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Chapter Text

The first time it happened, it was a villain attack. A crumbling building, a desperate shove, then darkness. Izuku gasped awake in his dorm room bed, the morning sun of a Tuesday he’d already lived streaming through his window. He’d brushed it off as a vivid nightmare.

Then Hitoshi mentioned a dream so realistic he’d felt the phantom ache of broken ribs, and Denki, with a nervous laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes, talked about a nightmare where he’d short-circuited so violently he thought his brain had fried. All describing the same villain attack, the same Tuesday.

The second death was quicker, a surprise explosion during a training exercise. Again, they woke up on that same Tuesday.

The third time, it was agonizingly slow, poison gas filling a sealed room. They’d clawed at the doors, at each other, their lungs burning, vision blurring until that now sickeningly familiar lurch back to Tuesday morning.

“Okay,” Izuku had croaked that third awakening, his throat raw with remembered pain, clutching his chest. Across the common room, Hitoshi was pale, his usual stoicism cracked. Denki was openly trembling, his eyes wide and haunted. “Something is very, very wrong.”

That was ninety-seven loops ago.

Ninety-seven Tuesdays, each ending in a fresh wave of agony. They were the only ones who remembered. Class 1-A, their teachers, the villains themselves – all reset, blissfully unaware of the horrors the trio had endured.

“Not the fire again,” Denki whimpered, curled on one of the common room couches. It was still early, the sky outside the grey of pre-dawn. They’d learned to find each other within minutes of waking, a silent, desperate solidarity. “Please, anything but the fire.”

Loop 42. A villain with a sadistic pyrokinesis Quirk. The memory of searing heat, of melting flesh, was still too fresh. Izuku closed his eyes, the phantom smell of smoke making him gag. “We stick together. We try to get to the outskirts as soon as the first bell rings. Maybe… maybe if we’re not in the city?”

Hitoshi scoffed, the sound hollow. “Like when we tried to hide in the forest preserve? And that… *thing* with the claws found us?” Loop 67. That had been a particularly gruesome one, slow and methodical. Hitoshi had a new network of faint, silvery lines on his arms that morning, ghost-scars only he and the others could truly perceive, a testament to wounds that should have been fatal.

The methods varied with a sickening creativity that suggested a cruel, unseen orchestrator. They’d been crushed, drowned, electrocuted (a particularly ironic and horrifying one for Denki, who’d woken up screaming for hours after, feeling his own power turned against him in a way that felt like being flayed from the inside out). They’d been subjected to Quirks that induced unimaginable pain, Quirks that twisted bone and tore muscle, Quirks that made them relive their worst fears until their minds nearly shattered right before their bodies gave out.

Then there were the torture loops.

They didn't talk about those in detail. The words were too heavy, the memories too raw. But the euphemisms were there, hanging heavy in the air between them.

“The 'interrogation' scenario,” Izuku might say, his voice tight, and Hitoshi would nod grimly, his gaze distant. That was loop 78. No quick death. Just days, it had felt like, of systematic breaking. They’d tried to resist, tried to use Hitoshi’s Quirk, but their captors had been prepared. They’d used… *tools*. Things that weren't Quirks. Cold, hard, unyielding. Izuku remembered the chillingly calm voice of their tormentor, asking questions they didn't know the answers to, the pain escalating with each denial. He remembered Denki’s choked sobs, Hitoshi’s gritted teeth until even he had broken into raw, animalistic screams.

“Or the ‘sensory deprivation’ one that went wrong,” Denki would whisper, his hands unconsciously going to his ears. Loop 83. What had started as an attempt to break them psychologically had devolved when a secondary villain grew impatient. The sudden, brutal shift from utter nothingness to an onslaught of physical violence had been a unique kind of hell.

They’d experienced being hunted, not by villains seeking swift victory, but by those who clearly relished the chase and the eventual, brutal end. Loop 55 had involved a villain who could manipulate their nervous systems, inducing spasms of agony for what felt like an eternity before finally letting their hearts give out. They’d woken from that one with every muscle screaming in protest, the memory of their own bodies contorting beyond their control a fresh horror. Another loop, number 91, had involved a slow-acting neurotoxin that dismantled their motor functions piece by piece, leaving them aware but paralyzed as they suffocated.

The pain was a constant companion, a ghost that clung to their limbs and settled deep in their bones. Some mornings, Izuku would wake up and instinctively check for wounds that weren't there, his skin crawling with the memory of being pierced, or burned, or torn. Hitoshi had developed a permanent tremor in his left hand after a loop involving repeated, targeted electrical shocks. Denki, once so vibrant, now had a perpetual shadow under his eyes, his laughter a rare and fragile thing.

“What if… what if we just don’t fight back this time?” Denki asked, his voice barely audible. “What if we just… let it happen? Maybe it’ll be quicker.”

Izuku looked at him, his heart aching. The despair in Denki’s eyes was a reflection of his own. He’d had that thought too, many loops ago. But the universe, or whatever cruel force was doing this to them, seemed to delight in prolonging their suffering. Passivity often led to drawn-out, more torturous ends.

“No,” Hitoshi said, his voice surprisingly firm. He pushed himself up from the floor, his eyes hard. “No. We don’t let them break us. Not really. Every time we wake up, every time we try again, we’re spitting in its face.” He looked at Izuku, then at Denki. “We figure this out. Or we die trying. And if we die, we die on our feet.”

Izuku nodded slowly, a flicker of the determination that had once defined him igniting in his chest. The pain was unimaginable, the repetition a grinding stone against their sanity. But Hitoshi was right. They had to keep trying. For each other. Because in this endless, agonizing Tuesday, they were all they had left.

The bell for their first class was about to ring. Another Tuesday of torment was dawning.

“Alright,” Izuku said, pushing himself to his feet, his muscles aching with phantom injuries. “Let’s try to avoid the collapsed underpass this time. And if we see anyone in a plague doctor mask… we run the other way. Fast.” That particular loop, with its insidious, flesh-rotting miasma, had been one of the worst.

They shared a grim look. Then, together, the three boys who had died too many times to count, stepped out to face their inevitable, painful end, hoping against hope that this loop, somehow, would be their last. Or at least, a little less agonizing than the ones before.

Chapter Text

The fluorescent lights of the U.A. hallway hummed, a sound that usually faded into the background noise of teenage chatter. But for Izuku, Hitoshi, and Denki, it was the soundtrack to their recurring nightmare, now on its 116th rotation. Each footstep তারা took towards their classroom felt both achingly familiar and leaden with dread.

Mr. Aizawa was leaning against the doorframe of Class 1-A, his gaze, already sharp, seeming to pierce right through them. He’d been watching them more closely these past few… Tuesdays. From his perspective, it was just one strange, out-of-character day repeating itself in his most problematic students. For them, it was an eternity of dying and waking to his scrutinizing gaze.

"Midoriya. Shinso. Kaminari." His voice was low, cutting through the usual morning bustle. "A word. Now."

The trio exchanged weary glances. They knew this was coming. Their apathy was becoming too obvious. The flinches at sudden noises, the way they sometimes finished each other's sentences before they were even spoken, the haunted, old-soul look in eyes that should have been bright with youthful energy – it was all adding up.

Aizawa led them to an empty side office, the silence thick with unspoken questions. He didn't sit, just turned, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. "Alright," he began, his tone deceptively calm. "What's going on with you three? And don't tell me it's nothing. You've been… off. Midoriya, you're hesitant, almost skittish. Kaminari, you haven't made a single idiotic joke all morning, which frankly is more concerning than the jokes themselves. And Shinso, you look like you haven't slept in a week, and your usual cynicism has been replaced by something… bleak."

Denki let out a shaky breath, a sound like air leaking from a punctured lung. Izuku stared at the floor, the familiar weight of their secret pressing down on him. It was Hitoshi who finally spoke, his voice raspy.

"How much… how much do you trust us, Sensei?"

Aizawa’s eyebrow arched. "Enough to know when you're hiding something significant. Something that’s clearly affecting your performance and well-being." He paused, his gaze softening almost imperceptibly. "Something that looks like it's hurting you."

Izuku’s head snapped up. That tiny crack in Aizawa’s stoic facade, that hint of concern, was what did it. He was so tired. They were all so, so tired.

"It's… a long story, Sensei," Izuku began, his voice trembling slightly. "And you're not going to believe us."

"Try me," Aizawa said, his eyes never leaving theirs.

Denki made a choked sound, half laugh, half sob. "Oh, he'll try you, alright. This whole damn day tries us, again and again and again."

"We're in a time loop, Sensei," Hitoshi stated bluntly, his lavender eyes burning with a desperate intensity. "This is the 116th time we've lived this exact Tuesday. And every single time, without fail, we die."

Aizawa’s expression didn’t change, but a stillness came over him. He didn't scoff. He didn't immediately dismiss them. He just watched them, listening.

Izuku took a deep, shuddering breath. "It started with that villain attack downtown, the one with the collapsing building. We died. And then we woke up, back in our beds, like it was a nightmare. Except it happened again. And again."

"The ways we die..." Denki's voice was barely a whisper, his gaze fixed on a point beyond the wall. "They're not... quick, Sensei. Not usually. They get more painful. More… creative." He shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. "Fire, crushing, drowning, being electrocuted by my own Quirk amplified a thousand times… villains with Quirks that just… hurt you. For hours."

"There have been loops with… with torture," Izuku forced out, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He couldn't meet Aizawa's eyes. "Where they try to get information. They use… methods. Not just Quirks. We've been… dismantled, Sensei. Mentally. Physically. We've heard each other scream until our voices gave out, and then kept screaming silently." He remembered loop 78, the 'interrogation', the cold precision of their unseen tormentors, the way Denki had finally gone limp with a small, broken sound.

Hitoshi picked up the thread, his voice flat, devoid of emotion – a defense mechanism honed over countless deaths. "We've been hunted. We've been poisoned, felt our bodies shut down piece by piece while we were still aware. We’ve experienced our nerves being set on fire, our bones being broken one by one. We tried hiding. We tried fighting. We tried running as far as we could. It doesn't matter. It always finds us. A new villain, a new accident, a 'training exercise' gone catastrophically wrong. Sometimes it’s an elaborate setup, other times it's brutally simple. But it always ends the same way. Pain. And then waking up again, right here. This Tuesday."

Aizawa remained silent for a long moment, his gaze sweeping over the three students before him. He saw the genuine terror in Denki’s eyes, the deep, soul-crushing exhaustion etched onto Hitoshi’s face, the almost unbearable weight of responsibility and remembered agony in Midoriya’s posture. He saw the slight tremor in Shinso's hand, the way Kaminari flinched when he shifted his weight, the haunted darkness in Midoriya's usually bright eyes. These weren't the signs of teenagers pulling a prank or suffering from shared delusion. This was trauma. Deep, profound trauma.

The logical part of his brain screamed that it was impossible. Time loops were the stuff of fiction. But the part of him that was a hero, a teacher who had seen the horrors the world could inflict, saw the truth in their broken voices and shadowed eyes.

"One hundred and sixteen times," Aizawa finally said, his voice quiet, dangerously so. He wasn't looking at them with disbelief, but with a dawning, chilling understanding. "You've endured this… one hundred and sixteen times."

Izuku nodded, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on his cheek he hadn't realized was there – a phantom sensation from a previous loop's demise. "We don't know why. We don't know how to make it stop. We just… keep dying. And we remember every single second of it."

Aizawa’s fists clenched at his sides. The sheer scale of suffering they were describing, the psychological torture of it all, was staggering. To die, to feel that agony, and then to wake and know it was coming again, with no escape in sight, over a hundred times…

He looked at his students, no longer just problematic kids, but survivors of an invisible war, casualties of a battle no one else could see. His usually tired eyes were now blazing with a protective fury he rarely let show.

"Alright," he said, his voice regaining its familiar, steely edge, but now laced with something new – a grim resolve. "If what you're saying is true, and I'm choosing to believe you based on… well, on *you*… then we have a problem to solve." He looked at each of them in turn. "And you're not going to face it alone anymore."

Chapter Text

The air in the small office crackled with the impossible truth. Aizawa, to his credit, didn't bombard them with a thousand questions at once. He was methodical, his gaze intense as he absorbed the unimaginable.

"Patterns," he said finally, his voice a low rumble. "You've been through this 116 times. Are there constants? Besides the day itself and your… deaths?"

Izuku shook his head, a familiar wave of exhaustion washing over him. "They vary. Wildly. Sometimes it’s a coordinated villain attack we recognize from news reports in previous… well, previous 'original' timelines before the loops started. Other times, it’s something entirely new, something that feels specifically tailored to us, or to be as brutal as possible. The only true constants are that it’s Tuesday, we three are the only ones aware, and by the end of the day, we die. Painfully."

"We've tried everything we could think of," Hitoshi added, his voice hoarse. "Hiding, fighting, running, splitting up, staying together. We've tried alerting other heroes, but no one believes us in time, or they become casualties themselves before the reset. We tried writing things down, leaving messages for ourselves, but everything resets. Only our memories remain."

Denki shuddered. "One time, we thought we’d made a breakthrough. Got to All Might. He was starting to listen, really listen. Then… a sniper. Aimed for him, but Izuku pushed him clear. Took the hit. That loop ended fast for him. Hitoshi and I… we didn't last much longer. They were thorough." The memory of All Might’s horrified face, quickly replaced by the agony of his own end, flashed in Denki's eyes.

