I stood at the mouth of the underpass, staring out at the bustling city before me. The chaos of people, noise, and motion was almost overwhelming after the quiet isolation of my near-death experience.
First things first: I needed to find my way home—wherever "home" was for Izuku Midoriya.
I patted down my pockets and found a smartphone. Perfect. A modern solution to my ancient problem of being completely lost in unfamiliar territory. I pressed the power button, watching as the screen illuminated with a lock screen wallpaper of—surprise, surprise—All Might flexing heroically.
The phone demanded a password.
"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, glaring at the screen. Not a simple four-digit pin, but a full alphanumeric password field. This Midoriya kid might have been pathetically obsessed with heroes, but he apparently had enough sense to secure his digital life.
I tried the obvious: "allmight"
Access denied.
"hero"
Access denied.
"password123"
Access denied.
What kind of paranoid fanboy was this kid to not have a pin code? Who was he hiding his hero shrine from? I could almost picture him, hunched over his phone, giggling as he typed in some obscure reference to All Might's third battle against whoever-the-fuck as his password.
Pocketing the useless brick of technology, I pulled out my student ID again. Aldera High School, Musutafu City. There was an address listed: a string of districts, blocks, and numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me. I might as well have been reading hieroglyphics.
I was in the right city, at least.
People streamed past me on either side, each locked in their own little world, none sparing a glance for the confused teenager standing stock-still on the sidewalk. I watched them for a moment, these strangers with their strange powers living their strange lives.
An idea struck me. A ridiculous, desperate idea.
"The mind is blank," I murmured to myself, looking down at my feet, "but the body remembers."
Seventeen years. This body had walked these streets for seventeen years. The neural pathways were already formed, the muscle memory etched into sinew and bone. I just needed to get out of my own way.
I took a deep breath and simply started walking, deliberately emptying my mind of conscious direction. Left foot, right foot. Let the meat puppet lead the way home.
It was a gambit born of desperation. Me, a tactical genius reduced to playing follow-the-leader with a dead boy's muscle memory. But it was the only play I had.
I walked.
My aimless journey led me deeper into the commercial heart of Musutafu. The buildings grew taller, the crowds thicker, the stimulation more intense. Digital billboards stretched across skyscrapers, bathing the streets below in perpetual electronic daylight.
One billboard in particular caught my eye—a massive holographic display that dominated the side of an entire building. On it, a woman with blonde hair and actual snakes protruding from her scalp smiled seductively at the passing crowds. She ran manicured fingers through her hair, the snakes coiling and preening under her touch.
"NEW FROM PANTENE," the text proclaimed. "SNAKE HERO: UWABAMI RECOMMENDS ULTIMATE REPAIR SHAMPOO."
I stopped, transfixed by the sheer absurdity of it. Here was a woman who could control snakes—or perhaps was part snake herself—and she was using this power to sell... shampoo.
I wasn't watching an advertisement for a product. I was watching an advertisement for a lifestyle. Beauty, danger, exclusivity—all bottled up and available for purchase at your local drug store. The snakes were just a bonus marketing gimmick.
As I continued walking, a cluster of television screens in an electronics store window caught my attention. The displays showed a news broadcast, each screen presenting the same image: a man wreathed in flames, his face set in a permanent scowl. Text scrolled beneath him: "ENDEAVOR'S AGENCY BREAKS Q1 RECORD FOR RESOLVED INCIDENTS."
The anchor's plastic voice drifted through the glass: "—marking the third consecutive quarter of growth for the number two hero's agency. Industry analysts predict this trend will continue through—"
I paused, parsing the information. Record number of "incidents resolved" translated easily enough in my mind: highest quarterly output. The man on screen wasn't being celebrated as a savior; he was being lauded as a successful franchise owner with excellent productivity metrics.
These weren't heroes. They were brands with superpowers.
As I passed a sidewalk café, a conversation between two young men floated over to me.
"Dude, did you see the debut at Tatooin Station today? That new hero, Mt. Lady? Holy shit, I'd like to climb that summit!"
His companion scoffed dramatically, setting down his coffee cup. "Get this—Azil said her ass might be better than Midnight's."
"That's an asinine take and Azil's an idiot. Midnight is a sculpted masterpiece. Mt. Lady is... a natural disaster of glorious proportions. It's a different category entirely."
I didn't judge their crudeness. In fact, I filed the names away mentally: Mt. Lady, Midnight. Their discussion revealed something crucial about this world—physical appeal was a quantifiable, publicly debated aspect of a hero's power.
I continued walking, letting the body guide me while my mind cataloged everything I saw. The gleaming towers of downtown gradually gave way to smaller buildings. The crowds thinned. The electronic billboards disappeared, replaced by hand-painted signs and weathered storefronts.
The air began to smell of salt and decay.
I found myself following a path that led toward the coast, the sounds of traffic fading behind me. Perhaps Izuku lived in a coastal neighborhood. That would be pleasant—a quiet suburb with an ocean view, the sound of waves lulling you to sleep at night.
I turned a final corner, and all such notions evaporated instantly.
Takoba Beach spread out before me, but it wasn't a beach at all. It was a graveyard of consumer excess. Mountains of trash—broken refrigerators, rusted car parts, countless bags of household waste—piled higher than I stood, stretching down to a shoreline choked with filth. The ocean itself appeared sick, an oily sheen coating its surface near the shore.
I stopped, genuinely speechless for perhaps the first time since my rebirth. This wasn't just a little litter. This wasn't a few items carelessly discarded. This was systematic, intentional neglect on a monumental scale.
A city that put its "heroes" on billboards and worshipped them like gods couldn't even keep its coastline clean.
"What. The. Fuck."
I walked closer to the trash mountains, examining them with growing disbelief. Some of these piles appeared to have been here for years, judging by the layers of rust and decay.
"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, kicking at a discarded toaster. "All that power, all those abilities, and no one can be bothered to clean up a beach?"
I climbed atop a relatively stable pile of garbage, gaining a better view of the desecrated shoreline. The beach stretched for at least a kilometer in either direction, every meter of it choked with refuse. No one else was here—no cleanup crews, no concerned citizens, no heroes posing for the cameras while hauling away token pieces of trash.
Just me, Izuku Midoriya, standing alone amid the evidence of a society's indifference.
And then it clicked.
I climbed down and checked my student ID again, confirming the address. Then I looked around more carefully, spotting a narrow path winding through the garbage toward what appeared to be a residential area on the hill overlooking the beach.
"No way," I muttered. "No fucking way."
I followed the path, climbing over broken furniture and discarded appliances until I reached a set of weathered concrete steps leading upward. At the top a few blocks away was a modest apartment complex, dated but well-maintained despite its proximity to the trash heap below.
I checked the building number against my ID.
A match.
Izuku Midoriya, the hero-worshipping fanboy whose body I now inhabited, lived literally overlooking a monument to heroic failure.
I couldn't help but laugh. The cosmic irony was too perfect. The kid who filled notebooks analyzing heroes lived every day with a panoramic view of everything they hadn't bothered to fix.
"Home sweet home," I murmured. "I wonder if I live alone?"