Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1: ALL EYES ON ME
During the dawn of Quirks, society did not simply change. It broke under the weight of something no one had been prepared to understand, let alone control.
The old world had been built on rules everyone understood. Laws, governments, borders, police, armies, courts, and the quiet agreement that power belonged to institutions rather than individuals. Then children began being born with abilities no system had been designed to contain, and almost overnight, that agreement collapsed.
There were people who could level buildings with their hands. People who could vanish into crowds. People who could burn, crush, fly, poison, and kill before anyone knew how to stop them. Some used those gifts out of fear, while others used them simply because they could. Territory was carved out by strength, communities barricaded themselves behind whatever protection they could find, and for those without power, survival became a daily calculation.
The world waited for someone to fix it, but when no one came, ordinary people stepped forward instead.
They were not licensed. They were not trained by any official program. They were not protected by law or recognized by authority. Some wore masks, some did not, and some fought for neighborhoods, families, or strangers they would never see again. They were reckless, flawed, and often outmatched, but they stood between the helpless and the chaos anyway.
At first, people called them criminals. Then they called them vigilantes. Eventually, when the world became desperate enough to accept any kind of hope, they called them heroes.
Their efforts mattered. They saved lives, pushed back against the worst of the violence, and reminded people that Quirks did not have to mean domination. But scattered acts of courage could only carry society so far. One hero could save a street and ten could save a town, but none of them could rebuild civilization by themselves.
For that, the world needed structure. It needed laws that could survive Quirks, heroes who could operate without becoming warlords, and power that could be watched, guided, controlled, and presented to the public as something safe.
That need gave birth to the Hero Public Safety Commission.
From its earliest days, the Commission understood something most governments had learned too late. Power was not enough. People did not follow power unless they could trust it, and they did not trust strength alone. They trusted symbols.
And in the wreckage of that broken age, the Commission found one.
Soldier Boy.
No one knew where he came from. Not really.
There were stories, of course, because there were always stories when someone like him appeared. Some claimed he had been a soldier before the fall, a man who kept fighting long after the chain of command died. Others said he had been a vigilante from the first days of chaos, operating under different names before the Commission ever reached him. There were rumors that he had fought beside some of the earliest resistance groups when the worst of the Quirk wars were still swallowing entire districts.
None of those stories were ever confirmed.
The Commission never gave the public his real name, and they never explained his past in any way that could be properly questioned. They gave the world what it needed instead.
An image.
Soldier Boy was not the first person to save lives during the age of chaos, and he was not the only powerful Quirk user of his time. What made him different was what happened after the Commission placed him in front of the world. They gave him a title, a costume, and a purpose people could understand. They took a man who could survive battles others could not imagine and turned him into proof that the new system worked.
Where vigilantes had been scattered, Soldier Boy was steady. Where the world had been uncertain, he was dependable. Where people had learned to fear anyone with too much power, he gave them permission to believe power could be on their side.
He was strong enough that even the worst villains learned to hesitate when his name was spoken. Strong enough that entire conflicts shifted when he entered the field. Strong enough that people stopped asking whether the Commission could truly protect them and started believing that maybe, finally, someone could.
But strength alone was not what made him useful, and the Commission understood that better than anyone.
Soldier Boy became a story people could repeat to themselves when the world still felt close to falling apart. He was the man who arrived when things were at their worst, the man who stood firm when everyone else broke, the man who proved that heroes did not have to be scattered vigilantes fighting outside the law.
He became the answer.
With him came the first real foundation of the modern hero system. Agencies formed, licensing standards were written, schools adapted, and laws shifted. The chaos did not vanish, but it was pushed back piece by piece until the public could finally imagine a future that did not end in collapse.
Soldier Boy became more than a man. He became the First Hero, the First Symbol, and for a time, that was enough.
Then, without warning, he disappeared.
There was no grand final battle broadcast across the world. No public retirement. No official explanation that satisfied the questions left behind. One day, he was there, standing at the center of the system he had helped legitimize, and the next, he was gone.
The Commission endured and the hero system survived, but the absence remained.
Society did not fall apart again, not completely, but something essential had been removed. The public still trusted heroes, but not with the same certainty. Every disaster carried a little more fear than it should have. Every scandal cut deeper. Every villain who slipped through the cracks reminded people of the age they had barely escaped.
The world kept moving, but it moved carefully.
Decades passed like that.
Then... All Might appeared.
He was not discovered by the Commission. He was not introduced through their channels, shaped by their speeches, or controlled by their expectations. He stepped into the world with a smile too wide for fear to survive beneath it, and with every victory, every rescue, every impossible stand, he became something the Commission could not ignore.
He became peace.
Where Soldier Boy had helped rebuild a broken society, All Might held it together. His strength was unquestionable, but strength alone was not what made people believe in him. It was the ease of his confidence, the certainty in his voice, and the way he arrived before despair could settle in and made the impossible look simple.
People did not merely admire him. They believed in him.
His image spread further than any hero before him. Television carried his smile into every home. Newspapers turned his victories into headlines. Children copied his poses in schoolyards. Criminals hesitated at the thought of him. Civilians slept easier because he existed somewhere in the world.
In time, even Soldier Boy’s legacy began to feel distant. It was still respected, still taught, still preserved in history books and Commission ceremonies, but no longer alive in the public imagination. When people spoke of the greatest hero, they no longer thought first of the man who had stood at the beginning of the system.
