Class 1-A trained harder, provisional licenses burning holes in pockets, whispers of the Shie Hassaikai rippling through briefings like smoke from a hidden fuse.
Eri. The name had come to him in fragments: a child's cry in a police report, a quirk-erasure bullet in a confiscated lab, Kai Chisaki's name surfacing in Aizawa's late-night mutters.
Meta-knowledge filled the gaps—the yakuza's underground empire, the bullet's origin, the little girl at its heart, horned and haunted, Overhaul's unwilling key to quirk-destroying salvation.
In the original timeline, it had been a raid: heroes storming the fortress, blood on snow, Eri's tears freezing the air. Here? Izuku couldn't wait. Not with her screams echoing in his soul's memory.
He'd slipped away at dusk, a forged note to Aizawa about "personal training," Mina and Momo covering with alibis of study sessions.
Denki and Aoyama stayed behind—resurrected flesh too precious for exposure, their "family leave" cover still fragile.
Midnight patrolled the dorms, her bound loyalty a silent sentinel.
This was solo: no class, no pros, no system. Just Izuku Midoriya, human heart and hidden arsenal, against the abyss.
The sewer grate above the Shie Hassaikai HQ loomed like a iron maw. Izuku paused in the ankle-deep sludge, Ocean extending its tide—eighty percent mastery painting the underbelly in crimson pulses: fifty heartbeats above, steady guards; deeper, erratic rhythms of caged desperation; one small, fluttering beat in the core, laced with fear and fever.
Eri. His jaw tightened, fist clenching until knuckles whitened. Power reset, baseline human strength humming in his muscles—fifty scaling hits from the last spar with Bakugou, but tonight it started fresh. No matter. He'd earn it.
He wedged the grate with a muffled pry bar from Momo's last creation session, emerging into a loading dock shrouded in fog from industrial vents.
The HQ squatted like a concrete tumor: eight stories of brutalist architecture, barbed wire crowns glinting under sodium lamps, yakuza enforcers patrolling catwalks with quirk-enhanced eyes.
Chisaki's domain—Overhaul's lair—rumored to burrow deeper, a warren of labs and vaults where quirks were dismantled like clockwork.
Izuku crouched behind rusted dumpsters, breath fogging the air. Distraction first. Sneak second. Rescue third.
His palm ignited with necromantic sigils—sea-green fire coiling like kelp in a storm. Dimensional Storage yawned, a rift between worlds, and his army poured forth.
First: Gasper Vladi, the dhampir knight. He materialized in a flutter of bat-wings, crimson eyes glowing like embers, Forbidden Balor View humming behind sealed lids.
"Master," he whispered, voice a velvet chill. "Command me."
Next: the six skeletal thralls, clattering into formation like porcelain soldiers—rusted armor creaking, eye-sockets flaring green. Bone and blade, disposable fury.
Then: the Earth Titan, Pixie-Bob's masterpiece unchained. The ground trembled as the fifty-meter colossus rose from the rift, granite plates grinding, magma vents igniting in its spine.
A low rumble escaped its furnace maw, shaking the dock like an earthquake's prelude.
Muscular last—Goto Imasuji, the brute. The eight-foot slab of augmented muscle burst forth, straitjacket shredded, metal eye replaced by a glowing socket from Izuku's makeshift repairs. He cracked his neck, grinning with shark teeth.
"Time to play, boss?"
Izuku nodded, voice steel.
"Distraction. Draw them out. No kills—contain, collapse, clear my path. Gasper, time-stop the sentries if needed. Titan, breach the outer walls. Muscular, thralls—funnel them to the flanks. Go."
They moved as one, a necromantic tide crashing against the yakuza's fortress.
The Earth Titan struck first. One colossal foot slammed the loading bay, concrete buckling like paper, shockwave hurling guards from catwalks.
Its roar split the night—furnace bellow shaking windows for blocks—magma vents erupting in geysers that melted barbed wire to slag.
Yakuza enforcers scrambled, quirks igniting: a rock-skinned brute hurled boulders the size of cars; the Titan swatted them aside like gnats, tail sweeping a swath that cratered the eastern wall.
Alarms wailed, red lights strobing the compound. "Intruders! Code Omega—Overhaul's orders: contain and eliminate!"
Gasper vanished in a blur, wings folding as he infiltrated the perimeter. Time froze around a sniper nest—Balor View's gaze petrifying seconds—guards slumping mid-draw, rifles clattering.
He reappeared on a rooftop, fangs bared, directing skeletal thralls like a conductor's baton. The bones charged in phalanx, blades whirring, green fire lancing from sockets to ignite ammo caches.
Explosions bloomed, secondary blasts from quirk-tech grenades, skeletons shattering and reforming in necromantic haze.
Muscular laughed, a guttural thunder, charging the main gate. Muscle fibers hypertrophied, arms swelling to tree-trunk girth, smashing through reinforced steel like foil.
"Come on, you suits! Let's see those fancy quirks!" A yakuza with acid spit met him—drenching the brute's chest in corrosive bile.
Muscular roared, fibers knitting instantly under Izuku's binding, then backhanded the man into a wall, cratering brick.
