while this villain was certainly a monster in its own right, Tomura was leagues above it in terms of power. That was just something his instincts were telling him.
Still, it didn't mean that this was going to be an easy fight.
"On you," Izuku said, giving the indication to start the brawl.
The villain rushed forward, trying to not give Izuku any time to react. Izuku deftly weaved underneath its right hook and answered with a counter of his own, catching it in the sternum with a one hundred percent smash. Because he had all of his Quirks active, the blow didn't have any impact on Izuku physically; the pain was all mental, but even he was starting to feel numb to it.
While the blow would have been enough to send any lesser villains flying off their feet, this villain's feet remained firmly anchored to the ground. In fact, it seemed like it had sustained zero damage. So, it seemed like it did possess a degree of shock resistance. Testing whether it was shock resistance or shock nullification seemed to be a worthy decision to Izuku. He just had to be smart about how he administered his blows.
He wove in and out of the creature's punches and smashes. The times where its blows connected with the ground, a small crater was left in its wake, so Izuku had to keep moving to secure solid ground to stand on. He threw in smaller, fifty percent punches, but those didn't seem to have any effect on the villain at all.
Their little dance continued on this way for a solid amount of time, neither gaining the upper hand. Izuku could tell that, while it possessed some type of super strength as evidenced by the craters it left in the ground, it did not possess super speed. Its attacks were quick, but nothing unmanageable. Additionally, it had a very high degree of shock resistance or just outright shock nullification. Smashing the thing down was simply not an option, at least at his current power output.
As Izuku continued thinking, all of a sudden, the villain stopped its barrage. It stood still, and as Izuku went in to take advantage of its slip in tempo, the villain opened its mouth and—
Izuku grunted in pain as a super-heated cloud of steam spewed forth and enveloped both of them. It obscured his vision, making the world go white.
While Izuku couldn't exactly see, he heard the villain approaching. With rumbling all around him and the steam still obscuring his vision, he couldn't pinpoint the villain's location. As he tried to focus, he suddenly—
A painful, stabbing sensation instantly appeared in his head. It was screaming at him: DODGE!
Izuku kicked off the ground with one hundred percent and dove to the left just as a meaty hand swung down and shattered the ground he was standing on. His legs creaked and groaned under the strain, but they weren't broken just yet. But he wasn't given a break. Immediately, the same pain occurred in his head and Izuku leapt, listening to his instincts.
This maneuver finally led him out of the smoke, but before he could reassess the situation, the villain was on him. Just underneath its black, leathery skin, red, vein-like lines bulged and twisted. It seemed to be a completely different beast now in terms of speed and ferocity. Maybe it had a Quirk that allowed it to power up in steam?
Izuku wasn't given a chance to pursue that train of thought any further. Its swipes and attacks were lightning fast now, and they were becoming harder and harder to dodge cleanly. An attack clipped him in the shoulder, and it sent him sprawling backward a good fifteen, twenty feet. Before he could even register the pain, he put his all into his right hand to push off against the ground, sending him tumbling to the right just as the villain leapt and shattered the ground he was just lying on moments prior.
Yeah. He could not afford to take a direct hit. The damage he took was negligence on his part; if he'd focused on keeping his body state "frozen" during the battle, he doubted he would've taken much damage. It seemed his passive state that allowed him to use fifty percent without breaking anything in his body wasn't going to cut it.
The villain immediately jumped on him, forcing Izuku to shove against the ground with one hundred percent on the same hand just to stay alive. As he rolled out of the way, a sharp pain told him that his hand had finally given out on him, shattering under the stress. So, that meant, for now, his right hand was out of commission. And, judging by how his left shoulder (and by extension, his left arm) was flaring up in pain and could barely move, that side of the body was broken as well.
But pain meant little to him.
Izuku followed the words visualize reconstructing, not healing on those parts of his body, standing up to get on his feet as quickly as possible. While this new Quirk had its benefits, Izuku did not know if it had any drawbacks, any consequences of using it, but he wasn't in a position where he could worry about such things.
The villain leapt at him again, but it was slower this time. The red lines beneath its skin were fading, which probably was a visual indication of its empowered state slowly petering out. Izuku had time to kick up to his feet and sidestep the strike that was meant for his skull.
Okay, Izuku had an idea of what Quirks the villain had.
Shock resistance or shock nullification. Super strength to some degree. The steam/smoke thing that it emitted from its mouth, and finally, some type of enhanced speed that it gained from being in steam. Possibly even more.