They thought of All Might.
The Commission noticed.
Their first symbol had been the foundation of their legitimacy, proof that the system could take power and make it trusted. Soldier Boy had shown the world that order and heroism could exist together. He had been their answer to chaos, but now that answer stood in the shadow of a man who did not belong to them.
All Might did not answer to their authority in the way they wanted. He did not need their approval to inspire people. He had spoken against them more than once when their decisions became public controversy, always with that same smile, always carefully enough to avoid open war, but clearly enough that people listened.
That was the problem. People listened to him, not because the Commission told them to, not because a press office arranged it, and not because policy shaped him into something useful. They listened because they trusted him more than they trusted the system around him.
That could not be ignored. Respecting the past was one thing, being replaced was another.
So the Commission returned to an old truth. A symbol did not need to be born naturally. It could be shaped, refined, and presented. If the world could be taught to believe in one man, then it could be taught to believe in another.
This time, they would not rely on chance. They would not wait for the right person to emerge from the wreckage. They would not risk another hero growing beyond their reach, slipping outside their authority, or vanishing before the work was complete.
Years of preparation followed. Quiet years. Expensive years. Years buried beneath classified budgets, sealed medical records, private facilities, and careful language. The public never heard about the project. Most heroes never heard whispers of it. Even inside the Commission, the full scope belonged only to those high enough to understand what they were truly attempting.
They were not preparing a weapon, because weapons frightened people. They were not preparing a soldier, because soldiers obeyed governments, and governments could be questioned. They were preparing a hero.
A new center of gravity. A new image of safety. A new symbol, not merely to inspire the world, but to guide it gently back into their hands. And at last, after years of work, the world was ready to see him.
All eyes would be on him.
They only had to wait for the right moment.
That moment came today.
"RIBBIT!"
Tsuyu Asui moved before she had time to be afraid.
Her tongue shot out across the water, wrapping around Mineta’s small body the moment he hit the surface. He flailed wildly, arms slapping at the water, his scream breaking apart into panicked spluttering as villains shifted around him like shadows beneath the ripples.
Tsuyu pulled hard.
Mineta flew back toward the boat and landed against the deck with a wet thud, trembling so badly that his fingers scraped against the wood as he tried to drag himself farther from the edge.
“Bad guys!” he shrieked, voice cracking as he pointed in every direction at once. “Bad guys, bad guys, bad guys!”
Tsuyu crouched low, one hand planted against the deck for balance as the boat rocked beneath them. The water zone stretched around them in every direction, dark and deep, broken only by the shapes moving within it. Villains circled slowly, some swimming, some standing on the water with Quirks she could not identify, all of them watching the two students with growing confidence.
They had been separated too quickly. One moment they had been standing with the rest of Class 1-A, listening to Thirteen explain rescue training. The next, that black mist villain had opened beneath them and scattered everyone across the facility like pieces thrown across a board.
No warning. No time to prepare. No teacher beside them. Only water, villains, and Mineta’s terrified breathing.
“You bastards!”
“I’ll enjoy eating you!”
The voices carried across the water, rough and eager, and Mineta’s panic worsened immediately.
Tsuyu did not let her expression change. That was important. If she panicked, Mineta would break completely, so she stayed still, eyes half-lidded, body ready, mind racing through every possible way out of this.
The answer came back the same each time.
There wasn’t one.
Far from the water zone, cold spread across another section of the facility.
Shoto Todoroki stepped forward, frost crawling from beneath his boots in a widening sheet. The villains charging him barely had time to register the drop in temperature before ice swallowed their legs, climbed their bodies, and locked them in place.
One tried to swing at him before the cold reached his shoulders. Todoroki tilted his head slightly, unimpressed, as the man froze mid-motion. “Aren’t you embarrassed?” he asked, his voice flat. “Losing to a child.”
Beside him, Tooru Hagakure shivered.
The cold bit through the air hard enough to make her hug her arms around herself, though relief quickly followed. Out of everyone she could have been warped beside, Todoroki was probably one of the safest options. He was calm, strong, and almost unfairly powerful.
For a moment, that made her feel like they might be okay. Unfortunately, one villain did not need his eyes to find her.
He moved along the edge of the frozen battlefield, avoiding the worst of Todoroki’s attention. His skin shifted with every step, color and texture changing until his outline blurred against the ice and rubble around him. He was not invisible, not truly, but close enough that anyone relying on sight alone would miss him.
His Quirk made that possible. Animal Inject.
Before coming to U.A., he had prepared carefully. Octopus camouflage to hide himself. Bloodhound scent tracking to hunt a target. Snake venom held in his jaw, waiting for the moment he came close enough to bite.
Most of the students were focused on Todoroki. That was natural. The boy with the ice was the obvious threat.
The invisible girl was not.
She stood a short distance away, completely unaware that something was stalking her by scent alone.
The villain smiled as he crept closer. 'You’re mine.'
In another zone, Momo Yaoyorozu formed a staff from her arm, the material sliding into her palms as she shifted into a defensive stance. A dull practice sword, hastily created but solid enough to matter, rested in Kyoka Jiro’s hands. Denki Kaminari stood with both hands free, sparks crawling faintly over his fingers as he swallowed hard and tried to look more confident than he felt.
They were surrounded.