Aizawa paced the small room, the only sound his soft footsteps and the ragged breathing of the three teens. "The methods of… termination. You mentioned torture." His voice was tight.

"Loop 78 was bad," Izuku whispered, looking at his hands. "They called it 'information retrieval.' No Quirks at first, just… tools. And questions we couldn't answer. It went on for what felt like days, even though it was still just Tuesday. We heard each other. That was one of the worst parts."

"Loop 91, the neurotoxin that paralyzed us slowly," Hitoshi added, his jaw clenching. "We were fully aware, couldn't move, couldn't speak, just… waited to suffocate. Or Loop 42, the pyrokinetic who liked to draw it out, make art with his flames, using us as the canvas."

Aizawa stopped pacing, his expression grim. He looked at them, truly looked at them – at the haunted shadows in their eyes, the way they held themselves, braced for an impact only they could predict. "Alright. For this loop, Loop 116, we operate under my direction. Full transparency. You tell me everything you anticipate, everything you remember."

A sliver of something almost like hope, fragile and terrifying, flickered in Izuku. Having Aizawa on their side, even for one loop, felt monumental.

"The most common trigger point for a major attack is usually around midday," Izuku explained. "Often near the city center, or sometimes it’s an assault directly on U.A. We've had collapses, explosions, highly specialized villain groups..."

"Today," Denki interrupted, a nervous tremor in his voice. "The last… maybe five or six loops that started like *this* one, with no immediate morning incident, have escalated with an attack on the training grounds. Specifically, the Unforeseen Simulation Joint."

"The USJ?" Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. "That’s a secure facility."

"Not secure enough, apparently," Hitoshi said dryly. "Twice it was a full-on villain invasion, reminiscent of our first year but… worse, more lethal. Once, a high-yield bomb. Another time, a villain who could turn the environment itself against us – the earth opened up, the structures collapsed. That was a messy one. Lots of crushing injuries."

"Okay," Aizawa said, his mind racing. "New plan. We don't go to the USJ. We create a different scenario. We’ll use one of the more remote training grounds, Ground Gamma. I'll authorize a specialized drill, just us four. Minimal personnel. We control the variables as much as possible."

It was a long shot. They all knew it. The loop had a horrifying way of course-correcting. But it was a plan, and with Aizawa leading it, it felt more concrete than anything they'd concocted in dozens of loops.

The morning passed in a blur of forced normalcy. Aizawa pulled strings, citing a need for focused Quirk assessment for the three students. As they walked towards Ground Gamma, Izuku felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach. It was too quiet. The loop was usually louder, more chaotic by now if it was going to be a "big" one.

"Anything?" Aizawa asked, his senses on high alert.

Izuku scanned the rooftops, the alleyways they passed. "Nothing yet. But it always feels like this, right before. Like the world is holding its breath."

Ground Gamma was a maze of industrial pipes and towers. Aizawa began to outline the drill, his voice calm and authoritative, but his eyes kept darting around, assessing every shadow.

Denki was the first to feel it. A prickling sensation on his skin, the air thrumming with an energy that wasn't his own. "Sensei…" he started, his voice cracking. "Something’s wrong. My… my Quirk feels… agitated. Not by me."

Suddenly, the ground beneath them *ripped* open. Not an earthquake, but a violent, tearing schism, jagged edges of earth and metal erupting upwards. It was eerily similar to Hitoshi’s description of a previous USJ attack, but here, now.

"Scatter!" Aizawa yelled, shoving Izuku and Denki in opposite directions as he activated his own Quirk, his hair flying, eyes glowing red, searching for the source.

Izuku hit the ground, rolling, the familiar roar of chaos filling his ears. He saw Hitoshi stumble, his leg caught by a shifting piece of concrete. Before Izuku could react, a massive, shadowy tendril, black as pitch and fast as a striking snake, slammed down from above, directly where Hitoshi had been. Izuku didn't see Hitoshi get hit, but the sickening crunch and the sudden, visceral wave of remembered agony that wasn't entirely his own told him everything. Loop 116 was ending for Shinso Hitoshi.

"Sensei!" Denki screamed, electricity arcing uncontrollably around him, not as an attack, but as a beacon of his terror. The tendrils were everywhere now, erupting from the ground, controlled by a monstrous figure half-hidden in the dust and debris, its form shifting and unstable.

Aizawa was fighting, a whirlwind of motion, his capture weapon lashing out, erasing Quirks where he could, but the sheer scale of the attack, the raw, destructive power…

Izuku pushed himself up, One For All crackling around him, but he knew. He *knew* how this went. They were outmaneuvered, outpowered. This was it for this Tuesday.

A tendril, impossibly fast, whipped towards Denki. Aizawa lunged, pushing Kaminari clear, but the tendril coiled, not crushing, but constricting, and Aizawa let out a choked gasp as his Quirk sputtered and died, the red glow fading from his eyes. The monstrous figure laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together.

"Two down," it rasped, its voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. "And the little green one makes three. The Master will be pleased with this cycle's harvest."

*Cycle? Harvest?* The words hit Izuku harder than any physical blow. This wasn't random. This was orchestrated.

Another tendril. Izuku met it head-on, a desperate, defiant yell tearing from his throat as he unleashed a 100% smash. The impact was colossal, but more tendrils followed, a relentless, overwhelming tide. He felt a searing pain in his side, then his leg buckled. Darkness encroached.

The last thing he saw was Aizawa, still fighting, even as he was being crushed, his unbroken gaze fixed on Izuku, a look of furious, helpless understanding.

Then, the sickening lurch.

Izuku gasped awake in his dorm room bed. Tuesday. Sunlight streamed through the window. His body ached with phantom pains, the echo of being torn apart still fresh.

He scrambled out of bed, already moving towards the common room. He found Denki already there, pale and shaking, and Hitoshi leaning against a wall, his face a mask of grim resignation.

"He knows," Izuku choked out. "Aizawa… in that last loop. He knew. He tried to help."

"And he'll have forgotten it all by now," Hitoshi said, the words like stones. "Just like every other time we've tried to tell someone who wasn't us."

A few minutes later, the door to the common room opened, and Mr. Aizawa walked in, his usual tired expression on his face. He paused, his gaze sweeping over Izuku, Hitoshi, and Denki. They were huddled together, looking like they’d seen a ghost – or lived through a war. Which, in a way, they had. Again.

"Midoriya. Shinso. Kaminari," Aizawa said, his voice low, a hint of something unreadable in its depths – concern? Annoyance at their early morning gloom? "You three look like hell. More than usual. What's wrong?"

The cycle, it seemed, was far from broken. And their burden had just become heavier, knowing that even with help, escape was not yet in sight, and every new attempt to involve someone meant re-living the agony of convincing them, only for it all to be erased.

Chapter Text

The morning of Loop 117 dawned with the same sterile sunlight, the same chirping birds outside Izuku’s window, the same crushing weight on his chest. He found Hitoshi and Denki in the common room, their faces pale etchings of dread. When Aizawa entered, his gaze lingered on them, that familiar question – *What's wrong with you three?* – practically radiating from him.

This time, no one spoke of loops. The words felt like ash in Izuku’s mouth. What was the point? To relive that fleeting moment of hope with Aizawa, only to have it snatched away again with the reset? To watch their teacher’s dawning horror, his fierce protectiveness, and then to see him the next “morning,” oblivious, their shared battle forgotten by all but them?

They mumbled non-committal answers to Aizawa’s questions, endured his narrowed, suspicious gaze, and moved through the early hours of the day like ghosts, their interactions with their classmates hollow and strained.

The loop, as if sensing their despair, their lack of fight, decided to be particularly cruel.

It wasn't a dramatic explosion or a grand villainous monologue that signaled the end. It was insidious. A fast-acting, highly corrosive pathogen released into the school's ventilation system during afternoon classes. There was no grand battle, just choking confusion, searing pain as the acidic agent took hold, and the horrified, gurgling cries of their classmates. Izuku and Hitoshi found each other in the chaos, their bodies already failing, and then, darkness.

The lurch back to Loop 118 was more violent than usual, yanking Izuku from a silent, burning oblivion. He gasped, his lungs aching with phantom corrosion, his skin crawling. He was in his room. Tuesday.

His first thought, sharp and urgent: *Denki.*

He scrambled out of bed, not even bothering with shoes, and nearly collided with Hitoshi in the hallway, who looked just as ravaged, his hand already reaching for Denki’s doorknob.

They didn’t knock.

Denki was sitting bolt upright in his bed, but his eyes… his eyes were wrong. They were wide, unfocused, staring at something a million miles away, or perhaps something horrifyingly close that only he could see. His breathing was shallow, his knuckles white where he gripped his blanket. He didn’t react when they entered, didn't even seem to register their presence. A faint, almost imperceptible smell of ozone, a lingering signature of extreme Quirk distress, clung to the air around him.

"Denki?" Izuku whispered, his heart clenching. He reached out a hand, hesitating.

Hitoshi was already at Denki’s side, his voice low and steady, a tone he’d perfected over countless loops to cut through panic. "Kaminari. Hey. You with us?"

There was no response. Denki’s gaze flickered minutely, a tiny, almost imperceptible tremor running through him.

"He must have… he must have lasted longer," Hitoshi breathed, his own eyes reflecting a dawning horror. "In the… the acid."

Izuku felt sick. To have died that way was horrific enough. To have endured it for longer, conscious while others… "What could have happened?"

It was later, after nearly an hour of gentle coaxing, of Hitoshi grounding Denki with quiet, factual statements about the room, about the "current" loop, and Izuku holding one of his trembling hands, rubbing warmth back into the cold fingers, that fragments started to emerge from Denki.

His voice was a raw, broken whisper, almost inaudible. "...green… then purple… they stopped moving…" He was reliving Izuku and Hitoshi’s deaths. "The burning… it kept going… for me." A shudder wracked his frame. "He… he found me. The one with the… the nullifying collar."

Izuku and Hitoshi exchanged a horrified glance. A Quirk-nullifying collar. That meant Denki couldn't even short-circuit himself to try and escape the pain or the situation.

"...said my electricity… interesting…" Denki’s eyes squeezed shut. "Wanted to see… how much I could take before… before I just… came apart. Without the screaming. The collar… it stopped the screaming too… after a while…" His breath hitched. "Felt… everything. For so long. Just… burning. And him… watching."

*An hour.* He’d been alive, conscious, and in unimaginable agony, being observed, for an entire hour after they’d succumbed. An hour of his nerves screaming, his body dissolving, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to die.

Izuku pulled Denki into a hug, Hitoshi’s arm wrapping around both of them, a protective, desperate circle. Denki finally broke, guttural sobs tearing from him, the kind that had no sound left, just pure, physical anguish. They held him, rocking gently, whispering reassurances that felt like lies in the face of their reality but were the only comfort they could offer.

The sun was beginning to paint the sky with the false promise of a new day when Denki’s sobs finally quieted into exhausted, shuddering breaths. He was still trembling, nestled between them, his face buried in Izuku’s shirt.

"I can't… I can't keep doing this," Denki mumbled, his voice thick with despair. "Every time… it's worse. How can it keep getting worse?"

"We don't know," Hitoshi said, his own voice rough, stroking Denki’s hair. "But you're not doing it alone. You hear me, Denki? Never alone."

Izuku tightened his hold, pressing a kiss to Denki's hair, the gesture instinctive, born from a depth of emotion that had been stripped bare by their shared torment. "He's right. We're here. We're always here."

Denki shifted, looking up, his tear-filled golden eyes moving from Izuku to Hitoshi and back again. The raw vulnerability in that gaze, the desperate need, mirrored what Izuku felt churning in his own chest, what he saw reflected in Hitoshi’s usually guarded expression.

In the quiet of the room, surrounded by the ghosts of a hundred and seventeen horrific deaths, something shifted. The barriers they’d all unconsciously maintained, the fear of adding any more complications to their impossible situation, crumbled under the weight of shared suffering and profound, desperate care.

"I…" Izuku started, his throat tight. He looked at Hitoshi, whose gaze was surprisingly soft, fixed on him, then at Denki, whose trembling had lessened slightly under their touch. "I think… I love you guys." The words were quiet, almost a whisper, but they hung in the air, potent and true. "More than anything. You're… you're everything."

Denki let out a watery, shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Took us long enough to say it, huh? After all this?" He squeezed Izuku’s hand, then reached out to take Hitoshi’s. "Me too. God, me too. You're the only reason I haven't completely shattered."

Hitoshi’s thumb brushed over Denki’s knuckles, his gaze dropping to their joined hands before meeting Izuku’s. A rare, almost shy smile touched his lips. "Yeah," he admitted, his voice deeper than usual. "What he said. Both of you. It’s… a special kind of hell we're in. Wouldn’t want to face it with anyone else." He paused, then added, with a sincerity that made Izuku’s heart ache, "I love you too."

There were no grand pronouncements, no fireworks – just the quiet, desperate truth spoken in a dorm room at the dawn of another cursed Tuesday. They held each other tighter, three broken souls clinging together in the storm, finding a fragile, precious anchor in a love forged in the fires of an unending hell. Maybe it wouldn’t save them. Maybe it wouldn’t break the loop. But for now, in that moment, it was enough. It had to be.

