Work Text:
9 PM
A quiet city street. No sirens. No crowds. Just rain tapping against concrete and neon reflections bleeding across puddles. It had been a few years since All For One and Tomura Shigaraki had been defeated, and though the scars still marked the city, cracked sidewalks, reinforced buildings, memorial plaques tucked into corners—something softer had taken root.
People smiled more.
They lingered. They talked. They trusted the night again.
A young man walks along the lit street, hands in his coat pockets. He’s a few years older now. Taller. Broader in the shoulders. His green hair is darker beneath the yellow streetlights yet calmer somehow. Izuku Midoriya wears no costume—no mask, no gloves, no emblem. Just a coat and worn shoes, walking like anyone else heading home after a long day learning how to teach at U.A.
Teaching felt strange to him. Standing where he once sat. Explaining concepts he used to scribble obsessively into notebooks. Watching first-years argue over hero names and costume designs with the same fire he once had.
He chooses to walk this late to avoid the attention. The whispers. The bowed heads. The quiet awe that still follows him if he’s recognized.
He doesn’t like the praise. Not because he doesn’t understand it, but because he knows how incomplete it is.
Without him, without his friends, the war would have been lost. Without Ochaco. Without Bakugo. Without Todoroki, Iida, Yaoyorozu—without so many others who stood when they could’ve fallen. It wasn’t just his victory, but theirs too.
The world likes simple stories. Izuku knows better.
As he walks, he passes a group of people sheltering beneath an awning, laughing as they share an umbrella too small for all of them. A shop owner waves goodnight to a patrol hero passing overhead. A pair of children tug at their parent’s sleeves, pointing excitedly at a holo-ad flickering across a building.
Izuku slows.
A massive digital panel lights up the street, showing Mirio Togata mid-leap, smiling wide as he punches through debris to save a crowd.
#1 HERO flashes beneath his name.
Izuku blinks, then chuckles quietly.
“Number one already,” he murmurs. “He really doesn’t slow down…”
Wasn’t Mirio number five just a few weeks ago?
The ad shifts. Another face. Then another. Bakugo, scowling fiercely as explosions flare behind him, Todoroki, calm and composed, ice and fire balanced perfectly. Uraraka, floating rubble aside with a bright, reassuring smile.
So many of them.
Izuku watches people stop to look—kids pointing, adults nodding with relief, some clasping their hands together in gratitude. No fear. No panic. Just trust.
He keeps walking.
Further down the street, a small group of children rush past him, laughing despite the rain. One of them nearly slips, arms windmilling, before regaining balance.
Izuku notices the costume before he notices the kid’s face.
A green mask. A red belt. A crude, homemade hood with uneven lightning stitched along the edges.
His steps slow.
Another child wears a different version—this one clearly store-bought, with reinforced gloves and boots. A third has taped green ribbons around their sleeves, imitating something older, rougher.
Izuku’s chest tightens unexpectedly.
…I used to do that.
The memory comes unbidden: cheap All Might merch, oversized gloves slipping off his hands, standing in front of the mirror and striking poses while his mother laughed from the kitchen. Running through the streets pretending to save people, even when everyone told him he couldn’t.
A quirkless kid who loved heroes anyway.
He watches the children disappear down the street, their laughter echoing long after they’re gone.
“…The cycle continues,” he says softly.
His phone vibrates in his pocket.
He pulls it out.
Ochaco:
You walking home again? It’s raining harder now.
Izuku smiles.
Izuku:
Yeah. Almost there. I like nights like this.
A pause. Then—
Ochaco:
You always say that when you’re thinking too much.
He exhales through his nose, amused.
Izuku:
Maybe. But it’s a good kind of thinking.
Another message pops up.
Ochaco:
Mirio moved to #1 officially today. He’s been unbearable about it.
Izuku laughs quietly under his breath.
Izuku:
Tell him congrats. And that I expect him to buy dinner next time. I paid for the both of us last time
A typing bubble appears, disappears, then—
Ochaco:
Love you, Deku. See you soon.
He doesn’t reply right away. He just looks at the message for a moment longer than necessary before slipping the phone back into his pocket.
That’s when he hears it.
Steel groaning.
Izuku’s head lifts.
Across the street, a civilian stands frozen beneath a damaged support beam, eyes wide, rain plastering their hair to their face. The structure shudders, metal screaming under its own weight.
A few seconds pass.
Then the beam gives.
No time to scream.
Izuku watches. He sighs—soft, almost bored—and pulls one hand from his pocket.
He aims his right index finger and releases a single Fa-Jin–enhanced, Gear Shift–boosted Delaware Smash: Air Force.
The world cracks.
Green lightning explodes outward, clean and violent, the beam disintegrating mid-air as a shockwave ripples down the street. Windows rattle. Rain is blown sideways. The civilian is untouched.
Izuku lowers his hand.
There is no strain. No recoil. No hesitation.
The lightning fades as quickly as it appeared.
The civilian stares, trembling. “W-wait—was that—?”
But Izuku is already walking past them.
Hands back in his pockets. Coat swaying. Expression unreadable.
No time to explain. No acknowledgement of what he did
No proof left behind—except scorched pavement and the echo of power that should not exist.
Green light flickers once… beneath his sleeve. He crosses the street, then turns back.
He smiles as the civilian walks away unharmed—wide and confident, the kind of smile that once told the world everything was going to be okay.
Cut to black.