The villains had not rushed them all at once. That was almost worse. They circled instead, testing angles, trading glances, grinning whenever one of the students shifted too quickly.
Jiro’s earphone jacks twitched. “Too many.”
“We shall prevail,” Momo said, gripping her staff tighter.
Kaminari forced a laugh that did not sound convincing. “So, uh, anyone got a plan that doesn’t involve us getting brutally murdered?”
No one answered.
Elsewhere, heat pressed down like a physical weight.
Mashirao Ojiro stood alone in the fire zone, sweat sliding down his face as flames reflected against his eyes. Smoke thickened the air and made every breath scrape on the way in. Villains moved through the haze ahead of him, their shapes warped by heat.
His tail coiled behind him and his fists rose. There was no backup, no teacher, and no one coming through the smoke to help, so Ojiro planted his feet and prepared to fight anyway.
Across the facility, rain hammered the ground in heavy sheets.
Fumikage Tokoyami and Koji Koda stood back to back as villains closed in from every side. Dark Shadow loomed over Tokoyami’s shoulder, restless and sharp-edged beneath the storm-dark sky. Koda’s hands trembled near his chest as his eyes darted around the area, searching desperately for birds, insects, anything alive that might answer him.
The villains kept coming, and at the center of it all, Shota Aizawa fought like a man trying to hold back a flood with his bare hands.
His capture weapon snapped around one villain’s ankle and dragged him off balance. Aizawa stepped in, drove an elbow into another attacker’s throat, twisted away from a third, and erased the Quirk of a fourth before the man could activate it. Every movement was efficient. Every strike had purpose.
But he was slowing. Not enough for his students to notice from where they were scattered, but enough for him to feel it. The weight in his limbs. The burn in his eyes. The way each new villain cost just a little more effort than the last.
In front of him stood the leader.
A thin young man covered in severed hands, posture loose and childish despite the violence around him. His fingers twitched against his arms as if he was bored, but the eyes beneath the hand covering his face watched everything with hungry irritation. Beside him waited something worse.
A hulking creature with exposed muscle, dark flesh, blank eyes, and a beak-like face that did not belong on anything human. It stood still, but not passively. There was a terrible readiness in its body, like a command was the only thing holding it back.
High above the USJ, beyond the broken dome and chaos below, someone hovered in the air. He did not move.
Arms folded over his chest, cape shifting behind him in the wind, he watched the facility beneath him with eyes that missed nothing. Every scream, every impact, every student dropped into danger, every villain converging, and every second passing while he remained where he had been told to remain.
Waiting.
The earpiece nestled against him crackled softly, and a calm voice spoke. “Report.”
The figure’s jaw tightened. “Multiple student groups surrounded. One teacher severely engaged at the central plaza. Thirteen is injured. Hostile numbers exceed initial projection.”
There was a pause. Below, Aizawa’s capture weapon snapped again. Below, Mineta screamed. Below, a villain crept closer to Hagakure with venom waiting in his mouth.
The voice in the earpiece remained measured. “Remember the conditions. Effective, clean, and slow enough to be seen. Absolutely no student casualties. No villain casualties. Minimal uncontrolled collateral damage once inside. Understood?”
The figure did not look away from the USJ. “Understood.”
Another pause followed, brief but deliberate, before the order finally came. “Superman, save the day.”
The sky fell.
BOOOOOOM!
Every head in the facility snapped upward.
Students, villains, and teacher alike turned toward the sound as part of the roof exploded inward. Metal shrieked. Concrete split. Sunlight poured through the wound in the dome, sharp and sudden, cutting through the artificial skies and staged disaster zones of the USJ.
For a moment, nobody understood what they were seeing.
Dust drifted through the air in slow, glowing sheets. Debris rained down around a single figure hovering beneath the shattered roof. The light behind him reduced him to an outline at first, broad shoulders, a cape, a human shape suspended above the battlefield as if gravity had no authority over him.
Then the dust thinned. The figure came into view, and the first thing several people noticed was that he looked young.
Too young.
He wore a fitted suit of deep blue and red, too clean and deliberate to be improvised, too polished to be homemade. A cape flowed behind him, heavy and bright against the ruined facility. At the center of his chest sat a large red and yellow symbol, bold enough to be seen from across the plaza.
An S.
His dark green hair was slicked back neatly, untouched by the crash that had announced him. His face was calm. Not blank, not arrogant, just calm in a way that did not fit the noise, fear, and violence below him.
Shigaraki stared up at him, the irritation beneath the hand on his face sharpening into confusion. “What..?”
The figure vanished, not flying or jumping so much as simply ceasing to be where he had been.
The air cracked in his absence, and before Shigaraki could finish turning his head, the Nomu was gone from Aizawa’s side. One instant it stood over the injured teacher, ready to crush what remained of him. The next, something blue and red drove into it from above and slammed its massive body into the ground hard enough to shake the central plaza.
The impact knocked Shigaraki off his feet. He hit the ground with a grunt, hands scraping against the floor as his mind struggled to catch up with what his eyes had missed. The Nomu, his Nomu, the creature built to kill All Might, had been ripped away like it weighed nothing.
Cold spread across his legs.
Shigaraki looked down just as ice climbed over him. It sealed around his ankles first, then his knees, then his waist. He twisted, fingers twitching, but the ice locked his arms out to either side before he could touch anything. His hands remained exposed, carefully uncovered, but the rest of him was trapped in place before he could decay the ice holding him.
