María Luciana Guadalupe Reyes Delgado had never been the kind of girl the world celebrated. She wasn't thin, she wasn't fashionable, and she didn't blend effortlessly into glossy crowds of pretty teenagers who laughed too loud and lived too carelessly. She was soft soft in her body, soft in her voice, soft in the way her heart worked a little harder than most people expected. That softness was her gentleness, her kindness, and also the very thing cruel people weaponized against her. For as long as she could remember, she had been the easy target in school hallways. A bump of a shoulder here, a whispered insult there, followed by the same cold laughter that always trailed behind her like smoke. "Move, fatty." "Careful, you might break something." "Try a salad for once." The words stung, of course they did, but she learned how to tuck the pain behind a warm, practiced smile. A smile she copied from her favorite characters especially Nana Shimura from My Hero Academia a smile that said I'm fine even when she wasn't.
She had just finished rewatching the entire anime that night, from the hopeful beginnings to the catastrophic battles and all the emotional crescendos in between. The ending theme still echoed faintly in her mind as she stepped out of her small apartment for a late-night walk, hugging her sweater closer to her body. She wasn't really hungry, despite heading toward the convenience store. What she needed was air. Quiet. A way to come down from the bittersweet ache the final episodes always left behind. The moon floated high above her, pale and huge, painting the empty streets in silver. She breathed in deeply, feeling a little more alive than she had all week.
Then fate placed someone beside her at the crosswalk.
Renata Estela Martínez Pardo. The girl who had haunted her teenage years like a ghost with sharpened teeth. Renata was beautiful in the way magazine models were tall, slim, sharp-jawed, with hair that always seemed styled no matter the weather. But beneath that beauty was something brittle, something angry. And María had been receiving the splinters of that hidden hurt for years. Renata's eyes flicked toward her, and the familiar disdain rose instantly to the surface of her expression.
"Oh," she sighed loudly, as if the universe were personally inconveniencing her, "of course someone like you would waddle up right next to me. I didn't know crosswalks had weight limits."
Her words sliced the night air sharply, but María didn't flinch. She didn't glare. Didn't run. Instead, she smiled that same fragile, unwavering smile she had practiced for so long that it no longer felt like something she put on. It simply lived on her face now, like a reflex. A shield made of warmth.
The pedestrian light turned green.
Both girls stepped forward.
That was when the world shattered into chaos.
A blast of sound a truck's horn blaring like a beast's roar ripped through the calm night. The screech of tires scraped the asphalt. Wind, violent and sudden, slammed forward as the enormous vehicle barreled through the intersection far too fast. María's breath froze in her chest. Renata's eyes widened in disbelief. There was no time to move. No time to react. No time even to scream.
But in that single suspended moment suspended as if the universe held its breath María made a choice.
Her instinct was not to save herself.
Her instinct was to save the girl who had never once saved her.
She lunged forward, ignoring the explosion of fear in her veins, and shoved Renata backward with all the strength her soft body had ever been mocked for. Renata stumbled, arms flailing, feet scrambling on the concrete until she collapsed safely onto the sidewalk. María didn't have time to see anything more than Renata's shocked expression before the truck slammed into her with the force of a world-ending blow.
The impact was a violent flash, a sound like the sky itself cracking open, and then everything became weightless.
Her body hit the ground. Hard. The world swayed. People screamed somewhere far away, but their voices sounded like they were underwater. The sky wavered above her, its stars flickering like distant candle flames. Something warm and wet spread beneath her, soaking through her clothes. Her heartbeat thudded weakly, as if struggling to remember its rhythm.
Footsteps pounded toward her frantic, uneven, trembling.
Then Renata's face appeared above her, pale as moonlight, streaked with tears, her mascara smeared into dark rivers down her cheeks. She dropped to her knees, hands shaking uncontrollably as she reached for María like a child reaching for a lifeline.
"W–Why?" Renata choked out, her voice cracking into something raw and unguarded. "Why did you save me? After everything I said to you… everything I did… WHY?!"
María blinked slowly, as if her eyelids were made of iron. Every breath burned. Every heartbeat hurt. But her heart still worked, still protected, still loved. She gently lifted her hand, brushing Renata's trembling fingers with her own cold ones.
"I noticed…" she whispered, her voice thin, fragile, but warm , always warm.
Renata's breath hitched. "Noticed what?! What could you possibly have—?"
"I noticed you were sad."
Renata went still.
María's gaze drifted to the faint bruises she had seen once beneath Renata's sleeves, the way the girl sometimes sat alone after school with her knees tucked to her chest, the hollow look she thought nobody saw. María remembered the loneliness hidden behind Renata's cruelty, the exhaustion behind her perfect façade, the quiet way she sometimes wiped her eyes when she thought she was alone.
"I saw the bruises you tried to hide," María murmured, her breaths shallowing. "I saw how lonely you looked. How tired. How much you were hurting… even if you never said anything."
Renata covered her mouth with a trembling hand, the tears pouring faster.
"I just wanted…" María continued softly, "to be someone who made you smile. Even if it was just once."
Renata broke.
"You stupid… stupid idiot…" she sobbed, gripping María's hand like she could anchor her soul to the earth. "Why—why would you do something like that for me? Why?!"
María tried to answer, but her lungs wouldn't take in enough air. Darkness crept around the edges of her vision, soft and quiet. Her hand lifted shaking, heavy toward her own lips. With the last of her strength, she pressed two fingers to the corners of her mouth. Slowly, painfully, she pushed her lips upward into a small smile.
Just like Nana Shimura.
"Even… if life feels hopeless…" she whispered, her voice breaking, "don't forget… to smile…"
Her arm fell.
Her chest stilled.
Her eyes drifted shut with a final, peaceful exhale.
And María Luciana Guadalupe Reyes Delgado left the world wearing a gentle, loving smile, the smile of a girl who wanted nothing more than to make even her darkest enemy feel less alone.
Renata Estela Martínez Pardo did not remember how she got home that night. Her legs moved, but she didn't feel them. Her lungs pulled in air, but it tasted wrong. The city lights blurred into streaks of color as she stumbled down sidewalks with hands that would not stop shaking, replaying the same image in her mind over and over again María's smile. That final, heartbreakingly gentle smile, given to her, of all people, with blood staining her teeth and life dripping out of her. It haunted her like a ghost glued to her ribs, suffocating her. She washed her hands five times, but she still saw the red. She cried into her pillow until her throat felt like sandpaper, but she still heard María's fading whisper: "I just wanted to make you smile…"
Three days passed in a fog. Renata barely slept, barely ate, barely spoke. Her house was too quiet and too cold, especially with her father slamming doors and yelling at things that weren't her. She curled into herself every time he shouted, every time his boots shook the hallway floorboards. Before, she could shove the fear down, bury it beneath cruelty toward others. But now her armor had shattered. María had smashed it with her kindness. With her sacrifice. There was nothing left to hide behind.
The day of the funeral came like a gray sunrise heavy, suffocating, unavoidable. Renata stood outside the church in a black dress that felt like it belonged to someone else. Her hands were clenched so tight that her nails cut crescents into her palm. She considered turning around. Running. Pretending she didn't belong anywhere near this place. Because how could she face the family of the girl she tormented? How could she step inside the room where María's body rested? How could she breathe the same air as her mother?
But she made herself walk.
Every step felt like dragging a mountain behind her.
Inside, the scent of white flowers and candles filled the quiet space. The casket was open María lay inside, dressed gently, her hair brushed, her face peaceful as though asleep. People whispered prayers. Some cried softly. But Renata's throat locked, and she could not look too long without her eyes burning.
