Chapter Text
Izuku didn’t know how, or when, or why it had happened — but staring into the cracked mirror before him, he realized that the color of his eyes was wrong.
They weren’t the same bright, lively green he remembered from his youth. Now, they looked pale. Muted. Like a pastel shade washed away by too many sleepless nights and too much grief.
It was a small change, really — insignificant compared to what had become of Japan.
The country had fallen. Completely.
Shigaraki Tomura, the man once seen as the symbol of chaos, had become something else — or rather, someone else. Possessed… yes, that was the right word. Possessed by All for One, the monster who had devoured everything in his path, including Shigaraki’s very soul.
And in his madness to obtain a Quirk he claimed once belonged to his “brother,” All for One had torn the world apart.
He killed countless heroes and students.
Including Kacchan.
The name still hurt.
Izuku could still remember the sound of Bakugou’s parents crying. They had never recovered his body — there had been no way to. Everyone knew what All for One did with corpses. Heroes, villains, civilians — anyone he found useful was turned into a Nomu.
There were no funerals. No graves. No flowers.
Just the occasional rumor that the remnants of a hero’s belongings had been salvaged by survivors. Kacchan’s parents had received a few things — his old notebooks, his dorm keychain, a single UA training glove — all given to them by Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher before he vanished.
Aizawa-sensei.
No one had heard from him in months.
Some said All for One had tried to hunt him down but decided the man wasn’t worth his time. Others said Aizawa had gone underground, leading a small resistance. Either way, his fate was uncertain — just another missing name in a world that had stopped counting the dead.
Izuku’s hands trembled as he ran his fingers through his hair, avoiding his reflection. His heart thudded unevenly in his chest. Every time he thought of the videos — the recordings of All for One’s rampages — his stomach churned.
The villain had destroyed entire cities out of rage.
He hadn’t found the Quirk. That was the rumor — that despite all the bloodshed, he had failed.
Apparently, someone — maybe All Might, maybe Lemillion — had managed to link the power’s transfer to another person. No one knew who.
Both All Might and Lemillion were gone now.
Dead.
Slain by the same man who had devoured Shigaraki’s body and declared himself a god.
Izuku took a deep breath, the air stale and heavy with the scent of dust and rusting metal. He lived alone now, somewhere between the ruins of Musutafu and what used to be Dagobah Beach, a wasteland of concrete and bones.
Izuku still remembered the fear.
Not the kind of fear that made your heart race or your knees shake — no, this was something deeper. A cold, bone-deep terror that stayed long after the moment had passed.
It happened months after Japan’s fall. The day one of All for One’s followers came to their home.
He’d heard rumors that the villain’s men were hunting for people with green eyes — strange, meaningless orders that no one understood, but everyone feared. And Izuku had green eyes.
That was the first time his mother, Inko Midoriya, truly lost her calm. She had already been restless for weeks, her nerves frayed by the endless news of destruction, by the sounds of distant explosions, by the screams that sometimes echoed from the city ruins.
But when that man appeared at their door, wearing a cracked mask and a bloodstained coat, something inside her snapped.
She refused to let him in.
“We are not part of your madness!”
Izuku could still hear her voice — trembling, but firm.
The villain didn’t care. He forced the door open like it was made of paper.
Izuku had tried to intervene — his hands shaking, his voice breaking as he pleaded for forgiveness, for peace, for anything. He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for.
But the man didn’t hesitate.
One motion. One sound.
And his mother fell.
The world stopped.
He remembered the way the villain’s shadow fell over him, remembered those words — said almost gently, almost like pity:
“I’ll let you live, boy. There aren’t many left under twenty. Consider yourself lucky.”
And then he was gone. Just like that.
Izuku sat on the floor for hours, staring at the stillness of his mother’s body. He didn’t cry at first — he couldn’t. His mind simply refused to accept what had happened.
When the tears finally came, they didn’t stop.
He tried to find someone, anyone, to help him — but no one answered. No one came.
The streets were empty. The few remaining neighbors had already fled or died. Heroes were gone. The police didn’t exist anymore.
So he did the only thing he could.