But with this, he could formulate a plan of attack.
Its only dangerous state was when it was empowered under the effects of steam. If Izuku could nullify that, then he could effectively neutralize most of its power.
As the villain went out to bellow more steam, Izuku shot two strands of Blackwhip at it, curling around its mouth. Infuriated, the villain clawed at the strands with its meaty hands, gripping it and swinging the strands, with Izuku attached on the other end, around in a large arc. Izuku quickly released the strands, but he still crashed into the ground, letting out a curse as he landed on his previously injured left side which still had not fully healed yet.
Evidently, he had to use more strands of Blackwhip. And they had to be strong, too.
Izuku remembered that, back when he first utilized Blackwhip, the strands were powerful enough to gouge out the ground. That had been before he managed to control it, so it had quickly knocked him unconscious. But, in the vision he had when he was unconscious, a figure told him that Blackwhip's power has been magnified by One For All. Which meant that he was potentially able to supercharge his other Quirks with One For All.
He didn't know if doing so would knock him out just like it did when he used Blackwhip and One For All together. The situation hasn't gotten so desperate where he had to use one hundred percent, break his limbs, and reconstruct them at hyper speeds by applying his "reconstruction" Quirk magnified by One For All. But the option was there.
No, Blackwhip was the best bet here; he'd done it once before (though knocking himself out in the process), and his mastery over the Quirk had progressed since he first activated it years ago. So it should be the case that he'd be able to at least control a few One For All-enhanced Blackwhips without too much trouble now. He just needed the strands to be unbreakable.
Blood rushing to his skull, he shot forth four strands of Blackwhip that was enhanced by One For All. These notably thicker strands raced towards the villain, latching onto its arms and around its mouth. This time, Izuku succeeded in restraining the villain's arms, forcing them behind its bulging body after a brief struggle. It seemed that, in a direct power contest, Izuku had the villain beat. This enabled him to lift the villain off the ground and suspend it in the air.
As he stared at the villain flailing its legs uselessly in the air, Izuku found himself feeling strangely… pleased. Maybe it was him being lightheaded from all the blood rushing to his head and making his thoughts a mess, but for a moment he thought…
Everything else faded from his mind. All that existed was this moment. Ever since Katsuki had awoken him from his autopilot mode and now that he was clear-headed enough to be aware of his thoughts, he came to the realization that, even in this life and death situation, he…
He thoroughly enjoyed it.
This feeling of triumph from completely and utterly dominating the opponents he faced, the one Tomura had robbed from him, had returned in full force.
Izuku couldn't help but let loose a small smile as his eyes met the villain's.
The villain tried to bellow out smoke and struggled against its binds, but Izuku's Blackwhip stayed strong. As Izuku pondered over what to do, he felt his control over the One For All-enhanced Blackwhip slip momentarily. The villain nearly broke free, but Izuku quickly regained control, restricting the villain's movement once more.
He needed to end it.
There was really only one choice to successfully neutralize a threat like this. Knocking it out was out of the question, thanks to the Quirks it possessed, but asphyxiating it…
He didn't even have to do it by his own hand. If his Blackwhip was strong enough, he could—
A fifth strand of Blackwhip, enhanced by One For All, snaked around the villain's neck. With it stuck in the sky, it could only hopelessly wriggle its legs as Izuku tightened the strand around its beefy neck. Veins bulging from all sides, Izuku kept up his concentration as his head began to feel seriously lightheaded. He felt like he could tip over at any moment, but he had to see this through.
Not because this villain was a danger to his classmates, not for a reason as shallow as that. He had to see this through because—
It just felt right.
Okay, Izuku had to admit that his reason was possibly even shallower than the other reason. But he didn't really care about reasons or stuff like that.
All he cared about was utterly defeating it.
As Izuku's Blackwhip tightened around the villain's throat, the villain thrashed wildly, nearly breaking free of his Blackwhip. But, as time went on and the seconds became minutes, its trashing slowly petered out.
Very soon, it went limp. But—
Izuku didn't stop there.
He held it for another one hundred and twenty seconds before releasing it, allowing it to drop to the ground unceremoniously with a thud. As the One For All-enhanced Blackwhips retracted into his body, he felt the lightheadedness fade from his mind, and Izuku became more firmly anchored in reality.
