She returned the next morning. And the next. Always when the tide pulled back, exposing rusted skeletons beneath the waves. Always wearing that UA tracksuit like armor. She'd bring thermoses—steam curling in the salt air—and textbooks thicker than his Zanpakuto's hilt. Sometimes she practiced materializing complex objects: grappling hooks, microscopes, a ridiculously ornate tea set balanced precariously on a washing machine drum. He watched from the shadows of a shipping container, cold seeping through his hakama. Her chatter drifted on the wind—equations, hero ethics debates, the precise calorie count of Dagobah seaweed. Meaningless static. If he'd still possessed eyelids to twitch, they would've. Instead, Murasame pulsed against his hipbone. A low, hungry thrum.
By week three, she stopped shouting questions. She'd simply appear, unpack her notes beside the still-glowing scar of his Getsuga Tenshō, and start studying. The scrape of her pen on paper became as constant as the gulls' cries. Once, she materialized an oversized umbrella against a downpour. He stood drenched atop a crane carcass, rainwater dripping from his horn fragment onto silent sand below. Her eyes flickered toward his position once—a brief, knowing glance—before returning to her quirk theory notes. The umbrella's cheerful polka dots clashed violently with the graveyard of appliances. He vanished deeper into the wreckage. Her sigh chased him, louder than the storm.
Today, as dawn bled gray through storm clouds, she arrived with blueprints instead of books. Spread them across a salt-crusted freezer lid: intricate schematics of support gear, energy dampeners, containment fields. She traced designs with ink-stained fingers, muttering about "reiatsu resonance suppression" and "spiritual particle decay rates." Izuku materialized behind her, boots sinking silently into wet sand. His shadow fell across the papers—long, horned, impossible. She didn't jump. Didn't turn. Just tapped a complex coil diagram. "Hypothetically," she murmured, voice tight with caffeine and determination, "if something *were* drawing power from, say, an existential void… How would you stop it from slagging city blocks?" Izuku stared at the back of her neck. A single strand of black hair escaped her ponytail. The void yawned wider. Convenience stores didn't need dampeners. Yet…
He shifted—a whisper of fabric. Momo finally turned, onyx eyes meeting his hollow slits. The blueprints fluttered in the wind. "You need control," she insisted, knuckles white where she gripped the freezer's edge. "Not less power. Precision. Or next time…" She gestured toward the trench scarring the beach, still steaming faintly where rain met superheated glass. "It won't be sludge evaporating. It'll be people." Her gaze dropped to his chest—the hollow where a heart should've been. "Imagine that grocery store clerk. The one you wondered about hiring you. Imagine her vaporized because you *sneezed*." Salt stung Izuku's nostrils. The scent of burnt seagull flesh, long since washed away, ghosted through his memory.
He tilted his head. Rainwater slid down his horn fragment onto his hakama collar. The blueprint flapped violently against Momo's thigh—a design for a collar. *Restraining*. His fingers brushed Murasame's cold hilt. Control. Precision. Words for heroes. Words for the living. The void swallowed them whole. His Zanpakuto pulsed. Hunger answered. He stepped past her, boots leaving no imprint in the sodden sand. "You mistake me," he stated, voice flat as the horizon, "for someone who cares." Momo froze. Behind him, ink-smudged blueprints tore free in the gust, swirling skyward like funeral ash.
He vanished mid-stride. Reappeared atop the crane carcass. Below, Momo stood statue-still, fists clenched at her sides. Her textbooks lay scattered, pages soaking in tidal pools. Silence stretched—broken only by the distant wail of sirens heading toward central Musutafu. The void hummed softly. Convenience stores hired smiles. Heroes preached restraint. He had neither. Only silence. Efficient. Absolute.
He continued, voice echoing flatly across the corroded metal graveyard. "You wish to restrain me because you fear me, foolish girl." Rain traced the sharp edge of his horn fragment before dripping onto rusted steel. "Fear is the shackle of the weak." Below, Momo flinched—not at his words, but at the sudden crackle of green energy gathering at his fingertip. Pebbles trembled on the sand. A stray cat fled beneath a microwave oven, fur smoking where static brushed it. Izuku aimed not at Momo, but at a derelict cargo ship rotting offshore. "If my power brings death than so be it." His slitted eyes remained fixed on the horizon. "Restraint is for weaklings who fear their own power."