Chapter Text

The soft glow of early morning light – Loop 124, by Izuku’s grim count – found the three of them already huddled on Denki’s bed. The confession hadn’t magically imbued them with immunity to the loop’s horrors, but it had woven a new, stronger thread into the tattered tapestry of their shared existence. There were more quiet touches now, a hand lingering on a shoulder, fingers interlaced in moments of silence. When the memories of a particularly gruesome end threatened to overwhelm one of them, the other two were there, a shield of shared warmth and whispered comfort.

But their love, as profound and desperate as it was, wasn’t a key. The loops continued, each Tuesday a fresh canvas for pain. Lately, there'd been a disturbing new trend. It felt as though whatever force orchestrated their torment was learning. Their old evasive maneuvers, the hiding spots they’d discovered, the predictable villain attack patterns they’d memorized – they were failing more and more often. New threats emerged, ones that seemed to anticipate their actions with chilling precision.

Loop 123 had ended with a villain whose Quirk specifically countered their combined abilities in a way that felt deliberately engineered, picking them apart with terrifying efficiency. Izuku had woken from that one with a scream trapped in his throat, the phantom sensation of his own Quirk being turned inward, devouring him from the inside out, while Hitoshi was forced to watch, his Brainwashing useless, and Denki was systematically drained of his energy until his heart gave out.

“It’s getting smarter,” Hitoshi murmured, his voice rough as he stared at the wall, Denki nestled between him and Izuku, absently tracing patterns on Izuku’s arm. “Or *something* is. The last few resets… they weren’t just random. They felt… targeted. Like it knew where we’d be, what we’d try.”

Denki shivered, pressing closer to Izuku. “Like that one with the sound-nullifying field just when you were trying to coordinate us, Hitoshi? And those Quirk-dampening cuffs that just *happened* to be perfectly sized for me and Izuku appeared out of nowhere?”

Izuku nodded grimly. The dread was a familiar companion, but this new, adaptive cruelty was stripping away their last vestiges of agency. Their encyclopedic knowledge of past loops was becoming a liability, their patterns used against them.

“Maybe…” Izuku started, the thought feeling like a lead weight in his stomach. “Maybe we have to consider telling Aizawa-sensei again.”

Denki flinched, a small, almost imperceptible movement, but Izuku felt it. Hitoshi’s arm tightened around Denki’s shoulder.

“Izuku, we’ve been over this,” Hitoshi said, his voice low and cautious. “You remember Loop 116. He helped. He *believed* us. And then… nothing. He was back to square one the next morning. And seeing that hope in his eyes, then having to face his blank stare… It’s not just us it hurts.”

“I know,” Izuku said, his own voice strained. “I know it was awful. For him, for us to witness. But that brief time he *was* with us? We made more progress, got further, than we have in dozens of loops on our own. He thinks differently. He has resources, authority.” He looked at them, his gaze pleading. “The loops are changing. What if this is the only way to adapt back? What if we need that outside perspective, even if it’s temporary, just to break the current pattern the… the *thing* controlling this has us in?”

“But what if it just makes him a target again?” Denki whispered, his voice small. “That… that tendril monster… it went for him. It *knew* he was helping us. What if we get him killed in some even more horrible way, and he won’t even remember why?” The memory of Loop 117, his hour of isolated agony, was a raw, festering wound. The thought of subjecting Aizawa, even a version of Aizawa who wouldn’t recall it, to anything similar was terrifying to him.

“That’s a risk,” Izuku conceded, his heart heavy. “But isn’t *everything* a risk now? We’re dying every day, Denki. And the ways… they’re not getting kinder.” He paused, then added softly, “And the ‘harvest’ comment from that tendril creature in Loop 116… if this is orchestrated, if we’re *being* harvested for some purpose, maybe someone like Aizawa, even with temporary knowledge, could spot a clue we’re missing, something about *who* is doing this or *why*.”

Hitoshi was silent for a long moment, his gaze distant. He remembered Aizawa’s brief, focused fury in Loop 116, the way their teacher had immediately started strategizing. The pragmatic side of him, the side that had been a hero-in-training before this hell, acknowledged Izuku's logic. But the part of him that loved these two, that had held Denki through his dissociation and seen the crushing weight on Izuku’s shoulders, recoiled from the inevitable emotional fallout.

“The re-explanation,” Hitoshi said finally. “That’s the worst part. Spilling our guts, laying out all this horror, knowing it’ll be wiped clean from his memory in a few hours. It’s like… it’s like confessing to a ghost.”

“But what if this time,” Izuku pressed, a desperate edge to his voice, “what if this loop we’re about to start, we focus on giving him one specific, verifiable piece of information? Something small he can see for himself early on. Something that makes him believe us faster, so we have more *time* with him on our side?”

Denki looked from Izuku to Hitoshi. The thought of telling Aizawa again, of watching that cycle of belief and erasure, made him feel hollowed out. But the thought of the loops continuing to escalate, of the ‘thing’ behind them learning and adapting… that was a suffocating dread. He thought of Izuku’s pained determination, Hitoshi’s weary protectiveness. He loved them too much to let them carry this alone if there was even a sliver of a chance.

“If we do it,” Denki said slowly, his voice trembling slightly, “we all have to be in. No doubts once we start. And… and we have to be prepared for how much it’s going to hurt when he forgets. Again.”

Izuku met Hitoshi’s eyes. The unspoken question hung between them. Was the potential gain worth the certain pain? Worth the risk to their teacher, even a temporary version of him?

The first bell, signaling the start of another Tuesday, another cycle of torment, was about to ring. They didn’t have much time to decide.

Chapter Text

The shriek of the first bell sliced through the tense silence in Denki’s room. Loop 124 was officially underway. Izuku looked at Hitoshi, then Denki, his heart pounding. “So? Do we try it? The verifiable information?”

Hitoshi let out a long breath. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But,” he added, a grim smile touching his lips, “we’re already so far past sane, what’s one more gamble?”

Denki nodded, his expression a mixture of terror and resolve. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it. But if… if it goes bad for him because of us…”

“We pull back. We abort trying to involve him for a while,” Izuku finished, understanding the unspoken fear. He squeezed Denki’s hand. “What’s the piece of information? What’s something small, specific, and soon?”

They quickly ran through the early morning routine of a typical Tuesday. Most of it was crushingly mundane. Then Hitoshi snapped his fingers. “The PA system. In about… ten minutes, during homeroom announcements, it’s going to cut out mid-sentence from Present Mic, then play three seconds of really loud, off-key jazz music before he comes back on apologizing for ‘technical gremlins.’ It happened in Loop 119 and 121. It’s minor, but it’s distinct.”

“Perfect,” Izuku said. “It’s not dangerous, but it’s weird enough.”

Their approach to Aizawa this time was less desperate, more calculated. They waited until he was seated at his desk, just before the morning announcements.

“Aizawa-sensei,” Izuku began, trying to keep his voice steady. Denki and Hitoshi flanked him, their presence a silent reinforcement.

Aizawa looked up, his gaze immediately sharpening at their unified, serious demeanor. “What is it now, problem children? Don’t tell me you’ve collectively decided to adopt a stray three-headed dog.”

“Sensei,” Izuku continued, ignoring the dry remark, “in approximately two minutes, when Present Mic is giving the morning announcements, the PA system will malfunction. It will cut out, play about three seconds of loud, badly played jazz music, and then Present Mic will resume, blaming technical issues.”

Aizawa stared at him. Blinked. “Is this a prank? Because if it is, your timing is, as usual, atrocious.”

“It’s not a prank, Sensei,” Hitoshi said, his voice flat and earnest. “It’s a demonstration. Please, just… listen to the announcements.”

Denki just nodded, unable to trust his voice, his eyes fixed on the classroom speaker.

Aizawa’s gaze flickered between the three of them, a frown creasing his brow. There was an unsettling intensity in their eyes, a shared conviction that went beyond a simple schoolboy joke. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, a skeptical but curious glint in his eyes. “Fine. Two minutes. This had better be the most avant-garde jazz I’ve ever heard.”

The longest minute and a half of Izuku’s life crawled by. Present Mic’s voice boomed through the PA system, running through the usual daily notices. Izuku could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. *Please let this loop be consistent in this one small way.*

“–and just a reminder that the support course bake sale is happening at lunch, so bring your yen and your appetites, listeners, because I hear Hatsume-san has outdone herself with some new explosive–”

*Cut.*

Silence. Then, exactly as Hitoshi had described, a blast of discordant, blaring jazz music, like a saxophone being strangled, echoed through the classroom for three cacophonous seconds before abruptly stopping.

Present Mic’s flustered voice returned. “–WHOA there, listeners! Apologies for that little audio hiccup! Looks like we’ve got some technical gremlins in the system this morning! As I was saying…”

The classroom buzzed with confused murmurs and a few snickers. But Izuku, Hitoshi, and Denki were watching Aizawa.

Their teacher hadn’t moved, but his eyes, wide and fixed on the speaker, were now slowly swiveling to stare at the three of them. The skepticism was gone, replaced by a profound, unnerving stillness. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, Present Mic’s voice fading into background noise.

“How,” Aizawa finally said, his voice dangerously quiet, each syllable precise, “did you know that was going to happen?”

“That’s… part of a much longer, much more unbelievable story, Sensei,” Izuku said, his own voice trembling slightly, relief and terror warring within him. “One we need you to hear. Because we think we’re in serious danger. All of us.”

Aizawa held their gaze for another charged moment, then nodded slowly. “My office. After this announcement. Now.”

The re-telling was just as agonizing as Hitoshi had predicted, but the prior, inexplicable proof had greased the wheels of belief. Aizawa listened, his expression growing grimmer with every horrific detail, every mention of a torturous end, every death remembered. He asked sharp, pointed questions, but there was an undercurrent of dawning, horrified acceptance. Loop 124 was already feeling different. There was a plan. There was an ally who *remembered* alongside them, even if it was only because they’d just told him.

“The entity that spoke to you in Loop 116,” Aizawa said, his focus absolute. “‘This cycle’s harvest.’ That implies intent, planning. Not random villainy.” He looked at them. “Today, our priority is observation and information gathering above direct confrontation, if possible. We need to understand who or what is doing this. And we need to try and identify what triggers the escalation.”

Their strategy was to stick close to Aizawa, to allow him to observe and direct, to see if his presence changed the dynamic of the loop. They avoided known hotspots, Aizawa rerouting training schedules and patrols. For a few hours, an almost unbearable sense of hope began to bloom. It was quieter. Less chaotic.

The shift occurred subtly, around mid-afternoon. Aizawa received an urgent, encrypted message on his private hero comm. His face went pale.

“There’s been a… containment breach at Tartarus,” he said, his voice strained. “Multiple high-level villains. Including… ones whose Quirks align with some of the methods you’ve described.” He looked at the three of them, a new, terrible understanding in his eyes. “This isn’t a random Tuesday event. This is a coordinated strike, and it’s happening *now*.”

Before they could react, before Aizawa could rally a response, the walls of the classroom *dissolved*. Not with an explosion, but as if they were made of sand, crumbling away to reveal a swirling, non-Euclidean nightmare of impossible geometry and shifting shadows. Figures emerged from the chaos, their forms indistinct but radiating immense power and malice.

“So,” a voice echoed, the same grinding, rocky voice Izuku remembered from Loop 116, the one that had spoken of a ‘harvest.’ It seemed to emanate from one of the larger, more stable shadows. “The little rabbits thought they could change the hunt by alerting the groundskeeper.” The shadowy figure gestured, and Aizawa gasped, his eyes widening in agony as invisible forces seemed to constrict him, lifting him from the ground. His Quirk erasure flickered and died.

“We appreciate your efforts to keep things… interesting,” the voice continued, a sickening amusement lacing its tone. “But the harvest is pre-ordained. And those who interfere with the cycle… become part of the compost.”

Aizawa let out a choked cry, his body contorting. Izuku, Denki, and Hitoshi surged forward, Quirks blazing, fueled by love and desperate fury, but the shadowy figures intercepted them with impossible speed and power tailored to neutralize them. One moment Denki was unleashing a torrent of lightning, the next he was screaming, his own electricity turned back on him, arching across his body with agonizing intensity. Hitoshi’s attempt to brainwash was met with a psionic blast that sent him reeling, blood pouring from his nose. Izuku’s smash was caught by a being of pure, shifting darkness that seemed to absorb the impact and reflect his own kinetic energy back at him, shattering his bones.

The last thing Izuku saw before his world went black was Aizawa, his life being visibly drained by the shadowy entity, his defiant gaze fixed on them, a silent apology, a desperate command to *live*, to *remember*. Then the unbearable, crushing pain, and the sickening lurch.

Izuku gasped awake in his dorm room bed. Tuesday. Sunlight. The phantom taste of blood and shattered bone. His hands flew to his chest, remembering.

He met Hitoshi and Denki in the hall. Denki was already crying, silent tears streaming down his face. Hitoshi’s expression was a mask of cold, hard fury, but his trembling hands betrayed him.

“It knew,” Denki choked out. “It knew we told him. It punished him for it. It punished *us* for it.”

“It adapted,” Hitoshi said, his voice raw. “Our clever little trick… just painted a bigger target on his back for this loop.”

Izuku felt a despair so profound it threatened to swallow him whole. Their attempt to gain an ally, to fight back smarter, had not only failed but had seemingly brought even more targeted, cruel attention upon them and, in that loop, upon Aizawa.