With a clear mind, he walked up to the unmoving villain. As it laid on the ground before him, Izuku reveled in his victory for a brief moment. The all-empowering feeling of having defeated a strong opponent washed over his mind and his psyche. The victory hadn't been as complete as Izuku would have liked—he did take a few hits, after all—but it will suffice for now. He was—
Wait. A whisper of a memory floated up, but as soon as it appeared to him, it wisped away.
That was a frustrating thing to experience.
But… Izuku was left with a strong feeling; a warning, of sorts.
It compelled him to lift up his foot and—
.:.
As Momo swung her staff around, smashing a villain with the tail end of it, she caught Katsuki and Shoto joining their defense of Aizawa and Thirteen.
But… wait, if they were here, then that meant Izuku was—
Shoto caught her arm as she attempted to run off to help Izuku. "Don't. You'll only hinder him."
Momo felt something akin to despair rise up within her. Her words came flowing out like a waterfall. "It defeated Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen! You don't know what it could do—"
"You're right. But Midoriya said that he would take care of it, and I chose to believe him," Shoto said. His tone was cold, and his words were sharp as steel. "We can't waste time. We'll clean up the villains here. That was what he trusted us to do, so that he could focus everything on defeating that villain."
"You're leaving him to fight it alone, though!" Momo stressed, trying to shake free of Shoto's vice-like grip. "Do you have any idea how dangerous—"
She was interrupted by a heated, "Do you think that I like leaving him behind like that?" It was the first time Momo heard Shoto use anything but a cool tone of voice.
Momo blinked. Katsuki gave a fiery "fuck this and everything" and ran off to join the defense, leaving the two momentarily alone.
"I don't," Shoto answered for her, tightening his grip on her arm. "I hate leaving people behind. I hate, hate, hate it, but for Midoriya, I'll make an exception."
"Why?" Momo cried out, still struggling to get her arm free. "Why for him? He's just like the rest of us—"
"No, he's not," Shoto vehemently denied. "He's strong. As of right now, we are not even in the same ballpark. I could tell from just a glance. Were you fooled by his sweet exterior? Were you?"
Stunned, Momo could only remain silent as Shoto continued. "I saw the way that he fought, and that was all it took to cement the fact that he's different from us. Newcomers don't fight like that. Hell, you don't fight like that even if you've had formal training. You only fight like that if you've had actual combat experience. I think—"
Shoto blinked, and he seemed to visibly deflate in front of Momo. His face morphed into its usual passive, ice-like expression. After a quick beat, he released her and said, "I'm sorry, Yaoyorozu. I haven't lost my cool like that in… forever. It's just… a difficult situation, and there's a lot on my mind. But please, believe me. We'll go help him after we defeat these villains, alright?"
After a brief moment of contemplation, Momo nodded. "Fine. But we better make this quick."
"It will be."
With Shoto's reassurance, the two rushed off to join the fight.
To be fair, the battle with the villains was all but won even before Momo and Shoto joined the fight. With Shoto's ice, the process of detaining the villains was just sped up. Momo didn't even have to knock more than one more person out; that was how successful her class had been at defeating the villains.
She tried to ignore the earth-trembling smashes that she felt, focusing on cleaning up the villains as quickly as possible.
As the fighting wrapped up, Momo began issuing out orders. A group to remain and ensure that the villains stayed detained, another group to begin administering first aid on the classmates that needed it the most (she worriedly eyed Mashirao and his cut tail) and their teachers, and a final group to join her in assisting Izuku fight against the monstrous villain.
Katsuki immediately jumped at that option, and soon, Momo, Katsuki, Shoto, and Ochaco raced off to aid Izuku in his fight.
They passed by a few craters in the ground, and after running through a small thicket of trees, Momo finally saw Izuku. And he was—
Izuku was viciously stomping on the skull of the downed villain.
As her words stopped in her throat, she heard Katsuki yell, "Izuku! Izuku!"
Izuku's foot stopped, hovering in mid air. He turned his face towards the four arrivees, momentarily making Momo shiver from the sheer… something she felt emanating off of him, but that feeling soon evaporated as Izuku let loose an adorable, shy smile that completely mismatched with the action that he was just performing, with the way he'd been acting today.
"Well, I did it."
"Yeah, you crazy bastard, you actually did," Katsuki breathed, walking up to him. Then, he halfheartedly hit Izuku on the shoulder. "But don't do that again."
Panting slightly, Izuku asked, "Do what?"
"This." Katsuki gestured around him.
"I don't understand."
