[12:20 PM, Contestant Prep Room, Sports Festival Stadium]
Domination. Complete and total domination.
"MOVING ON AFTER SUCH A CLIMACTIC BATTLE, WHO'S NEXT IN THE BATTLE FOR THE TOP?!" President Mic's booming voice ricocheted through the walls, pressing down on him. Each word sliced through his aching mind, echoing, louder and louder, relentless. A migraine gnawed at his temples, his head heavy with a dull, feverish throb.
[Y/N] stood alone, his back rigid, unmoving in the silence of the prep room. He could feel the seconds bleeding away as he waited for his name to be called, as he waited for his turn. The noise, the anticipation, all of it was distant, hollow, almost meaningless. Here, in this empty room, there was nothing but the chilling quiet and the polished mirror looming in front of him.
His reflection gazed back at him, blank and unreadable, like a portrait painted with too little soul.
In the mirror, he saw the hollow image of a student, a child, playing at heroism.
How strange. That was all he thought, that he stood here at all, wrapped in the guise of a hopeful, bright-eyed hero candidate. And yet, when he looked into his own eyes, he didn't see the ambition of someone striving for heroism. Not like Midoriya or Uraraka, whose unwavering drive practically burned from within. They had something he couldn't pretend to understand, a purity, an untainted belief. But when he looked into his own eyes, he saw nothing...
Just a flat, neutral stare and lips pressed in an indifferent line. So why am I here? The thought slid through his mind, murky and cold.
Around him, the world started to blur, the room thickening with an invisible fog. A dull ringing in his ears grew louder, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Just focus. He tightened his fists, but the ringing only amplified, droning in waves, dragging him deeper into a dark haze. His mind drifted, swirling back toward something, or was it someone?
It was him. Not himself, but him. The Phantom Stranger. The cold, faceless terror he had crafted from his own emptiness. The wide-brimmed hat, the high-collared cloak, the flawless suit that transformed him into something other, something fearsome. The Phantom wasn't a person, he was a nightmare, a whisper in the shadows, an entity born to haunt and hunt. And yet, when he looked into that polished glass, the Phantom didn't look back.
No, instead, he saw himself. The young man in the hero course tracksuit, exposed without his mask, stripped of his armour. A hollow figure. A shallow copy, barely skimming the surface of something darker.
The ringing became sharper, a grating wail as if something were scraping against his thoughts, dragging him away from reality. Then, as if emerging from that dark ringing void, he saw it.
The figure in the mirror vanished within an instant, and a smaller form appeared, a child. He stood much shorter than [Y/N], a figure of frail limbs and sallow, dirt-smeared skin, his clothes tattered and grimy, stained with a dark, oily residue. A crimson stain dripped from his forehead, matting his hair to his skull. Beneath the dirty mass of clothes was a limb overgrown with tumours.
The child stared up, hollow eyes rimmed with bruises, his mouth drawn in a strange, hollow scowl. Hell spawn. A creature that crawled its way out of the fiery pits of damnation. It was an anomaly, like someone being brought back from the reaper's clutches. This thing, there was no earthly reason for it to belong upon their mortal coil, for it to exist at all, to have gotten as far as it had, and yet, it had all the same...
[Y/N] didn't react.
He knew who this was.
This was him.
YOU ARE READING
- Fundamental Force - Male Reader x My Hero Academia
Fanfiction[Male Reader x My Hero Academia] The advent of Quirks changed society fundamentally. It was the birth of a child in Qing Qing City, China that nearly brought about the end of civilization as it was known. 'Meta Abilities.' Abilities that held the po...