The first bell rang. Another Tuesday. And the agonizing question of what to do next, how to possibly fight an enemy that learned, adapted, and seemed to hold all the cards, loomed heavier than ever. Telling Aizawa had been a gamble. And it felt like they, and he, had lost.

Chapter Text

The morning of Loop 125 was a suffocating blanket of dread. Izuku woke with Aizawa’s final, defiant gaze burned into his memory, the phantom sound of the shadowy entity’s mocking laughter echoing in his ears. The thought of facing their teacher, so blissfully unaware of the gruesome end they’d inadvertently led him to in the previous cycle, was unbearable.

He found Hitoshi and Denki already in the common room, their faces pale and drawn. The usual pre-class bustle was a distant, muffled roar. Their shared trauma from Loop 124 hung heavy between them, a silent, screaming wound.

“I can’t,” Denki whispered, his voice hoarse, clutching a cushion to his chest as if it were a shield. “I can’t go to class. I can’t look at him. Not today. After… after what happened. Knowing it was because we tried to…” He trailed off, a shudder wracking his frame.

Hitoshi nodded, his expression grim. “He wouldn’t remember, but *we* do. Every detail.” The image of Aizawa being crushed, his life force drained, was a fresh horror superimposed over a hundred other agonizing ends. The entity’s words about the ‘groundskeeper’ and ‘compost’ replayed in his mind.

Izuku, usually the most rule-abiding, felt a profound sickness at the thought of sitting in Aizawa’s homeroom, of pretending everything was normal. The guilt was a physical weight. “Okay,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Okay. We don’t go. We find somewhere… somewhere else. Just for today’s loop.”

It was a reckless decision, one that would undoubtedly have consequences in a normal timeline. But their timeline was anything but normal.

They slipped out of the dorms as their classmates began to head towards the main building, their movements furtive, like fugitives. They found their sanctuary in a forgotten corner of U.A.’s vast grounds – an old, dusty groundskeeper’s shed tucked away near the edge of the woods, smelling faintly of rust and old earth. It was small, cramped, but blessedly quiet, a world away from the structured routine of their unending Tuesday.

Inside, they huddled together on a pile of old tarps, the silence broken only by their shaky breaths. The weight of the previous loop pressed down on them.

“It adapted so fast,” Izuku murmured, staring at the grimy windowpane. “It *knew* he was helping. It made an example of him.”

“And it enjoyed it,” Hitoshi added, his voice laced with a cold fury. “That… *thing* enjoyed making us watch.”

Denki let out a choked sob, burying his face in Izuku’s shoulder. “What if we made it worse for everyone? What if trying to fight back, trying to involve anyone, just… feeds it? Makes the ‘harvest’ more interesting for it?”

Izuku wrapped an arm around Denki, Hitoshi’s hand finding Denki’s back, rubbing soothing circles. “We don’t know that, Denks,” Izuku said, though his own conviction wavered. “We can’t let it make us believe we’re powerless.”

“But aren’t we?” Denki’s voice was muffled. “We die. Every. Single. Day. And now… now we got Aizawa killed in one of the worst ways yet.”

“He fought,” Hitoshi said, his voice quiet but firm. “Even at the end, that version of him, he fought. He wouldn’t want us to… to give up because of what happened to him.” He paused, then added, his voice rough with an emotion he rarely showed, “He’d be furious if he knew we were hiding in a shed, blaming ourselves.”

Izuku managed a watery smile. “He probably would. He’d call us illogical.”

A fragile moment of shared understanding passed between them. The shed felt like a tiny, temporary raft in an ocean of pain. Izuku looked from Denki’s tear-streaked face, still pressed against him, to Hitoshi’s weary but resolute expression. The love they had confessed, forged in the crucible of their unending torment, was the only solid thing left.

He gently tilted Denki’s chin up, his thumb brushing away a tear. Denki’s golden eyes, so often bright with laughter, were clouded with pain, but also with a deep, trusting affection as he looked at Izuku. Without a conscious thought, driven by an overwhelming need to offer comfort, to feel something real and good in the midst of the nightmare, Izuku leaned in and pressed his lips to Denki’s.

It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of profound tenderness, a desperate sharing of solace. Denki’s lips were soft, trembling slightly, and he made a small, sighing sound, his hands coming up to grip Izuku’s arms as if to anchor himself.

When they parted, Denki’s eyes were a little clearer, a fragile spark returning to them. Izuku turned his gaze to Hitoshi, who was watching them with an unreadable expression, a mix of sorrow and a deep, quiet understanding. Hitoshi’s usual guardedness was lowered, his own vulnerability exposed.

This time, it was Hitoshi who initiated, leaning forward to capture Izuku’s lips in a kiss that was firmer, more grounding, a silent promise of steadfastness. It spoke of shared burdens and an unyielding, if weary, resolve.

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in their twisted world, Denki shifted, his gaze finding Hitoshi’s. He reached out, his fingers tangling in the purple hair at Hitoshi’s nape, and drew him into a kiss that was both a plea and an offering, a seeking of comfort and a giving of what little strength he had left.

They stayed like that for a long moment, a tangle of limbs and shared breaths, the three of them finding a fleeting, desperate peace in each other’s arms. The kisses were a balm, a silent vow in the face of oblivion. It didn't erase the horror, didn't solve the loop, didn't lessen the guilt over Aizawa. But for a precious, stolen hour in a dusty shed, as the ordinary, doomed Tuesday unfolded without them, they weren’t just three traumatized teenagers waiting to die. They were Izuku, Hitoshi, and Denki. And they were together. And for now, that small, profound truth was the only thing that mattered.

Chapter Text

The fragile peace they’d found in the dusty shed during Loop 125 was, predictably, short-lived. Their kisses, tender and desperate, had been a momentary anchor, but the storm of the loop raged on. They hadn’t returned to class, had remained hidden, speaking in low tones, sharing warmth, and simply *being* together.

For a few hours, it almost felt like they had outsmarted the day. There were no direct confrontations, no specific villains appearing on their doorstep.

Then, as dusk began to bleed into the grimy windows of the shed, the air itself grew heavy, charged with an oppressive energy. The temperature plummeted, and a creeping, unnatural frost started to form on the walls, not just outside, but *inside* the shed, crawling towards them. There were no visible enemies, no grand pronouncements this time. Just an inescapable, bone-chilling cold that seeped into their lungs, their muscles, their very marrow. It was an insidious, slow, and agonizing freeze, their bodies stiffening, their words slurring, their consciousness fading into a frozen oblivion. The entity, it seemed, didn't need to actively hunt them to ensure the loop’s bloody conclusion. It could simply let the environment, subtly manipulated, do its work. A quiet, efficient reminder: there was no hiding.

Waking to Loop 126 was like surfacing from an icy abyss. Izuku gasped, his limbs aching with the phantom cold, the memory of that slow, inexorable freeze making him shudder uncontrollably. He found Denki already curled into a tight ball on his own bed, trembling, and Hitoshi was leaning against his doorframe, his face ashen. Their new intimacy was a silent presence; a shared glance conveyed volumes of remembered pain and a desperate, clinging comfort. The kisses from the previous loop had deepened their bond, but also sharpened the edges of their fear – the thought of that icy end, of watching each other fade so slowly, was a fresh horror.

“It found us,” Denki whispered when they convened in the common room, his voice raspy. “Even when we did nothing, even when we hid… it just changed the method.”

“No grandstanding that time,” Hitoshi observed, his voice flat. “Just… erasure. Efficient.” He rubbed his arms, though the dorm was warm. “Skipping again seems pointless. It’ll just find another way.”

Izuku nodded, the familiar weight of despair settling in. “So, we go back. We face… we face him.” The thought of Aizawa, oblivious and whole, made his stomach churn with guilt.

Walking into homeroom felt like walking into a minefield. Every casual glance from Aizawa, every tired sigh, every pointed look he sent their way when they inevitably failed to engage with the morning’s lesson, was a fresh stab of remembered agony. Loop 124’s brutal end, Aizawa’s horrifying “death” at the hands of the shadowy entity, played on a loop in Izuku’s mind. He could see it reflected in the haunted eyes of Hitoshi and Denki too.

Aizawa, predictably, noticed their even more pronounced withdrawal. They were quieter than ghosts, their responses monosyllabic, their eyes darting away from his gaze. The concern he’d shown in previous loops when they were “off” was now tinged with a clear exasperation.

“Midoriya, Kaminari, Shinso,” he said, his voice cutting through Izuku’s morbid reverie just before the lunch bell. “My office. Now. And this time, I expect actual answers, not just shared brooding.”

The three of them exchanged panicked glances. *Not again. Not the explanation. Not the hope followed by the inevitable reset and his blank stare.*

In his office, Aizawa’s patience was clearly thinner than usual. “You three look like you’ve seen a collective ghost and then been haunted by it for a week straight. Last Tuesday – from my perspective, *this morning* – you were acting strangely. Today, you’re practically catatonic. What. Is. Going. On?”

Izuku opened his mouth, then closed it. The words wouldn’t come. The memory of Aizawa’s pained gasp as the entity constricted him, his life force draining, was too vivid. He felt Denki subtly trembling beside him.

Hitoshi, surprisingly, spoke first, his voice carefully neutral, devoid of the desperation they’d shown in Loop 124. “We’re dealing with some… personal issues, Sensei. Group issues. It’s… complicated.”

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed. “Complicated enough to affect your performance, your awareness in class, and make you look like you’re carrying the weight of the world? Try again.”

“With all due respect, Sensei,” Izuku found his voice, echoing Hitoshi’s careful tone, “it’s something we need to work through ourselves. We understand your concern, but… we can’t talk about it.” Not anymore. Not after what it cost.

Denki nodded mutely, staring at a fixed point on Aizawa’s desk. *Please just let this go. Please don’t make us lie more. Please don’t make us remember more.*

Aizawa stared at them for a long, hard moment, his expression unreadable. The air was thick with unspoken truths, with the trio’s shared, secret agony. He saw their unity, their shared distress, but also a new, almost unbreakable wall they had erected.

“Fine,” he said eventually, the word clipped. “Work through it. But if it continues to impact your ability to function as hero students, I *will* intervene in a way you won’t like. Understood?”

“Yes, Sensei,” they chorused, relief warring with the ever-present dread. They had avoided the explanation, avoided reopening that particular wound. But the day still stretched before them, a canvas for whatever new torment Loop 126 had in store.

As they left his office, the weight of their shared secret, their shared trauma, and their shared love felt heavier than ever. They moved closer together in the hallway, a small, tight-knit unit against the indifferent, repeating world.

“So, what now?” Denki whispered, leaning into Izuku’s side as Hitoshi walked protectively close on his other. “Just… wait for it?”

Izuku looked at his boyfriends, his heart aching with a fierce, protective love. The entity had shown them that hiding was futile. It had shown them that involving others could be catastrophic. “Now,” Izuku said, a grim determination hardening his gaze, “we watch. We learn. And we survive this day, just like we always do. Together. And we don’t let it break what we have.”

He didn’t know how they would ever escape, or if they even could. But as Hitoshi’s hand found his, and Denki’s head rested briefly on his shoulder, Izuku knew they would face whatever came next as one. The kisses in the shed hadn’t been a solution, but they were a promise – a promise of solace, of shared strength, in the heart of their unending nightmare.

Chapter Text

The grim tally of loops had climbed into the 130s. Each Tuesday dawned with the same sun but cast an ever-lengthening shadow of remembered horrors. Their strategy of quiet observation and mutual survival, born from the ashes of Loop 125’s icy demise and Loop 124’s catastrophic attempt with Aizawa, was wearing thin. The entity, or whatever intelligence guided their torment, was not content with simple, brutal endings anymore.

The recent loops had become more insidious. There were fewer overt, city-destroying villain attacks and more subtle, psychologically grueling scenarios. Illusions that preyed on their deepest fears, scenarios designed to isolate them from one another, to turn their own Quirks against each other in horrifying, unwinnable Sophie’s choices. Loop 132 had involved a Quirk that forced them to experience each other’s physical pain tenfold, nearly shattering their minds before their bodies gave out. They were surviving, yes, but the definition of survival was becoming a twisted, agonizing thing.

They were huddled in their now-familiar sanctuary – the dusty groundskeeper’s shed – early in Loop 133. They’d foregone even attempting breakfast in the dorms, the thought of polite chatter with their oblivious classmates too jarring after the previous loop’s mind-flaying torment. Denki was asleep, a restless, whimpering exhaustion finally claiming him, his head pillowed on Hitoshi’s lap. Izuku was meticulously cleaning Hitoshi’s scraped knuckles – a minor injury from their latest shared demise – his touch gentle.

“It’s playing with us,” Hitoshi said quietly, his gaze fixed on Denki’s fitful sleep. “The physical deaths were bad enough. This… this feels different. More personal. It’s trying to break our minds, not just our bodies.”

Izuku nodded, his own thoughts dark. The entity was adaptive, intelligent, and cruel. Their passive approach wasn’t working; it was just giving their tormentor new avenues to explore. A desperate, almost heretical thought had been worming its way into his mind for several loops now.

“What if…” Izuku began, his voice barely above a whisper, afraid to give the idea sound. “What if we need an intellect that can match it? Or even surpass it?”