"Oh, fuck it."
.:.
After what felt like an eternity, Izuku and the other students were finally picked up from the U.S.J.
Tenya had come with a small private army's worth of frenzied reinforcements, spearheaded by All Might, but they calmed down a bit when they realized that all of the remaining villains were either unconscious or detained. As the pro heroes walked through the U.S.J., some were struck by the injuries that the villains sustained, but their primary focus was getting the students safely home to U.A. and Aizawa and Thirteen some medical treatment. Some students along with the two teachers were immediately shipped off in ambulances.
The bus ride back was somber, silent. No one really spoke, still coming to terms with what happened. When they were dropped off, the students were told that class was canceled the next day and to focus on getting some rest. Therapy sessions conducted to talk about what happened, should one desire to do so, were offered, too. A few students took U.A.'s offer and shuffled into the allotted rooms, but Izuku declined.
The U.A. faculty was going to come ask them some questions later today and tomorrow about what happened. Apparently, they were going to question the girls first today since they didn't have much time left in the day and then focus on the boys tomorrow afternoon.
That gave Izuku some time to think, thankfully. He had some questions of his own.
After taking a shower and switching into a new set of clothes, Izuku found himself suddenly assaulted by a wave of drowsiness. He could barely keep his eyes open, but he was determined to at least write down his thoughts lest he forgot when he woke up. Getting out his notebook and pen, he started writing.
Quirks that I (may) have
One For All
Blackwhip
A Quirk that allows me to "freeze" parts/all of my body. Effectiveness is variable. Can be used to allow my body to handle a higher percent of One For All.
A Quirk that allows me to reconstruct my body after I've broken it. Different from healing. Visualize reconstructing, not healing.
He chewed on his lips thoughtfully.
A Quirk that has some effect that I don't know of as of right now. Used it once during the softball throw. Visualize opposites.
Yeah, that was all. He wanted to ask All Might—Toshinori—about the last three Quirks. Although his instincts were telling him that they were not One For All-related Quirks, he just needed more information, and his hope was that Toshinori would be able to provide him with that information. He seemed to have some idea when he last described it to him, so Izuku was placing all his hopes on his mentor.
As he went to bed, Izuku tried not to think about how Tomura Shigaraki somehow knew about his Quirks.
.:.
The U.A. teachers all sat around the round table, grim looks decorating their faces.
Nezu, the principal, began the meeting with a solemn, "So. The U.S.J."
The name hung like a dark storm cloud over their heads; Aizawa and Toshinori, in particular, looked miserable.
"This meeting will not talk about the possibility of a mole in the U.A. staff or student population, but," Nezu said, voice going deadly serious, "I assure you, he or she will be found. If the mole doesn't exist—"
"Oh, I assure you," Aizawa suddenly spoke up, "there is a mole at U.A. Those villains… they came with some sort of purpose, on a day no one except the staff or student body knew we'd be there."
"Right," Nezu said strongly, voice dark. "But we're not here to do any finger pointing. We're here to talk about a much more pressing issue."
The small creature swallowed before speaking. "The students were lucky to escape with their lives intact. Of course, there were injuries, but we preserved the students' lives. That is a cause for celebration. The villains, on the other hand…"
An uneasy silence crawled its way around the room. They had seen the aftermath of the U.S.J., after all.
Apparently, before they had arrived, led by Toshinori, their student and a hulking beast of a villain fought each other. The creature, which had incapacitated Aizawa and Thirteen, had been defeatedby Izuku Midoriya.
The stories of the female students that they had questioned so far were different in tone but similar in content. Some voiced admiration of the boy—how he, even after visibly shattering his arms, continued to fight. Some displayed a strange mixture of relief and horror, describing their shock at how Izuku obliterated some villains but still remaining thankful that he was there.
"We… we counted the bodies. Fifteen were declared dead on the spot. The causes of death vary; some, blunt trauma to the head. Others, blood loss. A few even had critical organ failure due to external damage. Thirty-five were sent to intensive care, and we don't know how many are going to survive that. Again, sixteen were from fire-related injuries, courtesy of Katsuki Bakugo and Shoto Todoroki, but the rest were just like the fifteen dead," Nezu summed up. "Shattered bones. Severe concussions. Possibly permanent disfigurations."
The silence in the room was thick.
Nezu looked directly at Toshinori and decided to cut right to the chase. "Toshinori-kun, did you teach Midoriya to fight like that?"