The Cero tore through the rain—a searing emerald beam that silenced the crashing waves. It struck midship. For one breathless moment, the vessel groaned, hull glowing cherry-red. Then steel flowed like wax. Deck plates vaporized. Seawater boiled where the beam met ocean, throwing plumes of scalding steam skyward. The blast wave hit seconds later: hot wind snapping Momo's ponytail, throwing textbooks into the surf. Izuku stood unmoved atop the crane. His white hakama rippled violently. Only when the cargo ship split with a shriek like worlds ending did he lower his hand. Molten slag hissed into the sea. Where the beam had passed, the ocean smoked.
Below, Momo shielded her face from the heat radiating off the ruined ship. Her knuckles were white against her forearm. When she lowered her arm, her onyx eyes weren't wide with terror—they blazed. Her gaze locked onto Izuku's silhouette against the inferno's dying glow. Salt crusted her lips. She didn't flinch as superheated droplets hissed around her. Instead, she straightened her UA tracksuit collar. Slowly, deliberately, she bent to retrieve a half-sodden notebook. The ink bled across hero ethics equations. She didn't wipe her face.
Izuku descended—not with Sonído, but with silent footsteps that melted the rust beneath his soles. He stopped three meters from her, the smoking trench of his earlier Getsuga Tenshō separating them like a moat. Rain sizzled where it struck its glass-smooth edge. His hollow gaze swept over her trembling hands, her wind-scorched cheeks, the textbook clasped like a shield. "Do you still wish to be near me, Yaoyorozu?" His voice cut through the hiss of cooling metal—flat, cold, devoid of inflection. The mask fragment above his temple gleamed wetly. "Or are you planning to run away?" He tilted his head, a predator assessing prey. His Zanpakuto sighed in its sheath. "I don't care either way."
Momo met his slitted stare. Her knuckles tightened around the notebook's spine. She stepped forward, boots sinking into ash-blackened sand beside the molten trench. The heat radiating from its depths flushed her cheeks. "Restraint," she whispered, voice raw from smoke and defiance, "isn't shackles." Her gaze dropped to Murasame's hilt, then lifted—unyielding—to the void where his heart should've been. "It's the scalpel that keeps the surgeon from killing the patient." She flinched as rain hissed against superheated glass behind her, but didn't retreat. The scent of scorched seaweed and ozone clung to her tracksuit like a challenge.
Izuku tilted his head. Horn fragment scraping air. He vanished—not with sonic speed, but silent dissolution—reappearing inches before her, close enough for his hakama's damp hem to brush her shins. Cold radiated from his hollow chest, frosting her breath mid-air. "Foolishness," he breathed, voice devoid of warmth. His pale fingers brushed the edge of her textbook. Paper crisped instantly, blackening at his touch. "Restraint is nothing but shackles." His slitted eyes bored into hers. "Chains that choke true power." Behind him, the split cargo ship groaned, metal skeleton collapsing into the sea with a roar like dying giants. Steam billowed, swallowing the horizon.
Momo's chest tightened. She swallowed hard, throat dry as ash. "Then your power is worthless," she shot back, knuckles white around the charred textbook edge. Her voice didn't tremble, though her hands did. "You carved streets. Vaporized villains. But Bakugo?" She jabbed a finger toward the distant city skyline. "He breathes because you *restrained* yourself from letting him choke!" Izuku's mask fragment pulsed—once, sharp as a blade strike. The air thickened. Pebbles levitated around his boots. Momo didn't flinch. "Restraint leads to death?" She leaned closer, forehead almost touching his collarbone hole. Her whisper sliced through the static. "So does *no* restraint. Ask that sludge villain."