His breathing hitched. “W-Who?”
The figure stood several meters away now, one hand lowered at his side, posture composed. “Superman,” His voice was young.
Too young.
That made Shigaraki’s stomach twist worse than the ice. Some kid. This was some kid in a costume!
Superman looked down at the exposed hands without losing that controlled, reassuring expression. “And I made sure not to cover your fingers. You won’t be spreading that Quirk through my ice.”
Shigaraki’s eyes widened.
Before he could answer, Superman was gone again.
The water zone changed next. Tsuyu felt the air shift before she saw him.
The villains around the boat had begun closing in. Some were laughing now. The boat rocked harder beneath her feet as something struck it from below, and Mineta let out a strangled scream as water lapped over the edge.
Then a red cape dropped into view.
A figure descended between the boat and the surrounding villains, his back to the two students as his boots hovered just above the water. Blue suit. Red cape. Broad shoulders held steady against the threat in front of him.
Tsuyu froze, Mineta stopped screaming for half a second. The villains did not.
“Who the hell are you?”
“You wanna die, brat?!”
The stranger drew in a breath, and Tsuyu saw his shoulders rise slightly before he exhaled.
White frost erupted across the water, spreading from him in a violent wave and swallowing the surface faster than the villains could swim. Cries of alarm broke out all around them.
“Woah, hey!”
“Move!”
“Get out of the water!”
They were too late.
Ice locked around their bodies beneath the surface, trapping them in place while leaving their heads above water. One villain tried to thrash free and only made himself shiver harder. Another cursed until his teeth started chattering too badly to continue. In seconds, the entire water zone had gone still.
Tsuyu stared. The boat no longer rocked. The water no longer moved. Every villain who had been circling them like prey was now stuck in the ice, helpless and furious. The figure turned just enough for them to see his face.
He smiled.
It was warm. Reassuring. Perfectly placed. But something about it felt... Off.
Then he nodded once and shot upward, disappearing in a rush of wind that sent Tsuyu's wet hair flapping backward. For several seconds, neither student moved. Mineta blinked through tears. “What just happened?”
Tsuyu’s fingers tightened against the boat’s railing. She did not know.
In the ice zone, Tooru Hagakure never heard the hidden villain reach her.
She felt the wind first, a sharp rush that slammed past her, strong enough to make her stumble. Todoroki turned at almost the same time, frost still spreading from his feet, his eyes narrowing as something moved too fast for either of them to track.
Tooru gasped as she saw the stranger. He stood in front of her with one fist extended upward. For a confusing second, there was nothing infront of his fist.
Then the villain became visible.
His camouflage broke all at once as his body folded around the blow, eyes bulging, mouth falling open before any sound could escape. He dropped to the ground unconscious, skin flickering through patches of ice, concrete, and human color before settling into something solid again.
Tooru stared at him, her stomach lurching. “He was behind me...?”
The stranger lowered his fist. Todoroki’s gaze locked on him immediately, sharp and assessing.
The stranger turned to Tooru first. “Are you hurt?”
Tooru blinked, then shook herself back into motion. “N-No! I’m okay. Thank you so much!”
He smiled.
Again, it looked natural at first. Bright, calm, and almost like something out of a public safety poster. But as he looked at her, something very small changed.
Tooru noticed because people were usually strange when they spoke to her. Their eyes wandered, searching for where her face should be. Some stared too high, some stared too low, and some avoided looking at her entirely because they did not know where to focus.
He did not.
His eyes found hers immediately. Not close to where her eyes were. Exactly where they were. Tooru went still, his gaze flicked downward for the briefest moment. Only a moment.
He looked away almost instantly, posture stiffening so slightly most people would have missed it.
Tooru did not. “Um,” she said, but before she could decide what to ask, he gave another polite nod, pushed off the ground, and vanished into the air.
Todoroki watched him go, eyes narrowed. “That speed…” It was not admiration in his voice. Not exactly.
Across the USJ, the same impossible pattern repeated.
In the fire zone, Ojiro braced himself as the villains finally charged through the smoke. Heat pressed into his skin. His lungs burned. He shifted his weight, ready to meet the first attacker. A blur passed through the flames, the fire going out.
Not slowly. Not naturally. One second the zone was choking with heat and smoke, the next a wave of cold crushed through it, snuffing the flames and leaving steam rolling across the ground. The villains dropped before Ojiro could throw a single punch.
He stared at the unconscious bodies scattered around him, then at the streak of red cape vanishing overhead. His tail lowered slightly. “What?”
Momo, Jiro, and Kaminari saw even less.
They were surrounded, and then they were not. Kaminari had raised his hands, sparks brightening around his fingers as three villains lunged at once. Jiro shouted a warning. Momo shifted her staff and prepared to intercept.
A rush of air tore through the space between them.
The villains collapsed.
One hit the ground at Kaminari’s feet. Another rolled past Jiro. A third slid to a stop near Momo’s shoes, unconscious before any of them understood where the attack had come from.
When their eyes finally caught up, the stranger was already standing beyond the fallen villains. The blue suit, the red cape, the S. He looked over his shoulder at them. “Stay together. Help is on the way.”
Then he was gone.