Hitoshi’s eyes flicked to him, instantly wary. “Who are you thinking of, Midoriya? Don’t tell me you’re considering Aizawa again. We know how that ended.” The phantom pain of watching their teacher die in Loop 124 was a scar that wouldn’t fade.

“No. Not Aizawa-sensei,” Izuku said, his gaze dropping to his busy hands. “Someone… someone else. Someone whose entire Quirk is about analysis, strategy, processing information at an impossible rate.” He took a shaky breath. “Principal Nezu.”

Hitoshi went very still, his hand protectively stroking Denki’s hair. The name hung in the air, heavy with potential and with terrifying risk. Nezu, the principal of U.A., a rare animal with the High Spec Quirk, renowned as quite possibly the smartest being in Japan, if not the world.

“Nezu,” Hitoshi repeated, the name a stark acknowledgment. He didn’t immediately dismiss it. The strategic, logical part of him, the part that craved a solution, however remote, saw the undeniable appeal. If anyone could dissect the intricate, hellish mechanics of their repeating Tuesdays, it was the principal.

But then the memory of Loop 124, of Aizawa’s agonized face, of the entity’s mocking voice – *“The groundskeeper… compost…”* – crashed down with chilling force.

“Izuku,” Hitoshi said, his voice tight with apprehension, “think about what you’re suggesting. The entity *reacted* when we brought Aizawa in. It targeted him. It made an example of him. Nezu is… he’s the principal. He’s a symbol, a major strategic asset. If that thing realizes we’ve brought *him* into this, the retaliation could be… It could bring U.A. down. Not just in a loop, but potentially for real if it has that kind of reach outside our perception.”

Denki stirred at the intensity in Hitoshi’s voice, his eyes fluttering open, still clouded with sleep and lingering fear. “Nezu-sensei?” he mumbled, picking up on the thread of their hushed conversation. He pushed himself up slightly, looking between them, his expression immediately anxious. “Why… why would we tell him? After Aizawa…?”

“Because he’s brilliant, Denks,” Izuku explained gently, though his own heart hammered with doubt. “The entity is intelligent. It learns. We’re just… we’re reacting. We’re barely surviving its games. Nezu-sensei might be able to see the rules of the game, find a flaw in the system, something we’re completely blind to even after all this time.” He looked at his boyfriends, his eyes pleading for them to understand, to share even a sliver of his desperate hope. “If there’s even a one-in-a-million chance he could find a way to *end* this… for all of us…”

The thought of an end, a *true* end to the pain, the fear, the endless dying, was a seductive lure. Denki leaned into Izuku, his hand finding Hitoshi’s. The kisses they’d shared, the love that had deepened between them, made the prospect of continued suffering even more unbearable. He didn’t want to see Izuku break himself over and over, didn’t want to witness Hitoshi’s stoicism crack under another wave of agony.

But the fear was a cold, coiling serpent in his gut. “But… what if it hurts him like it hurt Aizawa-sensei?” Denki whispered, his voice trembling. “Remember that… that *thing* talking about a ‘harvest’? It sounded like it knew exactly what it was doing. What if Nezu-sensei just becomes… a more interesting crop for it?” The thought of the cheerful, tea-loving principal being subjected to the horrors they’d faced, because of them, was sickening. And then, the inevitable reset. The pain of re-explaining, of seeing that brilliant mind grapple with their impossible truth, only for it to be wiped clean.

“The emotional toll on *us* just telling him…” Hitoshi added, his voice grim. “Convincing him, making him believe something so far outside of reality… it would be harder than with Aizawa. And if it fails, if he dies in the loop because of us… I don’t know if I could handle that guilt, on top of everything else.”

Izuku felt the weight of their hesitation, their completely justified fear. It mirrored his own. He was proposing to walk into the lion’s den, armed with nothing but a desperate, unbelievable story, and offer up one of their most powerful protectors as potential bait.

“I know,” Izuku said, his voice thick with the understanding of what he was asking. “I know it’s a terrible risk. Maybe an unforgivable one.” He looked at their intertwined hands, the only constant in their hell. “But these… these psychological attacks… they’re getting worse. I’m afraid of what we’ll become if this goes on, if we just keep letting it happen. If there’s a chance, even a slim, terrifying chance, that Nezu could give us a weapon, an idea, *anything*…”

The shed was silent again, save for Denki’s quiet, shaky breaths. The first bell, distant but inevitable, was about to ring, signaling the true start of Loop 133. The consideration was there, hanging heavy and daunting in the dusty air. The smartest mind in Japan. A gamble of astronomical proportions. Their hesitancy was a palpable thing, a shield forged from trauma and a desperate, protective love.

The decision, for now, remained unmade.

Chapter Text

The jump from Loop 133 to Loop 135 was a descent into a colder, darker hell. Loop 134 had been a masterpiece of tailored cruelty, a violation so profound it left them hollowed out, shadows of their former selves. The entity, with its ever-increasing understanding of their bonds, their fears, their very souls, had orchestrated a scenario that struck at the core of their beings. Izuku… Izuku had been isolated, and a villain with a Quirk that warped perceptions and desires had been unleashed upon him. Denki and Hitoshi had been restrained, forced to bear witness to every moment of his violation, their screams swallowed by a sound-dampening field, their struggles futile against unbreakable bonds. The memory of Izuku’s broken cries, the sight of his spirit crumbling, the sheer, abject powerlessness – it was a brand on their souls.

Waking to Loop 135, Izuku was a ghost. He moved numbly, his eyes vacant, the touch of his own clothes against his skin a repulsive reminder. Denki and Hitoshi clung to him, a silent, desperate trinity of shared trauma, their usual morning routine of hushed planning abandoned for the raw, unspoken need for comfort. The kisses they had shared felt like a distant, fragile memory from another lifetime, now overshadowed by this new, visceral horror.

It was Denki, surprisingly, who voiced the desperate thought first, his voice a raw, broken whisper as they huddled in the cold pre-dawn light of his room. “Nezu. We… we have to. I can’t… I can’t watch that again. I can’t let it… let it do that to *anyone* again.” The unspoken ‘especially not Izuku’ hung heavy in the air.

Hitoshi, his face a mask of cold, contained rage, nodded slowly. “It crossed a line. It showed us there *is* no line for it. Our hesitation before… it’s a luxury we can no longer afford. If there’s even a molecule of a chance Nezu can stop this, we take it. Consequences be damned.”

Izuku, still lost in the suffocating grip of Loop 134’s aftermath, merely nodded, a single tear tracing a path down his cheek. The fight had leached out of him, replaced by a bone-deep weariness and a searing, all-consuming desire for it all to just *end*.

They didn’t bother with subtlety. As soon as the first bell rang, they headed straight for the staff room, intending to wait for Nezu, to corner him, to spill their impossible, horrifying truth. They found Aizawa there first, nursing a cup of coffee, his eyes immediately narrowing at their approach, at their ravaged appearances.

“Nezu-sensei,” Izuku began, his voice flat, devoid of inflection. “We need to speak with Principal Nezu. Urgently.”

“What about?” Aizawa asked, his gaze sharp, taking in Denki’s trembling, Hitoshi’s barely suppressed fury, Izuku’s terrifying emptiness.

“It’s… a matter of extreme U.A. security. Something only he can…” Izuku trailed off, the lie feeling flimsy.

“We think we’re in a time loop, Sensei,” Hitoshi cut in bluntly, his patience shattered. “A repeating Tuesday where we die, over and over. And we need to tell Principal Nezu because it’s getting worse, and if we don’t, we’re all going to be destroyed, mind, body, and soul.”

Aizawa stared at them, coffee cup halfway to his lips. “A time loop?” he repeated, skepticism warring with the undeniable evidence of their profound distress.

Before he could say more, Denki, with a desperate sob, blurted out, “And you have to stay away! Please, Sensei! Last time… last time we tried to get your help, it… it killed you! It made an example of you because you helped us! We can’t… we can’t see that again!”

Izuku flinched, the memory of Loop 124 – Aizawa’s defiance, his agony, the entity’s mocking voice – flooding back. “He’s right, Sensei,” he managed, his voice trembling. “It targeted you. It was… unspeakable. We can’t ask you to risk that. You won’t even remember, but *we* will.”

Aizawa slowly lowered his cup. He looked at their faces, at the raw, unfiltered terror and grief. He remembered their strange prediction about the PA system from a previous Tuesday that now felt impossibly distant, yet naggingly familiar. This wasn't a prank. This was something real, something that was breaking his students.

“Tell me everything,” Aizawa said, his voice low, calm, but with an underlying edge of steel. “Tell me what happened to me. Tell me what’s happening to *you*.”

And so, they did. Crouched in a corner of the empty staff room, their voices hushed and trembling, they recounted the horrors. The endless deaths, the escalating pain, the entity’s adaptability. They told him about Loop 124, about his involvement, his bravery, and his horrific end. And then, his voice cracking, his body shaking with suppressed trauma, Izuku told them both about Loop 134.

“It… it wanted to hurt Hitoshi and Denki,” Izuku choked out, staring at his hands, unable to meet their eyes. “It used me. There was a villain… his Quirk… I was… he made me… They had to watch. It went on for… for so long.” He couldn't say the words, but the meaning, the violation, hung heavy and sickening in the air. Denki was openly sobbing now, Hitoshi’s arm around him, his own eyes blazing with a murderous grief.

Aizawa listened, his face growing grimmer with every word, his fists clenching until his knuckles were white. The story was insane, impossible. But the pain in Izuku’s voice, the shared trauma that bound these three boys together, was undeniably real. When Izuku spoke of his violation, Aizawa felt a cold, murderous rage unlike anything he had ever experienced.

“Enough,” Aizawa said, his voice a dangerous growl when they finally fell silent. “You’re not going to Nezu alone. And you’re not convincing me to stay out of this. What happened to me in that loop you describe is irrelevant if I don’t remember it. What’s relevant is what’s happening to my students, *now*. If there’s a monster preying on you, it’s my duty to stand in its way. We go to Nezu. Together.”

Their protests were weak, easily overridden by Aizawa’s fierce, protective resolve.

Principal Nezu listened to their story, Aizawa standing stoically beside them, his presence a silent affirmation of the impossible. The small, verifiable proof they’d used on Aizawa – the PA system glitch – was recounted. Izuku, with Aizawa’s steadying hand on his shoulder, even managed to repeat, in stark, clinical terms, the nature of his torment in Loop 134, emphasizing the entity’s deliberate, psychological cruelty.

Nezu, with his High Spec Quirk, processed it all, his usual cheerful demeanor replaced by an intense, almost frightening focus. He asked questions that were sharp, insightful, cutting through their trauma to the core mechanics of what they described.

“A learning entity, localized temporal displacement, a seemingly pre-ordained ‘harvest’… fascinating and utterly horrifying,” Nezu mused, his whiskers twitching. He looked at them, a spark of something fierce in his intelligent eyes. “This entity, it has rules, however alien. It has shown adaptability. This implies it is not omnipotent. It can be surprised. It can be countered.”

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, a genuine flicker of hope ignited within the trio. Nezu wasn’t just believing them; he was *analyzing*, strategizing on a level they couldn’t comprehend.

Nezu’s plan was audacious. It involved using their knowledge of the loop’s typical fatalistic triggers, not to avoid them, but to channel them, to create a feedback loop of controlled chaos that would, theoretically, overload the entity’s ability to manage the temporal anchor of *this specific Tuesday*. He hypothesized the entity was tethered to a focal point, an event or energy signature it used to reset the day. If they could disrupt that focal point at the exact moment of a predicted major “harvest” event…

“It will be incredibly dangerous,” Nezu stated, his gaze sweeping over them, lingering on Izuku with a flicker of profound sympathy. “The entity will likely react with extreme prejudice once it understands our intent. But if my calculations are correct, there’s a 17.38% chance of causing a cascading temporal failure – essentially, breaking the loop at its source.”

17.38%. It was the highest chance they’d ever had.

With Aizawa and Nezu coordinating, using U.A.’s resources in ways the students never could, they prepared. They knew a major attack vector often involved a specific abandoned subway line beneath a sector of the city that always seemed to be the epicenter of the worst deaths. Nezu theorized *that* was the anchor.

As the predicted hour of doom approached, they stood with Nezu and Aizawa at a command center Nezu had jury-rigged, watching monitors displaying sensor readings from the subway line. The plan was to use a precisely timed, massive discharge of Denki’s electricity, amplified by U.A.’s power grid and focused by support course tech, directly into the theorized anchor point, just as Izuku and Hitoshi (reluctantly using Hitoshi’s Brainwashing on a captured, minor villain from an earlier loop to cause a predictable diversion) triggered a known major villainous response.

The tension was unbearable. Denki was pale but resolute, cables connecting him to an array of capacitors. Izuku and Hitoshi stood ready. Aizawa was their shield, his eyes scanning for any premature move from the entity.

“Now, Kaminari-kun!” Nezu commanded.

Denki screamed, unleashing every ounce of power he had, light and energy surging through the cables, a man-made thunderbolt aimed at the heart of their torment. Simultaneously, the diversionary chaos erupted on the monitors.

For a moment, nothing. Then, the screens went wild. Energy signatures spiked beyond anything Nezu had predicted. The ground beneath U.A. trembled violently. A sound like the fabric of reality tearing apart filled the air.