Silence crashed down. Only the hiss of rain on molten glass filled the space between them. Izuku's gaze flickered—imperceptible, inhumanly fast—from Momo's defiant eyes to the charred textbook corner smoldering beneath his fingertip. The void within him pulsed, not with anger, but a chilling, detached curiosity. He tilted his head slowly, the horn fragment scraping a faint line against the humid air like chalk on slate. His voice emerged flat, devoid of inflection, colder than the raindrops tracing his jawline. "You are truly pathetic." The words fell, heavy and final, onto the ash-streaked sand. "You talk of restraint, of surgeons and shackles—things you do not understand. You dissect power like a specimen pinned beneath glass. Futile." His slitted eyes narrowed fractionally, capturing her reflection—wind-torn ponytail, soot-smudged cheeks, knuckles clutching charred paper. "You act as if you comprehend this emptiness," he gestured vaguely toward his hollow chest, "as if you grasp the hunger gnawing at my bones. You do not."
He withdrew his hand from the crisped textbook. The lingering scent of burnt paper mingled with ozone and seawater. Behind him, the gutted cargo ship groaned its death throes, metal shrieking as it settled deeper into the boiling surf.
"And you?" His slitted gaze raked over Momo's trembling hands, the tear tracks cutting through the soot on her cheeks. "You speak of controlling this void?" He tapped the hollow beneath his collarbones; the gesture echoed dully, like stone striking bone. "You mistake indifference for comprehension. You weep over hypothetical grocers while standing knee-deep in the ashes of what I *am*."
His Zanpakuto hissed against its sheath—a sound like steam escaping a tomb. He leaned closer, the horn fragment casting a jagged shadow across Momo's face. "Listen well," he breathed, voice colder than the rain slicing between them. "I do not care what you tell me. I do not care if you beg or plead. I will never make myself purposely weak so society will accept me." The air crackled; stray pebbles vibrated violently at their feet. "If I must become a monster," he finished, slitted eyes glowing faintly in the storm's gloom, "then I will accept it fully."
He vanished without sound. Only the fading resonance of power remained—a low thrum that trembled through the wet sand. Momo stood alone, the charred textbook slipping from her fingers into the smoking trench. Far offshore, atop the sinking freighter's last visible mast, Izuku watched her crimson figure blur behind the downpour. Rain sluiced down his mask fragment, carving icy paths through ash on his cheeks. The void pulsed—satisfied, vast, and utterly silent. Convenience stores could wait. The monster was awake.
The next dawn bled gray over Dagobah Beach. Empty. No thermoses steaming beside textbooks. No crimson tracksuit cutting through the wreckage. Only salt-scoured metal and the trench's jagged scar, still radiating faint heat where rainwater hissed into glass. Izuku stood atop the crane carcass, hakama whipping in the wind. His hollow gaze swept the horizon—empty trash heaps, deserted shoreline, gulls wheeling over boiling sludge pits where his Cero had struck. Silence stretched, broken only by the ocean's rhythmic roar. He inhaled deeply: ozone, rust, rot. No trace of expensive tea leaves or desperate courage. The void hummed, low and cold. Irrelevant.
He descended, boots sinking soundlessly into ash. At the trench's edge, a half-submerged notebook lay splayed open—hero ethics equations blurred beyond recognition by seawater and rain. Izuku's shadow fell across it, horned and elongated by the weak sun. Pale fingers brushed the sodden paper. It dissolved instantly into pulp beneath his touch. His thumb traced the air where Momo's defiant eyes had burned. Empty. Like his chest. Like the beach. Like the UA letter folded sharp in his hakama. He lifted his gaze toward Musutafu's skyline—a jagged silhouette wreathed in storm clouds. Silence. Efficient. Absolute.
He turned toward the ocean. Murasame slid free with a serpent's hiss. Green energy coiled around the blade, crackling with static that lifted stray strands of his hair. He aimed not at ships or sludge or hypothetical grocers—but at the horizon itself. The void roared. Rain evaporated before touching the steel. Pebbles danced. The air tasted of lightning and endings. "Getsuga Tenshō." The words scraped raw from a throat that remembered screaming. The slash tore sky from sea—a searing green guillotine that split the world. Behind him, untouched, the empty beach bore witness.