Then she saw her...
María's mother.
A woman with gentle eyes and long dark hair streaked with silver. Her face was carved by grief, but there was something warm in her gaze, something soft that reminded Renata painfully of the girl lying in the casket.
Renata approached her slowly, barely daring to breathe, and when she finally stood before her, her knees nearly buckled. Tears gathered immediately in her eyes.
"I—I'm sorry," she whispered, voice trembling like a scared child. "I'm so sorry for everything. I bullied her. I called her names. I made her life harder. I don't deserve to be here, but I… I needed to say it. I needed you to know that she saved me even though I hurt her. And I don't… I don't understand why—"
Her voice broke completely, and the tears fell freely.
Maria's mother didn't look angry.
She didn't look hateful.
She simply stepped closer and placed a hand gently on Renata's cheek, brushing away one of her tears with a thumb a gesture so motherly, so painfully gentle, that Renata almost collapsed.
"My daughter," she whispered softly, "saw the pain in you that the rest of the world ignored."
Renata's lips parted, but no sound came out.
"She told me," the woman continued, "that you looked lonely. That you hid bruises. That she didn't want you to suffer alone." Her eyes flickered briefly with sorrow, then resolve. "Before she died, she made me promise something, Renata."
Renata swallowed hard. "W-What… what did she ask you to do?"
"To help you."
The words cut deeper than any scream could.
Maria's mother cupped her hands gently, like she was holding something fragile. "She asked me to help you escape whatever hurt you. To help you find safety. To help you put away the man who scares you." Her eyes moved pointedly toward Renata's sleeves. "She knew."
Renata's breath hitched the soft gasp of someone who had spent years pretending everything was fine. Her arms trembled as she instinctively pulled her sleeves lower, hiding the bruises she always told herself were accidents.
She felt seen.
Exposed.
And overwhelmingly… cared for.
Maria's mother opened her arms and Renata broke. She stepped forward and buried her face against the woman's shoulder, sobbing like a child who had finally found refuge. Gentle hands stroked her hair, firm arms held her together, and for the first time in a long time, the fear inside her chest loosened.
"We will put him away," Maria's mother whispered into her hair. "You will not live under his fear anymore. My daughter wanted that for you."
Renata cried harder for María, for herself, for all the years she let pain turn into cruelty. A guilt heavy as stone sat in her gut, but Maria's mother did not push her away. She held her like she was her own.
And over time, she helped her escape her father. Helped her file reports. Helped her find a safe place to live. Helped her heal. She became a lifeline the only one Renata ever had.
All because of María's last wish.
-----
At first, María Luciana Guadalupe Reyes Delgado thought dying would be loud. She expected sirens, shouting, crying, the roar of the truck, the taste of metal and fear filling her lungs. But what came after the pain was not sound. It was silence. When awareness returned, she wasn't lying on asphalt or in a hospital bed. She lay on nothing. A surface that wasn't cold or warm, hard or soft just there. When she opened her eyes, the world around her was pure white. No walls. No sky. No floor. Just endless, endless white stretching out in every direction. The only color was herself her bloodied clothes, the bruises on her arms, the dark stain spreading beneath her where the impact had marked her final moments.
She pushed herself up slowly, staring at the red smeared on her hands. It was jarring, almost surreal, that the blood was still there. That her last moments clung to her even here. Her chest tightened. She remembered her bully's tear-streaked face. She remembered the truck. She remembered choosing to push someone else away instead of herself. A hollow laugh escaped her, thin and shaking. "So this is… it?"
The white space trembled.
At first, she thought it was her vision blurring. But then, far in the distance, a spark of color appeared a flicker of gold against the void, like sunlight reflecting off glass. It grew as it approached, the white bending around it, and soon footsteps echoed faintly. Heavy. Confident. Dramatic, even. María squinted, lifting a hand to block the glare, and then she saw him clearly.
A tall man strutted toward her like he owned the horizon. Giant slicked-back golden pompadour. Black sunglasses taking up half his face. Tight black t-shirt hugging muscle that looked like it had been carved with a chisel and ego. Blue jeans that clung like they'd signed a contract. He stopped a few feet in front of her, planted his hands on his hips, tilted his head back and declared, loud enough to vibrate the air:
"Woah-ho-ho! Hey there, pretty mama."
The white realm actually echoed the words back to them, like the universe was embarrassed but committed.
María stared. Her brain politely exited the chat for a full three seconds.
"…Johnny Bravo?"
"You know it," he said, brushing imaginary dust off his shoulder before flexing an arm with a grin. "The one, the only, the walking monument to good hair and questionable life choices." He did the little hip swivel, finger-guns, and a casual, "Ha! Thank ya, thank ya very much."
It was so absurd that a tiny laugh slipped out of her, even through the ache in her chest. It felt wrong and right at the same time. This was the kind of thing fanfics joked about, not something that actually happened. Johnny's grin softened just a little when he heard her laugh.
"There she is," he said gently. "That's better. Cryin' girl in a white void? Way too sad. Cryin' girl who can still laugh a little? Now that's someone I can work with, pretty mama."
She swallowed, her eyes burning. "What… what is this? Am I dead?"
He rocked his head side-to-side, like he was weighing it. "Ehhh… techniiiically? Yeah. Truck hit you real good. Not exactly a love tap." His voice softened further as he looked at the blood on her clothes. "But you ain't done yet. That's why you're here."
Her hands trembled in her lap. "I… saw her crying. Renata. I didn't want her to die. I just…" Her voice cracked. "I just wanted her to smile for real. Just once."
Johnny lowered himself into a crouch in front of her, elbows resting on his knees, his shades reflecting her small, broken figure. Gone was the cartoonish flirting; in its place was a strange, solid warmth. "I know. We all saw it, ya know?" he said quietly. "All the big cosmic channels tuned in for that one. Girl gets called every name in the book, shoved around, laughed at… and still throws herself in front of a truck to save the one who hurt her." He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "That's real hero stuff, right there."
She bit her lip, tears spilling freely now. "It hurt… but I didn't want her to be alone. I knew… she was hurting too. Someone had to do something."
Johnny nodded, like she'd just confirmed something important. "You notice things, don't ya? The bruises. The loneliness. Stuff everyone else pretends not to see." He sighed, then straightened up, planting his fists on his hips again. "Alright, listen up, pretty mama. I know you've read your fair share of fanfics. Don't try to deny it."
She blushed. "…maybe…"
"White void? Mysterious guy? Big talk about your destiny?" He gestured grandly at the emptiness. "You know how this works. Usually, some creepy robed dude shows up and goes 'Choose your world and your cheat skill,' right?"
Despite herself, she snorted. "That's… not wrong."
"But here's the difference," Johnny said, pointing at her heart. "You're not here because some cliché needed to be fulfilled. You're here because you earned more than the hand life dealt you. You saw pain and tried to heal it. You smiled through your own hurt. You died saving someone who made your life hard. So now… you get a second shot, in a world you already know."
Her breath hitched. "A second… shot?"
"A whole new life, baby." He grinned. "Different world, different body, different chance. And this time, you're not goin' in empty." His grin tilted into something mischievous but strangely proud. "You're gettin' a package deal. A real upgrade."
She blinked. "W-What kind of upgrade?"
He tapped his chin theatrically. "Tell me somethin', pretty mama. You like dragons?"
"…Yes."
"You like magic?"
"Yes."
"You like ridiculously powerful, stacked, legendary dragon ladies who can warp reality and still smile like Sunday morning?"
"…Y-Yes," she admitted, thinking very specifically of one character.
