(A/N: This note is for those readers who absolutely hate reading backstories. Right below is the backstory of Kusabane Itsuo, Japan's Director of Energy Infrastructure. You know... the idio... I mean, the man who proposed turning Ryo into a living battery and had that complete crashout when his plan went up in flames. It's a pretty straightforward story that explains his life and how he climbed to the position he holds today. So if you think it's completely irrelevant, feel free to skip the entire section until you reach the "--------" that I always use to separate different parts and POVs.)
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Kusabane Itsuo grew up hearing the same sentence so many times that it stopped sounding like advice and became an order.
"When you grow up, you need to become someone great."
His father always said it with the stern voice of someone who wouldn't accept any other answer. His mother always reinforced it with a strained smile, as if the idea of having an ordinary son was a personal failure on both their parts.
They didn't just want him to be successful.
They wanted him to have a name, influence, power, and respect.
Especially because he didn't have a Quirk.
They wanted a son who would make them proud in front of others, someone above average, someone who would justify the family name.
The problem was that Kusabane was never that kind of child.
He wasn't quick to learn.
He wasn't naturally brilliant.
He didn't have the kind of charisma that made adults smile whenever he walked into a room.
He was STUPID.
At school, he was the student who got the simplest answers wrong, who took forever to understand instructions, who had to repeat the same task over and over before finally getting it right.
The other boys noticed and started making jokes. Then they started shoving him around. Eventually, the bullying became far more cruel.
They called him stupid, useless, and low-IQ.
Some teachers pretended not to notice. Others did notice and silently concluded that perhaps those children were right.
Things weren't any better at home.
If he got a bad grade, he was called a disappointment.
If he forgot something, he was treated like an incompetent fool.
If he cried, he was told he was bringing shame upon the family.
If he tried to explain that he was doing his best, the answer always came in the form of scolding, contempt, or punishment.
His parents didn't want a broken son. They wanted an efficient one. Since he wasn't, they slowly turned affection into pressure, and pressure into abuse.
Kusabane grew up believing there was something wrong with him.
That there had to be a missing piece.
That maybe he had simply been born to disappoint people.
Until he was fifteen, his life was exactly that: a narrow corridor of expectations he could never fulfill.
One day, he was riding in the car with his parents, returning from yet another failed attempt to solve another issue related to school.
What Kusabane didn't know was that his parents were already taking him to an orphanage. They hadn't said it outright, but the conversations in the front seats, the avoided glances, and the tense silence slowly made made Kusabane wonder if he was really returning home.
That's when something slammed into the side of the car.
The explosion was so violent that the vehicle was swallowed by fire and twisted metal in a single instant. The world became heat, shattered glass, and deafening noise. Kusabane didn't even have time to understand what had happened. He only felt the impact, the sickening crack of the frame collapsing, and the horrifying sensation of being thrown violently sideways.
He heard his parents screaming in pain and agony for minutes until the screams began to subside.
When he opened his eyes, the car was destroyed, overturned amid flames and smoke. His parents were dead. Kusabane staggered out of the wreckage, his clothes scorched and his body covered in soot.
And, unbelievably...
He was perfectly fine.
No broken bones.
No cuts.
No burns.
He looked down at his own hands, still in shock, and felt something new. It wasn't fear. It wasn't sadness. It was an overwhelming vitality, an internal pressure that made him feel, for the first time in his life, that there was something inside him besides failure.
That was the moment he discovered he had a Quirk after spending years being told he didn't.
Energy Absorption.
Electrical, thermal, solar, mechanical, kinetic, and countless other forms of energy that Kusabane would only learn about later. His body could absorb almost every known type of energy and safely store it, converting it into strength, durability, or simply releasing it back out.
Once he understood what he had become, the shock of his parents' deaths drifted past him as if it were distant news.
He didn't cry for them.
The idea of possessing such a unique Quirk completely consumed his mind and emotions.
If people had spent his entire life telling him he was nothing, then this was the first proof that they had been wrong.
And unlike most people, Kusabane didn't think about heroism.
He thought about money and power.
He thought about how easy it would be to profit from something no one else in the country could do in the same way. He quickly realized that he didn't need to fight to save people. He could sell stability, energy, efficiency, and productivity. He could become the country's very own living power plant, a clean, efficient, and nearly inexhaustible energy source.
And the corporate world truly understood that value.
The doors slowly began to open, first out of scientific curiosity, then political convenience, and finally outright greed. Influential people wanted to know what he could do. Companies wanted contracts. Government agencies wanted to measure his limits. Men in expensive suits wanted reports, numbers, projections, and profits.