"No," he responded lowly, "not even close. I'd only taught him non lethal incapacitation methods."
"Then, is he unable to control his power?"
Toshinori took a bit longer to respond. "He is—normally. He normally shouldn't be able to unleash more than three blows of one hundred percent One For All without breaking his bones, he and I both know that, but I think he still did it…"
He remained silent for a moment, before paling in realization. "No, he did break his arms, he just—"
"Healed them? Reconstructed them?" Aizawa finished for him. "I've seen the file you sent my way, Toshinori. That's Chrono Force or Regenerator, right?"
"No, Regenerator's more passive, so it was probably Chrono Force."
"Uhmmm," Nemuri, Midnight, interrupted, "is there something going on here that the rest of us don't know about?"
Aizawa shrugged and looked at Toshinori as if to say, the ball's in your court, buddy.
Toshinori sighed. "Long story short: Izuku Midoriya had been given a set of Quirks that he, ah, no longer remembers anything about. And he's beginning to rediscover them, without the memories."
A dumbfounded silence hung in the air. Nobody even seemed readily willing to believe Toshinori's words save for Aizawa and Nezu. Actually, Nezu didn't even seem particularly surprised about this. He probably pieced it together in his free time.
"Did I just, uh, hear you correctly? You just said he'd been given a set of Quirks, Quirk being plural, correct?" Hizashi, Present Mic, clarified.
Toshinori nodded.
"Oh, fuck."
"How is that even possible?"
A flurry of words poured forth from the gathered teachers, all silenced once Toshinori spoke up.
"This cannot leave this room," Toshinori stressed. "I've worked with you all for years, I'd like to trust in our relationship. If this information got out and somehow reached the person that did this to Izuku in the first place, he would stop at nothing, and I repeat, nothing, to bring Izuku back under his wing. And, trust me, you do not want to see a world where that happens."
"… and you somehow thought it was best to make a kid like him your successor?"
It wasn't Aizawa who said this. Sekijiro Kan, otherwise known as Vlad King, spoke his words with a derisive tone.
"I saw how that kid fought on the security cams," Sekijiro said. "It didn't fit into any style of martial arts I've ever seen. It was sheer instinct, raw brutality. The fight of an animal that has been caged…where had he learned to fight like that, Toshinori?"
Toshinori hung his head.
Then, he gave them the watered down explanation that he'd given Aizawa. How Izuku had been taken at the age of eight by a villain named All For One. How he'd been pitted against other children in an experiment to create a supersoldier. How he'd been forcibly injected with different Quirks. Finally, he told them about how Izuku had been rescued and had his mind wiped.
"So the body remembers even when the mind forgets, huh," Sekijiro said. "Toshinori, I'm going to make this request with all of the respect I have for you and everything that you have done for modern society."
Sekijiro lowered his head. "Take back One For All from the boy."
"What?" Toshinori said, shocked. "What are you thinking?"
"That's what I should be asking you!" Sekijiro spat back. "What were you thinking, giving your Quirk to a boy like that? Who even knows what he's had drilled into his mind? What happens once he regains his memories? Can you—"
"I can assure you," Toshinori said strongly, "that even once he regains his memories, he won't stray to the path of evil. Of course we don't want him to regain his memories, but that boy wants to do good from the bottom of his heart. I've seen it in him before I even knew the whole story. I made up my mind then, and I won't change it now. Izuku is to become the next Symbol of Peace."
"The Symbol of Peace…" Sekijiro started, "The Symbol of Peace doesn't kill."
"Wait," Nemuri halted the flow of the conversation, "does… does Midoriya even know that he caused the deaths of fifteen villains?"
The look on Toshinori's face said it all.
"Oh, God. He doesn't?" Nemuri confirmed.
Toshinori nodded.
"Are we," she faltered. "Are we going to tell him?"
Toshinori had been ready for this moment. "I will. Along with various other things. But he needs to understand what he's done and take responsibility for the lives that he's taken."
Nemuri's heart ached for the boy. Her interactions with him were limited, but from what she'd seen teaching his class, he seemed like a bright, if not shy, happy boy. She hated to think what knowledge of his deeds would do to that expression.
Of course, due to the nature of their work, sometimes death was unavoidable. But it was always a rule of thumb for the heroes to try to take back villains alive. It was both a moral high ground issue and a publicity issue. No one liked a hero with a high casualty rate.