Jiro’s earphone jacks swayed in the wind left behind. Kaminari’s mouth hung open. Momo gripped her staff tighter, not because the danger had increased, but because it had disappeared too quickly for her to trust it.
In the storm zone, Dark Shadow lunged at a villain just as the stranger landed beside Tokoyami and Koda. He did not interrupt Tokoyami’s attack. He moved around it. One strike dropped the closest villain. A burst of frost pinned two more without harming them. Another blur, another impact, another body hitting the ground.
Dark Shadow twisted toward him, startled. “Strong,” the shadow hissed.
Tokoyami did not answer immediately. He watched the stranger rise into the air and leave without waiting for thanks. “Indeed,” Tokoyami said quietly. “Perhaps too strong.”
It did not last a full minute.
By the time the stranger returned to the central plaza, the USJ had gone quiet in a way that felt almost unnatural.
Villains lay unconscious across every zone or trapped in ice with their heads exposed. Fires had been extinguished. Students who had been seconds away from being overwhelmed now stood unharmed, shaken, and staring across the facility toward the boy in blue and red who had done what none of them could fully understand.
At the plaza, Aizawa was still breathing, bloody and unconscious but alive.
Tsuyu and Kirishima dragged him toward the others with Mineta stumbling beside them, his face wet with tears and melted ice. Kirishima took most of Aizawa’s weight as soon as he could, jaw clenched, his usual energy buried beneath horror at the state of their teacher’s body.
Momo rushed forward, already creating medical supplies before she fully reached them. Uraraka followed close behind, pale but focused, helping ease Aizawa down as gently as possible.
“Careful!” Momo said, voice tight but controlled. “Lay him flat. Do not move his head more than necessary.”
Mina hovered over Thirteen nearby, her hands shaking as she tried not to touch anything that might make the pro hero’s injuries worse. “Thirteen, wake up,” she whispered, then louder, voice cracking. “Please wake up!”
Sero stood a few steps away, breathing hard now that the immediate danger had passed. His tape hung loosely from one elbow. His eyes moved from the unconscious villains, to Aizawa, to Thirteen, then finally to the stranger descending into the plaza.
The boy in blue touched down softly.
After everything he had done, after the roof he had shattered and the villains he had dropped, his boots met the ground with barely a sound. His cape settled behind him. His posture straightened. His expression became calm again, that same practiced smile returning as if the chaos had been nothing more than a stage cue.
Sero swallowed, his eyes moving from one unconscious villain to another. “That kid just took out every villain here,” he muttered.
Kirishima carefully passed Aizawa into Momo’s care, then looked around, panic flashing back across his face. “Where’s Bakugo?”
Jiro’s earphone jacks lifted slightly. “Over there,” she said, pointing with one jack. “Near speedy blue.”
Bakugo stood at the bottom of the stairs near them, closer than anyone else but still a distance from the stranger.
Unlike the others, he did not look relieved. He did not look confused either. His arms hung tense at his sides, his shoulders were stiff, and his red eyes were locked onto the stranger with a kind of fury that made the air around him feel sharper.
The stranger turned his head slightly toward Bakugo. The smile on his face faltered for less than a second before it returned, polite, controlled, and perfect.
Sero’s unease deepened. “Who is he?” he asked. He had not meant to say it loudly, but the words carried through the exhausted quiet.
Around him, the rest of Class 1-A began to look again, not at the villains, not at their teachers, but at the unknown figure standing in the middle of the disaster he had just ended.
Kirishima stared first, his eyes shining. “That guy,” he said, voice rising despite the fear still lingering in his chest. “That guy is so manly!”
“Kirishima,” Jiro said, exhausted.
“No, seriously!” Kirishima pointed toward the stranger, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Did you see him? He came out of nowhere and saved everyone!”
Ojiro rubbed the back of his neck, still trying to process the way his fight had ended before it began. “Actually,” he admitted, “I barely saw anything. He moved too fast.”
“Same!” Kaminari said quickly, nervous laughter spilling out of him now that he was safe enough to fall apart a little. “One second we were surrounded, and the next second everyone was just... down. I thought I blinked too hard or something.”
Sero did not answer right away. His eyes stayed fixed on the stranger, a smile on his face, following the way he hovered above the ruined plaza as if gravity had simply decided to leave him alone. The villains scattered across the USJ had not even looked like fights. They had looked like moments skipped over, bodies dropping before most of the class understood he had moved at all. “It was like All Might-level speed,” Sero said in awe.
The comparison landed heavily.
A few students shifted, but no one laughed. No one corrected him either.
Even saying All Might’s name in relation to someone their age felt wrong, almost impossible, but the words hung there because everyone had seen it. The blur of red and blue. The sudden silence after so much chaos. The impossible calm of a boy who had dropped into the middle of a disaster and made it look effortless.
Around him, the others kept staring upward, caught between shock and something brighter. Awe, maybe. The kind that made the danger feel distant for just a second because something incredible had appeared in the middle of it.
Uraraka squinted through the dust, trying to make out the stranger’s face more clearly. Now that he was standing still, the impossible blur had become a person, and that made the whole situation stranger, not less. “He’s not a pro,” she said slowly.
Sato frowned. “How can you tell?”
“He looks our age.”
That drew more attention. Hagakure nodded quickly, both gloves lifting as if to emphasize the point. “Mhm! I saw him up close when he saved me. He’s definitely a kid like us!”