Johnny snapped his fingers, golden sparks flaring in the air. "Congratulations. You're getting the full goddess-dragon treatment. Powers like hers. Body like hers. Heart still yours. And as for where you're going… well." He leaned in, lowering his shades just enough she felt the weight of his gaze. "How'd you like to live in the world of heroes and quirks you spent all that time watching?"
Her heart skipped. "You mean… that world? With UA… All Might… the League…?"
He nodded. "The one and only. You know how it starts. You know how it gets messy. That knowledge? That's your compass. But your real strength… that's you." Then his voice softened, almost reverent. "You went through hell, María. This time, you're going in with something that'll help you survive it… and change it."
She hesitated. "What if I mess it up? What if I ruin things just by being there?"
Johnny smiled less posing, more genuine. "You're worried about breaking the story? Pretty mama, the story needed breakin' a long time ago. You don't owe the plot anything. You owe yourself the chance to live. And if along the way you help some kids not get crushed under a messed-up hero system…?" He shrugged. "Well, that sounds like a darn fine use of a second life."
Tears blurred her vision again, but this time there was warmth beneath the ache. Fear and hope twisted together in her chest. "Will… will I remember this? You? Her? My mom?"
"Every bit," Johnny said. "This isn't a reset. It's a continuation. Chapter two, if you will." He then straightened up one more time, spreading his arms wide as golden light pooled around his feet. "Now then, pretty mama… ready for takeoff?"
She took a breath. Then another. Then she nodded. "Yes."
Johnny Bravo flashed her one last, bright, wholesome grin not flirtatious, not mocking, just proud. "Attagirl. Now go make that new world better than the last."
He flicked his fingers toward her chest.
The white realm shattered into color.
---
Wind hit her face first. Cool, crisp, laden with the scent of grass and distant pavement. Then came the feeling of gravity very much present and very much rude, as it yanked her downward. María choked on her own gasp, her eyes flying open as she toppled onto a patch of uneven earth and rolled twice before coming to a stop flat on her back.
For a moment, all she could do was stare up at the blue sky above her. Not white. Not empty. Blue. Clouds drifted lazily past. Tree branches waved overhead. Somewhere, birds argued loudly about something in the foliage. Her heart pounded against her ribs, startled and alive.
She tried to sit up.
Her newly enhanced chest did not agree with this plan.
The sudden shift in weight sent her pitching forward harder than she expected. Her hands flew out too late, and she face-planted into the grass with a muffled, "Ow—!" Her nose squashed against dirt, and a leaf got stuck to her lips.
"O-okay," she mumbled into the ground. "That's… heavier than I remember."
She pushed herself up again, slower this time, and sat on her knees, breathing carefully. When she looked down at herself, her breath caught. Her body was… not the same. Her curves were dramatic, her waist trim, her skin smooth and unblemished. Long, multicolored hair spilled down her shoulders and back like a living rainbow, shimmering faintly in the light.
She turned her head and caught sight of movement behind her.
A long, thick dragon tail swayed lazily back and forth, the scales shimmering with green-gold-blue hues, as if someone had poured the sky and forest into gemstone form.
The tail decided to swish the other way.
It knocked her completely off-balance and she tumbled sideways, landing on her back again.
"I miss my old center of gravity…" she groaned.
Standing took several clumsy tries, each balanced between wobbling knees and overcompensating shoulders. Once upright, she closed her eyes and focused on that strange hum beneath her skin the warm, thrumming current of magic that felt as natural as breathing. Instinct whispered to her. She listened. Her tail tingled, then gradually faded from sight, as if someone had erased it with a careful stroke. The subtle sharpness of claws softened. Scales vanished. Even the faint pressure of fangs receded.
But when she raised her hand and felt her head, two curved, golden horns remained.
They were smooth and warm, arching like elegant ornaments, framing her hair.
"These can stay," she decided quietly. They felt like a part of who she'd become a little too obvious to be normal, but not monstrous. Just… otherworldly.
With each step, she adjusted a little more. She learned to lean slightly back so her chest wouldn't pull her forward. She practiced swinging her arms without overbalancing. She got used to the weight of her hair and the subtle hum of her magic. By the time she reached a hill overlooking Musutafu, the sun was beginning to dip, painting the city in orange and gold.
She recognized it instantly. The cityscape. The layout. The feeling.
I'm really here, she thought, a shiver of awe running through her. The world of MHA…
---
Later, she found herself near a familiar place a tunnel, the one she remembered so vividly from episode one. The underpass where a sludge villain attacked a boy destined to carry more than his share of burdens. Smoke still clung to the air from the fight. People had dispersed. Heroes had done their cleanup. The danger was gone, but the emotional wreckage remained.
She didn't step in while it was happening. She watched from a distance, hidden behind a line of trees, fingers gripping the bark. Every instinct screamed to act, to help, to protect that freckled boy throwing himself at danger. But she knew. She knew the story, and some things needed to happen for the chain of fate to remain intact. If she saved him now, she might break the path that led to One For All being passed on.
So she waited.
When everything was over when the boy she knew from countless rewatchings trudged alone down a quiet path, shoulders slumped, eyes red and swollen she finally stepped out.
"Hey there, little hero," she called softly.
He flinched at the sound of a voice and spun around, one hand clutching his notebook like a shield. When he saw her, his jaw dropped. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to freeze.
A tall girl with multicolored hair that looked like spun opal. Golden horns curving from her head like a crowned dragon. Gentle eyes that glowed with a soft, comforting light. Her figure was striking in a way his teenage brain wasn't prepared for, and the warmth in her expression was enough to make his heart lurch.
His entire face went scarlet.
"I—uh—I—h-hi!" he squeaked, voice cracking. "S-sorry—did I—am I in your way—I can move—!"
She lifted her hands quickly, palms out, smiling. "You're not in my way, don't worry. I just wanted to talk. Is that okay?"
He swallowed. Hard. "Y-Yes! I mean—yes, m-ma'am!" He straightened like a soldier at attention, then realized how ridiculous he looked and fumbled, nearly tripping over his own feet.
She bit back a giggle. He was exactly like she'd imagined earnest, anxious, kind to the core. "I saw what you did back there," she said gently. "With the villain. With that other boy."
He flinched, guilt flashing on his face. "I—I know, I know, it was stupid, I didn't have a quirk, I could've died, everyone already said it was reckless and—"
"And it was brave," she interrupted softly.
He stopped mid-apology, blinking rapidly. "B-Brave?"
"You ran toward someone who was scared and in danger," she said, taking a slow step closer. "You didn't think about your own safety. You just moved. You wanted to help. That's not nothing. That's not worthless. That is the heart of a hero."
His eyes filled with tears again, shimmering green and pain and hope all at once. "Everyone keeps telling me I can't be a hero," he whispered. "That I'm useless. That without a quirk, I should just give up."
She knelt down so she wouldn't tower over him, her horns catching the sun like a halo. Up close, she could see how tired he was, how worn down by those words, how desperately he clung to his dream even as the world tried to crush it. It reminded her of herself of smiling through insults, of refusing to let go of the light inside.
"Listen," she said, her voice steady and warm, "people can be wrong. Even people you look up to. Even people who seem like they know everything." Her eyes softened. "A hero isn't made by their power. It's made by their choices. And today… you chose to act when it mattered most."
He stared at her, breath shaking, cheeks glowing red. "D-Do you really think someone like me… could be a hero?"
She smiled, the same kind of smile she'd given Renata in her last moments, now framed by dragon-horn grace. "I don't just think it," she whispered. "I believe it completely. One day, you're going to be an amazing hero. One of the greatest."