He covered his mother’s body with her favorite blanket — the one with sunflowers — and left her in her room, untouched. He closed the door quietly, as if afraid to wake her.
And then he left.
He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.
Days later, the building was destroyed by Nomu patrols, reduced to rubble and dust. If he had stayed, he would’ve died too.
Sometimes, when he passed by the ruins, he could still smell the faint trace of home — the scent of tea, detergent, and the warmth of his mother’s cooking — now mixed with the metallic tang of ash and decay.
He stopped going after a while. It hurt too much.
He had no one left.
No purpose.
Just survival.
Izuku had long accepted that he would probably die soon — by his own choice, if the world didn’t finish him first.
Death wasn’t something people feared anymore. It had become ordinary, like the weather.
The last meaningful human interaction he remembered was with a girl — tall, graceful, with dark hair that caught the dying sunlight. She had looked at him for a long moment, her eyes curious yet cautious, before she turned and ran.
Izuku never knew why.
Maybe he frightened her. Maybe she simply didn’t want to see another living soul.
He saw her once or twice again — never close, never long enough to speak. Each time, she was with someone new: a girl with bright pink dreadlocks once, and another time, a man with purple hair.
Those three were the most colorful things he’d seen in years — if he didn’t count the seashells and fish he collected from the polluted shore.
Life had become quiet. Too quiet.
And Izuku began to plan how he wanted it to end.
He didn’t have much — a knife, some canned food, and a view of the sunset from what used to be a coastal apartment block. He often imagined it: the sky painted orange, the waves whispering below, and then… nothing.
But fate, cruel as ever, had other plans.
That evening, as the sun dipped low, someone stopped him.
A man — tall, thin, with eyes as sharp as glass and hair the color of deep crimson — grabbed him by the face with one hand, the other gripping his shoulder firmly.
Izuku’s body tensed, instinct screaming danger. He almost struck out, but then he froze.
He knew this man.
The years had changed him — older, more tired, the red in his eyes deeper, haunted — but the memory of that presence was unmistakable.
Shota Aizawa.
Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher.
Izuku’s breath caught in his throat.
Aizawa didn’t waste time. “Izuku Midoriya?” His voice was rough, yet steady — the same voice that used to command silence in a classroom full of young heroes.
“I—” Izuku blinked, unable to speak. “You’re… alive?”
“Barely,” Aizawa muttered. “But we’ve been looking for you.”
That made no sense.
Izuku stared at him, confusion flickering across his face. “Looking for me? Why? I’m no one. I haven’t— I’m not—”
Aizawa’s grip softened slightly, though his eyes stayed locked on him. “Because All Might told us to.”
That name hit Izuku like a shockwave.
He took a step back. “All Might is dead.”
“I know,” Aizawa said quietly. “But before he died, he made sure a message was sent. He told us the power — his Quirk — had been transferred. Not willingly. Forced.”
Izuku blinked. The world seemed to tilt. “Transferred… to who?”
Aizawa’s gaze didn’t waver. “To you.”
The words landed like thunder.
Izuku shook his head violently. “No— that’s impossible. I would’ve known, I would’ve felt something— I don’t even have a Quirk—”
“You didn’t,” Aizawa interrupted. “But you do now. The color of your eyes changed — that’s how we tracked you. It’s a side effect of the partial transfer. One For All moved into you when the system broke down. That’s why All for One has been looking for people with green eyes.”
Izuku’s stomach twisted. His hands trembled.
He wanted to deny it, to scream, to run — but his thoughts tangled and collapsed inside him.
All for One was hunting him.
His mother had died because of it.
The color of his eyes — his mother’s favorite feature — was the reason she’d been killed.
His throat felt tight, the air too thin to breathe. “No… No, that can’t be true…”
Aizawa took a step closer, lowering his voice. There was something raw in his tone, a mixture of urgency and exhaustion. “Izuku, I don’t know how much of it is left in you — but you’re the only one who can stop him now. You’re the last piece All Might left behind.”
Izuku looked at him, wide-eyed and hollow.
The teacher he once admired was standing before him again, offering him a reason to live — and all Izuku could think about was how much he wanted to die.