Chapter 1: ChosenChapter Text"Listen to me, you worthless Deku! Don't you daretry to get into UA!" Bakugo snarled. "I'm the only person from this crap school who's going to make a name for himself!"
If Izuku Midoriya had had to guess the day that his life would change forever, he most definitely would not have picked this day.
"B-But Kacchan, what difference does it make if—?"
"Wrong answer, shitty nerd!" Bakugo growled, his hands gripping Izuku's shoulders like metal clamps just before his Quirk sounded with a muffled pop.
The green haired boy hissed as he felt the familiar sting.
"Learn your god damn place, idiot!" Bakugo sneered as he grabbed the other boy's treasured notebook.
"Kacchan, no, please don't—!"
The explosive blonde ignored him, pressing his palms to either side of the book and firing his Quirk again. Somehow the notebook wasn't reduced to confetti, though it was badly scorched.
"And stop trying to pretend like you have a single damn chance in hell of becoming a hero," he sneered, carelessly tossing the book out the classroom window.
Izuku let out a strangled sound of dismay as he watched it fall into the school's small koi pond.
Bakugo stomped toward the exit but stopped as he stood in the doorway. "If you really want to be a hero, then you should throw yourself off the roof and hope you get a Quirk in your next life."
Shocked, and actually feeling a rare spark of anger at his childhood friend, Izuku turned to Bakugo with a look of mingled surprise and fury.
The blonde just smirked, the look in his eyes daringthe other boy to attack him. He knew what he'd just done, and he'd be delighted if Izuku gave him the excuse to really pummel him.
Izuku felt his anger deflate like a balloon and looked away. Victorious as usual, Bakugo laughed, two of his lackies falling in step and guffawing along with him as he finally exited the classroom.
The green haired boy waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps, then allowed himself a deep sigh and started heading for the stairs, intent on getting his burned, sodden notebook back.
Yes, if Izuku had had to guess what day he really began on the path to becoming an interstellar hero, he wouldn't have chosen today.
Some things just work out like that.
Meanwhile, nestled deep in the massive trash heap of Dagobah beach, lay the twisted remains of what might've passed for the wreckage of a moderately sized motor vehicle, such as a pickup truck or a small bus. Indeed, among all the other discarded refuse, it was practically anonymous.
The smoke still drifting almost lazily forth didn't even do much to distinguish it, really. People threw away all sorts of things they shouldn't here, and it wasn't entirely uncommon for them to set fire to things they really wanted to remain forgotten and gone.
Yet it was no mere truck. It was a space ship.
A crashed spaceship.
And the being that was responsible for its inglorious landing, a two-and-a-half-meter tall giant clad from head to toe in golden armor, was stomping away from it, its feet crushing various pieces of scrap metal flat as it went.
"Target destroyed," it remarked to itself. "No other targets on planet found. New objective: find a means of leaving the planet, resume attainment of vengeance."
Only once it was well away did its supposedly dead target stir. A being with brick red skin, he wouldn't have seemed very out of place in the superhuman society of this world, yet he was very much not of this world.
He was also dying, his body broken and twisted beyond all repair by the gold-clad titan.
With the life quickly ebbing out of him, he removed the jade-colored ring he wore on his middle finger with a shaking hand.
"Go," he commanded it. "My time has ended. Find someone worthy to wear you."
The ring hovered in midair for a moment, as though reluctant to leave its master of many years. Then it glowed with emerald light and took off through the air, leaving a brief trail of green luminescence behind it, like the trail of a tiny comet.
His final task done, Abin Sur exhaled one final time and died on the sand.
"Maybe Kacchan is right," Izuku sighed as he walked a winding path through Musutafu, none too eager to actually reach his home that afternoon. "Maybe I'm just deluding myself, holding onto this dream of becoming a pro hero…"
He was so lost in his own glum thoughts that he didn't head the loud, thudding footsteps from below until it was much too late.
"What is that?" he wondered aloud as he finally became aware of the bone jarring impacts shaking the ground, just an instant before part of the footpath he was on erupted.
Izuku let out a yelp as pieces of asphalt flew everywhere, somehow managing to avoid getting brained by one of the bigger chunks, the sheer force of the explosion knocking him off his feet.
The dust cleared after a moment, and the Quirkless boy found himself staring at what had caused the path to burst, eyes widening at the sight of the golden behemoth.
A nerd and a fanboy to his very core, Izuku's mind rapidly began to run through all the active villains he knew about, even as he sat on the ground, frozen in fear. Unfortunately, he couldn't turn up any information about whoever this was. It seemed like they should've been a very well-known villain, too.
"Who are you?" he blurted out, then slapped his hands over his mouth, cursing his idiot self for doing something to attract the villain's attention.