Kusabane quickly learned what people truly valued.
He stopped asking for approval and started selling it.
His ability to absorb energy and convert the stored energy into virtually any other form transformed him into a phenomenon far too rare to be treated like an ordinary human being. Within just a few years, he climbed one step after another, surrounded by lawyers, bureaucrats, and businessmen who smiled at him while trying to determine just how useful he could become.
Eventually, he became the Director of the country's Energy Infrastructure Sector.
His Quirk became the foundation of the nation's energy output. His influence grew. His name began circulating among powerful people. Money flowed in just as quickly as the energy he converted. For a while, he truly believed he had finally reached the top.
Then Ryo Tanaka appeared.
That boy was different.
Very different...
Not only did he possess a Quirk as unique as Kusabane's, but rumors claimed that Ryo's energy potential was practically infinite. He was a potential energy source that the government desperately wanted to study, monitor, and, if possible, control.
That infuriated Kusabane.
Because until then, he had been the exception.
He was the energy man.
The rare asset.
The limitless source.
And suddenly there was a boy who threatened to steal all of that simply by existing.
He began watching him from afar.
He couldn't touch Ryo directly because the government kept him far too well protected to manipulate easily.
Kusabane hated that.
And when he finally saw an opportunity to corner the boy and use his energy for himself...
Nezu appeared.
That school mascot, that rat with the calm voice and irritating eyes, interfered with his plans as if he had any right to do so. Kusabane was furious. Truly furious. He couldn't accept that a school rat had more influence than he did. He couldn't accept that his plans had been stopped by someone who didn't even seem threatening.
He spent days irritated, pacing back and forth, kicking walls, breaking furniture, and venting his frustration on anything nearby.
Then one day, while riding in his limousine on the way to a meeting, an idea suddenly came to him.
"What if I take his mother?"
Kusabane smiled to himself, slowly, like someone who had just solved a difficult problem with a solution almost too elegant to be true.
"Of course..."
He turned toward the window.
"If I have his mother, then I have the boy. And the government too."
The idea settled into his mind like the final piece of a perfect puzzle.
"That's it. I can force both of them to serve me."
(A/N: I lost brain cells writing this. Writing stupid characters is torture.)
Kusabane's smile grew even wider.
Almost maniacal.
"I really am a genius!"
But luck didn't seem interested in letting his happiness last.
The car was violently shaken.
The driver screamed.
Before Kusabane could understand what was happening, the limousine flipped over.
The vehicle rolled across the road several times before finally stopping upside down. The roof had become the floor. The air smelled of gasoline and smoke. Alarms blared for a second before dying out.
Kusabane struggled to breathe, his head spinning from the violent rolling of the limousine.
He heard footsteps surrounding the vehicle and angrily pulled himself up, forcing open the crushed side until he crawled out through the shattered window.
"Who are you people?!" he snarled, straightening his filthy suit. "Do you even know who you're attacking?!"
The villains surrounding him simply stared without much concern.
Kusabane raised his chin.
"You have no idea who you're dealing with! Rats like you should never have crossed me!"
One of the villains raised a stun gun and fired.
Kusabane was hit directly, but the electrical energy was absorbed instantly, flowing into his body as though it were nothing more than food.
Kusabane smiled as his confidence returned.
"See?"
He took a step forward, his eyes gleaming with arrogance.
"You can try as much as you want! Nothing you do will work! I am invinci...!"
A hand suddenly appeared behind him and covered his face with a heavy cloth soaked in a strange-smelling substance. Kusabane froze in shock and immediately began struggling, twisting his body, trying to grab the person behind him, trying desperately to breathe.
But his consciousness was already slipping away.
His knees gave out.
The last thing he heard was the sound of his own breathing failing.
And just like that, the world he had dreamed of conquering faded from his sight forever.
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"Everyone, stay calm and return to the lodge immediately! Do not leave the group!"
Mandalay's voice echoed directly inside everyone's mind, firm and clear.
Some of the students obeyed immediately and began heading back to the lodge.
Others kept staring at the forest, trying to make sense of the strange explosions and what was happening.
Tiger and Pixie-Bob were busy amid the chaos, restraining Spinner and Magne after finding them unconscious among the trees. The two heroes were still trying to figure out where those villains had come from. One minute earlier, they had only heard the loud sound of trees breaking behind them. The next, both villains were lying on the ground unconscious, and the forest seemed to have swallowed the rest of the explanation.
"Where did these guys come from?" Tiger growled, tightly securing Spinner with a rope.
Pixie-Bob clenched her fingers, causing the earth to wrap around Magne with an irritated expression.
