Bakugo Katsuki sprinted forward like a launched missile, sweat and blood flaring off his body with each explosive burst from his palms. The roar of destruction grew louder the closer he got, until it swallowed all thought, all reason. The entrance zone behind him faded into smoke and chaos.
He didn't care.
He had seen the thing. The massive, hulking creature—the one that had nearly broken Aizawa, the one that made the air feel wrong just by existing.
He was going to destroy it.
"There you are," Bakugo snarled, skidding across shattered concrete and launching himself off a pile of rubble. "Try me, freak!"
The Nomu was enormous up close—musclebound, stitched together like a butcher's leftover project, eyes blank and mouth perpetually agape in a grotesque snarl. Steam hissed off its skin. It turned toward Bakugo slowly, as if barely recognizing him as a threat.
It wasn't fast enough.
Bakugo's palm ignited in a blinding blast, the explosion lighting up the air with violent energy. "DIE!!"
The impact struck the Nomu square in the chest, the force creating a crater behind it from the redirected shockwave. Dust exploded upward, clouding the battlefield.
For a brief moment, Bakugo smirked—triumphant.
Then the smoke cleared.
The Nomu stood unmoved. Barely singed.
"…What the hell—?" Bakugo muttered, stunned.
He didn't have time to think.
The Nomu moved.
It was faster than something that big should be. In one blink, it was gone—and in the next, it appeared right in front of him. Its fist was a blur.
Bakugo barely managed to dodge, the punch missing his ribs by a hair. The wind pressure alone sent him flying back through a wall, coughing up blood.
Still, he stood.
Still, he screamed.
Still, he attacked.
Izuku felt it all from across the battlefield—Bakugo's stubborn fury, the Nomu's devastating power, the screams in the back of his mind from childhood, that feeling of helplessness that once lived in his bones like rot.
His hands trembled—not from fear, but from recognition.
Because there was something wrong with this Nomu. Yes, it was powerful. Yes, it was terrifying.
But there was something else.
Magic.
Dark, cold, suffocating magic—not like his own or even like the infernal forces he had studied. This was cursed, as if life had been stitched into muscle through hate and agony.
Izuku's fingertips began to spark again. Runes danced along his skin in spontaneous response, like his body remembered something before his mind did.
He stepped forward—Momo tried to grab his sleeve, but missed.
"Midoriya, wait—!"
"I have to help him."
"You can't face that alone!"
"I'm not," he whispered. "I'm facing something I should've faced years ago."
He moved toward the battlefield.
Scene: The Confrontation — Echoes of a Broken Past
Bakugo was on one knee, coughing, the Nomu stalking toward him with unnatural calm. Blood ran down his face. He growled but couldn't move fast enough this time. Not again.
The Nomu raised its arm.
Then—
A wall of burning crimson light erupted between them.
A rune circle exploded mid-air, rippling outward like a magical pulse of seismic energy. The Nomu staggered, snarling, its skin sizzling where the magic touched it.
Izuku stepped into view, eyes glowing, fingers alight.
"You're not hurting him," he said, voice low.
The Nomu let out a horrible screech, almost like it recognized him—no, targeted him. As if something within it knew Izuku's magic, hated it.
Bakugo's eyes widened from where he knelt, barely catching his breath. "Midoriya?! What the hell are you doing—?!"
Izuku didn't answer.
Because the Nomu's aura was overwhelming now. And he could feel something beneath its skin. Whispers. Remnants. The soul of someone—twisted and rewritten by magic and science.
And then—he saw it.
Not with his eyes, but in the spell-sense at the edge of consciousness.
A boy. Young. Screaming. A collar around his neck. Tubes in his arms. Green eyes, like his own, filled with agony.
And in that moment, Izuku understood:
This creature was made from the broken shell of a child once experimented on.
A child like him.
"No…" Izuku breathed. His knees nearly buckled. The horror, the pain—the parallel—threatened to drown him. "It's not just a monster. It was a person…"
The Nomu roared again—and Izuku barely conjured a second shield in time to deflect a charging blow. The impact still sent him flying, skidding across debris. Pain laced his ribs.
But he stood.
Hands shaking. Heart pounding.
He held his hands together, and a glowing sigil of purification began to form between them. Runes shaped from empathy, protection, grief.
"I'm sorry," he whispered—to the creature, to the child it used to be, to the memory of what he could've become if his life had turned out just a little differently.
Then he cast the spell.
The light surged forward like a comet—not to kill, but to unravel. The runes struck the Nomu's chest, latching onto it like chains of starlight. For a moment, the creature convulsed.
It screamed—not in rage, but something else.
Grief.
The kind of sound Izuku had made when he was younger, curled up in his room, wondering why the world hated people like him.
The Nomu stumbled, its regeneration slowing. Its muscles twitched erratically. Izuku fell to one knee, gasping. His magic was almost depleted.
But he looked up—and the Nomu had stopped.
It was staring at him.
Confused.
Broken.
Silent.
Bakugo, clutching his side, looked between them in disbelief.
"You… you stopped it?"
"I just reminded it of who it was," Izuku whispered.
A distant boom cracked the sky—closer this time.
Reinforcements were arriving.
But Izuku didn't move. Not yet.
He could still feel it—the remnants of the child's soul inside the Nomu, begging to be remembered.