It started with a text.
It had been a few days after Tokyo burned. I was sitting in my dorm room, staring at the dust motes dancing in the dim light, when my phone buzzed.
I thought it was my parents. I hoped it was them, telling me they were safe, that the construction business didn't matter, that they just wanted me home. But the number was a void, no caller ID, no name, just a string of digits that looked like a scar across the screen.
The header was a cold, clinical hook: Information on Katsuki Bakugo and Izuku Midoriya.
I almost deleted it. My thumb hovered over the trash icon, trembling. In a world of villains and hackers, a random link is a landmine. But curiosity is a rot, and I was already hollowed out by the silence of the school. I clicked.
The first thing I heard wasn't a voice. It was a sound I'll never forget, the wet, rhythmic thwack of a hand striking skin. Then, laughter. Not the competitive, sharp laughter Bakugo used in training, but something jagged and cruel.
The video was grainy. I saw them. They were so small. Bakugo looked exactly the same, shoulders squared, palms sparking with a terrifying, youthful arrogance. And there was Izuku. He was curled in the dirt, his yellow backpack tossed aside like a piece of trash. He wasn't fighting back. He was just... taking it.
I swiped away, my heart hammering against my ribs. I texted back, my fingers clumsy. Who is this? How did you get my number?
The reply came instantly, as if they were waiting for me to drown. A classmate. We went to school with them in Aldera. We were surprised to see them at the Sports Festival together. Especially after everything.
Everything? I asked. I didn't want to know. I wanted to throw the phone out the window. I wanted to believe that Bakugo was just "intense," that his aggression was a by-product of a hero's drive.
Midoriya was quirkless, the void replied. And Bakugo made sure he never forgot it.
Then, the audio file arrived.
It was short. Five seconds of a boy's voice, cracking with a malice that made the air in my room feel thin.
"If you want to be a hero that badly, there's actually a really good way. Believe that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof!"
I dropped the phone. The device hit the floor, the screen cracking further, but the voice stayed. It echoed in the corners of the room, mingling with the memory of Izuku's quiet smiles and his habit of mumbling in the back of the class.
Throughout the following week, I watched them. I watched the way Izuku flinched when a door slammed too loud. I watched the way Bakugo's eyes followed him with a mix of obsession and loathing. When they fought in the hallway, I stood in the back.
I wanted to call out to him. I wanted to say, Deku, are you okay?
But the name died in my throat. Deku.
I remembered the day I first called him that. I remembered the way he flinched at first until I have it a different meaning and his face lit up when I told him it sounded like "You can do it." I thought I was being kind.
But as I looked at that cracked screen, I realized I hadn't given him a gift. I had taken the word his torturer used to strip him of his humanity and I had made it his identity. I had told a boy who had been told he was "useless" every day of his life that he should wear that name like a crown. I was a hero, wasn't I? And yet, I had been a participant in his erasure.
I should have gone to Aizawa. I should have reached out to Izuku, held his hand, and asked him to tell me the truth. I should have done something besides watch a tragedy unfold from the sidelines.
Now, the antiseptic smell of the hospital is so thick I can taste it. It's the smell of failure.
I'm sitting on a plastic chair that feels like ice against my legs. My knees are pulled up to my chest, and I'm staring at the flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling. It hums, a low, electric buzz that sounds like a flatline.
Ten feet away, behind a heavy reinforced door, All Might is being kept alive by machines. And Izuku...
Izuku isn't here. He isn't in any of the rooms.
I close my eyes and I see the video again. I see the boy in the dirt, and I realize that the "Champion" we all wanted him to be was just a mask for the boy who needed a hero all those years ago.
It started with a text. And it ended with the realization that the person I wanted to save has finally, mercifully, disappeared. I wait for Aizawa to walk through those double doors and tell us the world is over, but in my heart, I know the truth.
The hero is dead. The "Deku" I knew never existed.
___
There was a cold, pressurized silence, broken only by the rhythmic, mechanical hiss-click of a high-grade life support system and the erratic, frantic chirping of a dozen biometric monitors.
Shota Aizawa stood in the corner of the room, his silhouette a jagged shadow against the bleached white walls. His eyes were fixed on the bed in the center of the room. Toshinori Yagi, the man who had once stood as the sun of their society, looked like a broken clock, his frame dwarfed by the massive array of machinery keeping him anchored to reality.
Recovery Girl was perched on a stool, her face aged a decade by the events of the last few hours. Two senior nurses, specialists vetted by Nezu and her most recently two years prior, moved with ghost-like efficiency around the bed, adjusting IV drips of concentrated nutrients and blood thinners.
"The phenomena defies any standard medical logic," Recovery Girl began, her voice a dry, hushed rattle. She pointed to a screen displaying a thermal reconstructive map of All Might's body. "When the rescue drones brought him in, he was… fragmented. But the moment we laid him on the table, the tissue began to seek itself out. It was as if the space between his severed limbs collapsed. The flesh reattached itself with surgical, almost molecular precision. There are no stitches, Aizawa. There are only seams."
Aizawa stepped forward, his gaze never leaving the unconscious hero. "Is that the 'Adaptability' quirk?"
Recovery Girl glanced at the nurses. One of them, a woman with a calm, stoic face, checked a monitor and gave a curt nod. "We have locked the internal logs," the nurse said softly. "Nothing that happens in this room leaves this room. We are aware of the sensitivity regarding the Number One's biological history."
