Age: 15 (6 months before the U.A. exam)
The metal briefcase weighed in my hand as if I were carrying a corpse.
Inside, resting on custom-cut black foam, lay the "Atlas Mark I." Titanium alloy gauntlets with hydraulic pistons and a recoil damping system. It had cost me three months of insomnia, skipped meals, and almost all my savings. But it wasn't just a piece of engineering; it was my apology. My confession that I was afraid.
The afternoon sun bathed the Tatoin shopping district in a heavy, orange light. It was hot, a humid, sticky heat that presaged a storm.
I intercepted Izuku at the main street crossing. He was coming from his "secret training," gray tracksuit soaked in sweat and knuckles wrapped in that cheap tape that got on my nerves. Toga walked beside me, sucking on a cherry lollipop, acting as the human buffer between our two volcanic personalities.
"Put them on," I said, blocking his path and holding out the case. My voice came out more aggressive than I intended.
Izuku stopped dead. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm. He looked at me, and in his green eyes, I didn't see the submission of old, but a stubborn exhaustion.
"Kacchan... we already talked about this in the garage."
"No, you talked. I listened to emotional nonsense." I took a step forward, invading his personal space. "I'm not going to let you kill yourself trying to prove a philosophical point about the 'human spirit.' Physics doesn't understand spirit, Deku. It understands Newtonian force. These gauntlets will give you the impact force needed to destroy a three-pointer robot without breaking your arms. Use them."
"I don't want them," Izuku repeated. His voice was low, but firm as a rock. "I don't want your charity, Kacchan. I want your trust. If I put those on, I'll be admitting you're right. That I'm broken."
"It's the same thing!" I shouted, causing a couple of pedestrians to turn and look at us. "Protection and trust are the same thing!"
"No, they're not!" he retorted, raising his voice for the first time in weeks.
"Guys, please!" Toga stepped between us, placing her small hands on our chests to create distance. She looked at us with pleading eyes, her fangs biting her lower lip. "People are watching. Katsuki, you're yelling and scaring the kids. Izuku, stop being so proud for five minutes."
I snorted, looking away toward the intersection. The traffic light was red. Traffic was dense, an irritating symphony of horns and engines. A massive silver tanker truck with an industrial chemical company logo was stopped in the front row, gleaming under the setting sun.
"Just... take it," I muttered, lowering my tone, feeling the weight of the case pulling on my shoulder. "Please. Don't make me beg."
Izuku looked at me. His expression softened a little upon hearing my "please," a word that in my vocabulary had the value of a diamond. He opened his mouth to respond.
"Kacchan, I..."
The world broke before he could finish.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a mechanical, high-pitched, torturous sound. The sound of hydraulic brakes failing and metal tearing against asphalt.
A red sports car ran the red light at full speed from the left. The tanker truck driver, reacting on instinct, swerved sharply to avoid crushing the car.
It was a fatal mistake.
The weight of the liquid inside the tank shifted violently. Inertia overcame gravity. The truck tilted, the right wheels lifted off the ground in slow motion, and then, the entire vehicle tipped over.
CRAAAASH!
The crash was visceral. The steel tank dragged sideways along the pavement, throwing up a shower of orange sparks, and slammed into the glass and concrete facade of a three-story office building.
The ground shook beneath my feet. The impact blew out the ground floor windows, and the truck remained embedded in the building's entrance, crushed like a soda can.
Silence. A second of absolute silence, where no one breathed.
And then, the most terrifying sound in the world.
Hsssssssss.
A high-pressure hiss.
From the dented and cracked tank, a dense, heavy, yellowish gas began to spew out. It didn't rise toward the sky; it fell toward the ground, creeping like a poisonous fog, flooding the street and the interior of the damaged building.
My nose, trained for years to detect chemical compounds for my own explosions, picked up the scent instantly. A sweet, sickly, petrochemical smell.
My pupils contracted. My scientist brain identified the threat before my hero brain.
Propylene. Unsaturated hydrocarbon. Highly flammable. Denser than air.
"SHIT!" The scream tore at my throat. I dropped the briefcase to the ground without thinking. "BACK! EVERYONE BACK!"
Panic erupted. People in the street started screaming and running in all directions. The truck driver was trapped in the cab, banging on the broken windshield, shouting something we couldn't hear. Inside the building, I saw silhouettes of office workers coughing, trying to get out, but the entrance was blocked by the truck and the gas cloud.
My hands ignited instinctively. Small sparks danced in my sweaty palms. I crouched, readying my legs to jump toward the truck, blow open the cab door, and pull the driver out. It was what I always did. It was my solution for everything.
Destroy the obstacle.
But then, the chemical equation completed in my mind.
Propylene Gas + Confined Space + Oxygen + Spark = Thermobaric Explosion.
If I used a single explosion... if I released a single spark of my nitroglycerin near that expanding cloud...
I wouldn't just ignite the truck. The shockwave would vaporize the building, kill every person trapped inside from overpressure, and incinerate the civilians in the street.
I froze.
My legs, which a second ago were springs ready for action, turned to lead. My hands, my precious and lethal hands, started to shake.
I desperately extinguished the sparks, clenching my fists so hard my nails dug into my skin.
"I can't..." I whispered. Horror washed over me like ice water. "I can't attack."
It was the worst nightmare of my existence. I had the power of an army in my hands, but it was useless. In this situation, I wasn't the hero. I was the detonator of a bomb that would kill everyone.
"Kacchan!" Izuku's voice broke my paralysis. He was shaking my shoulder. "We have to get the driver out! The gas is entering the building! Use a directed explosion to open the door and ventilate!"