"We are Legion," it growled, stomping toward Izuku and picking the boy up in one massive, gauntleted hand. "And we demand to know the location of the nearest interstellar vessel!"
He blinked. "Are…are you asking to know where JAXA is?" he stammered, a tiny part of his brain wondering why he couldn't either just shut up or simply send the villain in some random direction away from him.
Another part—a bigger part, if he was being honest—was wondering why a villain would want such a thing. It wasn't like there was another planet he could escape to, was there?
"We also require knowledge on how to evade the one known as All Might!" Legion added.
"What?!"
"We require—!"
"Have no fear, citizen!" bellowed a voice from behind them, one that was extremely familiar to Izuku, despite him never having met its owner before. "Why? Because I am here!"
"No!" Legion yelled, turning with Izuku still in his grip. "We cannot allow you to—!"
But All Might didn't care to listen to the protests of the golden villain. "Texas Smash!" he roared, massive fist flying.
Izuku was thrown clear by the sheer force of the number one hero's attack and went tumbling into a patch of soft grass nearby. Legion, on the other hand, went staggering, a massive dent in his armor, but somehow the gleaming titan remained on his feet.
"Oh, so you want some more, huh?" All Might taunted.
"We cannot allow you to stop our quest for revenge against the green—!"
All Might once again cut off the villain by firing another massive blow, and this time Legion wasn't able to withstand the attack. He slammed into the side of the nearby overpass, armor breaking upon contact, then collapsed limply to the ground, a grayish ooze seeping out from the now mangled joints of his armor.
"Wha…what…?" Izuku stammered dumbly.
"Are you all right, citizen?" All Might's booming voice brought him back to reality. "Terribly sorry you had to get tangled up in that. I'm not too familiar with this area, and this villain was able to evade me for longer than he should've been able to!"
The number one hero didn't cover his ears to muffle Izuku's fan boy squeal of excitement, but it was a close thing. Instead, he grinned, gathered up the ooze inside the suit of armor (he really would have to ask Tsukauchi to investigate that; no villain should ever have been able to gain access to such a powerful piece of support gear), gave the young man an autograph, and then went on his way, all too conscious of how close he was to using up the last of his time.
Which made it all the more annoying when the young man grabbed onto his leg just before he leaped into the sky, really.
Aki "Fingers" Goto had always privately thought it was funny when Bakugo would alternate between completely flouting the rules and scrupulously following them.
One minute the guy was aggressively putting the Quirkless wonder in his place, the next he was having a conniption because one of his friends was having a smoke. As if UA would take a pass on a guy with such an obvious top shelf Quirk because he'd associated with someone who committed the heinous crime of underage tobacco use. It was crazy.
Of course, he'd never say as much. He didn't need the guy who sat at the top of heap in his little universe pissed off at him, thank you very much. Still, there were times when he had to hold back a snicker at the guy's antics and contradictions.
"So, I was thinking we could head down to the arcade," said Mako, trying to act like he wasn't taken aback at Bakugo violently destroying his cigarette a minute ago.
"Can't," the explosive blonde grunted. "I gotta go train."
"Aw, you're always doing that lately," Mako whined. "You've got a spot at UA in the bag, and that's not gonna change if you take one day off."
"Listen, dumbass, maybe I just don't want to go to a shitty arcade!" Bakugo snarled.
"It doesn't have to be an arcade, man," Fingers put in. "What do you wanna do?"
Bakugo opened his mouth to reply, but he never got out so much as a word before the grayish ooze struck.
Izuku didn't even bother paying attention to where he was going as he walked, taking only enough care to ensure he didn't get run over by a car or something as he wandered aimlessly through Musutafu.
He felt like All Might had grabbed his insides in his massive hand and squeezed with all his incredible strength when the number one hero had told him he couldn't be a pro hero himself. And the fact All Might had clearly done it without a trace of malice, motivated only by the desire to prevent him from getting hurt in the future, or even getting himself killed one day, just made it all the more painful.
Anger would've softened the blow, but he couldn't be angry at All Might for trying to protect him from himself.
Izuku was so wrapped up in his dour thoughts that he didn't realize he was unconsciously gravitating towards the sound of a villain fight until he was already on the outskirts of the gathering crowd.
He shook his head, disgusted with how he'd fallen into his old habit without even thinking.
Of course, he realized now, he hadn't been thinking the entire time he'd dreamed of being a hero. Had he really believed that watching heroes long enough would allow him to become one despite his lack of a Quirk? That if he was enough of a fan boy, he'd magically become what he admired?
Absurd.
The green haired boy knew he should just go home and try to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, but something kept him there. Not the familiar excitement at the prospect of seeing pro heroes in action but a sinking feeling that seemed to be growing more acute by the moment.