Another, a telekinetic, hurled debris storms; Muscular bulldozed through, fist connecting with a meaty thud that sent the villain crumpling.
The distraction swelled to symphony. Yakuza poured from vents and doors—fifty, sixty strong—quirks a cacophony: flame-throwers scorching thrall ranks (bones charring, reforming), speedsters blurring to flank the Titan (granite hide shrugging off blades), a gravity manipulator crushing skeletons mid-charge (necromancy defying entropy, shards knitting anew).
Gunfire rattled, quirk-bullets pinging off the Titan's plates; Gasper's shadows darted, time-stops freezing kill-shots mid-flight.
Izuku watched from the shadows, Ocean a crimson map of chaos: heartbeats spiking in panic, commands barked over radios.
Chisaki's voice crackled through intercepted comms—"Secure the labs! The girl cannot fall!"—Eri's pulse fluttering deeper, a fragile beacon.
Now.
He slipped the perimeter like oil through cracks, Power baseline but fists ready. A lone guard rounded a corner—quirkless pistol drawn.
Izuku surged: jab to the solar plexus—thud, one—dropping the man wheezing. Second punch, scaling instant, to the temple—crack, two—lights out, body slumped gentle.
Deeper: service corridors, flickering fluorescents buzzing like angry wasps. Two enforcers blocked a junction, one with elastic limbs stretching like taffy, the other summoning illusory duplicates.
Izuku feinted left—elastic arm whipping; he ducked, counter-hook to the real one's jaw—snap, three—illusions shattering as the summoner crumpled.
Elastic rebounded, limbs coiling to crush; Izuku twisted inside, uppercut to the gut—boom, four—air evacuating in a whoosh, body folding.
Stairs down, three at a time.
Alarms drowned in the aboveground bedlam—Titan's roars, Muscular's bellows, thrall clashes a clatter of bone on flesh.
A lab tech fled upward, white coat flapping; Izuku sidestepped, palm-strike to the neck—five—gentle collapse.
Sublevel two: sterile halls, quirk-suppressant fields humming (ineffective on his gears, but noted). Four yakuza in lab coats, armed with syringes and quirk-darts.
They turned, quirks igniting—a cryokinetic freezing the air, hydro-manipulator flooding the corridor, two electrics sparking arcs.
Izuku exploded forward. Dodge the ice wall—punch through at baseline, fist shattering frost—crunch, six—scaling cold bite fueling fire.
Water surged; he dove under, rising with a haymaker to the hydro's knee—thud, seven—wave collapsing in spray.
Electrics flanked, bolts chaining; Izuku rolled, coming up between—left cross to one's temple—zap, eight, absorbing the arc; right hook crumpling the other—boom, nine.
Cryokinetic last: blizzard howling, shards like knives. Izuku charged the maelstrom, punches weaving a shield—ten shattering a spike, eleven cracking the field, twelve—a straight to the chest that ended it, frost blooming then melting in defeat.
Silence in the sublevel, broken by distant echoes. Eri's heartbeat quickened—fear? Hope? Izuku pressed on, corridors narrowing to vaults: doors sealed with biometric locks (Momo's stored creations bypassed with a palm-print spoof from Gasper's prep).
Guards thinned—Chisaki's elite deeper— but the distraction worked: aboveground, the Titan breached a support pillar, HQ shuddering like a beast in pain.
Sublevel five: the core. Air grew thick with chemical tang, quirk-essence residue from bullet forges.
Two final sentries—Chisaki's lieutenants, quirks elite: one with phasing walls, the other regenerative flesh knitting wounds mid-fight.
They ambushed from alcoves. Phasing walls slammed, concrete turning ethereal to crush; Izuku punched the wall—crack, thirteen—phasing shattering like glass illusion, fist embedding in solid behind.
Regenerator lunged, flesh bubbling to blades; Izuku sidestepped, elbow to the spine—thud, fourteen—blades retracting in spasm.
They pressed: walls reforming to trap, regenerator's arms elongating to scythes. Izuku danced the knife-edge—fifteen cracking a barrier, sixteen shearing an arm (regenerating, but slower), seventeen—an uppercut buckling the phaser's knee.
Walls closed like jaws; he roared through, eighteen shattering the cage, nineteen—a hook crumpling the regenerator's guard, twenty—final straight to the jaw, both crumpling in tandem.
The hall fell still. Eri's pulse thundered now, mere meters away. Izuku approached the vault door—reinforced steel, etched with yakuza sigils, a red light pulsing denial.
He placed his palm, necromantic sigil flaring subtle. The lock clicked, unmaking under Ocean's tide.
The door hissed open.
Beyond: a sterile chamber of horrors. Beakers bubbled with crimson elixirs, surgical tables scarred with straps, monitors beeping vital signs in cold green.
In the center, a glass enclosure like a twisted nursery: tubes snaking to a small form, horned and fragile, silver hair matted, eyes wide with terror.
Kai Chisaki—Overhaul—stood over her, gloved hands mid-gesture, plague mask turning slow. Eri whimpered, curling tighter.
Izuku stepped into the light.