"I CAN'T!" My scream was pure desperation, a confession of helplessness that hurt more than any wound. "It's propylene! It's flammable gas! If I explode anything, I'll blow up the whole block! Can't you smell it? If I make a spark, I kill them all!"
Izuku froze. His eyes scanned the scene, processing the information. He saw the gas creeping along the ground. He saw my clenched hands, white with tension. He understood the physics instantly.
The panic around me was chaos. Sirens in the distance, but they would arrive late. The gas was accumulating. A single short circuit inside the building, a light bulb breaking, and it was all over.
I felt a small, cold hand grab mine. Toga.
I turned. She was pale, her nostrils flared from the chemical smell that must have been unbearable for her enhanced senses. But there was no madness in her eyes. There was a sharp, brutal clarity.
"Katsuki. Breathe." She squeezed my hand hard, anchoring me to reality. "You can't shoot. Understood. You're dangerous right now. But you're the leader. Give us orders."
She let go of my hand and turned toward the crowd running in panic, trampling each other near the danger zone.
"Move!" Toga shouted. Not with her little girl voice, but with a predator's roar that froze the civilians' blood. "Get away from the gas! Run upwind! If you stay here, you'll die!"
She ran toward a woman who had fallen to the ground with her baby and lifted her up with surprising strength for her size.
"Run that way!" Toga ordered, pointing to the safe direction. "Don't look back! Go!"
I stared, stunned. Toga... my Toga, the girl society had discarded as a defective monster, was saving people. She was controlling the chaos better than I was.
But the driver was still trapped. And the people inside the building were banging on the glass, their faces red from asphyxiation.
"Kacchan."
Izuku's voice sounded beside me. Low. Calm.
I turned.
Izuku had taken off his uniform jacket. He had run to a decorative water fountain in front of a nearby store and soaked his white shirt and the handkerchief he always carried in his pocket.
He was tying the wet handkerchief around his mouth and nose, tightening the knot hard.
"What are you doing?" I asked, with a thread of a voice.
"You can't go in. Your sweat is an ignition risk. You're a walking bomb," Izuku said. He looked at me. And what I saw took my breath away.
His green eyes held no fear. There was no doubt. They had that electric spark, that divine madness I had seen in All Might's eyes in my childhood videos. The look of someone who has already decided their life is worth less than others'.
"But I don't have a Quirk," he said. "I don't make sparks. I'm inert."
"Izuku, no." I took a step toward him, reaching out. "It's toxic gas. It'll displace the oxygen. If you go in there, you'll pass out and die."
"Someone has to get them out before this ignites." He adjusted his red sneakers. "If I wait for the fire department, it'll be too late."
He looked at the briefcase with the "Atlas" gauntlets lying on the ground, forgotten among the rubble.
"Keep that safe for me," he said, with a sad half-smile. "Maybe I'll need them if I survive. But right now... my bare hands are safer."
"Wait! Deku!"
He didn't wait.
Izuku Midoriya, the boy without power, the boy I had called useless, fragile, and delusional for months, broke into a run.
He didn't run with fear. He ran with technique. He vaulted over the hood of a crushed car, used the bent railing for momentum, and dove headfirst into the yellowish gas cloud surrounding the truck.
"IZUKU!"
I wanted to run after him. I wanted to grab him. My body tensed, ready to follow. But my feet were nailed to the ground by the weight of my own chemistry. If I went with him, my body heat, the static from my clothes, or a stress-induced reflex detonation could ignite the gas.
I was the threat. He was the salvation.
I stood there, shaking with rage and terror, watching my best friend's silhouette disappear into the deadly mist. I heard the sound of glass breaking. He was inside.
Toga returned to my side, panting, hair messy. She grabbed my arm, digging her nails in until it hurt, staring at the truck with wide eyes too.
"He'll be okay," she said, though her voice trembled and sounded like a plea. "He's smart. He's fast. He runs every day."
"He's an idiot," I whispered, hot tears of rage gathering in my eyes. "He's a damn suicidal hero. And I'm standing here watching him kill himself."
And then, amidst the smoke and the chaos of the fleeing crowd, I saw another silhouette.
At the corner of the street, partially hidden by a lamppost, was a tall, skeletal man.
Toshinori Yagi.
He was carrying a grocery bag that had fallen to the ground, spilling oranges. He was looking at the accident. His skeletal hand clutched his shirt over his heart.
His blue eyes, sunken in dark sockets, shone with an intensity that didn't belong to a sick civilian. They shone with recognition.
I saw his body tense. I saw steam start to rise from his skin, as if he were trying to force a transformation his body could no longer support. He was going to intervene. He was going to kill himself to help.
But he stopped.
He stopped because he saw the same thing I did. He saw a green-haired boy emerge from the gas cloud for a second, coughing, dragging the unconscious driver by the collar, away from the danger zone, only to turn back and re-enter the building for more.
All Might saw him. He saw the only human being on that street who moved when everyone else, including me and himself, was paralyzed.
And in that moment, under the orange sky and the smell of chemical death, I felt the universe rearranging itself.
My calculations, my plans, my arrogance as a "puppeteer"... everything crumbled.
The "Butterfly Effect" didn't matter anymore. Because destiny had just found its way back home. Izuku was writing his own legend with burning lungs and bare hands, and he was doing it without my permission.
I squeezed Toga's hand until our knuckles cracked together.
"Don't die, nerd," I prayed to the empty air, feeling smaller than ever. "Please, don't die."
Author's note: I saw that the story received incredible support and decided to write a new chapter.