On the main monitor, the image from the subway line distorted, colors shifting, and for a breathtaking, heart-stopping second, Izuku saw not the dingy tunnel, but a glimpse of… *stars*. An endless, swirling void. And in that void, something vast and shadowed *recoiled*.

“It’s working!” Izuku yelled, tears streaming down his face, hope surging like a tidal wave. “We’re doing it!”

The tearing sound intensified. The lights in the command center flickered, died, then blazed back with an unnatural, blinding intensity. A wave of pure, disorienting force slammed into them. Izuku felt Aizawa shove him down, shielding him with his own body. He heard Denki cry out, a sound of pain and overload. He heard Nezu yelp, a sharp, surprised sound.

The world dissolved into white noise and an unbearable pressure.

*Almost… we were so close…*

Then, the sickening lurch.

Izuku gasped awake in his dorm room bed. Tuesday. Sunlight. The phantom sensation of reality tearing itself apart still echoed in his bones. The hope, so bright and fierce only moments ago, crashed into the familiar shores of despair.

Close. They had been so impossibly, agonizingly close.

Chapter Text

The lurch back to Loop 136 was the cruelest yet. Izuku gasped awake, the phantom feeling of reality tearing apart, the blinding white light, and the triumphant, fleeting glimpse of stars still seared onto the inside of his eyelids. His body thrummed with the ghost of immense energies, his ears rang with the silent scream of their near success. *So close. We were so agonizingly, impossibly close.*

He didn’t pause, didn’t think. His feet hit the floor, and he was moving, a desperate, magnetic pull towards the only two souls in existence who understood the monumental victory and the crushing defeat that had occurred only moments ago in his perception.

He found Denki already halfway out of his own room, his face a mask of stunned disbelief and dawning despair, eyes wide and wild. Hitoshi met them in the hallway, his usually controlled features etched with a raw, visceral frustration, his fists clenched at his sides. No words were needed. Their shared gaze conveyed everything: the almost-miracle, the brutal snap-back, the gaping wound of hope dashed.

They didn’t go to the common room. They didn’t go to the shed. Instinctively, they retreated to Izuku’s room, the first door they reached, piling inside and shutting the world out. For a long moment, they just stood there, breathing heavily, the three of them a tight knot of shared shock.

“The stars…” Denki finally choked out, his voice trembling. “Did you… did you see them? Behind the… the tear?”

“I saw them,” Izuku confirmed, his own voice hoarse. “And it… it *recoiled*. Nezu-sensei was right. It can be hurt. It can be *affected*.”

“17.38 percent,” Hitoshi murmured, a bitter, almost incredulous laugh escaping him. “For a second there, I really thought… We had Aizawa. We had Nezu. We had a *plan* that was working.” He slammed a fist softly against the wall, a gesture of pure, undiluted frustration. “And now… now they’re back at zero. They don’t remember a damn thing. All that effort, all that risk, all that pain we had to dredge up to convince them…”

The weight of it, the sheer Sisyphean task of rebuilding that level of trust, that intricate coordination, from scratch, all within the confines of another doomed Tuesday, crashed down on them. Izuku felt a sob build in his chest, raw and heavy.

Denki, seeing Izuku’s distress, reached out, his hand trembling as it found Izuku’s. “Hey,” he whispered, his golden eyes, though shadowed with his own pain, holding a desperate tenderness. “Hey, Izuku. We were close. That’s… that’s more than we’ve ever had before.”

Izuku looked at him, then at Hitoshi, who had moved closer, his earlier anger giving way to a weary, protective stance. In their eyes, he saw his own despair mirrored, but also that unwavering, stubborn core of love that had become their only true shield.

The room was too small, the silence too loud, their emotions too vast. Izuku’s gaze flickered between Denki’s hopeful, tear-filled eyes and Hitoshi’s grimly determined ones. The memory of the previous loop’s violation still clung to him, a cold shadow, but overlaying it now was the burning, brilliant image of their near-victory, and the devastating crash. He needed to feel something real, something to anchor him before the weight of it all pulled him under.

He stepped forward, his hands coming up to cup Denki’s face, and kissed him. It wasn’t like their first hesitant kisses in the shed. This was a kiss born of shared battle, of monumental effort, of a hope so fierce it had almost burned them alive, only to be doused. It was desperate, searching, a raw affirmation of *this matters, you matter, we matter*, in a world designed to tell them they didn’t. Denki clung to him, kissing back with an equal, fervent intensity, tears streaming freely down his face.

When they broke apart, breathless, Izuku turned to Hitoshi, whose own eyes were suspiciously bright. Hitoshi didn’t wait. He closed the distance, his arms wrapping around Izuku, pulling him into a kiss that was deep and consuming, a raw expression of frustration, of grief, but also of an unyielding, possessive love. It tasted of shared burdens and the bitter tang of almost-triumph. Izuku felt Hitoshi’s fingers tangle in his hair, holding him tight, as if afraid he too might tear away like the fabric of their near-escape.

Then, as if by unspoken agreement, Denki moved into their embrace, his arms encasing them both. Their lips found each other again in a shifting, desperate series of kisses – Izuku to Hitoshi, Denki to Izuku, Hitoshi to Denki – a messy, tear-soaked, heartfelt tangle of three souls clinging together on the precipice of an unbearable reality. It wasn’t about romance in that moment as much as it was about survival, about reaffirming their bond, the only thing the loop couldn’t erase, the only thing the entity hadn’t yet managed to corrupt or destroy.

They sank to the floor, still holding each other, the kisses subsiding into breathless foreheads pressed together, shared sighs. The early morning light filtered through Izuku’s window, painting the scene with the same indifferent glow of every other Tuesday.

“So,” Hitoshi murmured eventually, his voice rough, his lips brushing Izuku’s temple. “What now? Do we… do we even try to tell them again today? Nezu? Aizawa? Can we… can we even replicate that plan without his exact calculations from the start?”

Izuku closed his eyes, the weight of Hitoshi’s question immense. The thought of starting over, of recounting their trauma for the umpteenth time, of facing that initial disbelief, even with proof… it was exhausting just to contemplate. And to risk Nezu and Aizawa again, knowing the entity would be even more wary…

“I don’t know,” Izuku whispered, his voice raw. He opened his eyes, looking at Denki, then Hitoshi, their faces inches from his, their shared breath mingling. “I honestly don’t know if I have it in me today. But… we saw something. It’s not unbeatable.” He tightened his grip on them. “Whatever we do, we do it together. And we don’t let go of that. That feeling… of being close. We hold onto that.”

For now, in the quiet of Izuku’s room, with the ghost of starlight and torn reality still clinging to them, they held each other. The kisses had been a desperate plea for solace, a reaffirmation of their love. And as Loop 136 began to unfold around them, that love was the only weapon they had left against the crushing weight of their almost-victory.

Chapter Text

The Tuesday of Loop 137 began like any other for Class 1-A, Present Mic, and Aizawa. For Izuku, Hitoshi, and Denki, it was another forced march into a familiar hell, the weight of 136 previous, agonizing cycles heavy on their souls. They took their seats, the usual morning chatter of their oblivious classmates a distant, painful hum. Izuku exchanged a look with Denki and Hitoshi – a silent acknowledgment of their shared dread, their grim solidarity.

The change started subtly, during Aizawa’s homeroom. The main screen at the front of the class, usually displaying lesson plans, flickered. It went dark, then illuminated with a complex, shifting geometric puzzle. Beneath it, stark white text appeared: *“For Midoriya Izuku. The rules are simple: solve, or your friends suffer. Let’s test that lauded intellect.”*

A low, piercing hum filled the room, almost too high to hear but drilling directly into their skulls. Denki cried out, hands flying to his ears, lightning crackling erratically across his skin. “Agh! What is that?!” Hitoshi staggered, his face contorting in pain, his own Quirk flickering uselessly as he tried to focus.

“What the hell?” Present Mic exclaimed, jumping up from his seat.

Aizawa was already on his feet, Quirk flaring, eyes blazing red as he scanned the room for a source, a villain. “Everyone stay calm! Villain attack?”

But there was no visible villain. Only the puzzle, the text, and the escalating hum that seemed to sync with Denki and Hitoshi’s visible distress.

“Midoriya!” Aizawa barked. “What is this? Do you know something?”

Izuku was already staring at the puzzle, his mind a maelstrom of panic and forced analysis. He recognized the entity’s signature from a previous, private torment. But now… now it was public. His classmates were staring, confused, scared. Bakugo was already sparking. Uraraka looked terrified. Iida was demanding answers.

“I… I have to solve it!” Izuku gasped out, turning to the screen, the hum intensifying as he hesitated. Denki screamed, a raw, agonized sound, collapsing against his desk. Hitoshi was on one knee, sweat beading on his forehead, his teeth gritted.

“Solve it how, Deku?!” Bakugo yelled. “What damn game is this?!”

Izuku ignored him, his mind racing, connecting patterns, his intellect a reluctant weapon against the unseen tormentor. As he made a correct deduction, the hum would momentarily lessen, Denki and Hitoshi’s agony receding, only to spike again with any error. Class 1-A watched in horrified silence, Present Mic trying frantically to get systems online, Aizawa circling, a caged tiger, unable to find an enemy to erase or fight.

The first puzzle dissolved, and Izuku sagged with relief, Denki and Hitoshi gasping for breath. But the screen immediately refreshed: a new, harder puzzle. And a new message: *“Adequate. But slow. Perhaps a motivator for your companions. Kaminari-kun, Shinsou-kun: for every minute Midoriya-kun takes beyond the allotted five for this next puzzle, you will experience a… heightened sensory overload. Let’s begin.”*

“No!” Izuku cried, turning back to the screen, his heart pounding.

The next hour was a living nightmare for everyone in Class 1-A. They watched as Izuku, tears streaming down his face, frantically worked through impossible riddles, complex cyphers, and twisted logic problems. They saw Denki and Hitoshi writhe, scream, and sometimes convulse as the unseen entity inflicted its punishments whenever Izuku faltered or the arbitrary timers ran out. Sometimes it was the hum, sometimes it was flashes of blinding light that left them disoriented and nauseous, sometimes it was an oppressive, crushing pressure that made them gasp for air.

Aizawa and Present Mic were frantic, trying everything – cutting power to the room (the screen remained, powered by an unknown source), trying to evacuate the students (the doors were sealed, unbreakable), attempting to shield the trio (invisible barriers repelled them). Their growing frustration and horror were mirrored on the faces of their students. Kirishima yelled in outrage, Todoroki sent waves of ice towards the screen to no effect, Momo tried to create dampening materials, all futile.

During one agonizing lull, as Izuku stared, stumped, at a particularly malevolent logic grid, the text on screen changed. *“Your intellect seems to be failing you, Midoriya Izuku. Is the pressure too much? Perhaps you require a reminder of what true failure, true pain, truly entails? Something to sharpen your focus?”*

Izuku was trembling, on the verge of collapse. “Stop it,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Please… just stop hurting them.”

*“Hurt?”* the text mocked. *“This is merely… encouragement. You, of all people, should understand the necessity of pushing past one’s limits. After all, you’ve experienced so much worse, haven’t you? In Loop 134, for instance.”*

A cold dread, sharper than any physical pain, pierced through Izuku. Hitoshi and Denki, even through their own suffering, looked at Izuku with sudden, shared terror, knowing what that loop entailed.

“What… what does it mean, Deku-kun?” Uraraka asked, her voice small and frightened.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, shame, rage, and a soul-deep agony warring within him. He couldn’t… he couldn’t say it. Not here. Not in front of everyone.

The screen flickered, and an image began to form – a shadowy room, a silhouetted figure…

“NO!” Izuku screamed, the sound tearing from his throat, raw and broken. He whirled around, facing his horrified classmates, his teachers, his boyfriends. The puzzle, the entity, faded from his mind, replaced by a pain that consumed everything. “You want to know what it means?!” he sobbed, his body shaking uncontrollably. “You want to know what this *thing* is capable of?! It’s not just puzzles and noises! In Loop 134… it… it let a villain… he… he *defiled* me!” Each word was a shard of glass, ripping through him. “He touched me, used me… made me feel so… *unclean*… while Hitoshi and Denki… it made them *watch* every second! It wanted them to see me break! It fed on it!”

A stunned, horrified silence fell over the classroom. Aizawa froze, his face a mask of disbelief and rising fury. Present Mic gasped, his hand flying to his mouth. Izuku’s classmates stared, their expressions ranging from shock to pity to a dawning, terrible understanding of the true nature of this unseen enemy. Bakugo, for once, was utterly silent, his usual rage eclipsed by something else. Denki and Hitoshi were openly weeping, trying to reach for Izuku, to offer comfort even as they were still reeling from their own pain.

The text on the screen changed, cold and clinical despite the emotional devastation Izuku had just unleashed. *“A poignant recollection, Midoriya Izuku. Such vulnerability. Such… useful leverage.”* An image of Denki appeared on the screen, looking terrified, beside the shadowy silhouette from Izuku’s trauma. *“Perhaps Kaminari-kun is feeling left out? Solve the current puzzle in under one minute, Midoriya-kun, or his own… ‘specialized education’ will commence immediately. And you, and Shinsou-kun, and all your little friends, will bear witness. Again.”*

Denki let out a strangled cry of pure terror, scrambling backwards, his eyes fixed on the screen. “No! Izuku, don’t! Please, no!”