---
The apartment smelled of stale coffee and desperation. Inko Midoriya stared at her reflection in the microwave door—soft cheeks, trembling hands, eyes haunted by a hollow-eyed ghost wearing her son's face. She'd scrubbed the ink stains from the kotatsu where Izuku's bleak categories had bled: HERO, VILLAIN, NOTHING. Her fingers traced the phantom words. Rain lashed the window. Below, laughter spilled from a convenience store—bright, alien sounds. She remembered the gleam of Murasame's edge, the smell of ozone and molten steel. Her knuckles whitened. Slowly, deliberately, she pushed aside the half-eaten bowl of cold soba. Her bare feet sank into the cheap tatami. And then she moved. Not with grace, but with furious, clumsy purpose—lunging forward, sweeping a leg she hadn't lifted in twenty years. Her balance wavered; she crashed into the fridge. Egg cartons rattled. Silence echoed back. She panted, palms stinging where they'd slammed against linoleum. Tears pricked her eyes. She swallowed them. Salt and resolve burned her throat.
Dawn found her on the rooftop laundry lines, fists wrapped in frayed dish towels. Wind snapped wet sheets against her face. She ignored the sting. Instead, she focused on the chipped brick wall before her—a stand-in for rusted appliances, for impossibility, for the void in her boy's chest. Her first punch was a whisper against concrete. The second landed with a wet thud; pain flared up her wrist. She didn't stop. Bone met brick again. And again. Blood bloomed crimson through the thin cotton. Sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead. She smelled iron and rain-washed asphalt. Below, Musutafu stirred—car horns, distant sirens, the mundane pulse of a world that didn't know heroes wept while mothers broke their hands on walls. She thought of Izuku's detached gaze, his blade humming with power that erased horizons. Her next strike cracked brick dust into the air.
By week's end, callouses had replaced blisters. She ran—not toward anything, but *away*: from sagging couches, from unanswered phone calls, from the ghost-smell of ozone clinging to Izuku's empty room. She pounded pavement at midnight, lungs burning, thighs screaming, past convenience stores glowing like lonely beacons. Her reflection in their windows was a stranger—cheeks hollowed, eyes sharp as broken glass, sweat-drenched hair whipping like a battle standard. Joggers veered wide from her furious pace. Rain soaked her threadbare track pants. She didn't slow. She imagined Bakugo's sneer as she pushed harder up steep hills, All Might's booming laugh as she collapsed gasping on park benches slick with dew. Power wasn't green light or hollow chests. It was this: the shuddering ache in her ribs, the taste of copper on her tongue, the raw defiance in every ragged breath. She spat onto wet concrete. Salt. Iron. Fury. The hunger wasn't his alone anymore.
Two months crawled by—marked by stolen gym weights strapped to broken vacuum cleaners, by YouTube tutorials on combat stances played on silent repeat, by rice cooker alarms repurposed as sparring timers. Dawn bled through the kitchen window, painting the steam rising from reheated miso soup. Inko stood barefoot on faded tatami, balancing on one leg like a heron. Her arms trembled as she held a teapot overhead—a makeshift weight—eyes squeezed shut against the burn in her shoulders. Outside, spring rain whispered against the glass. A shadow fell across the doorway. Cool, damp air seeped into the room. She didn't turn. Didn't open her eyes. Only lowered the teapot slowly, knuckles white around its chipped handle.
Izuku stood framed by the apartment entrance, rainwater dripping from his hakama hem onto the worn welcome mat. Salt crusted his mask fragment. Murasame's hilt gleamed dully beneath his folded sleeve. His hollow gaze swept the room—the stacked textbooks serving as makeshift hurdles, the frayed rope knotted to a ceiling beam for pull-ups, the faint smear of blood still stubborn on the chipped brick near the fridge. It lingered last on Inko's trembling stance, the dish-towel wraps around her fists stained rusty-brown with old effort. He tilted his head—a slow, reptilian motion. The horn fragment scraped air. "What," he asked, voice flat as a tombstone, devoid of curiosity yet piercing the silence like Murasame's edge, "are you doing?"