"Someone must have leaked the camp's location."
Further ahead, Tony, who had already brought Iida and Todoroki back, was helping guide the remaining students toward the lodge.
Kaminari walked with the rest of the class, his eyes wide as he kept glancing toward the forest.
"Is it a villain attack? How did they even find this place?!"
Sero, walking right beside him, shook his head as they continued forward.
"I've got no idea, man. But right now, the best thing we can do is follow orders and get out of here."
Just then, another explosion echoed across the horizon.
A massive cloud of earth erupted far beyond the trees, and another wave of destruction rose above the forest canopy like a wall. The students stopped for a second, staring at it with a mixture of fear and disbelief, but Mandalay immediately urged them onward again.
"Don't stop! Get back to the lodge now!"
That was when Pony came running up, her face pale.
"Wait!" she said, grabbing Mandalay's arm. "Dash isn't here!"
Mandalay turned toward her.
"Aizawa and the others have already gone to look for anyone still in the forest," she explained, trying to keep her voice steady. "They'll find him eventually."
Kirishima, who was right behind them, clenched his teeth and pointed toward the devastated horizon.
"I'm sure Dash and Ryo are over there!"
The entire class turned to look at him.
Kirishima continued.
"This looks exactly like something Ryo would do while fighting someone. And if they're out there, then they need our help!"
Silence settled over the clearing for a few seconds.
Then Iida stepped forward.
"He's right."
Uraraka turned toward him.
"Iida-kun?"
The boy clenched his fists.
"If Ryo and Dash are in danger, we can't just run away. They need our help!"
Mina nodded immediately.
"Yeah! We've faced worse than this before!"
"Yeah!"
"That's right!"
Several of the Class B students exchanged glances.
Tetsutetsu gritted his teeth and took a heavy step forward.
"Hey! Don't leave Class B out of this! We're helping too!"
Mandalay immediately became overwhelmed.
"No, no, no... You all have to go back!"
But the students were already moving, their bodies tense and ready to head into the forest.
From the distance, Tiger saw the scene and let out an irritated sigh as he started walking toward them.
"These brats have no idea what danger is..."
Then a voice rang out from behind Mandalay.
"All of you, shut up and get back!"
Aizawa's voice echoed through the trees.
The students turned at the same time toward the voice, only to freeze in shock at what they saw.
Aizawa emerged from the trees carrying the injured Dash in his arms. The boy was in terrible condition, worse than anyone could have imagined.
Pony covered her mouth.
"D-Dash...!"
Kirishima froze for a second before sprinting toward his friend.
"Dash!"
Aizawa approached without wasting a second, but silence had already fallen over the entire area. Some students stood frozen, others instinctively stepped back, while a few felt nauseous just looking at the blond's condition.
Kirishima tried to get closer but stopped the moment he got a better look at his friend.
"...Dash..."
His voice came out broken.
Aizawa didn't let everyone's shock last long.
He turned his head and spotted Iida among the crowd.
"Iida!"
The boy blinked, trying and failing to pull himself together.
Aizawa ignored it and continued.
"Go to the lodge and bring Dash's brother from Room 57. Now!"
Iida didn't answer immediately.
Aizawa raised his voice, harsher this time.
"NOW!"
That snapped him out of his trance.
Iida squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, took a deep breath, and dashed toward the lodge at full speed.
The crowd immediately parted to let him through.
But in the middle of everyone, one person didn't move even a single inch.
Aoyama stood frozen, his eyes locked on Dash as Aizawa and Kirishima carefully laid him on the ground. Pony was already kneeling beside him, quietly crying, her expression shattered by what she was seeing.
Aoyama kept staring at Dash in horror.
Barely able to breathe without feeling a sharp pain in his chest.
"What... have I done...?"
Guilt hit Aoyama like a cold wave.
His chest rose and fell far too quickly.
His heart seemed to hammer against his ribs with an uneven rhythm.
His vision began to blur around the edges.
His stomach twisted in a sickening, heavy way, as though his entire body had realized before his mind that everything had spiraled horribly out of control.
But before the feeling could grow even worse, the horizon exploded with light.
First, an incandescent sphere rose between the trees, so bright that everyone instinctively turned toward the depths of the forest.
Then another.
And another.
The explosions formed enormous spheres of green and yellow fire in the middle of the woods, rising in brilliant flashes that illuminated the treetops and, for brief moments, painted the sky with multicolored light.
The sound arrived a moment later, deep and heavy.
Aizawa immediately raised his head.
Mandalay did as well.
Pony, still beside Dash's body, froze in place.
Deep within the forest, Ryo and the Nomu collided once again.