Hitoshi roared, a sound of pure animalistic rage, launching himself fruitlessly at the impervious screen. Aizawa moved, a blur of motion, trying to get to Denki, to shield him, but an invisible force slammed him back against the wall with brutal force.

Izuku stared at the puzzle, then at Denki’s terrified face, then at the leering threat on the screen. His mind, once his greatest ally, felt like a viper’s nest. Every thought was poison. To solve was to condemn Denki, potentially, to that same horror. To not solve was to condemn him *definitively*.

His intellect, the thing the entity had sought to weaponize, simply… shattered. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He could only see Denki’s fear, feel Hitoshi’s rage, and relive his own violation, now with the added horror of it being dangled over one of the people he loved most.

The countdown timer for Denki’s “education” appeared on screen: 00:59… 00:58…

The world began to distort around Izuku, the sounds of his classmates’ horrified cries, Denki’s panicked sobs, Hitoshi’s enraged shouts, Aizawa’s grunted efforts to break free, all fading into a singular, high-pitched whine.

*No more… please… no more…*

The sickening lurch of the reset was almost a mercy.

Chapter Text

The reset from Loop 137 was less a lurch and more a violent tearing out of a nightmare that refused to end. Izuku awoke with a choked gasp, the phantom sensation of the entity’s psychological barbs still embedded deep in his mind, the echo of Denki’s terror and Hitoshi’s enraged helplessness a fresh, open wound. His own raw, public confession of his violation in Loop 134 – the shame, the horror, the *exposure* – clung to him like a toxic shroud.

He scrambled out of bed, his breath coming in ragged, shallow bursts. His room felt like a cage. *Your intellect is the cage.* The entity’s words. He pressed his hands to his head, trying to block them out, trying to stop the cascade of horrifying images: the puzzles, Denki and Hitoshi’s pain synced to his thoughts, the leering threat against Denki, the shocked, pitying, horrified faces of his classmates, of Aizawa-sensei, of Present Mic…

He found Hitoshi and Denki in the hallway, drawn together by the invisible, unbreakable tether of their shared trauma. Denki was pale as death, trembling uncontrollably, his eyes wide and vacant, staring at something Izuku couldn't see but could vividly imagine. Hitoshi was holding him upright, his face a grim landscape of fury and profound exhaustion, but his arms around Denki were gentle, protective.

No words were exchanged. They simply gravitated towards the perceived safety of Izuku’s room, the door clicking shut behind them like the seal of a tomb. Denki sank to the floor, curling into a tight ball, whimpering softly. Izuku slid down beside him, pulling him into an embrace, Hitoshi forming a protective barrier around them both.

“They saw,” Denki whispered, his voice hoarse, broken. “Everyone… Aizawa-sensei… they all *saw*. They heard you, Izuku… they saw what it threatened…”

“And now they don’t remember,” Hitoshi finished, his voice flat, devoid of emotion, a chilling counterpoint to Denki’s distress. “They’re out there right now, getting ready for another normal Tuesday, while we’re… we’re carrying *that*.”

The realization, though expected, was a fresh wave of agony. To have their deepest traumas, Izuku’s violation, the entity’s sadistic games, laid bare for their friends and mentors, only for those witnesses to be wiped clean by the reset… It was a unique form of psychological torture, leaving the trio feeling utterly, terrifyingly alone with the phantom audience of Loop 137 still vivid in their minds.

Izuku buried his face in Denki’s hair, trying to offer comfort he didn’t feel himself. His mind was a battlefield. The entity had turned his intellect against him, made his every analytical thought a potential trigger for his lovers’ pain. How could he think, how could he strategize, if his own mind was the weapon? The shame of his public confession, the raw vulnerability he’d been forced into, burned within him. He felt stripped bare, dissected, his deepest wound exposed and then mocked.

“It wanted them to see,” Izuku choked out, the words tasting like ash. “It wanted to humiliate me. To break us by making me… the instrument of your pain. And then… threatening Denki… in front of everyone…” He couldn’t finish. The memory of the entity’s cold, leering threat against Denki, mirroring his own trauma, was enough to make him physically sick.

Hitoshi’s hand found Izuku’s shoulder, his grip tight, grounding. “It’s not your fault, Izuku. None of it. Not the puzzles, not what it made you say, and damn sure not what it did to you in that… that other loop.” His voice was a low growl, but laced with an unwavering protectiveness. “It’s a monster. It’s trying to destroy us by making us destroy ourselves. We can’t let it.”

But how could they not? The thought of going to class, of facing Aizawa’s oblivious gaze, of hearing Present Mic’s cheerful voice, of seeing their classmates chat and laugh as if Loop 137 hadn’t been a horrifying spectacle of their torment, was almost unbearable.

They skipped homeroom, then the first period. They couldn’t face it. They stayed huddled in Izuku’s room, the silence thick with unspoken horrors and shared grief. Denki eventually cried himself into an exhausted, uneasy sleep in Izuku’s arms.

Izuku looked at Hitoshi over Denki’s sleeping form. “What do we do, Hitoshi? How do we… how do we even function after that? It knows our strengths. It knows our fears. It knows how to hurt us in ways that aren’t just… physical.”

Hitoshi’s gaze was dark. “I don’t know. But we can’t let it win. We can’t let it make you afraid to think, Izuku. That’s what it wants.” He paused. “And the threat against Denki… we can’t ignore that. It might have been for that loop, for that moment, but it showed us what it’s capable of, what it’s willing to do.”

The second period bell rang, a shrill, indifferent sound that made Denki jolt awake with a small cry.

The thought of Nezu, of their near-success in Loop 135, felt like a distant, impossible dream. How could they even begin to explain, to convince, to rally that kind of support again, especially now, when they were so shattered? And how could they risk involving anyone else after the entity had made it so brutally clear that interference would be met with targeted, escalating cruelty?

There were no easy answers, only the crushing weight of another Tuesday, heavier and darker than all the ones that had come before. Their shared love, their desperate kisses, were a small, flickering candle in an overwhelming darkness. And the entity was still out there, watching, learning, waiting to turn their own strengths, their own love, against them in new and ever more horrifying ways. The cage felt tighter than ever.

Chapter Text

The hours following Denki’s fitful sleep in Izuku’s room during Loop 138 were a blur of suffocating anxiety and shared, silent misery. They didn’t leave the room. The thought of facing the bright, oblivious normalcy of U.A., of encountering classmates and teachers whose previous-loop counterparts had witnessed their deepest traumas, was a collective, unspoken ‘no.’

Izuku found himself actively suppressing his analytical thoughts. Every time an observation sparked a potential connection, a strategic notion, the entity’s mocking words – *“Your intellect is the cage”* – would echo in his mind, followed by the searing memory of Denki and Hitoshi’s pain being a direct consequence of his problem-solving in Loop 137. He’d flinch, physically shaking his head as if to dislodge the burgeoning ideas, his breath catching in his throat. He focused instead on Denki, on Hitoshi, on the physical reality of their presence. He’d smooth Denki’s hair, hold Hitoshi’s hand, his touch a desperate attempt to ground himself and them in the present, however horrifying that present was.

Denki was a fragile, trembling thing. The specific, vile threat the entity had made against him in the previous loop had shattered his already frayed nerves. He startled at every creak of the dorm building, every distant shout, his eyes darting towards shadows, his breath often hitching in a prelude to panic. He clung to Izuku or Hitoshi, sometimes both, a desperate, almost unbearable pressure in his grip. Sleep offered no respite, only bringing muffled cries and thrashing limbs until one of his boyfriends could gently wake him, murmuring reassurances that felt paper-thin against the enormity of his fear. He barely spoke, and when he did, it was in whispers, reliving fragments of the entity’s threat or Izuku’s agonized confession.

Hitoshi was their reluctant anchor. His own rage and despair were a cold, hard knot in his gut, but he forced himself to project an outward calm he didn’t feel. He’d make them drink water, coax tiny bites of emergency rations Izuku kept stashed in his room into Denki. He’d speak in low, steady tones, not offering solutions – what solutions were there? – but simply narrating the mundane, the immediate: “Denki, you’re safe right now. Izuku is here. I’m here. This room is secure for now. Just breathe with me.” But Izuku could see the fury in the clench of his jaw, the bleakness in his eyes when he thought the others weren’t looking. He knew Hitoshi was replaying Loop 137 as well, the helplessness, the fury, his own inability to protect them festering within him.

They missed all their classes. They heard the bells, the distant sounds of U.A. life continuing its inexorable march, a surreal counterpoint to their private apocalypse. At one point, there was a knock on Izuku’s door – Uraraka’s worried voice, then Iida’s concerned, more forceful inquiry. They stayed silent, barely breathing, until the footsteps retreated. The guilt of worrying their friends was another small, sharp stone added to the mountain of their suffering, but the thought of facing their innocent, unknowing questions was infinitely worse.

As afternoon bled into evening, the muted, oppressive atmosphere of the loop seemed to deepen. The low hum Izuku had noticed that morning was still there, a barely perceptible thrumming in his bones, a constant, subtle reminder of the entity’s pervasive presence.

“It’s just… waiting, isn’t it?” Denki whispered, his voice raspy from disuse and fear, during a moment when he was lucid and relatively calm, tucked between Izuku and Hitoshi on Izuku’s bed. “It doesn’t even have to *do* anything this time. After yesterday… or, well, *our* yesterday…”

Izuku nodded, unable to voice the agreement that sat like lead in his stomach. Loop 137 had been a masterclass in psychological destruction. Perhaps this loop was the fallout, the entity observing the wreckage it had wrought.

The end, when it came, was quiet, almost anticlimactic, yet imbued with the entity’s signature, detached cruelty. It wasn’t a villain, or a puzzle, or a direct assault. As darkness truly fell outside, the temperature in Izuku’s room began to drop, just as it had in the shed during Loop 125. But this time, it was faster, more aggressive. A chilling mist, unnaturally cold, began to seep in from under the door, from the vents, solidifying into delicate, razor-sharp spicules of ice that coated every surface.

“No… not again…” Denki breathed, his eyes wide with terror, the memory of that slow freeze still vivid.

Hitoshi pulled them closer, shielding Denki as best he could, Izuku doing the same from the other side. There was nowhere to run, no puzzle to solve to make it stop. Izuku didn’t even try to think of one, a cold wave of learned helplessness washing over him. His intellect was a cage, and he refused to rattle its bars, even as the ice formed on their clothes, their hair, their skin.

The cold was absolute, stealing their breath, their strength, their consciousness. It was an impersonal, inevitable end to a day spent in hiding, a final, silent statement from the entity: *There is no escape. Not even from yourselves.*

Izuku’s last conscious thought, as the frost claimed him, was of Denki’s trembling form pressed against his, Hitoshi’s arm a rigid, frozen shield around them both. *Together. At least we’re together.*

The lurch back to Loop 139 was a violent expulsion from a frozen tomb. Izuku gasped, not just for air, but against the crushing weight of despair. The entity didn’t need to actively torture them every single loop. The echoes of its past cruelties, the fear of its future machinations, and the gnawing certainty of their own helplessness were doing the work for it. And the cage, built of his own intellect and their shared love, felt more inescapable than ever.

Chapter Text

The icy grip of Loop 138’s end lingered long after Izuku, Denki, and Hitoshi jolted awake to the unwelcome sunrise of Loop 139. The passive death, the sheer futility of hiding, had left a unique brand of despair. It wasn't the sharp, fiery agony of direct confrontation, but the slow, suffocating realization that even their complete withdrawal offered no sanctuary.

They found each other in the pre-dawn gloom of Izuku’s room, the unspoken horrors of the previous loops – Izuku’s public shaming and violation in 134, the weaponization of his intellect in 137, the direct threat to Denki, Aizawa’s witnessed “death” – a suffocating blanket around them. Denki was still trembling, a low, constant tremor that Izuku felt as he pulled him close. Hitoshi stood watch by the window, his silhouette rigid against the pale light, the quiet fury in his posture a stark contrast to Izuku’s own bone-deep weariness.

Izuku felt a profound aversion to *thinking*. The entity’s parting shot from Loop 137, *“Your intellect is the cage,”* had burrowed deep. Every analytical thought felt like a potential snare, a prelude to more pain for Denki and Hitoshi. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted to curl up and disappear.

It was Hitoshi who finally broke the silence, his voice rough but resolute. He turned from the window, his gaze sweeping over Izuku and Denki. “We can’t do that again.”

“Do what?” Denki mumbled into Izuku’s shirt, his voice thick with exhaustion and fear. “Die? We don’t exactly have a choice.”

“No. We don’t have a choice about dying,” Hitoshi conceded, his eyes locking with Izuku’s. “But we have a choice about *how we wait for it*. Hiding in here, letting it… letting it freeze us out, or break us down psychologically without even trying to find a pattern, a weakness… that’s letting it win before the loop even ends.” He saw Izuku flinch at the mention of finding patterns, of analysis. “Izuku,” Hitoshi said, his voice softening slightly but losing none of its intensity, “I know what it did to you in 137. How it twisted your strength. But if you let it silence your mind, if we let it make us too scared to even *try*… then it’s already broken us in the worst way possible.”

Izuku looked away, shame and fear coiling in his gut. “But what if… what if thinking just makes it worse for you two? What if every plan I make is just… another cage?”

