Chapter Text
The projector hummed, a rhythmic, mechanical drone that chewed through the oppressive silence of Aldera Middle School’s third-year classroom. The fluorescent lights flickered, casting a sickly pallor over the students, but all eyes were fixed on the whiteboard. A grainy, high-contrast video loop played on a continuous, hypnotic cycle: the blurred, dark-clad figure of the vigilante known as ‘Clockwise’ navigating the structural ruin of a collapsing tenement.
This was the footage that defined a decade—the night the Great Collapse nearly claimed the life of the UA student Oboro Shirakumo. In the footage, Clockwise was a storm of kinetic force, his dark vigilante gear—reminiscent of a tactical combat suit—moving with an intimacy toward danger that defied human instinct.
"Note the efficiency," the history teacher said, his voice dropping into a reverent, hushed tone, as if speaking in a sanctuary rather than a classroom. "Clockwise didn't just save the lives trapped inside; he neutralized the threat in under twelve seconds. He was the only hero—vigilante or otherwise—who understood that some wars require a soldier, not a symbol."
Izuku Midoriya sat at his desk, his notebook open, his pen hovering motionlessly over the paper. He wasn't taking notes. His mind was elsewhere, drifting through a fog that seemed to thicken whenever the footage played. Every time the screen captured that silhouette—the way Clockwise tucked his chin, the way his shoulders braced against the impact of a falling support beam—a cold, unnatural chill seeped into Izuku’s marrow. It wasn't just admiration he felt; it was a strange, suffocating familiarity, as if his own muscles were remembering a trauma his brain had never processed.
He stared at the screen, at the broad, weathered shoulders and the battered, tactical mask of the man who had vanished from the public eye years ago. The boy sitting to his right, a student who usually mocked Izuku’s quirkless status, leaned over, his voice dropping to an uncharacteristically serious whisper.
"Still weird, right? My dad says that if he hadn't disappeared, he would have made All Might look like an amateur. He didn't care about rankings or popularity. Just the body count he kept at zero. Too bad he’s probably long dead, buried in whatever rubble finally caught up to him."
Izuku didn't answer. He couldn't. His heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs, a sensation he always associated with the phantom ache in his chest whenever he accidentally pushed himself too hard during physical training. His right hand was trembling, his fingers tracing a phantom shape in the air—the sharp, high-collared line of a combat coat he had never owned, the weight of a gear-heavy belt he had never worn.
Suddenly, the classroom noise dropped away. The light of the projector seemed to intensify, burning into his vision. A flash of memory hit him, sharp as a rusted blade: the overwhelming, suffocating scent of wet concrete and ozone, the deafening roar of a falling support beam, and a voice—his voice—rough, gravelly, and saturated with a desperate, ancient fatigue, screaming out a name he didn't consciously recognize.
Oboro.
The name echoed in his mind, resonant and heavy.
Izuku blinked, and the sensation evaporated instantly, leaving him breathless and disoriented. The classroom reality rushed back in—the squeak of chairs, the distant sound of traffic outside, the teacher moving to a new slide detailing Clockwise’s last known sightings before his total disappearance. Izuku looked down at his own hands, his palms pale, smooth, and ordinary—devoid of the scars and callousness he felt so vividly only seconds ago. He felt a sudden, crushing wave of grief, a profound and hollow sense of loss for a life he felt he had lived a lifetime ago, yet had no right to claim.
He stared at the board, his breath hitching. Everyone saw a legend, a dead man, a ghost story of the past. Izuku saw a mirror, and he was terrified that if he looked long enough, the man in the mask would look back and recognize him.
"Midoriya?" The teacher’s voice cut through his trance, sharp and expectant. "Since you’re so fascinated by the footage, perhaps you can enlighten the class on why the Hero Public Safety Commission officially designated Clockwise’s disappearance a 'classified casualty'?"
Izuku swallowed hard, the phantom scent of smoke still clinging to the back of his throat. "I... I'm sorry, sir. I don't know."
The teacher sighed, unimpressed. "Naturally. Focus, Midoriya. The past is for learning, not for daydreaming."
As the class turned back to their notes, Izuku stared at his own notebook. At the top of the page, he had unconsciously scribbled a series of clock-hand symbols, their points aligned in a way that made his skin crawl. He quickly flipped the page, hiding his own handwriting, but the damage was done. The ghost was awake, and it was getting harder to pretend he wasn't carrying the weight of a man who had already given everything, and wanted nothing back.
The rest of the school day was a blur of static and white noise. Izuku moved through the halls like a spectator in his own life, his skin prickling with the phantom sensation of phantom adrenaline. Every time he brushed against a locker or leaned against a wall, his mind flickered—not with memories of his childhood, but with the tactical assessment of structural integrity and exit routes. It was maddening, this internal dissonance where he felt like a boy of fourteen inhabiting the battle-hardened shell of a man who had seen the end of the world. He kept his head down, desperately trying to anchor himself in the mundane, but the city outside the window felt too small, too fragile, as if the entire world were a glass house he had once failed to protect.
When the final bell rang, Izuku didn’t linger. He hurried toward the exit, ignoring the usual taunts from Bakugo and his lackeys. He needed air, or maybe he just needed to run until the voice in his head stopped echoing that name.
He took the long way home, cutting through the shadows of an underpass he usually avoided. It was quiet here, a pocket of industrial decay that felt eerily similar to the back alleys shown in the grainy footage from class. He stopped, his breath hitching as the temperature around him suddenly plummeted. The air grew sharp, tasting of ozone, and for a fleeting second, the shadow he cast on the concrete wall behind him didn't match his own. It was wider, broader, draped in the heavy, tactical silhouette of the Dark Deku gear.
Izuku froze, his heart hammering against his ribs like a bird in a cage. He reached out, his fingers trembling, and watched in terrified awe as his own green lightning—raw, jagged, and unstable—erupted from his skin. It wasn't the controlled flow he had practiced in his dreams; it was violent, cold, and lethal. Before he could scream, the shadow lunged. It didn't possess him, but it clashed with him, a sensation of two souls occupying the same space for one heartbeat of pure, crushing pressure. A vision seared into his mind: a burning building, the desperate scream of a friend being crushed by debris, and the feeling of throwing himself into the maw of death without a second thought. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the pressure shattered.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, the street light buzzing rhythmically above him. The green sparks died out, leaving the alley unnervingly silent. He looked up, his vision swimming, and for a split second, he saw it—the silhouette of an older, scarred man standing at the far end of the alley.
Clockwise didn't turn to face him. The vigilante simply stood there, a ghost of a war that hadn't happened yet, before flickering like a dying bulb and vanishing into the encroaching twilight. Izuku was alone again, the only trace of the encounter a faint, lingering scent of smoke and the terrifying realization that he wasn't just losing his mind. He was being haunted by himself.
He stumbled home, locking his bedroom door as if it could keep the ghost out, and collapsed onto his bed. He stared up at the ceiling, his pulse finally slowing, but the silence of the room was no longer comforting. It was heavy with the weight of the man who had given everything. As Izuku closed his eyes, he didn't see the future he wanted—the bright, smiling hero he dreamed of becoming. He saw the clock hands turning backward, a countdown he had already started, and realized that if Clockwise was truly the man he was destined to be, then the countdown to his own disappearance had already begun.
He wasn't just Izuku Midoriya anymore; he was a bridge between a forgotten past and a future he was beginning to realize he might not be allowed to survive.