Ryo's fist slammed against the monster's with enough force to create another explosion in the middle of the forest.
The impact carved out another crater of fire and dust, swallowing both of them in a blazing flash that burned even from afar. Rage still consumed Ryo. He fought as though he were trapped inside his own body, and the only way to escape was to destroy everything standing before him.
The Nomu, meanwhile, seemed to grow stronger every time it absorbed the energy expelled by Ryo.
But Ryo's body seemed endless.
Every new pulse came larger, hotter, and more powerful.
When the Nomu landed another punch in his stomach, the blow did nothing except bend the ring of fire surrounding Ryo's body for a brief instant.
The boy grabbed the creature's arm with both hands and twisted it with a sharp, brutal motion, snapping the joint and the bones with a muffled crack before releasing another pulse that erupted from his body and incinerated everything around him.
The creature was hurled away into a sea of fire and lava, while Ryo remained standing at the center of yet another melted section of the forest.
The cracks across his body spread even further, growing wider and brighter, leaking blazing yellow-green energy with every scream of pure rage.
His body had entered an extreme state of Overload.
Under normal circumstances, the energy he generated was constantly absorbed, compressed, and redistributed by his own body. But now, that entire balance had collapsed.
His body could no longer contain the energy it produced.
It burst out violently from every part of him.
Every form of energy he generated was being released into the environment without the slightest control.
That enormous waste of energy was precisely what kept the Nomu in the fight.
The creature fed on the energy Ryo wasted with every explosion, every shockwave, and every pulse that devastated the forest. As long as Ryo continued releasing absurd amounts of energy without fully directing it into his attacks, the Nomu kept evolving in the middle of the battle.
Realistically...
If Ryo were still capable of thinking rationally, he would probably defeat that Nomu with a single blow, without wasting another second.
But his rage had completely replaced his reason.
His Quirk greatly amplified his senses and emotions, which was why he had always been trained to regulate them and remain emotionally neutral in his daily life, preventing any potential breakout. But after months at U.A., he had gradually lowered his guard and allowed himself to open up to others, unleashing emotions that he had kept locked away for years.
And now, he was paying the price for his own mistake.
Deep inside, the darkness had already swallowed everything.
Yet within the depths of his own consciousness, Ryo was no longer in the forest.
He stood within an immeasurable abyss of darkness.
And he was sitting curled up inside that void, his arms drawn tightly against his body, his hands wrapped around his knees, his shoulders trembling.
Tears streamed endlessly down his face as he apologized over and over again.
"I'm sorry..."
His voice came out broken.
"I couldn't... I couldn't save him..."
His head bobbed up and down unevenly.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sor..."
He clenched his fingers tightly around his knees.
"I hesitated again... I was weak again... I... killed someone precious again..."
His hands seemed unnaturally pale within that darkness. Ryo stared at them as though he had never realized just how small they were compared to everything they were supposed to accomplish.
"Why are people so fragile compared to me?"
Black hands slowly began emerging behind him, at first without any clear shape, merely shadows drawing closer. They touched his shoulders. Then his torso. Then his arms. They were not the hands of real people. They were the hands of guilt itself, of insecurity, of the fear of failing once again.
Every new hand that reached him seemed to represent everything he could lose.
"Can I really save anyone?"
More hands.
"Can I really protect my friends?"
More hands surrounded him.
"Can I really... protect my mother?"
The shadows tightened.
"I don't know anymore..."
Back in the forest, Ryo's body dropped to its knees within the sea of lava he himself had created. His hands touched the ground, his shoulders shook, and his rage began giving way to a raw sorrow, one far too heavy to keep buried any longer.
A blazing tear began forming in one of his eyes.
A single hot drop, glowing with a greenish-yellow hue, rolled down Ryo's face and fell into the white magma below, while his empty eyes seemed to see something else reflected upon the trembling surface.
Dash.
His fallen friend.
His wounded friend.
And the friend who was dead to him.
"I'm sorry..."
Far away, on the other side of the devastated forest, the Nomu burst out from beneath the rubble with a violent surge, and the ground exploded around it. Yellow electrical discharges began coursing across its body like massive, elongated bolts of lightning, rising several meters into the air and tearing apart everything nearby.
But then, the Nomu's body failed.
Its legs bent and rebuilt themselves in rapid succession. Its arms twisted into impossible angles before reforming once more. Its chest seemed to swell and collapse at the same time. Large, irregular blisters began forming beneath its unnatural skin. Bone structures grew where they shouldn't, cracked, shattered, and then reappeared in entirely different shapes.
CRACK!