Inko turned. Slowly. Sweat plastered graying hair to her temples. Her breath hitched—not from fear, but exhaustion. She met his slitted stare. For a heartbeat, the room hummed with the memory of molten steel and uncaring voids. Then, deliberately, she raised her fists—calloused, scarred, trembling but unwavering. "Learning," she rasped, voice rough as sandpaper. She didn't flinch as rainwater dripped from his horn onto the tatami between them. Her shadow stretched long and ragged across the floorboards, touching the ink stains Izuku hadn't erased. "To fight monsters." The unspoken word hung heavier than any Zanpakuto: *Yours*. Outside, thunder rumbled. Distant. Hungry.
Izuku tilted his head—a sharp, mechanical angle that made his mask fragment catch the weak kitchen light. His hollow gaze dissected her: the frayed hem of her sweatpants, the purple bruise blooming beneath her sleeve, the way her shoulders trembled with spent adrenaline rather than terror. His eyes lingered on her knuckles—split and rewrapped—before flicking to the makeshift training equipment littering the room. The silence deepened. Not absence. *Pressure*. Like the moment before a Cero detonates. His thumb brushed Murasame's hilt. A low thrum vibrated through the floorboards. Inko didn't lower her fists. She smelled blood, damp wool, and defiance thicker than storm clouds.
He took one step forward. Rainwater pooled darkly around his boots. The horn fragment sliced downward like a blade as he leaned in—inhumanly close—inhaling the scent of her effort: sweat-salt, iron from split skin, stale coffee clinging to her collar. His slitted pupils dilated fractionally. Not recognition. *Assessment*. As if cataloging the tensile strength of bone against Reiatsu. "You will break," he stated, voice devoid of inflection yet colder than the rain soaking his hakama. His gaze traced the tremor in her forearm muscles. "Before you bruise me." Behind him, the shadow he cast swallowed half the room. It pulsed—darkly, hungrily—with the void's resonance. Inko's jaw tightened. She shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. Ready. Foolish. *Alive*.
A low crackle filled the air—static lifting stray threads from Inko's dish-towel wraps. Izuku's palm lifted, not toward her, but toward the blood-smeared brick wall. Green energy coalesced—faint, contained, a mere whisper of annihilation. "See?" he breathed. The brick *vanished*. Not shattered. Erased. Dust motes hung suspended where mortar had been. The aftershock ruffled Inko's bangs. She didn't blink. Izuku lowered his hand. The void in his chest yawned wider. "Your fragility," he murmured, turning his gaze back to her trembling hands, "is absolute." Outside, lightning flashed—illuminating the hollow where pride might have lived. Inko's fists stayed raised. Blood dripped onto the tatami. Silence. Absolute. Waiting.
Slowly, deliberately, Izuku slid both hands deep into the pockets of his hakama. The fabric stretched taut over his knuckles—a dismissal colder than any blade. Rainwater traced the curve of his horn fragment as he turned his back on her defiant stance, on the makeshift weights, on the ghost-smell of desperation clinging to the walls. He walked toward the apartment door—boots silent on worn wood—past the spot where Inko's shadow touched the ink-stained kotatsu. The doorframe radiated damp chill. He paused there, not looking back. Salt crust cracked on his mask fragment. "Your struggle," he stated flatly, voice carving through the humid air, "is noise." He stepped over the threshold. Rain swallowed him whole. Behind him, Inko stood frozen—knuckles bleeding, breath ragged—staring at the empty space where impossibility had stood.
Dawn bled gray over rain-slicked rooftops. Izuku walked—not with Sonído's blur, but the measured tread of something acclimating to concrete and human scent. Below, Musutafu stirred: commuters bustling past steaming manholes, neon signs flickering to life. He paused atop a pachinko parlor, hollow gaze tracing the distant silhouette of Dagobah Beach's scar. Salt wind sliced through his hakama. Murasame pulsed—a low thrum against his hipbone—as a convenience store clerk three blocks away laughed, bright and brittle. Izuku's fingers brushed his collarbone void. Hunger yawned. Convenience stores needed rice balls. Monsters needed none. He dissolved into mist.