Momo’s expression tightened as she finished securing one of Aizawa’s bandages. “If that is true, then his presence here raises several legal concerns,” she said. “He may be operating as a vigilante.”
“With that costume?” Aoyama said immediately, one hand pressed to his chest as he studied the stranger with open fascination. “Non, non, that is not a vigilante costume. That fabric is far too refined. Look at the cut. The cape alone is custom work.”
Kaminari blinked at him. “You can tell that from here?”
“Of course.”
Sato stepped closer, brow furrowed. “Then what’s his Quirk supposed to be? He flies, he’s fast, he’s strong, and he froze the water zone, right?”
“He froze the whole water zone solid,” Tsuyu said, finger resting against her chin. Her voice stayed calm, but her eyes did not leave the stranger. “His ice breath may be as powerful as Todoroki’s ice, ribbit.”
Todoroki said nothing. Mina looked between Todoroki and the stranger, confusion pulling at her expression. “Flying and ice breath,” she repeated. “How does that even fit together?”
“Maybe it’s not ice breath,” Jiro offered an explanation. “Could be air pressure. Or temperature control. Or some kind of energy thing.”
“He saw me,” Hagakure added suddenly.
The conversation paused.
Kaminari tilted his head. “Uh, yeah? He saved you.”
“No, I mean he saw me,” Hagakure said, her gloves moving closer to herself as her voice turned uncertain. “There was this villain behind me with some kind of camouflage Quirk. I didn’t even know he was there, but he did. He hit him before Todoroki or I noticed anything.”
That made Momo look up sharply. “He detected an invisible attacker?”
“Not just him,” Hagakure said, a little quieter now. “Me too. When I thanked him, he looked right at my eyes. Not where he thought my face was. My actual eyes.”
Kaminari’s expression shifted as the implication slowly reached him. “Wait, so if he could see you, then…”
Hagakure went very still. Her costume was her gloves and boots. That was it. It had never mattered before, not really, because no one could see anything else, but the memory of the stranger’s gaze flicking downward for half a second suddenly felt much more embarrassing than it had in the moment.
“Oh my gosh,” she let out a embarrassed noise, her gloves lifting toward where her face would be. “He saw everything, didn’t he?”
Mina’s eyes widened. “Oh.” Sweat-dropping.
Jiro winced. “That’s… awkward.”
Aoyama gasped dramatically, one hand rising to his mouth. “Mon dieu.”
“That’s not the important part,” Momo said quickly, though there was a faint flush of secondhand embarrassment in her cheeks before she forced herself back on track. “If he could perceive Hagakure-san clearly, then his senses are far beyond normal visual detection.”
Todoroki’s gaze narrowed further, and Sero felt a chill that had nothing to do with the ice. “So he has enhanced senses too?”
Kirishima, somehow, only looked more impressed. “I don’t care what his Quirk is,” he said, pumping a fist. “That guy saved us. That makes him a hero in my book.”
Bakugo still had not said a word, that was what finally made Uraraka uneasy. She looked at him again, really looked this time. His teeth were clenched, his breathing was uneven, and his hands twitched like he was seconds from setting off an explosion, but he was not looking at the villains.
He was looking at the stranger.
Like he hated him.
Before she could ask why, Hagakure gasped. “Wait! The warp villain!” Every head turned.
At the edge of the central plaza, black mist twisted open beneath Shigaraki’s frozen body. The villain made of fog had returned, rising behind his leader as mist curled around the ice and the portal opened wider. The movement was quiet, almost gentle, but after everything that had happened, it struck the class like a gunshot.
The stranger reacted instantly, the polite smile vanishing as he launched forward hard enough to crack the ground beneath his boots, shooting toward the portal so quickly that several students lost sight of him before he had crossed half the distance.
For one brief second, it looked like he would reach them. Kurogiri had only just begun pulling Shigaraki into the warp, the ice still clinging to the villain’s body and cracking as the black mist spread beneath him, swallowing him piece by piece. It was not fast enough. The stranger was already closing in, one fist drawn back, his eyes fixed on the portal with a sharpness that made the escape look impossible.
Then the Nomu screamed, the sound tearing through the USJ, harsh, broken, and wrong. Ice shattered around the creature in violent chunks as it forced itself upright, its massive body surging out of the crater where the stranger had driven it earlier. The damage it had taken was already repairing itself, its hanging beak cracking back into place with a wet, sickening sound as muscle twisted, bone reset, and torn flesh knitted itself together.
The stranger’s gaze swept across the plaza as the Nomu began forcing itself free again, ice cracking around its body in thick, jagged chunks. Most of the students had pulled back toward the injured teachers, but one of them was still too close to the center of the fight.
Bakugo.
The blond stood rigid near the broken ground, fists smoking faintly at his sides, his entire body locked on the stranger instead of the monster tearing itself loose behind him. He looked furious, but not in the same way the others looked frightened or confused. There was something personal in it, something sharp enough that even from a distance, Uraraka could feel the difference.
The Nomu’s arm broke free with a violent crack.
The stranger moved before anyone could shout a warning. One second he was near the center of the plaza, and the next he was in front of Bakugo, a hand catching the boy by the shoulder as the world seemed to blur around them. Within a heartbeat, Bakugo was back beside his classmates, displaced so quickly that several of them stumbled in surprise.
