Apotheosis

CHAPTER 37: ALCHEMY

Izuku stared into the abyss that he suddenly found himself in. He'd been having this dream a lot lately. This time he felt more lucid than a typical dream. As if he was more aware of himself and where he was. When he turned around he saw the same group of eight people standing in the darkness. Sometimes he got a brief look at them, but he still didn't recognize these people and he normally had a good eye for faces.

The one in the center walked towards him. This one seemed to be the leader as he was the only one that ever spoke to him.

Izuku's eyes followed the man as he approached. He had white disheveled hair that seemed to obscure the top half of his face, leaving it shadowed, but Izuku could see his mouth moving clearly. No words reached him, so Midoriya had to try reading his lips.

'...Enough...' That word was all he could make out.

"Enough?" Izuku said aloud. "What do you mean? What are you saying? What's enough?" He tried to ask, but got no response. Before he could demand more answers the figures vanished into darkness as the dream ended.

Izuku woke with a start. Sitting up in his bed his ears finally registered the beeping noise coming from his nightstand. Grabbing the digital tablet he smirked seeing exactly what he was waiting for. The documents from the Prime Minister himself, signed and approved, were finally sent to him. It looks like the Deus Ex Machina protocol was a go. Full permission to use his powers and knights to take down the Shie Hassaikai.

"Finally." Pressing a button on his tablet he sounded the alarm throughout his facility. Todoroki, Uraraka, and Iida knew the drill. Wake up, put on your uniforms, grab your gear and meet on the helipad. Jumping out of bed Izuku made his way over to his bathroom to splash some water in his face and get ready.

His bedroom was the most secure chamber in the base. The entire room was sealed, covered top to bottom in the best security technology, bio scanners and quirks scanners, and the only way in or out was a heavily vaulted blast door that even Allmight would struggle to rip open. A sleeping Midoriya was a vulnerable Midoriya after all. If he wanted to get a good night's rest without worrying about an enemy coming in to kill him or worse steal the gauntlet off his unconscious body, then he needed all that extra protection.

Looking into the mirror he examined his shirtless muscular torso. He'd been training extra hard lately in an effort to master One for All. So far he still couldn't use one hundred percent of it without damaging his body. Luckily he had the time stone to undo that damage. One thing he did figure out was that he could channel a small percentage of that power throughout his entire body and not suffer any harm. He just had to improve that in small steps. Annoying, but progress none the less in Midoriya's eyes.

Looking away from the mirror he examined the gauntlet still attached to his left arm. His eyes trailed over each stone carefully, coming to focus on the green power stone placed in the outside palm. From an outside perspective One for All was really an incredible quirk. Where All for One could get powerful in a short amount of time, depending on the quirks that were stolen, One for All became stronger over a long period of time by being passed along through eight inheritors. Eventually surpassing even All for One and defeating its original user.

Personally he found One for All a tad bit disappointing. While the super strength was impressive it wasn't what he wanted this quirk for. In theory all that stock piled power should amplify all the other stones immensely. For the most part it did, but for some odd reason whenever he tried to boost a quirk that was stolen with the soul stone, the strength of the quirk while enhanced was nowhere near what it should be. It was almost as if those two quirks were not compatible, which he Izuku found hard to believe.