Inside the cramped apartment, Inko drove her fist into the brick wall again. Pain flared—white-hot lightning up her forearm—but she welcomed it. Her knuckles, wrapped in fresh gauze, cracked against mortar. Blood bloomed rust-red through the fabric. She didn't stop. Sweat stung her eyes; the salt taste mingled with iron on her split lip. Behind her, the kotatsu bore new ink stains: crude diagrams of pressure points, torn pages from a stolen combat manual. She remembered the void in Izuku's eyes as he erased the brick—the absolute *nothing* where pride or pity should have lived. Her next strike sent brick dust cascading onto discarded eggshells. She breathed through the shudder in her ribs. Noise, he'd called this. Let it be thunder.
She ran that night through torrential rain, thighs burning as she scaled fire escapes slick with algae. Wind ripped at her sodden track pants. Above, lightning forked—illuminating the skeletal crane where Izuku had stood weeks ago, a ghost against the storm. Inko lunged for the next rung, fingernails tearing. Concrete scraped her palms raw. At the summit, gasping, she faced the ocean's roaring blackness. Power wasn't green annihilation. It was this: the ache in her lungs, the tremble in her exhausted muscles, the stubborn refusal to look away from the horizon he'd split. She screamed into the gale—a raw, wordless thing swallowed by thunder. Rain lashed her cheeks like icy needles. She tasted salt and defiance.
The next morning, Izuku materialized silently in the alley behind their building. Rain dripped from his horn fragment onto cracked asphalt. He sensed her before seeing her: Reiatsu spiking—not with power, but *effort*—a frantic drumbeat against the void's silence. Peering through the kitchen window's grimy pane, he watched. Inko balanced on one leg atop the wobbling kotatsu, arms trembling as she lifted the dented teapot overhead. Her eyes were squeezed shut, lips moving in silent counting. A fresh bruise purpled her jawline. His hollow gaze traced the tremor in her shoulders, the clumsy shift of weight, the way her bare feet gripped the wood grain. Pathetic. Fragile. Yet… her scent had changed. No more sour milk terror. Only sweat, blood, and something sharp—ozone?—clinging to her skin. He tilted his head. The void hummed, low and curious. She slipped. Teapot clattering. Izuku vanished before her gasp hit the air.
One month later, Izuku stood alone where Dagobah Beach's mountains of trash once festered. Wind whipped his hakama against legs forged of nothingness. Beneath his boots: sterile glass plains stretching to the tide line—the grave of his Getsuga Tenshō's hunger. No rusted skeletons. No stench of decay. Only polished silence reflecting storm clouds. His thumb brushed Murasame's hilt. *Stronger?* The word echoed hollowly in his chest cavity. He'd erased matter. Carved coastlines. Yet… Bakugo breathed. Inko bled. The sludge villain was gone, but convenience stores still sold rice balls to trembling clerks. Power hadn't reshaped the world; it had merely cleared a stage. Emptier. Cleaner. Utterly unchanged.
He lifted his palm. Green light coalesced—familiar, ravenous. The Cero's whine split the air. Pebbles danced. Gulls fled. But Izuku paused. His slitted gaze fixed on the distant city skyline where UA's towers pierced the gloom. *Access.* The word slithered through him—cold, alien. Not strength. *Depth.* Murasame trembled. Not hunger. Impatience. Beyond vaporization… what lay coiled in this void? The memory of Momo's frantic blueprints flickered—dampeners, collars, shackles for the unspeakable thing he carried. His lips thinned. Fools feared what they couldn't cage. But if this emptiness held layers… if erosion wasn't the only language…
Lightning forked overhead. Izuku's cero dissolved unshot. He stared at his reflection in the glass plains—horned shadow against infinite gray. No strength mattered here. Only depth. He closed his hollow eyes. Rain lashed his cheeks. His reiatsu coiled inward, a serpent tasting its own venom. Beyond the familiar gnawing hunger… deeper… *beneath* the void's cold silence… something stirred. Not energy. Not power. A presence—vast, ancient, coiled tighter than spacetime itself. Like tectonic plates shifting in the abyss. His fingers spasmed. Murasame hissed against its sheath. *Deeper*. He drove his awareness downward, past the scar tissue of his humanity, past the cold rage All Might's betrayal had etched into his bones. The beach vanished. Only darkness remained—thick, primordial, swallowing sound and sense. And there… locked beneath chains forged of despair and dead dreams… it waited. A pressure building behind his sternum, threatening to crack his hollow chest wide open. Not hunger. Dominion.