His heart stuttered in his chest. No one had ever said it so confidently. So wholeheartedly. He felt like crying, laughing, collapsing, and running all at once.
Before he could spiral, she gently reached out and cupped his cheeks in her hands. He squeaked, blushing so hard his ears turned red. Slowly, tenderly, she leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.
Warmth flared where her lips touched. A gentle, golden light flickered unseen by normal eyes, but very real. Magic flowed from her into him, subtle but potent, a dragon's blessing sinking deep into his soul.
"For good luck," she murmured. "For courage. For the days when it feels too hard to keep going. Remember this warmth and don't give up, okay?"
His eyes shone, brimming with tears again — but this time, they weren't just from pain.
"Th-Thank you, miss…" he whispered hoarsely, unable to look her directly in the eye without feeling like his heart would explode.
She let her hands fall away and gave him space. "Go on," she said with a soft laugh. "Your journey's just getting started."
He bowed his head, clutching his notebook to his chest, and then turned and ran, each step a little steadier than the last. He didn't know her name. She didn't speak his. But between them, something invisible had shifted — fate, slightly brighter, slightly stronger than before.
She watched him disappear around the corner, her hand resting over her own heart.
Somewhere inside, she swore she could still feel Johnny's grin.
Alright then," María murmured to herself, casting one last glance toward the distant skyscrapers of Musutafu, their silhouettes glowing in the early evening light like an invitation into a story she once knew only from screens. "New world. New body. Same me. Let's see how much good I can do… without breaking the story too much." The words drifted into the air with a lightness she didn't truly feel. Beneath her attempt at humor pulsed a strange cocktail of anticipation and uncertainty—excitement at being in a world she cherished, a little fear at altering events she remembered, and an unfamiliar weight in her limbs, her balance, her magic. She took a slow breath, adjusting her posture so her new body didn't pitch her forward, and for a brief moment she listened to the rustle of the wind through the grass, the distant hum of city life, and the quiet thrum of power deep under her skin. Everything felt new. Everything felt alive. Everything felt like a beginning.
Then something ripped through her.
Not physically. Not through sound. But through the soul fast, violent, merciless. Her breath faltered, knees buckling as a tidal wave of anguish, terror, and exhausted despair crashed into her heart like a blow. It wasn't simply fear; it was a fear that had lived too long, the kind that hollowed out childhood and replaced it with pain. It was a heartbreak so pure it felt like a small chest was collapsing under invisible hands. For a moment she couldn't move, couldn't even breathe as the sensation tore through her bones, forcing her hand to shoot out and grab the nearest tree just to stay upright. Her vision blurred, stars dancing at the edges, and her heart seemed to physically twist in her chest, forcing out a strangled gasp she didn't recognize as her own.
And then recognition.
She knew this pain.
She knew this fear.
She knew this child.
"Eri…" she whispered, her voice cracking like thin ice under immense weight. The name felt sacred. It felt fragile. It felt like a remembered sorrow combined with the living agony echoing inside her. "Oh god… Eri…"
Every scene from the anime flooded into her mind at once the bandages, the medical table, the trembling lips, the way Eri clung to Izuku as if afraid he would vanish like the rest of her fleeting hopes. She remembered Overhaul's chilling calm, the sterile rooms, the blood, the cold dissection of a child's innocence. But remembering was nothing like this. Nothing like feeling the echo of a quirkless, helpless girl who had cried herself quiet long ago. Nothing like sensing the lingering warmth of fear trapped inside her little chest. Nothing like hearing the faint spiritual cries of someone who had begged the universe for "anyone" to come for her and been met with silence until now.
María's body trembled from head to toe. Tears stung her eyes but didn't fall yet, as if her soul was still holding its breath. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she straightened herself and lifted one hand to her sternum, pressing down on the painful throb as if that could lessen what she felt from Eri. But the connection didn't fade. It intensified, becoming a beacon with every heartbeat a soft, fragile signal begging for warmth, for protection, for release. María felt her chest tighten again, this time with something fierce and explosive. A motherly fury she didn't know she possessed bloomed inside her and ignited like fire licking up dry wood. Her horns began to glow faintly, shimmering with warm golden light.
"Shie Hassaikai…" she whispered, her voice no longer trembling from pain but sharpening into something deadly focused. "Kai Chisaki… Overhaul…" The names tasted like venom on her tongue. She didn't need to wonder who was hurting Eri. She didn't need to search for suspects. She didn't need guidance. She already knew the location from her memories of the anime. She already knew their crimes. She already knew Eri's suffering. The moment she felt the terrified pulse inside her soul, everything aligned with terrifying clarity. She didn't need a map. She followed the emotional scream of a child who had never been saved soon enough.
Her vision sharpened, the world turning into a blur as she pushed forward. Then, without hesitation, she ran.
Except "ran" was too weak a word.
Her body moved with supernatural efficiency, her feet pushing off the ground with such force that cracks fractured the earth under her first three steps. Air whipped violently around her, her hair flaring behind her like a luminous banner of molten gems. She shot forward in a blur, her breath steadying even as her heart thundered with rage and determination. Street lamps flickered as she passed. Pedestrians felt a warm gust of wind brush their cheeks without seeing the shape that caused it. Cars rattled as she surged past them, leaving golden streaks that vanished before anyone could process what they had seen. She wasn't a blur. She was a streak of divine instinct barreling toward one target.
And that target was waiting in a warehouse district of Nabu City.
She stopped without slowing, without skidding, without stumbling her body halting with an eerie, weightless precision. Before her stood a row of connected warehouses, nondescript and industrial, the kind of buildings overlooked by everyone except those who wished to hide behind plainness. But she recognized this place immediately. The stench of chemicals, blood, and quiet suffering seeped through the metal walls. It wasn't a smell. It was a memory one she had seen through a screen but now felt in her bones. The pain inside the building trembled like a small bird trapped in a cold cage.
"She's inside…" María whispered. Tears finally fell—silent, slow, burning trails down her cheeks. "Eri… I'm here now."
She approached the metal sliding door. The reinforced steel loomed tall and wide, meant to block heroes, intruders, and curious eyes alike. She placed her hand gently against the cold metal.
It disintegrated.
Not shattered.
Not dented.
Not bent.
It simply turned into golden dust and evaporated like mist struck by sunlight.
She stepped into the corridor.
Inside, the air was stale and filled with the sterile sting of disinfectants barely masking something older fear, blood, the lingering scent of loneliness. The fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, casting long shadows across peeling tile floors. The hallway stretched ahead like the spine of a dying beast, with branching corridors that hid old crimes and silent witnesses. María's footsteps made no sound, but every step made the building tremble ever so slightly in response to the dragon energy coiling beneath her skin.
Then she felt it.
A heartbeat.
Small.
Weak.
Terrified.
Eri.
María's breath caught in her throat, her fury swelling so fast it nearly blinded her. She moved faster through the corridors, ignoring corners, ignoring doors, ignoring everything except the faint psychic thread pulling her forward. Her magic pushed outward like a low hum. Two guards turned the corner ahead of her and vanished before they even registered the shape approaching them. Dust drifted down to the tile, golden and quiet.
She reached the final door.
Heavily reinforced. Bolted. Sealed. Covered in biometric locks.
Her hand touched it.
The door dissolved like old paper turning to ash.
The room on the other side was chilled, bright, sterile, and horrifyingly quiet. In the center, illuminated by the harsh glare of a single overhead bulb, sat a small metal chair covered in straps and padded bindings. And in that chair she saw her.
Eri.