He realized that that there were several pro heroes present, and that the people looked more concerned than fired up. He could also smell smoke from nearby.
Whatever was happening, it was much more than some pro beating down a petty thug.
"Excuse me," he said to someone in the crowd. "What's going on?"
"Some kind of slime monster is attacking a bunch of kids, and none of the pros here have the right Quirk to take it down!" the guy replied, not taking his eyes away from the scene for a second. "I…I'm not even sure that thing is actually human!"
Izuku's eyes widened in horror at the mention of a slime monster, remembering the ooze that had seeped out from the gold armor of the figure that had attacked him.
The sinking feeling from before transforming into a yawning pit in his stomach, he managed to squeeze and shove his way to the front of the crowd. He gasped as he finally got a look at the fight, and his worst fears were confirmed.
The same gray ooze that had been inside Legion's armor had half flooded the nearby alleyway, which multiple pro heroes were swarming around but so far refusing to actually charge into. He could just make out three human forms caught amid all the muck, all of them nearly buried.
Are they just kids like me? Are they kids from my school? He wondered with rapidly mounting horror as he caught a glimpse of what he thought was a familiar uniform.
Then a single hand burst free of the ooze. It only took a moment for the gray slime to cover it once again, but in that moment, Izuku was able to see the unnaturally long fingers. He felt his breath stop dead for a moment, recognizing Aki Goto's Quirk immediately.
And if one of Kacchan's lackies was there, then that meant…
He heard several loud pops and somehow managed to smell the familiar, sickly sweet smell of nitroglycerin a moment later, head snapping in the direction of the sound. Izuku's eyes widened as his gaze locked with Bakugo's, the blonde's crimson eyes filled with more fear and desperation than he'd even seen in them before.
Izuku Midoriya was charging past the barricades that the heroes had hastily thrown up before he even realized what he was doing, body moving of its own accord, ears deaf to the bystanders crying out for him to stop.
He swung his schoolbag into the ooze with all his might, but it didn't even seem to faze the slime creature, and Izuku belatedly realized that there were no obvious targets, no eyes or face or anythingreally, aside from the amorphous goop.
Amorphous goop that was rapidly climbing up his form, he realized with alarm.
Somehow, Bakugo managed to get his entire face free just then. "What the fuck are you doing, you idiot?!" he snarled after taking a desperate gulp of air.
"You…you looked like you needed saving," Izuku practically sobbed, his terror and frustration leaving him near tears.
Bakugo looked like he was about to scream at the other boy some more, but the ooze reclaimed its hold on his face before he could. Seconds later, Izuku found another wave of the awful muck rushing up to bury him as well, and his world became darkness.
All in all, the scene was pandemonium, with heroes yelling at the crowds to stay back, people screaming, fires burning, and Bakugo continuing to fire off his Quirk out of panic and desperation.
So, it really wasn't much of a surprise that nobody noticed the little green light that whizzed onto the scene, plunging itself directly into the pile of ooze.
Izuku felt something warm and solid settle itself on the middle finger of his right hand, an otherworldly voice speaking directly into his mind.
"Izuku Midoriya of Earth, you have the ability to overcome great fear," it said. "Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."
For a moment, the pressure on his body seemed to ease, almost like some sort of force field was holding the slime at bay. Then the great mass of sludge seized, reacting as if it was angry, and the force it was applying to him was increased tenfold. Izuku let out a grunt of pain, feeling like he'd be crushed well before he could drown.
Unbeknownst to him, the slime almost totally released its other prisoners. Mako and Fingers immediately scrambled free and rushed away from the fight. Bakugo didn't, gazing up at mound of slime that held Izuku prisoner, before his two lackies grabbed him and led him away, the explosive blonde allowing himself to be pulled along.
I have to do something, or I'm gonna die! Izuku thought desperately, mind racing as he tried to find a solution. His right hand curled into a fist, the feel of warm metal reminding him of the mysterious object on his finger.
What was it? Could he use it?
Maybe if I…
"Detroit Smash!"
A massive wave of force swept over him. Izuku was sent flying and went sprawling onto the concrete ground as the ooze was blasted off of him, splattering onto the nearby walls. He expected it to immediately regroup and attack him again, but before it could, the skies rumbled, and rain began to fall, rapidly diluting it. Apparently, there was a reason the stuff had been inside that armor beyond just aesthetics.
"Whoa…" he breathed as he looked up at the now gray sky.
A devoted All Might fan boy, he had long known about the number one hero's ability to change the weather with a single punch, but he'd never expected to see it up close like this.
He turned to All Might, making eye contact with the grinning hero for just an instant before the other heroes drew near, looking upset.
"Oh boy…" he muttered, only briefly glancing down at his hand to observe the ring of green metal that now sat on his finger.