"Enclose," Izuku breathed, the word scraping raw. Not a shout. A key turning in a cosmic lock. Reality tore.
Light vanished. Sound ceased. For an impossible heartbeat, Dagobah Beach folded in on itself—tides suspended, raindrops hanging like shattered diamonds. Then… expansion. Violent. Silent. Two colossal wings of obsidian shadow erupted from Izuku's back—feathers darker than vacuum, fraying light at their edges. Murasame dissolved into swirling ink, absorbed into the sudden void swirling beneath his collarbones. His hakama and kosode flowed upward like liquid mercury, merging, solidifying into a stark white haori longer than he was tall. The jagged fragment of Ulquiorra's mask fused… and *grew*. Smooth bone flowed upward, encasing his skull entirely—a numb-white helm crowned by four additional horns curving backward like blasphemous antlers. Down his chest, a thick black line plunged vertically, bisected by four horizontal bands—a stark declaration of sealed power. His black hair lengthened, falling past his shoulders. The tear marks beneath his eyes deepened into jagged fissures, weeping trails of condensed shadow. Cold. Absolute. Stillness reigned. Not silence. The *absence* of sound itself. Izuku floated inches above the glass, wings mantled like a fallen archangel's shroud. Below, the reflection showed only oblivion wearing a mask.
A single raindrop fell. It passed through the space where Izuku hovered… and vanished. Not vaporized. *Unmade*. Erased from existence's ledger. Izuku flexed fingers sheathed in new, seamless white fabric. No tremor. No echo of effort. Reiatsu didn't radiate. It *resided*. A contained singularity. The beach around him began to fray—rusted edges of distant scrap heaps dissolving into gray static, the glass plains losing cohesion, pixelating into nothingness. He tilted his helm-shrouded head. Vision expanded. Saw not light, but the screaming potential energy trapped within atoms. Saw Momo Yaoyorozu's frantic heartbeat pulsing kilometers away like a frantic firefly. Saw Inko's bruised knuckles healing in their apartment, the cellular repair accelerated by sheer, desperate will. The tear marks beneath his eyes flared colder. Understanding, vast and terrible, flooded him. This wasn't evolution. It was revelation. The void wasn't empty. It was the canvas. He was the brush. And existence itself… was paint.
Horror whispered through Musutafu. Not as sound. As *absence*. Birds fell silent mid-flight. Car engines sputtered and died. Neon signs flickered into oblivion. Across the city, heroes lurched, clutching suddenly hollow chests as quirks flickered—strangled whispers replacing roaring flames, hardening skin turning brittle, levitation failing. Toshinori Yagi choked on his own blood miles away, One For All guttering like a dying star. On Dagobah Beach, the transformed Arrancar lowered one wingtip. It brushed the glass. Instantly, a perfect hemisphere fifty meters wide ceased to exist—not shattered, not melted. *Gone*. Cleanly excised, leaving only featureless black void beneath his feet. He lifted his gaze toward UA's distant towers. The tear marks bled shadow. Convenience stores? Heroes? Fools. They played with sparks. He held the extinguishing dark. Absolute silence stretched. Waiting for its first command.
Izuku's helm tilted slightly. The universe whispered its secrets—not in words, but in the screaming potential trapped within every atom, in the frantic pulse of life he could snuff with a thought. Below, kilometers away, Momo Yaoyorozu stumbled, clutching her chest. Panic. Her creation quirk had vanished mid-equation. Her fear tasted… irrelevant. Like ash on the wind. Slowly, deliberately, a pale hand lifted. Fingers curled inward. The air screamed. Not with sound, but with fundamental reality tearing itself apart. From the infinite void swirling within his collarbones, emerald reiatsu coalesced—not as a beam, not as raw destruction. It forged itself into physicality. Cold. Precise. Unyielding. A spear materialized in his grasp: shaft longer than he was tall, quillions gleaming like frozen lightning, tip honed to an atom's edge. Pure Cero solidified. Tangible. Hungry. Murasame's essence reshaped.