A tiny girl with long white hair cascading over bruised shoulders. Bandages covered her thin arms. A small horn protruded from her forehead, glowing faintly with suppressed quirk energy. Her eyes large, red-rimmed, glassy were open but empty, staring at nothing with a numbness only prolonged trauma could create. She didn't cry. She didn't whimper. She only trembled slightly, as though waiting for the next round of pain she had grown used to.
María froze.
Her breath left her in a shaky exhale so soft it nearly disappeared in the cold air. Her vision blurred with tears as her heart shattered in a way she didn't know was possible. She had watched this scene in animated form. She had cried for this child on a screen. She had whispered "someone save her" from behind the safety of fiction. But nothing...nothing prepared her for the reality. Nothing prepared her for the sight of a child so gentle, so frightened, so unbearably small being treated as an experiment instead of a human being.
"Oh… mi cielo…" María whispered, her voice breaking so sharply it hurt. She took a slow step inside, her hands trembling at her sides.
Eri lifted her head slightly at the sound, flinching instinctively, pressing against the back of the chair as if bracing for impact. Her lips parted, a small, fragile breath escaping. "P-Please… don't…"
The restraint buckles snapped into golden dust.
María didn't remember touching them.
She only remembered rushing forward to catch Eri as the child slumped forward, too weak and too scared to even stand. María scooped her up gently, lifting her with the delicacy one might use to cradle a wounded bird. Eri froze in her arms, expecting pain, punishment, rejection anything except warmth. But María held her close, pressing the small child against her chest, hands trembling with rage and love all at once.
Eri clung to her instinctively.
Softly.
Desperately.
As though she had found something she didn't dare believe existed
Safety.
María's tears fell onto Eri's white hair as she whispered, "I'm here. You're safe now. I've got you."
And as she held the trembling child against her heart, something inside María—the part that had survived death, the part that remembered smiling through pain, the part that had always wanted to protect—finally snapped free.
Her horns ignited.
Her aura darkened and brightened at the same time.
Her hair lifted as if weightless.
The floor beneath her cracked.
The dragon's wrath awakened.
For a long time, María did nothing except stand in that sterile, heartless room holding the trembling child against her heart as though protecting the last warm light in a dying world. The cold fluorescent bulb above them buzzed weakly, flickering as though confused by the divine energy coiling tighter and tighter beneath María's skin. Her long, multicolored hair hung around them like a curtain, shielding Eri from the harsh light; each strand shimmered with crystalline hues that reflected the faint trembling breath of the girl in her arms. The world outside seemed to fall away. The tile floor, the peeling paint, the humming machines all of it faded into a blur of meaningless background noise, because María's entire universe had narrowed to the fragile weight clinging to her chest. Every tiny shudder of Eri's breath cut through María like a blade. Every bruise scattered across that small body, every old scar lost under layered bandages, every tremor of fear woven into her muscles all of it sank into María's bones with a heaviness she had not known she could carry.
She had lived through loneliness, through mockery, through pain and insecurity, but she had never experienced the raw ache that now pulsed through her like a heartbeat. This wasn't sympathy. This wasn't pity. This was something deeper, instinctual, ancient—a dragon's primal, sacred fury awakening for the first time as she held a child who had been robbed of everything children should have.
She whispered nothing at first. She simply held Eri, feeling the girl's tears bleed invisibly into her shirt as the small fingers clutched desperately at the fabric. Eri wasn't sobbing; she was too exhausted even for that. Her breaths weren't full, they were thin, terrified inhalations as though she expected the arms holding her to vanish at any moment, replaced by the cold sting of restraints or the metallic scent of blood and disinfectant. María curled her arms around her more tightly, rocking her very slowly, her tears slipping silently down her cheeks.
Each tear was hot...too hot falling from a woman barely holding back the tsunami inside her. "Mi cielo… mi estrella…" she whispered with a voice that fractured like broken glass, "I'm here… you're safe in my arms." The words felt like fragile offerings, tiny flickers of hope she was trying to coax into flame through sheer will. Eri's breath hitched, her tiny hands clinging harder, as though those soft words were the first warmth she had felt in years.
That was when the footsteps began.
They were soft, distant, cautious yet carrying the harsh rhythm of someone who walked through this facility regularly, someone who didn't expect resistance, someone without fear because they believed they owned every heartbeat inside these walls. The metal tray clattered faintly with the shifting weight of glass vials and surgical tools.
The sharp scent of antiseptic drifted closer with every step. María stiffened instinctively. Her horns glowed faintly as she turned her head slightly, her sharp hearing picking up the sound of the man muttering under his breath complaints about the girl's "stubborn quirk," about Overhaul's new timetable, about the "samples" he needed to extract tonight. He walked toward the door without pause, perhaps assuming Eri had begun crying again, perhaps assuming another round of agony awaited the child who had never been allowed to grow.
The doctor stepped through the melted doorway and stopped mid-breath.
For a long, silent stretch of seconds, he simply stood frozen, his mind taking far too long to process the impossible sight before him. A woman with glowing golden horns stood in the room, her long, shimmering hair drifting in a non-existent breeze, her eyes glowing like molten sunlight. And in her arms held with more tenderness than he had ever witnessed inside these walls was the little girl they had tormented for months.
Eri's small body was relaxed for the first time in ages, pressed against the warmth of a stranger who radiated a power the doctor had never felt before. His eyes widened in terror. His hands trembled. The tray shook violently, the scalpels rattling against the vials that held remnants of stolen childhood. His entire posture shrank as though the very air had thickened around him.
But María didn't focus on him yet. She lowered her head and whispered softly into Eri's ear, her voice shifting into a lullaby so warm and nurturing that the entire world seemed to hush to hear it. "Mi cielo," she breathed, brushing her thumb gently along Eri's cheek, "you've been so strong… so brave… so patient. But I don't want you to see anything that might scare you. I want you to sleep, just for a little while. When you wake up, I promise… I'll make you something wonderful." Her voice softened even more. "I'll make you pancakes. Sweet ones with honey. I'll make you something warm that tastes like a safe morning." Eri's eyelids fluttered at that, the tired muscles relaxing as though the promise had reached a place deep inside her that had long been numb. María pressed a gentle kiss to the girl's forehead and released a soft pulse of golden magic, a soothing wave that eased Eri's exhausted body into the first peaceful sleep she had experienced in far too long. The child grew limp in her arms, finally resting.
Then María slowly lifted her head.
Her gaze shifted toward the doctor.
The atmosphere in the room cracked.
The warmth that had surrounded her just moments before evaporated so quickly that the air seemed to freeze solid. Her glowing eyes locked onto him, bright and ancient and full of a storm the man had no hope of surviving. Her posture didn't change; she didn't take a threatening step, didn't raise a hand, didn't bare her teeth. She didn't need to. Power radiated from her in waves, thick and suffocating, making the sterile room feel suddenly too small to contain her presence. Her long hair lifted in an unnatural wind, her horns glowing brighter until they cast curling shadows across the walls like the silhouettes of dragons ready to strike.
"Tell me," María said softly, almost conversationally, though her voice carried the pressure of a collapsing star, "are you the one… who hurt her?"
The doctor swallowed hard, stepping backward until his shoulders hit the wall. His tray clattered onto the floor, the vials shattering, glass scattering across tile. He shook his head violently, mouth opening and closing like a fish thrown onto dry land. "I—I—I didn't— no, you don't— it was Overhaul! He—he told us— it wasn't my— I only—" The excuses poured from him in frantic, broken whispers, but none of them had weight. None of them mattered. He reeked of guilt. His gloves were stained from the same sessions that left Eri trembling. He couldn't hide behind orders when the evidence was written across the child's small body.