"But even then," Sekijirio began, "have you not thought about what it would be like if one of our students was killed by Midoriya, even if by accident, in a class spar? We have the inter-class war later this semester, after all."
"I have. And he, so far, is of no threat to the safety of the other students." Aizawa, who had been quiet up until now, spoke in an attempt to defend his student. It was surprising for Toshinori to hear Aizawa of all people backing him up, but he appreciated the help nonetheless.
"I just… I fear that boy. I fear what he could become." Sekijiro said grimly. "I fear for the safety of his classmates, my students. What happens if he isn't able to control his Quirk? Haven't you seen the bodies as they were collected? Some had their entire chest area caved in from one punch. We have spars at U.A. all the time. What if he isn't able to hold back then?"
"I feel that arguing about this isn't going to get us anywhere," Nezu finally spoke up. "I will deliver my judgement on this matter to prevent any further debate. Does anyone have an issue with that?"
No one did. They all knew that, when Nezu passed judgement, it was usually correct.
"Okay." Nezu took a deep breath. "I will begin with saying that Toshinori-kun is correct in informing Izuku about the death that he has directly caused. Be sure to reiterate that, while not technically illegal, it is deeply frowned upon. Being the Symbol of Peace is more than just being able to kill villains. With your strength, Toshinori-kun, you should understand what I'm trying to say more than anyone else."
Toshinori nodded.
"I don't believe that Toshinori-kun should take back his Quirk; I don't even think that it is possible in the first place. I also do not think that we should take action to remove him from the hero course at U.A., that would undeniably be a massive waste of potential. So now we come to a crossroads. One path we could theoretically take is to inform Midoriya of his forgotten past. This, of course, comes with risks. We have no idea how Midoriya could transform, if he does at all, after learning about it." Nezu paused, reflecting for a bit.
"This is what I think we should do. We wait patiently for now. We engrave, on his mind, that U.A. is a safe place. So, even if he does reawaken his memories, he is torn between whatever has been indoctrinated, if there even existed such a thing in the first place, and his love for this place. In that crucial moment of hesitation, we will capture him. Kill him if necessary."
Nezu's heavy words were met with shocked faces, but he continued. "It will be an unavoidable action. No matter what, we can not allow Midoriya to be taken by villains. Under no circumstances are we allowed to have that happen," he repeated. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Surely we don't have to kill him," Toshinori interjected.
"I'm afraid that's not a decision we can afford to make," Nezu rebuked. "If the power of One For All fell into the hands of the villains, the consequences would be massive, and I'm not just talking about the fight between good and evil. I'm talking about society as a whole. But I am willing to believe in you, and by extension, believe in the boy's desire to be good. That is the sole reason that I am even taking this risk in the first place."
The participants of the meeting remained silent.
"I'm not hearing any complaints. Good. Now go, Toshinori-kun," Nezu said. "You will… likely have a very difficult conversation with Izuku in the near future. It would probably be in your best interest to prepare for that."
Toshinori nodded solemnly and got up. He ignored the eyes following him and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him with a click.
Oh, he was not looking forward to the conversation.
.:.
Izuku was awoken by someone knocking at the door.
Startled, he looked at the electronic clock in his room. 3:37!? It was really three o'clock in the afternoon? He cashed early last night—at around eight, if he remembered correctly. That meant he had been asleep for… nineteen hours?
"Coming!" Izuku shouted, throwing on some pants and a jacket. Barely dressed, he rushed to open the door, shocked out of his mind when he found All Mi—Toshinori standing before him.
"Just woke up?" Toshinori observed, eyes glancing at his disheveled state and the general look of the room. "May I come in?"
"Yeah," Izuku admitted, trying not to breathe out too hard lest his morning breath reach Toshinori. "Wait—you could tell?"
"I can guess," Toshinori said. "Happened a lot when I overexerted myself while training with One For All."
"Ohhh," Izuku hummed, then instantly brightening up. Before he started talking about the events of the U.S.J., he just had to get this off of his mind. "Hey, before I forget, I think I found some more Quirks that I have!"
As Izuku reached to fish out his notebook, he missed the way that Toshinori's face stiffened.
"I wrote down some notes regarding them, and I was thinking that you could maybe help me in figuring out what Quirks they are," Izuku said hopefully. He handed Toshinori his notebook, prompting his mentor to glance at what was written.
After reading it over, Toshinori said, "Hold on a sec." He whipped out his phone and… seemed to access a file or a document of some sort, Izuku couldn't tell from where he was standing. After reading through it a couple of times, Toshinori nodded and put away his phone.