Rain lashed his obsidian wings. Droplets vanished inches from contact—unmade. The spear pulsed. Its name echoed in the hollows of his bones, a truth deeper than sound. His helm-shrouded gaze fixed on UA's distant spires—a fortress of heroes, symbols of hope… *weakness*. His grip tightened. Bone-white knuckles pressed against the weapon's shaft. Silence deepened. Not anticipation. *Authority*. The spear thrummed, resonating with the tide's suspended stillness. Power wasn't unleashed; it was acknowledged. Commanded. Izuku inhaled—a gesture of habit, not need—tasting ozone, void, and the fragility of worlds. His voice scraped forth: flat, cold, yet echoing across the unraveling beach. **"Luz de la Luna."** The words weren't spoken. They *were*. Reality flinched. The spear's tip ignited—viridian light swallowing the storm's gloom, casting stark shadows across the fraying glass plains. Purpose solidified. Target acquired.
The sigh tore from him—not relief, not fatigue—but a blade's rasp against stone. Deep. Resonant. A primal expulsion of pressure behind his helm. Beneath the tear-streaked mask, beneath Ulquiorra's borrowed form, beneath the hollow where Midoriya Izuku had shattered… *something* recoiled. Not emotion. Recognition. The spear's light pulsed, beckoning destruction. UA waited. Heroes cowered. Momo's panic fluttered like a trapped moth against his awareness. Yet… the sigh lingered. Echoing. He remembered Bakugo's choked gasp in viscous sludge. Remembered the trembling clerk stacking rice balls. Remembered Inko's bloodied knuckles driving *into* his void's indifference. Fragility. Noise. Chains? Or… anchors? The spear trembled—not with hunger, but *impatience*. His wings mantled wider. Oblivion whispered its simplicity: erase them. Erase *everything*. Become the canvas. Become the brush. Become… alone. Utterly. Finally. The sigh faded into the consuming silence. He lowered the spear. Light bled away.
Boots touched glass. Not hover. Contact. The obsidian wings folded inward—vanishing like smoke drawn back into a furnace. Bone-white armor flowed downward, dissolving into familiar kosode and hakama. The towering helm fragmented, receding until only Ulquiorra's jagged horn fragment remained above his brow. Murasame solidified in its sheath. Cold. Ordinary. Dagobah Beach snapped back into focus—wet sand, storm-churned sea, the jagged trench steaming faintly. Power remained—vast, coiled—yet sealed. Not suppressed. *Mastered*. His gaze swept the ruined shore. Glass plains reflected the brooding sky. Rain stung his cheeks—real, wet, tangible. He breathed the salt air, thick with ozone and rot. Intentionally. Deeply. Acceptance wasn't restraint. It was dominion. He turned his back on UA's distant towers. Convenience stores could wait. Heroes could fear. The monster wasn't caged. It was choosing its path. He walked north. Toward the scrap mountains. Toward the stink of rust and forgotten things. Toward the place where impossibility began. Home wasn't a location. It was the crucible. Dagobah awaited.
Wind whipped through the canyon of ruined appliances as he crested the highest dune. Below, rain slicked twisted metal, pooling in oil-black puddles. Silence stretched—a different silence now. Not absence, but potential. Murasame pulsed warmly against his hip. Not hunger. Readiness. He stopped. Closed his slitted eyes. Not to meditate. To feel. Rain on skin. Wind tugging fabric. The coarse grit beneath his soles. The immensity locked within his bones—not a storm to unleash, but a sea to navigate. He flexed his fingers. No Cero sparked. No reiatsu bled. Control wasn't weakness; it was precision. He would carve his path not through vaporized cities, but through understanding. Depth. Layer by layer. Down into the void's whispering abyss. Down to the thing that stirred beneath despair. The power was his. Not his master. The beach stretched before him—a graveyard, a proving ground, a beginning. He inhaled again. Salt. Iron. Promise. The storm broke overhead. Thunder rolled. He didn't flinch.