"It isn't just the Adaptability," Recovery Girl said, turning back to Aizawa. "I don't know what caused the initial displacement, but his body is in a state of extreme biological paradox. The Adaptability is active, yes, but it's struggling. Usually, that quirk would reset his body to its baseline within twenty-four hours, but the trauma he sustained… it's too deep. His heart stopped twice in the transport. He has lost sixty percent of his total blood volume."
"Then why isn't it fixing him?" Aizawa hissed, his voice laced with a desperate, suppressed rage.
"Because he isn't awake to drive it," Recovery Girl explained, tapping a graph showing a flatline of neural activity. "Adaptability is a survival mechanism, but it requires a conscious or subconscious will to survive. Right now, Toshinori is in a suspended death state. His brain has retreated into a deep, protective coma. His body is diverting every ounce of energy just to keep his cells from decaying. The machines are doing the work his quirk can't, they are keeping the blood moving and the lungs expanding long enough for the 'Adaptability' to slowly, painfully, rebuild his internal structure."
She sighed, a sound of profound defeat. "It's a biological stalemate. He is a man who was hit by a force that logic cannot explain, being kept alive by a quirk that refuses to let him die."
"How long?" Aizawa asked.
Recovery Girl hesitated, looking at her clipboard. One of the nurses stepped in, her voice clinical and cold. "Any other hero would be in a morgue. If they survived through some miracle, they would be catatonic for eight months at minimum. But this is All Might. His cellular density is still higher than the average human. We estimate he may begin to show signs of cognitive awareness in three to five months."
Aizawa's hand slammed against the metal tray beside him, sending a stack of gauze fluttering to the floor. "Three to five months? We don't have three to five days! The League is growing, this 'Harvest' is will start escalating once the villains understand the position we're in, and now Midoriya has vanished into thin air after… whatever that was!"
Aizawa paced the small room like a caged animal. "We have no Symbol and a student body that is terrified. And Midoriya... He disappeared. He moved in ways I've never seen. He looked at All Might with such a lack of care until the last moment where it looked like he was about to cry."
Recovery Girl looked up at him, her eyes sharp. "Why did he fight All Might, Shota? What was going on with his quirk? The biometric data we pulled from his suit before he vanished showed spikes of energy that shouldn't be possible for a fifteen-year-old body to handle."
Aizawa shook his head, his hair falling over his face. "I don't know."
"And Bakugo?" Recovery Girl asked.
"He's fine," Aizawa spat, the name tasting like poison. "Severe head trauma, some fractured ribs, and small burns on his palms. He'll wake up in a day or so. But he won't be coming back to class. He'll be waking up to a police escort and a team of investigators. After what he did to Midoriya… if the boy survives the legal fallout, he'll be lucky to ever hold a provisional license again. I'm pushing for full prosecution."
Recovery Girl let out a long, weary sigh. "Nezu rushed them. He wanted to forge them into weapons because he was afraid of the Commission, and instead, he created a crucible that melted them both. He wanted 'Monsters in a Box,' and that's exactly what he got."
Aizawa stopped pacing. He took a deep, jagged breath, his chest heaving. He looked at All Might, the broken pillar of their world, and then at the door.
"Once the doctors stabilize him further, we're moving him," Aizawa said, his voice dropping to a low, cold promise. "Nezu has a safe house, a bunker off the grid that even the Commission doesn't know about. If the villains find out he's in this state, they'll level the school just to finish the job."
He turned toward the exit, his capture scarf bristling.
"Where are you going?" Recovery Girl asked.
"I'm going to find Nezu," Aizawa said, his eyes glowing a dull, dangerous red. "We need to talk about his 'results.' And I'm going to make sure he understands exactly what his plan cost us."
___
The glow of the smartphone screen was the only thing alive in the suffocating darkness of the dorm room. It cast a harsh, digital blue light across a pair of eyes that were narrowed in rapt, almost hypnotic focus.
A thumb swiped upward on a blackened glass surface, navigating past a series of decoy folders and encrypted firewalls until it tapped an icon that didn't officially exist, a glitchy, flickering emblem of a broken bird.
The video feed opened.
It was raw footage, unedited and bypass-fed directly from the "Box's" internal sensors as the hack had fully blinded the teachers. The boy watched the first file, Midoriya and Bakugo. He watched the moment the explosion sent Midoriya through the brickwork. It was a little unfortunate that there was no audio.
A low, raspy chuckle vibrated in the boy's throat. It was a wicked sound, devoid of the playful energy he usually projected in the hallways.
"Look at them," he whispered, his voice smooth and cold. "Tearing each other apart over a childhood that never ended. Beautiful."
He flicked his thumb again, skipping to the secondary feed, the one that even the faculty hadn't fully seen.
It was the more unique and scary showing of Midoriya Izuku fighting All Might like a child taking apart a toy. He watched the number one's body... collapse into displaced parts.
The boy let out a sharp, jagged laugh that died into a satisfied sigh.
"I never thought things could escalate this far," he murmured, his eyes reflecting the white-hot flash of a spatial rupture. "The 'Champion' became something that the world would be terrified of."
He flipped the phone over, the screen going dark as it hit the mattress. To the rest of the school, this was a tragedy, a collapse of the heroic ideal. But to him, it was just another data point.
"An odd step for the advancement of our freedoms," he mused, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips in the dark.
He reached out, his fingers idly tracing the edge of his charging cable, a faint, nearly invisible spark of yellow static dancing between his skin and the plastic.
"This can still be used," he said, his voice dropping to a final, resolute whisper. "The Commission is blinded. The school is broken. I just need to find the right time to show the world what their 'heroes' really look like when the lights go out and they're free to act with no restrictions."