María didn't blink.
She didn't soften.
She didn't hesitate.
Her voice dropped into a whisper so calm, so soft, so terrifying that it felt like the pronouncement of a god.
"I already know you did."
For a moment so elongated it felt suspended outside of time, the sterile room stood deathly still, devoured by a silence so absolute that even the hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to shrink away in fear. The doctor this man who had once walked into this room with arrogance masked as indifference, who had pressed needles into a trembling child's skin with the mechanical casualness of someone checking items off a grocery list now found himself incapable of sound or breath. His mouth opened and closed uselessly like a trapped creature drowning in air. His hands hovered mid-gesture, fingers curled stiffly as though his body could not decide whether to raise them in defense or clasp them in prayer.
The tremor in his muscles betrayed him. His legs quivered so violently they could barely support the thin skeleton beneath his lab coat. Yet, despite his collapsing posture, it was not María's words alone that suffocated him it was the weight behind them, the suffocating cosmic gravity in her spiraling eyes, Lucoa's impossible galaxies swirling with calm, impossible color. Those eyes held the stillness of something ancient watching a sinner prepare to meet his fate, and for the first time in his life, the man felt the crushing understanding of what it meant to be truly, completely seen by a being far above him.
María did not raise her voice. She did not draw herself taller or shift her stance into anything dramatic or monstrous. The danger she radiated came from her complete absence of outward aggression. She stood utterly still, Eri sleeping safely in her arms, her long shimmering hair drifting around her like veils of living light, and when she inhaled, the air in the room seemed to sway inward with her breath. The doctor felt the atmosphere thicken until his lungs burned with the weight of it, and sweat poured down his face in miserable streams. All the excuses he had practiced excuses he had used when faced with moral discomfort, excuses he had whispered into the mirror when he tried to sleep died on his tongue. "She's not really human," "It's for the mission," "Overhaul said she was necessary" none of them held weight in the presence of this terrifying, divine quiet. Because María's spiraling galaxy eyes stripped every lie from him, peeling away the pieces of justifications he had built like crude armor. Her look made it clear she did not want him to explain. She wanted him to accept.
"You hurt her."
The words were softer than a sigh, almost too gentle to be heard, but they carried through the room like a blade dipped in honey. The tenderness of her tone was what made it monstrous. It was not anger. It was grief sharpened into judgment, a sorrow so immense it had calcified into divine certainty. She lowered her gaze to Eri's sleeping form the tiny fingers curled around the fabric of María's shirt, the faint streak of dried tears on her cheek, the soft hitch in her exhausted breathing and when she lifted her eyes again, the spirals inside them seemed to deepen, pulling the doctor into their center like vortices of stars twisting into a cosmic collapse.
The doctor whimpered. The pitiful sound broke from somewhere deep in his chest as his shoulders collapsed inward, and he fell fully onto his knees, collapsing so hard the impact cracked the tile beneath him. His trembling hands clawed at the air as though begging for mercy from a being who might, under some other circumstance, be capable of gentle forgiveness. But María's forgiveness was not something to be earned it was something to be deserved. And he had forfeited that right the moment he strapped a child to a chair. "P-Please," he choked, tears spilling freely now, streaking down a face that had never earned the right to cry, "I—I was ordered—O-Overhaul, he—he threatened—he would kill—please—I'm not—I didn't—"
María tilted her head slightly, her expression serene in a way no human face should be able to achieve in such a moment. "You had choices," she whispered. The calmness in her tone cracked the doctor more than any scream could have. "You had choices every night you walked into this room. Every time you took her blood. Every time you ignored the way she trembled. Every time you told yourself it wasn't your fault. You had choices… and you chose the coward's path."
Her eyes glowed brighter spirals shifting inward like galaxies collapsing into stars.
The doctor screamed.
Not because she threatened him.
Not because she struck him.
But because, for the first time in his entire life, he truly saw himself not through the lens of orders or hierarchy or Chisaki's rule. He saw himself through the eyes of judgment. Through the gaze of a goddess of protection. Through the spiraling galaxies of a being who weighed souls and found some unworthy.
He scrambled backward, hands scraping against the tile, boots slipping on shattered glass as he attempted to flee through the doorway. But the light from María's horns intensified, spreading like a dawn made of molten gold, and the room trembled under the pressure of her presence.
"Overhaul didn't make you a monster," María whispered, her voice so unbearably soft it felt like a warm hand pressed over a beating heart. "You chose that for yourself."
And then she lifted her hand.
Not quickly.
Not violently.
Not with any display of force.
She simply raised her fingers gently, almost tenderly, as though brushing aside a curtain from a window.
Golden light pulsed outward, silent at first, then humming with soft resonance like the lowest note of a distant, ancient instrument. The air shifted. The dust in the room lifted as though gravity forgot its purpose. The doctor's tear-streaked face twisted into one final, broken gasp.
And then he was gone.
Not burned.
Not blasted.
Not torn apart.
He simply ceased to exist dissolved into a drifting cloud of shimmering particles that glowed like dying stars in the beam of a celestial eclipse. For a moment, those particles floated through the air like golden snow, each one catching the sterile light in a silent final dance. Then they dispersed into nothing, erased from the world as though the universe had decided there was no need for that soul's continuation.
The silence that followed was deeper than before not empty, but reverent. Even the room itself seemed to hold its breath, as if the metal and tile understood they were in the presence of something holy and wrathful and real.
María lowered her hand slowly, her spiraling eyes dimming back to their usual gentle glow as she looked down at the sleeping child nestled safely against her. She brushed Eri's hair back from her face with a trembling thumb, her voice breaking as she whispered, "Shh, mi cielo… you'll never hear him again."
Then, with the sleeping child cradled carefully in her arms, María turned toward the long corridor outside the room and the entire facility shivered.
The goddess had finished her first judgment.
Now the rest of Shie Hassaikai awaited their turn.
For a long, heavy moment, María simply stood at the threshold of the ruined room, Eri resting peacefully against her chest as though the child had never known anything except this warmth. The golden remnants of the doctor's existence still hung faintly in the air, like distant motes of cosmic ash drifting slowly downward, each glowing speck marking where the universe had quietly decided to remove an impurity. María didn't look back at them. She didn't need to. The judgment was complete, and once she passed verdict, she never revisited it. Her spiraling eyes those twin galaxies churning behind her irises shifted toward the dim corridor stretching ahead, their luminescent color patterns swirling slowly like celestial storms gathering force. A deep, ancient quiet settled over her expression. She tilted her head, as if listening not with her ears but with a sixth sense woven into her divinity, feeling for the remaining heartbeats hidden behind layers of concrete and fear. Every pulse that reached her fast, panicked, armed with cruelty sent small vibrations along her skin, each one a clear signature of guilt. She felt them the way a dragon senses tremors in its territory: intimately, instinctively, without possibility of mistake.
She took her first step into the hallway, and the floor beneath her heel cracked in a branching, delicate fracture, not from force but from pressure the pressure of divine wrath coiled behind mortal flesh. The air responded as though recognizing its new ruler. It thickened, warmed, and shimmered faintly, the fluorescent lights flickering nervously overhead, as if unable to decide whether they should illuminate the scene or hide from it. María's long, rainbow-sheened hair drifted behind her in soft waves, lifted by the subtle, unnatural winds her magic generated as it expanded through the structure. Her horns glowed brighter as she moved, flooding the hallway with a warm gold that contradicted the cold horror etched into the very foundations of this compound.
With each step forward, María felt the shape of the facility in her mind, not from memory of the anime but through the living sensation of Eri's trauma echoing across the rooms. She sensed where the experiments had taken place rooms filled with instruments that had stolen innocence drop by drop.
