Humming happily to himself, a teenager wandered out of his school, his messy hair blowing wildly in the wind. "Hey! Izuku!" Running up to him was another teen, dressed in the same uniform as him, with long white hair trailing to his shoulders.
"Hi Yoichi. How do you think you did?" Izuku smiled as his childhood friend began talking about their recent exam, only stopping to occasionally cough.
Eventually reaching their destination, the two stepped inside of Shigaraki's home. "Ah, there you two are." A familiar unsettling voice spoke from the passage, the form of Yoichi's older brother standing within. "Midoriya, I read your paper, it's most interesting." The man held up is phone, displayed on the screen was a science article, the headline reading: 'Correlation with toe joints and Meta-abilities.'
"I don't think that's any of your business, brother." Yoichi subtly moved in front of Midoriya, his gaze locked firmly on his relative. However, before he could object further, he began to cough violently.
The older man looked down at his brother, not taking his eyes off him as he spoke: "Midoriya, you have more knowledge on Meta-abilities than most. Tell me, what do you think would happen to someone who gained one, without being born with it."
The green haired boy glanced towards his friend, then nervously replied: "T-that's not possible. Meta-abilities are part of someone's dna, you would have to have extremely advanced gene editing to do something like that. And if you could, there's bound to be some changes you can't make that should be there."
The imposing figure made a noise of understanding at the boy's words, then began to approach. "No!" Yoichi shouted, suddenly on edge. "I won't let you touch him."
"Worry not brother, after all this is over, you'll realise that I helped you." The man held up his hand, from which, a grey gas slowly began to fill the room.
Izuku staggered as the vapour entered his lungs, then crashed to the ground, unconscious.
It might have been weeks, or maybe months, at this point Izuku wasn't sure. As he was led back to the padded room, his eyes glanced to Yoichi, who sat in the corner, yellow light occasionally flashing around his fist. The guard slammed the door shut, leaving the two by themselves.
"I got everything finished." Recently, that man (Why couldn't he remember the name?) had been curious about Izuku's studies of Meta-abilities, and 'asked' him to study changes to Yoichi. "There's nothing different than before whatever he did, but well..." Izuku handed over the x-ray, one of Shigaraki's foot.
"The joints..."
"Yeah, it seems like you've had a power all your life."
The reinforced door swung open, a familiar head of white hair stepping through. "As I thought." Two glares found their way to the man. "And you still haven't come around. I'll let you in on a little secret. A resistance group has formed against me, one who is causing an unexpected stir. With their presence, I cannot afford to keep you two around."
"I suppose it's too ambitious to think you'll let us go." Anger was a rare thing Izuku saw in Yoichi, but now his tone was exactly that.
"Indeed. Worry not, you're not going to die. Well... at the very least, I'm not going to kill you. Come along." Two guards entered the room, dragging the two prisoners behind their leader.
The sterile corridors passed by quickly, ending with a passcode locked door. The man in front entered a code, swinging the door open to reveal the room, or rather device, inside.
The floor changed to a circular pit, with a ring of electronics surrounding it. "This is a prototype device invented by Bracca technologies, supposedly it was designed to extract energy from a strange other world. I am most curious about how it can be of use, especially what said world is like."
"What? You're going to throw us in just because of your curiosity. You're insane!"
"Perhaps, but doesn't every demon lord need to do some villainy to show how evil they are?"
"Clearly you didn't understand the message brother. The villain always loses in the end."
As the brothers stared each other down, the machine roared to life, a swirling black and red portal appearing in the middle. "Goodbye, Midoriya, Yoichi. Remember, you brought this on yourselves." A blast of wind burst from the man's hand, sending the two friends flying back into the portal and into the depths of hell.
"Izuku, you should move. You've been standing here for 10 minutes. Someone will get suspicious."
His friends voice echoed in his ear as he stared at the large screen atop an office building, a news presenter, standing before a graph, was displayed upon it.
"With crime rates at over 50% in some areas, the highest recorded in the last century, many citizens have taken to the streets to protest the current state of heroics. Protesters have questioned number one hero: Endeavour's actions especially."
The screen changed to a picture of a man in a blue body suit, his left arm a silvery metal and a scowl upon his face. "Considering the hero is reported to cause a death when stopping one in 10 crimes, it's no wonder the public are angry, the question is: is there anyone out there who could solve these issues?"
The reporter opened their mouth to speak again, but was cut off as the screen went black, along with the entire street's lights. Above the street, a rift formed, from which demons began to drop.
"How come these guys always have to be a horde battle?"
Izuku glanced to his side, a department store stood before him, one of his favourite tools sitting within the front window.
"What did you want, rat?" Aizawa didn't bother to shut the door as he wandered into the office, taking a long sip from his thermos.
"I have another lead on our mystery man. He was spotted in Shinjuku, massacring monsters using a chainsaw." Nezu turned his screen to how Aizawa the footage, causing the man to sigh deeply.
"Wait... pause it." Aizawa squinted at the screen, then backed away. "It's as I thought. Every time one of those things dies the energy around him gets larger, like he's siphoning strength from them."
"I'll run the numbers, if we can figure out how much stronger he gets per death, we might be able to tell his age at the very least." Nezu began swiftly typing, leaving his employee to stare into his rapidly shrinking drink.
"And... done!" The chimera's smile quickly diminished as he stared at the result on his screen.
"What now?"
"These numbers... if he always grows at the rate he does now then... he'd have to be billions of years old."
Aizawa stared at his boss, downed the rest of his coffee then stood up. "I'll get Snipe's whiskey."
"That might be necessary."