Although it had successfully absorbed Ryo's energy up until now, his natural radiation could not be absorbed in the same way.
As a result, its body had become severely contaminated by incredibly high doses of it.
And the Nomu's regeneration did not save it from that.
It only made it worse.
Every new cell created through regeneration was born already altered, infected with internal mutations, copying genetic errors before they could even be corrected. Cell division spiraled out of control, producing more dysfunctional tissue, more abnormal growth, more grotesque deformities throughout its body. Its DNA reacted under immense stress, twisting beneath prolonged radiation exposure and forcing increasingly violent reconstructions.
The results became visible on the outside.
Its ribs began bursting out from its torso like broken teeth.
Sharp bone protrusions emerged from its elbows.
Thick spikes tore through the skin along its spine, growing outward in irregular and grotesque formations.
The skull mask cracked after smashing against its own face as it grabbed its head with both hands, its fingers digging into the surface until it shattered completely.
The creature let out a horrific roar as it pulled its own face apart, revealing exposed bone structure and freshly regenerated skin formed in all the wrong layers.
CRACK!
Its jaw expanded unevenly. New teeth sprouted in impossible places. Others grew from its tongue. Its entire mouth became a tangled mass of thin, crooked teeth, as though its own regeneration was desperately trying to invent a way to keep its host alive without knowing how.
The Nomu screamed.
"P... PaI...!"
Another spasm.
"PAIN!"
Its hands dug into the ground, crushing the earth beneath its fingers as its body trembled from the forced reconstruction.
"PaI... so MUcH..."
Its empty eyes slowly looked forward.
Far away, at the center of the destruction, Ryo was still kneeling in the sea of lava, crying with his head lowered.
The Nomu stared at him as though trying to connect the sight with the memories that now seemed to be surfacing more clearly within its mind.
Ryo's name surfaced only in fragments, alongside images of failure, humiliation, and hatred.
"...R..."
Its deformed mouth struggled to form words.
"...R-r..."
Its teeth chattered against one another.
"...Ry..."
Its torn throat vibrated.
"...RyO..."
More memories.
More hatred.
"...Ta..."
"...TaNa..."
"...TaNaKa..."
Its entire body trembled.
Its bloodshot eyes locked onto Ryo.
Its yellow veins pulsed even harder.
The thermonuclear electrical aura once again enveloped its body, even more intensely than before. The Nomu forced itself to stand, first with trembling movements, then with steadier steps, even as its leg broke and regenerated with every stride.
The sound of bones snapping and reforming never stopped.
"...YoU..."
Another step.
CRACK!
"...DiD..."
Another step.
"...ThIs..."
Another.
"...To Me..."
It kept moving.
"KiLl..."
Its march accelerated.
"...KiLl..."
CRACK!!
"...KILL..."
CRACK!
"...KILL!!"
And it launched itself toward Ryo, leaping with everything it had across the sea of lava, its entire body engulfed by yellow sparks and the monstrous deformities of the mutation consuming it.
"DIIIIIIE!!!"
But before the attack could reach him, purple energy exploded through the air.
The impact struck the Nomu head-on and hurled it back through the forest, smashing through tree trunks and carving another path of destruction before disappearing into the wreckage of shattered trees.
Violet appeared above the lake of lava, hovering directly over where Ryo knelt.
Her long hair rose together with her aura, flowing through the air like ribbons caught inside a hurricane. The purple energy surrounding her body pulsed in dense waves, and her expression was cold, serious, and lethal.
"You won't kill anyone as long as I'm here."
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(A/N: I've seen people saying that Ryo was nerfed or that I was nerfing him, when in reality I only applied things I've already established a long time ago. His Quirk is heavily influenced by his emotions, and whenever that happens, those emotions get amplified, causing him to lose his sense of reason depending on what he's feeling. Then there's the wasted energy rate, which surprised everyone. Despite being incredibly powerful, Ryo was effectively nerfed in a way from the very beginning. But whenever he has a breakout, that wasted energy rate skyrockets to almost 100%, leaving him with barely anything left to use for physical enhancement.
His Fury Mode is still dangerous, just not because of raw strength. The real threat comes from the sheer amount of energy and radiation he releases, along with the fact that he can literally explode if things keep going in that direction. On the bright side, he becomes completely invulnerable in that state, taking no damage no matter what hits him.
Sorry to all the fans of the classic "Top Protagonist Rage Moments," but this ended up being one of our boy's weakest forms when you consider his actual limits and the internal logic behind his powers.
Honestly, that's a huge relief for me, because I've never really liked this type of power-up...
Question...
Should I have Ryo cook the Frenchman?)