She sensed where guards had stood laughing at a child's fear. She sensed where Overhaul had walked with perfect, sterile arrogance, never imagining that something older and more terrible than him would one day step through these halls. His presence here was like a dark stain she could smell, the foul scent of cold obsession and twisted ambition woven into every tile and wall. Each time her feet touched the ground, her magic pulsed outward and pushed deeper into the structure, wiping away the grime of his influence like waves erasing footprints in the sand.
The first group of Hassaikai henchmen appeared from around the bend of the hallway, drawn by the unnatural light and the tremors beneath their boots. They froze when they saw her this horned woman standing barefoot on cracked tile, holding a sleeping child as though the girl were the most precious thing in the world.
For several long seconds, they stared at her in shocked confusion. They saw the gentle curve of her arms around Eri, the smooth multicolored hair cascading over her shoulders, the soft expression on her face… and then they saw her eyes. Those spiraling, impossible galaxy eyes. Eyes that did not belong to any creature of this planet. Eyes that made the men feel suddenly, horribly small.
Weapons lifted.
Voices shouted.
Quirks prepared to activate.
But María did not even look at them.
She simply exhaled.
A breath just a breath rolled down the hallway like a breeze carrying spring warmth. But beneath that warmth lay annihilation. The tiles beneath the henchmen cracked first, splitting in thin lines that spread outward like a spiderweb forming beneath their feet. Their weapons rusted in their hands, metal collapsing into powder before they even had time to react. Their quirks sputtered uselessly, the energy evaporating from their bodies as though the laws of nature themselves had shifted in the goddess's presence.
One man attempted to scream, but the sound disintegrated into silence as his body dissolved from the inside outward, particles of golden dust lifting from his skin and swirling upward into the warm air before vanishing into nothingness. The others followed, each erased so quietly, so gently, it looked almost peaceful like the universe had plucked them from existence with compassion rather than cruelty.
María didn't slow her steps as the corridor cleared before her. The golden dust swirled around her ankles like drifting fireflies before fading away. Eri slept undisturbed in her arms, her tiny hand curled loosely into the fabric of María's shirt, the softest sigh escaping her lips. María's gaze lowered to the child briefly, her expression softening with an ache that almost broke her. Then her eyes rose again, hardening, spiraling, sharpening as the next wave of heartbeats another cluster of guilty souls entered her perception.
She walked.
Every guard she passed disintegrated without the need for touch, as though simply being in her line of sight was enough to unmake them. Doors melted into shimmering dust before she reached them. Electronic locks flickered, sparked, and died without resistance. Somewhere deeper in the facility, alarms began to blare, sirens wailing in panicked disarray, but even the sound faltered as María's magic pressed outward, choking the hallways with divine authority. The facility itself seemed to realize that its purposeb its cruelty would not survive the night. Metal strained. Beams groaned. Foundations trembled in quiet anticipation of collapse.
In the deepest chamber of the compound, as María approached with unbroken calm, she felt the cold, surgical presence of Kai Chisaki Overhaul like a pool of stagnant water in the middle of a wildfire. His heartbeat was steady. Too steady. Calculated. Controlled. He believed himself composed. He believed he could rebuild anything broken. He believed, even now, that he was the center of this world.
As María moved deeper into the bowels of the Shie Hassaikai compound, the atmosphere began to shift from the sterile chill of laboratories to a thicker, heavier tension one woven from the fear of men who had long believed themselves untouchable. Her spiraling Lucoa eyes glowed with an eerie, celestial warmth, reflecting the faint silhouettes of winding hallways and flickering lights. Eri slept peacefully against her chest, utterly untouched by the destruction trailing in María's wake. The corridors became a maze of trembling quirk-users preparing for battle, each unaware that they were not preparing for a fight but for their final moments in a world they had poisoned. The Eight Bullets, Shie Hassaikai's elite fighters, gathered near the deeper halls where Overhaul strategized, but even they men hardened by trauma and loyalty twisted into fanaticism felt an inexplicable terror roll through the walls like a cold wind that smelled faintly of divine judgment.
Chronostasis, Hari Kurono was the first to meet her. He rounded the corner with his usual air of cold calculation, adjusting his glasses with two fingers, already preparing a sarcastic remark for whatever fool had dared trigger an alarm in their sanctum. But the moment his eyes landed on María her horns glowing, her galaxy eyes pulsing with color, her arms protectively cradling the girl they had tortured his entire expression shattered. Fear flickered across his face, followed by an attempt at forced professionalism, but María wasn't looking at him for long. Her gaze passed over him like a divine eclipse scanning a single ant. He pulled out his watch weapon, muttering something about "intruder control," but before he could activate Chronostasis, the air around him folded. He didn't even get to blink. A single ripple of golden light passed through his body and he disintegrated into flecks of dust that hovered for a moment before fading into empty air. María did not even slow. Eri's breath was soft, steady, warm against her shoulder.
Nemoto, with his smug confidence and interrogation-based quirk, tried to shout at her from behind a broken pillar, demanding answers, screaming that she "must obey" his orders to tell the truth. His quirk activated the moment he ordered her to "freeze," but María's spiraling eyes only glowed brighter. The truth was simple: there was no universe in which a mortal's quirk could command a goddess. His body dissolved into golden light before his second command could leave his lips.
Rappa, the only one among them with a sense of warrior honor, charged her with the desperate fury of a man who had longed for a worthy death. He launched blow after blow, fists cracking the air with sonic intensity but not a single strike ever touched her. María walked past him as though he was nothing but smoke. His punches phased through golden ripples in the air, and when his final roar left his throat, María whispered a single word "Rest" and his existence gently dissipated like embers fading in the night. For the first time in his brutal life, Rappa's end was peaceful.
Iruma tried to hide. Shiromu tried to ambush. Tabe tried to devour her whole. They all failed to understand what stood before them. They were not fighting a woman they were being weighed by a divine being whose power was wrapped in maternal wrath. And as María walked the hallways, the compound grew quieter, darker, emptier. Each henchman she passed faded into shimmering gold, their sins erased from the world with a calm gentleness that made the destruction all the more horrifying. Eri slept through all of it, her little horn glowing faintly, her breath soft and trusting against María's skin.
Finally, the corridor widened into the deepest chamber, where cold, sterile air seeped around tile floors. Kai Chisaki, Overhaul stood waiting. Hands gloved, mask firmly covering the lower half of his face, posture rigid, sterile, hateful. His golden eyes narrowed at the sight of María holding Eri, and for the first time in his life, he hesitated. Not visibly. But María felt the faint twitch in his heartbeat. The faint tremble in his careful composure. The faint recognition that he was finally facing something whose very presence contaminated the "clean" aesthetic he worshiped.
"How disgusting," Chisaki murmured, voice low and cold. "To let filth cling to you like that." He stepped forward, adjusting the sleeve of his coat. "Give the girl back. She is necessary for—"
María did not let him finish.
The spirals in her eyes ignited.
The chamber trembled.
Chisaki's quirk Overhaul shattered inside him like glass crushed beneath a divine heel.
He gasped, staggering back, clutching at his chest with a sudden terror he had never known. His power his identity, his purpose had been stripped from him in less than a heartbeat. "W-What—what did you—?!"
María's voice was soft.
Too soft.
A softness that made the air around them thicken with dread.
"You broke her," she whispered. "You carved pieces of a child to build a dream no one wanted. You stole her blood, her body, her years, her hope. For that… your quirk is mine to take."
