Three days later, Izuku was elbow-deep in a junkyard that smelled like rust and motor oil and the slow death of consumer electronics.
Rain hammered the corrugated metal roof. The dirt paths had turned into ankle-deep mud. He didn't care. He was too busy ripping the guts out of a broken microwave with his bare hands.
'High-voltage capacitors. Come to papa.'
The metal housing bent under his grip. A month ago he couldn't have done that. Weeks of deadlifts were paying dividends in ways the gym didn't advertise.
He tore the capacitor bank free and dropped it in his canvas bag. Next. Old washing machine. Stripped motor, busted drum, but the microcontroller board was still intact. He pried it loose with a flathead, checked the pins for corrosion.
'Good enough.'
He moved through the rows of dead electronics with the focused energy of a man on a shopping spree at the world's worst store. Accelerometer from a bricked smartphone. Copper wiring from a stereo that had probably last played music when his mom was in middle school. A reinforced forearm brace from a construction exosuit someone had dumped.
'That last one is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Pun intended.'
He slung the bag over his shoulder and walked out into the rain. The old man running the yard didn't look up. Probably used to weird teenagers picking through his scrap. Probably had a policy of not asking questions.
***
His bedroom was dark except for the laptop screen. Rain on the window. Parts spread across his desk like the aftermath of a small, targeted explosion.
The soldering iron hissed as it heated up.
This was where it got strange. Because Izuku Midoriya — the real one, the fourteen-year-old who'd filled notebooks with hero analysis and cried when Bakugou yelled at him — absolutely did not know how to solder.
But the hands remembered.
Not his hands. The other ones. The ones from before, from the life that was fading like a dream you try to hold onto after waking. He couldn't remember a face. Couldn't remember a name. But he remembered a workbench. A screen. The smell of flux and solder and cheap energy drinks at 3 AM. The muscle memory of someone who'd spent years building things — not professionally, not brilliantly, just obsessively. The kind of person who took apart everything they owned to see how it worked and only put half of it back together.
The hands remembered. That was enough.
He picked up the forearm brace and started mounting the capacitor bank to the underside.
'Compact. Low-profile. Can't mess with the range of motion.'
The iron touched the solder wire. Silver droplets fused the components to the metal frame. A drop of molten solder splashed onto his thumb and he barely flinched.
He worked for two hours. Capacitors. Microcontroller. Wiring harness. Accelerometer mounted on the striking plate. Every connection had to be clean. One loose wire and the whole thing would short out. Or detonate on his arm. Either would be bad.
The code was simple. Had to be. No bloat. No safety checks.
Accelerometer detects impact. Triggers relay. Capacitors dump voltage into the strike point.
if (accel_z > IMPACT_THRESHOLD) { trigger_discharge(); }
He bypassed every safety limiter in the firmware. No voltage regulation. No thermal cutoff. No failsafe.
'If this thing overheats, it will burn my arm off. That is a real thing that could happen.'
He stared at the screen.
Hit compile.
No errors.
'Well. Only one way to find out.'
***
The alley behind his apartment was narrow and dark. A stack of broken wooden pallets leaned against the wall, left over from a construction project months ago. Rain soaked through his hoodie.
The gauntlet was strapped to his right forearm. Heavy. Crude. Ugly as sin. Looked like someone had strapped a car battery to a medieval gauntlet and decided that counted as engineering.
He loved it.
'One punch. Let's see if you work.'
He stepped forward. Rotated his hips. Drove his fist into the center pallet.
The accelerometer triggered.
The capacitors discharged.
CRACK.
A blinding blue arc of electricity erupted from the strike point and spiderwebbed across the wood. The entire stack exploded. Splinters everywhere. The smell of ozone and burnt wood filled the alley.
Izuku staggered back. His arm was vibrating. The metal housing was hot. Dangerously hot. He could feel it burning through his sleeve.
He didn't take it off.
He just stared at the shattered remains of four wooden pallets and thought, 'I just punched a stack of wood with a homemade taser strapped to my arm and it exploded. This is my life now. I am making choices.'
Then he started laughing.
He couldn't help it. It was so stupid. So perfectly, beautifully stupid. He was a 22-year-old dead man wearing a teenager's body in a superhero anime, standing in the rain behind his apartment building with a junkyard weapon strapped to his arm and splinters in his hair.
And it had worked.
He flexed his fingers. The residual heat bit at his skin.
'Need better heat dissipation. Thermal sink maybe. Or just accept the burns. Burns heal. Dead doesn't.'
He walked back inside and set the gauntlet on his desk. The metal was still too hot to touch. He grabbed his notebook and started sketching improvements. Version 2.0 would be lighter. Faster. Less likely to cook his forearm.
But for now, Version 1.0 was enough.
The U.A. entrance exam was in eight months.
He had a shadow hound that lived in his feet and charged rent on his mana.
He had a shock gauntlet that could blow through solid wood and might also blow up his arm.
And he had a body that was getting stronger every single day.
He looked at his reflection in the dark window. His face was leaner. Shoulders broader. Something in his eyes that hadn't been there before. Something cold and focused and just a little bit unhinged.
'This might actually work.'
Under his feet, the Hound pulsed once.
TO BE CONTINUED