The stranger released him and turned slightly, already drawing in a breath as if preparing to say something reassuring.
Bakugo’s palm slammed into his face.
BOOOM!
The explosion burst across the stranger’s features in a flash of heat and smoke, sharp enough to make half the class flinch. Uraraka gasped, Kirishima stepped forward on instinct, and Kaminari actually yelped, but the stranger did not fall or even stagger. He only blinked through the smoke, confusion cutting through the practiced calm on his face for the first time.
Bakugo glared up at him, teeth bared and eyes burning with a hatred that made no sense to anyone watching.
“DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME, DEKU!”
The name hit the air strangely.
The stranger stared at him for half a second, his expression caught between confusion and something deeper, something almost pained before he seemed to force it back down. Behind him, the Nomu shattered the last of the ice holding it in place, its body lurching free with a guttural shriek as broken flesh pulled itself back together.
The moment ended.
The stranger shook his head once, not quite clearing the confusion from his face but burying it beneath the mask again, and turned back toward the monster as it charged.
Momo went pale. “That thing is regenerating,” she whispered.
The stranger twisted mid-stride and met the Nomu head-on, catching the creature’s fist before it could tear past him. The collision cracked the ground beneath his boots and sent a shockwave rippling across the plaza, forcing Sero to throw up an arm while Uraraka staggered and Kirishima hardened on instinct, stepping in front of the nearest classmates.
Behind him, Kurogiri took the opening.
Black mist surged higher around Shigaraki, swallowing the last of his frozen body as the remaining ice splintered and dropped uselessly to the floor. Shigaraki’s hateful glare remained visible for only a moment longer through the warp, fixed on the stranger who had nearly reached him, before the darkness closed over him completely. By the time the portal snapped shut, Shigaraki was gone, and the only enemy left standing in the plaza was the monster built to kill All Might.
The stranger’s jaw tightened as he held the creature in place, his fingers locked around its massive fist. He had slid back several feet from the force of the blow, deep grooves carved beneath his boots, but he had not fallen. His expression was controlled, not strained or afraid, just controlled, and when the Nomu pushed harder, he let it drive him back another inch before twisting and throwing the creature across the plaza.
The Nomu crashed into rubble hard enough to send concrete flying, but before the dust had even settled, it began climbing back to its feet. Its broken jaw snapped into place, its torn shoulder filled itself in, and its ruined skin pulled back together as if the damage had barely mattered.
UA students watching the spectacle in awe, Aizawa stirring. The stranger’s head tilted slightly, just enough to suggest he was listening to something no one else could hear.
Static hissed softly in his ear. “Regeneration confirmed,” the calm voice said.
The stranger’s jaw tightened. “I can stop it before it hurts anyone else.”
“Negative. Do not finish the engagement yet.”
His eyes flicked toward the Nomu as the creature finished pulling itself upright, broken flesh sealing over exposed muscle. “It is still active...”
“Then keep it contained,” the voice replied, smooth and immediate. “Control the damage. Keep the students out of harm’s way. Do not bring the target down until instructed.”
The stranger remained where he was, and for the first time since he had appeared, the perfect certainty around him seemed to strain at the edges.
“All Might is en route,” the voice continued. “The local news crews we contacted are almost in position. This is the opportunity.”
His expression shifted, too small for most of the class to understand but not small enough to disappear completely. “Understood.”
The Nomu moved again, crossing the distance with impossible speed for something so large. Its fist swung with enough force to distort the air around it, and a few students screamed as the blow connected with another thunderous impact that swallowed both figures in dust and debris. The ground split beneath them, cracks racing through the plaza as the shockwave rolled across the class, but when the dust shifted, the stranger was still standing with the Nomu’s fist caught in his hand.
He watched the regeneration happen, then moved again. He struck the Nomu in the ribs, sending it skidding sideways, but before it could hit the wall, he was already there, catching it by the arm and driving it back into the ground instead. The impact shook the floor without damaging the facility any further than it already had.
Momo noticed that. So did Todoroki.
“He’s controlling where it lands,” Momo said quietly.
“What?” Kaminari asked.
“He could have thrown it into the wall, or through the building,” she said, eyes fixed on the fight. “He is redirecting the impacts.”
Todoroki’s stare sharpened as the stranger blurred around the Nomu, striking and pulling back, each blow brutal enough to break bone and tear flesh but never enough to end the fight completely. Every time the creature regenerated, he gave it time to stand, and every time it charged, he met it head-on, stopped it, redirected it, and sent it crashing somewhere that would not hit the students.
It was clear he was more powerful than the Villain.
Above them, beyond the broken roof, the heavy thrum of helicopter blades began to cut through the air. Uraraka looked up as a news helicopter swung into view beyond the wound in the dome, its camera mounted on the side and aimed directly down into the facility. “Huh..?"
Sero followed her gaze, confusion turning into a sliver of hope. “A news helicopter? That must mean...”
Near the entrance, a section of the USJ wall exploded inward as a familiar voice thundered through the facility with enough force to make several students turn instinctively, relief hitting them before they even saw him.
“I AM HERE!”
All Might stood amid the broken wall and falling dust, shoulders broad and smile blazing, his presence filling the room in a way only he could manage. Behind him, Iida stumbled to a stop with other heroes moving in after him, breathless from the sprint back to U.A. and the desperate rush for help.