Chisaki fell to his knees, wheezing like a man drowning in thick air. "You— you can't— I— I need— this world— I was GOING TO FIX—!"
María's eyes narrowed slightly, their spirals deepening like galaxies collapsing inward.
"No," she murmured, bending reality around him with a whisper. "Your punishment will be eternal. You will feel every moment of burning agony, and you will never die. You will be immortal. And you will hurt forever… exactly the way you made her hurt."
And Kai Chisaki ignited.
Not with fire as humans knew it, but with divine burning—light that seared without consuming, flame that tormented without killing. His skin burned. He healed. He burned again. Over and over. His screams filled the chamber, each one slicing through the air like a blade drawn across stone. María did not look away. She simply turned her back on him and walked away with Eri held gently against her chest.
When she reached the exit, she whispered a single word.
"Burn."
The entire compound detonated outward, walls dissolving into light, flooring collapsing like sand, concrete vaporizing into fine ash. The explosion did not behave like an explosion. It folded silently, inward then outward, until the entire area became a single, gigantic crater a wound upon the landscape carved by divine righteousness. Overhaul remained at the center of it. Burning. Healing. Burning again. Forever.
Heroes arrived minutes too late.
María was gone.
---
She landed in the vast forest east of Musutafu the forest near where the city Izuku Midoriya lived. her feet touching the soil with the gentleness of a falling feather. The trees around her bent subtly, sensing something divine in their midst. She breathed slowly, deeply, letting the cool scent of pine, earth, and night air wash over her after the brutality of the compound. Then, with Eri still asleep in her arms, María raised her hand and let her magic flow. The earth answered. Wood twisted elegantly into beams and pillars, stone rose from the ground like sculpted clay, and a sprawling, traditional Japanese estate emerged piece by piece. High walls, sliding doors, warm lanterns, cherry blossom trees blooming out of season a sanctuary hidden from all eyes. A home worthy of a goddess and her child.
She laid Eri gently on a futon inside the mansion's inner room, kissed her forehead, and whispered, "I'll protect you, mi cielo. Forever."
But her job was not yet done.
There was one more judgment she owed.
-----
Even after the Shie Hassaikai were erased from existence, even after Overhaul's bones burned and regenerated in an endless loop of immortal agony, even after María built a sanctuary deep in the quiet forest near Musutafu where Eri slept peacefully under layers of soft blankets and gentle warmth, there remained a single shadow that her divine wrath had not yet touched. It followed her like a persistent whisper quiet, thin, but sharp enough to tug at the threads of her conscience. It was not the shadow of an enemy, nor the echo of a monster, nor even the memory of violence. It was the unfinished story of the woman who had created Eri's life… and then abandoned it. And so, guided by duty rather than anger, María stepped from the forest into the human world once more, her spiraling galaxy eyes glowing softly beneath the pale moonlight as she approached a nondescript apartment on the outskirts of the city.
The night air grew strangely still as she arrived, as though every living thing sensed the divine purpose walking among them and bowed into silence.
She did not knock.
Space parted for her like silk curtains drawn aside by invisible hands, and María stepped effortlessly into a dim, cluttered living room where Kiyomi Shirogane, Eri's biological mother, sat slouched on a sagging couch beneath the bluish flicker of an old TV. Empty bottles littered the carpet; stale air clung to the walls like regret that had never found release. Kiyomi blinked blearily at the glowing figure suddenly standing in her home a woman with long, shimmering multicolored hair, horns glowing softly, eyes swirling like living galaxies and she recoiled violently, the bottle slipping from her hand and shattering across the rug.
"H-Huh—?! Who—who the hell—how did you get in here?!" Kiyomi sputtered, scrambling backward until her spine crushed into the couch cushions. Fear widened her eyes, but irritation simmered under it, the defensive anger of someone who never wanted to confront the realities she had run from.
María said nothing at first. She simply stood there in quiet radiance, her hair lifting gently in a supernatural breeze that smelled faintly of warm sunlight and storm-charged air. The room felt smaller with each passing moment, as though the walls themselves leaned inward to listen.
Finally, María spoke in a voice too soft for the weight it carried.
"I am here because of your daughter."
Kiyomi froze.
"What… what did you say?"
"Eri." María said the name with a reverence that filled the room like sacred music. "The child you brought into this world. The child you left behind."
Kiyomi stiffened as though caught in a trap of her own making. "N-No—stop—don't talk about her— I didn't— I couldn't— you don't know anything about—"
María took one step closer, her bare foot silent on the carpet, her spiraling eyes locking onto Kiyomi with crushing gentleness. "I know enough."
She lifted her hand, and with a voice soft as a mother comforting a frightened child, she said:
"Sit."
Kiyomi's legs buckled instantly. She collapsed onto the couch with a gasp, trembling, staring at María with widening terror as the divine command rooted her to the cushions. María approached her slowly and lowered herself until she was at eye level, her long hair cascading like liquid aurora around her shoulders. She did not radiate rage. She radiated truth, ancient and unyielding.
"You abandoned her," María whispered. "Not from violence. Not from malice. But from fear. From cowardice. From choosing silence instead of protection."
"I—I didn't know what to do!" Kiyomi shouted, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Her quirk scared me! I was alone! I was overwhelmed! I— I never meant to—"
"You did not have to hurt her to be responsible for her suffering," María said. Her voice remained steady, heartbreakingly calm. "You gave her to a man who saw her as a tool. You sensed something was wrong—you felt it in your bones but you looked away. You told yourself it was easier not to know. You closed the door on a child begging to be held… and monsters walked in through that door instead."
Kiyomi sobbed, curling forward as though trying to fold herself into nothingness.
María lifted her hand.
The golden spirals began to form.
"Your judgment," María said softly, "is not death. Death is escape. You do not deserve escape."
Kiyomi trembled violently as the light bathed her in a warm glow that felt like both a blessing and a threat.
"You will feel," María whispered, her voice becoming a gentle blade, "every moment of suffering Eri endured. Every year. Every tear. Every night she cried alone. Not physically… but within your soul."
Kiyomi screamed as the first wave hit memories that weren't hers, terror that wasn't hers, loneliness so deep it hollowed her chest. She clawed at the couch, sobbing uncontrollably.
But María was not finished.
"You will not die from it," she continued softly. "Not by age. Not by accident. Not by your own hand. Should you try to end your life, the curse will begin again from the beginning, replaying every moment of her pain."
Kiyomi choked on her sobs, collapsing onto her side, hands clutching her head.
"If you lose your mind," María added, "the curse will heal your thoughts… and reset them, so you feel everything with clarity."
Kiyomi screamed again a raw, broken sound.
"And your womb," María whispered, her tone now unbearably gentle, "will never bear another child. You forfeited that right when you abandoned the first."
The golden light sank deep into Kiyomi's body.
But María reached out one last time and placed a warm hand on Kiyomi's back a touch so gentle, so heartbreakingly kind, that it made the curse feel even heavier in contrast.
"And yet… there is one path to freedom."
Kiyomi froze, gasping.
"The curse can only be broken if Eri herself forgives you."
Kiyomi's breath stopped.
"That forgiveness," María said, "will not come quickly. Or easily. It may take years. Decades. It may never come at all. The choice is hers alone… not yours."
Kiyomi collapsed into sobs deep, wrenching sobs that shook the entire room.
María rose slowly, her spiraling eyes dimming to a soft, warm glow.
"When you sleep," she said, "you will feel peace. That is your only mercy."
Then she turned away, her form dissolving into light.
"You are judged."
Kiyomi Shirogane was left alone with her curse her pain, her guilt, and the near-impossible hope of someday earning a forgiveness she had never earned.