"Well, you already know about One For All and Blackwhip," Toshinori started. "But this third and fourth one you wrote down, the ones about freezing and reconstructing, are the same Quirk. Its name is Chrono Force."
"Chrono Force," Izuku repeated, rolling the words over his tongue.
Before he got the chance to ask, Toshinori said, "I think it was the First or the Second's Quirk. Can't be sure on that, though."
Izuku bit back his words of that feels incorrect and nodded at Toshinori to continue.
"The Quirk is simple to explain, but its applications are many," Toshinori explained. "From what I know of it, it is the ability to rewind, pause, or fast forward anything that is done to or happens within the body. You've been doing that this whole time, correct?"
That… made a lot of sense. Technically, when he was using fifty percent of One For All throughout his body, he was putting his body and muscles on "pause" to ensure that they didn't break; freezing was the same thing as pausing. And when he reconstructed his torn up limbs, he was technically rewinding what had been done to him.
"And this visualize opposites Quirk is called Electromagneta. It allows you to control the magnetic fields, charges, and currents of… uh…"
He quickly fished out his phone, took a good, hard look at it, and put it away. "It has something to do with moving electrons. It's—how do I say this… it hasn't popped up a lot in many users of One For All, so I don't know much about it. All I can say for sure is that it's about manipulating electrons, so you can create electromagnetic barriers to protect you from projectiles or whatever else you can come up with."
Izuku nodded slowly. "To what extent can I manipulate the electrons?"
"Uhm, I'm not sure, the records aren't too clear on that. Well, anyways, enough about Quirks—"
But Izuku was already mumbling. "If I can manipulate electrons, aside from defense, can't it be used offensively? I think it would be worth to check out to what distance I can manipulate the electrons, so that I could potentially look into—"
"Uh, Izuku?" Toshinori said softly.
Yet the boy would not stop. He kept on mumbling, coming up with multiple hypotheses on the limits and extents of his Quirk Electromagneta. It got to the point where even Toshinori could tell, with just a single glance, that the boy was happy. He was having fun, and Toshinori…
Could he really rain on his parade by doing what he initially came to do, to tell him that he caused the deaths of fifteen people? Sure, they were villains, but was he really about to tell the boy that he had killed?
Could he really do that? Wipe the small smile off of his face? Was he, the Symbol of Peace, strong enough to possibly emotionally ruin a dreaming boy?
Toshinori took another long look at the boy.
This was a conversation that he had to have.
This was a conversation that he had to have.
He knew that, yet…
He couldn't bring himself to broach the topic.
He wanted to, if just even for another day, protect that smile on Izuku's face.
With a dreary look in his eyes, Toshinori resolved to tell him on another day.
Some notes:
1. I've decided to bump up the rating to M because of the, uh, not so kid-friendly descriptions that happened this chapter and in future chapters to come.
2. I guess the most important thing to note is that Izuku wasn't fully in control during the fights last chapter and in the beginning of this chapter before Katsuki beat some sense into him; he alternated between 100%, 0% beyond 100%, and everywhere in between while beating up the villains. That's why the power he displayed was inconsistent, I wrote it that way on purpose. Berserk Izuku was fun to write.
3. Q. "And was it even healthy for him to switch mindsets this quickly?" A. No it is not, no it is definitely not. Hahahahahahahahaha, more on that to come~
4. My intention in the Nomu fight wasn't to have Izuku overpower it physically like All Might did, but to defeat it after thoroughly analyzing it. Also… Danger Sense! The Fourth user's Quirk—let me know if you've spotted where I slid it in.
5. "No matter what, we can not allow Midoriya to be taken by villains." Ahahaha…
6. More on Electromagneta and Chrono Force in the chapters to come! Chrono Force and Electromagneta are the first two Quirks I came up with. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say Chrono Force was the first Quirk I came up with when drafting this story and Electromagneta was heavily inspired from A Certain Scientific Railgun. I hope you guys can see how we're going to get to Eventual OP!Izuku.
7. Just to clarify, Electromagneta and Chrono Force are not One For All Quirks, that's just All Might lying to Izuku.
8. How do you guys think Izuku will react to being told that he caused the deaths of all those villains? All Might chickened out from telling him this chapter, but don't worry, that conversation will happen. I wanna hear your thoughts on this.
9. Thank you for reading!