“All Might!” Mina shouted, her voice cracking with relief as she pointed toward the center of the plaza. “There’s some kid our age fighting some kind of monster!”
All Might’s gaze snapped toward the battle.
The stranger had just driven the Nomu back into the ground again, keeping the creature pinned before launching upwards as the creature swiped. It was regenerating almost as quickly as it was damaged, flesh knitting back together with each violent twitch of its body, but the boy in blue and red did not look overwhelmed. If anything, he looked like he was measuring every movement, controlling the fight more than struggling through it.
Then All Might moved.
In a burst of speed that reminded the students why he was still the Symbol of Peace, he crossed the plaza and slammed into the Nomu before it could fully rise. The impact sent a shockwave across the USJ, loose debris skidding over the floor as All Might locked arms with the creature and forced it back in a raw contest of strength.
The stranger floated away from the clash, cape shifting behind him as he hovered a short distance above the fractured ground. For a moment, it looked like he was about to join in and help finish it.
Then his head tilted slightly, static hissing in his ear.
“Wait until our signal,” the calm voice ordered. “Let the public see their symbol face adversity.”
The stranger’s eyes shifted toward the entrance. Several people with cameras had begun forcing their way through the broken opening, local news crews pushing in behind the arriving heroes while the pros tried to keep them back for their own safety. Above the shattered roof, the helicopter continued to circle, its camera aimed down into the facility through the gap he had made when he first entered.
He did not need to look up to know it was there. He could hear the rotor blades cutting through the air, just as clearly as he could hear the reporter speaking rapidly into her microphone, breathless and excited as she tried to explain what the camera was capturing. He did not like this.
He should be helping.
All Might was fighting a monster, the students were scared, Aizawa and Thirteen were injured, and every instinct in the stranger’s body told him to move. But the voice in his ear had given an order, and after a moment of visible hesitation, he obeyed.
All Might drove his fist into the Nomu’s face hard enough to twist its head sideways, following with a barrage of blows that thundered through the plaza. Each punch carried enough force to send wind tearing across the ground, but the creature absorbed them, its body breaking and repairing in the same breath. Its arm snapped wrong, then reset. Its torso caved, then filled back out. It took everything the Number One Hero gave it and pushed forward anyway.
To the students, it looked horrifying.
To the stranger, it looked winnable.
All Might would defeat it. He could see that much. The hero was injured, strained, and clearly taking longer than he should have, but there was still power behind every punch and certainty in the way he kept forcing the creature back. All Might was going to win.
But the cameras did not need to see him win easily.
That was the point.
The concept sat cold in the stranger’s chest as All Might and the Nomu traded blows in front of the watching students, the arriving heroes, and the cameras now capturing every second. The fight dragged just long enough for the image to settle. The Symbol of Peace, locked in battle. The monster, enduring him. The world’s greatest hero, forced to struggle.
Then the earpiece crackled again. “Now.” The stranger moved.
It was over in an instant.
One moment All Might was driving another punch into the Nomu’s body, and the next a flash of red cut through the plaza. The beam struck the creature before anyone could react, engulfing it in a brilliant burst of heat and force that drove it down into the already shattered ground. The Nomu convulsed once, its body pinned beneath the pressure of the attack as smoke curled from its ruined skin, its regeneration failing to keep pace with the sudden, overwhelming damage.
When the light faded, the monster lay embedded in the floor, twitching weakly, its eyes rolled back and its body smoking where the beam had struck. It was still alive, but it was finished.
Silence fell over the plaza as All Might stood a short distance away, one fist still raised, frozen by the sudden end of the fight. The students stared. The heroes stared. Even the reporters seemed stunned for a heartbeat before the camera operators pushed forward, capturing the impossible image as the stranger floated down between All Might and the defeated monster.
His eyes still glowed red for a moment, bright and unnatural against the dust-filled air, before the light faded and they returned to their usual green. By the time his boots touched the cracked ground, the practiced smile was already back on his face.
All Might blinked, then coughed into his hand and wiped away the blood before anyone could get too clear a look at it. His gaze stayed fixed on the boy in front of him, confusion and awe warring with something sharper as he took in what he had actually seen. Flight. Physical power great enough to contend with that monster. Speed fast enough to cross the battlefield in a blur. Durability that let him stand in the middle of impacts that should have shattered bone. And now, burning red light from his eyes.
Multiple Quirks?
The thought hit harder than it should have, and although All Might’s smile stayed in place, his heart picked up in a way that had nothing to do with the fight. One powerful Quirk could do strange things. He knew that better than most. A single ability could branch in unexpected directions, especially when pushed to its limit, but flight, overwhelming physical enhancement, and destructive energy from the eyes did not fit together cleanly in a way he could accept without question.
It was not certain.
But it was enough to make an old name press against the back of his mind. All For One. A boy appearing from nowhere with too much power, too many unrelated abilities, and a costume polished enough for a public debut was not something All Might could look at without feeling every old wound in his body remember the man who had nearly killed him.
His voice came out lower than before. “Who are you?” The young man did not turn toward him.
Instead, he kept his back to the Number One Hero and looked toward the reporters gathering beyond the heroes trying to hold them back. The cameras were on him now. Every lens. Every microphone. Every shocked face waiting for an answer.
His smile did not waver.
“I’m Superman.”