“Then we face it together,” Denki whispered, surprisingly, lifting his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, shadowed with terror, but there was a tiny, fierce spark in their depths. “Being… being passive, waiting for the ice, or for… for *it* to remember its threat against me… that was worse. It felt like… like drowning slowly. If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die trying something. Even if it’s a stupid plan.”

Their words, Denki’s desperate courage and Hitoshi’s grim determination, chipped away at the wall of Izuku’s fear. He looked at his boyfriends, at their faces etched with suffering but also with an incredible, stubborn resilience. Their love for each other, their refusal to completely surrender, was the only light in this endless darkness.

“Okay,” Izuku breathed, the word feeling foreign but also, strangely, a little lighter. “Okay. We try… we try to make a plan. But nothing like… nothing like Loop 137. Nothing that gives it obvious leverage.”

They retreated to their now customary war room – the dusty groundskeeper’s shed. It felt safer than their dorms, more detached from the entity’s recent, more personal attacks within U.A.’s walls.

“So, no grand confrontations,” Hitoshi started, pacing the small space. “No trying to involve Aizawa or Nezu again, not yet. The risk is too high, and frankly, I don’t think any of us can handle that re-explanation right now, especially after…” He didn’t need to finish. Loop 137 hung heavy in the air.

“What about what Nezu-sensei said?” Izuku offered tentatively, testing his own analytical thoughts like walking on thin ice. “About the loop having rules, an anchor point? We saw the stars, we saw *something* recoil when we hit that subway line in Loop 135. Maybe… maybe we can try to find out more about that anchor, but… quietly. Just observation.”

“How?” Denki asked. “That place is always crawling with… with *endings* for us.”

“We don’t go *to* it, not directly,” Izuku mused, a flicker of his old analytical spark returning, albeit nervously. “We observe its periphery. What if… what if the loop’s start isn’t just a temporal reset, but tied to a specific energy signature emanating from that anchor point? We have a few hours every ‘morning’ before things usually go catastrophically wrong. What if we use that time, not to run or hide, but to measure things? Background radiation, electromagnetic fluctuations… things that might be subtle, that the entity wouldn’t consider a direct threat or a ‘puzzle’ for it to manipulate.”

Hitoshi stopped pacing. “You mean, like… scientific observation? Data gathering?”

Izuku nodded. “It’s small. It’s passive in a way. We’re not attacking anything. We’re just… looking. Trying to understand the foundation of the loop itself. If we can find a pattern in the ‘mundane’ start of the loop, something tied to that anchor point, maybe we can find a different kind of vulnerability. Something that doesn’t involve grand plans or direct confrontation with the entity or its agents.”

Denki, surprisingly, added, “And if we have to die doing it… maybe we can try to make it happen *near* where we’re taking readings. So if there’s any kind of… energy release from us, or from the ‘death event’ itself, we can see if it interacts with what we’re measuring.” It was a grim thought, but practical in their horrific context.

A silence fell as they considered it. This wasn't a plan to break the loop, not yet. It was a plan to *understand* it on a level they hadn’t attempted before, a plan that felt… manageable, almost. It allowed Izuku to use his intellect in a controlled, observational way, rather than the high-pressure, consequence-laden “puzzles” of Loop 137. It was a small act of defiance, a way to reclaim a tiny sliver of agency.

“Okay,” Hitoshi said finally, looking at Izuku, then Denki. “Focused observation. Data on the loop’s mechanics. We’ll need to ‘borrow’ some equipment from the science labs, very discreetly.” A ghost of a smirk played on his lips. “And we’ll need a way to record our findings that won’t get wiped.” That was always the problem.

“Maybe…” Izuku’s eyes lit up, a genuine spark this time. “Maybe we don’t record it on paper. Maybe we record it… in ourselves. We each memorize a different data set, a different type of reading. If the entity isn’t actively probing our minds in *that specific way* during the reset, the raw data might stick, like our other memories.”

It was a fragile plan, fraught with a thousand potential failures. But it was *theirs*. It was a step away from the crushing despair of the previous loops.

“Alright,” Izuku said, taking a deep breath, feeling a sliver of his old determination return, tempered by caution and the ever-present trauma. “Let’s try to learn how this cage is built.”

They wouldn’t confront the zookeeper yet. But perhaps, just perhaps, they could start to map the bars.

Chapter Text

The transition into Loop 142 was familiar, the jolt of waking to another doomed Tuesday a grimly accepted constant. But this time, there was a subtle undercurrent to their dread, a tense anticipation. The previous three loops – 139, 140, and 141 – had been dedicated to their new, cautious plan: mapping the subtle energies of their prison. No grand confrontations, no desperate pleas to oblivious allies. Just meticulous observation in the early hours, each of them responsible for memorizing different data sets before the inevitable, often brutal, end of the day.

They met in the pre-dawn quiet of Hitoshi’s room this time, the change of venue a small attempt to break the monotony, to avoid old ghosts. Izuku had a borrowed (and soon to be reset) datapad, its screen dark for now. Denki was already there, nervously tapping a rhythm on his knee, while Hitoshi watched the U.A. grounds begin to lighten, his expression thoughtful.

“Alright,” Izuku began, his voice low, the old analytical spark in his eyes now tempered with a hard-won caution. “Loop 141’s initial readings. Denki, electromagnetic fluctuations around the known USJ attack time, even though the attack itself didn't happen that loop?”

Denki nodded, closing his eyes to better recall the memorized figures. “Consistent spikes, Izuku. Just like in 139 and 140. Even when the ‘event’ is different – a gas leak in 139, that weird localized gravity distortion in 140, and nothing but a tense lockdown in 141 – the EM readings around the USJ perimeter show a build-up starting about an hour before our typical ‘major incident’ time. It’s like… like the stage is being set, even if the actors change.”

Hitoshi turned from the window. “And the residual chroniton particle scatter I was monitoring near the old subway entrance – Nezu’s suspected anchor point? Higher concentrations at the start of each loop if the *previous* loop’s ending was… explosive or involved a significant energy release. Like when that tanker blew up two blocks away at the end of Loop 140. Loop 141 started with much higher scatter than Loop 139 did, after that… quieter, freezing end in 138.”

Izuku’s fingers flew across the datapad, inputting their memorized information, cross-referencing it with his own observations on subtle gravitational shifts and background radiation. He wasn’t working in a vacuum this time. Every few minutes, he’d pause. “Denki, confirm the decay rate you saw in the EM field post-spike in Loop 140. Hitoshi, did the chroniton scatter correlate with any specific seismic readings, however minor?”

His intellect was still there, sharp and powerful, but the fear from Loop 137 had changed how he wielded it. It was less a solitary weapon, more a collaborative tool, constantly checked and balanced by his boyfriends’ input, their shared data. The cage felt less constricting when they were all examining its bars together.

After nearly an hour of intense, hushed discussion, a pattern began to emerge from the noise, a fragile, tentative hypothesis.

“So,” Izuku summarized, looking at the complex correlations on his screen, then at Denki and Hitoshi, “the entity, or the loop mechanism itself, seems to have… a ‘reset energy’ that’s not perfectly clean. Violent, high-energy events at the *end* of a loop leave a more significant ‘residue’ or ‘echo’ at the *beginning* of the next, particularly around Nezu’s suspected anchor point.” He pointed to a graph. “And Denki’s EM readings suggest there’s a ‘preparation phase’ for major negative events, an energy build-up irrespective of the specific event’s nature.”

“It means the loop isn’t a perfect, sterile reset every time,” Hitoshi mused, his eyes narrowed in thought. “There are… ripples. Consequences, on a quantum level perhaps, from one iteration to the next.”

“And,” Denki added, a sudden, nervous excitement in his voice, “if big energy at the *end* makes the *next start* messy near the anchor… what if we could *use* that? What if *we* create the big energy, right at the anchor point, just before we know a reset is coming?”

Izuku looked at him, then at Hitoshi. The unspoken thought hung in the air. Nezu’s plan in Loop 135 had been to disrupt the anchor with a massive, controlled energy surge to cause a “cascading temporal failure.” They had come so close. But that had required Nezu’s calculations, Aizawa’s coordination, U.A.’s resources.

“We can’t replicate Nezu’s exact plan without him,” Hitoshi said, voicing the obvious obstacle. “Not on our own, not in one day, starting from scratch with convincing him.”

“But maybe,” Izuku said slowly, a new, dangerous idea taking root, born from their own hard-won data, “we don’t need to break it in one go. Maybe we can… *dirty* the anchor point. If we can cause a significant, targeted energy overload right *at* the subway entrance just before a known, violent loop-ending event, could it make the anchor point more… visible? More unstable at the very beginning of the *next* loop? Enough for us to observe something new about its nature, or even interact with it when it’s in that messy, residue-filled state?”

It was a terrifying prospect. It meant willingly walking into a violent end, and trying to unleash a massive burst of energy – likely Denki’s, amplified somehow, or perhaps explosives if they could acquire them – at a precise moment and location. The risk of it backfiring, of attracting the entity’s direct, furious attention, was immense. The memory of Loop 137, of the entity’s sadistic games, of its threat against Denki, was a cold counterpoint to any flicker of hope.

“You mean… use one of Denki’s massive, uncontrolled discharges?” Hitoshi asked, looking at Denki with concern. “The kind that usually leaves him… well, out of commission?”

Denki swallowed hard, the fear evident in his eyes, but also a stubborn spark. “If it could give us a clearer shot at understanding that… that *thing* the next morning… maybe it’s worth one bad short-circuit.” He looked at Izuku. “If your data is right, Izuku… if this works… it’s *our* move. Based on *our* information.”

Izuku met their gazes. The fear was still there, a constant companion. But now, mixed with it, was a sliver of something else – not quite hope, but a grim, focused determination. They had information. They had a theory, born from their own efforts, their own pain.

“It’s incredibly risky,” Izuku stated, the weight of their past failures, of the entity’s cruelty, pressing in. “It might do nothing. Or it might make things unimaginably worse.”

“Things are already unimaginably bad,” Hitoshi countered, a wry, humorless smile on his face. “At least this way, we’re not just waiting for the ice, or for the next twisted puppet show.”

Loop 142 stretched before them, another Tuesday of potential torment. But for the first time in a long while, they had more than just each other to cling to. They had a hypothesis. They had a plan, however dangerous. And they had the shared, burning desire to stop being just victims of the loop, and start actively trying to dismantle its cage, piece by painstaking piece.

Chapter Text

The hours of Loop 142 after their fragile plan was formed were a blur of tense preparation and suffocating anxiety. They moved with a grim purpose, the weight of their desperate gamble pressing down on them. They’d identified their target: a recurring late-afternoon villain attack involving a chaotic, energy-based villain they’d dubbed ‘NovaBurst’ who always seemed to appear near the dilapidated sector housing the old subway entrance – Nezu’s suspected anchor point for the loop. NovaBurst’s attacks were always cataclysmic, ensuring a violent, city-damaging end to the loop, perfect for their theory of leaving ‘residue.’

Their preparations were scant, relying more on timing and Denki’s raw power than intricate equipment. Izuku and Hitoshi’s role was primarily reconnaissance, ensuring the area around the subway entrance was as clear of civilians as possible without altering the timeline too much to prevent NovaBurst’s appearance, and then, to protect Denki as he charged up, to be his unwavering support.

As the predicted time approached, they stood near the gaping maw of the abandoned subway station, the air thick with unspoken fear and a thrumming, nervous energy that was mostly Denki. He was pale, his usual vibrant energy coiled tight within him, ready to be unleashed. Izuku stood on one side of him, Hitoshi on the other, their presence a silent promise of solidarity.

“Remember, Denki,” Izuku said, his voice low and steady despite the tremor he felt in his own limbs, “you let go when I give the signal – the moment we see NovaBurst’s initial energy flare. Not before, not after. And don’t hold back. Every drop you have.”

Denki nodded, his jaw tight. “Just… be ready to catch me. Or scrape me up.” A failed attempt at a joke that fell flat in the oppressive atmosphere.

Hitoshi clasped Denki’s shoulder, his grip firm. “We’ll be here. We’re not going anywhere.” His eyes, though, scanned their surroundings, alert for any premature move from the entity, any sign that their plan had been discovered. He trusted Izuku’s data, their shared hypothesis, but the entity had proven time and again its capacity for cruel surprises.

The tell-tale shimmer of distorted air, the precursor to NovaBurst’s arrival, appeared at the end of the street. A wave of oppressive heat washed over them.

“Now, Denki! Get ready!” Izuku yelled over the rising ambient noise.

Denki closed his eyes, his body tensing. Electricity began to crackle around him, hesitant sparks at first, then rapidly escalating into a miniature lightning storm. The air filled with the sharp scent of ozone. Izuku and Hitoshi braced themselves, not against Denki, but against the world that was about to erupt.

NovaBurst materialized in a blinding flash of destructive energy a block away, a roaring inferno of a villain already tearing into the street.

“DENKI, NOW!” Izuku screamed, his voice nearly lost in the first shockwave from NovaBurst’s attack.

With a guttural yell that was more animalistic than human, Denki threw his arms wide, unleashing the entirety of his stored electrical power in one monumental, uncontrolled torrent. It wasn’t precise, it wasn’t finessed; it was a raw, desperate explosion of lightning aimed directly at the crumbling entrance of the subway, at the heart of Nezu’s theorized anchor.

The world turned white. Izuku was thrown back by the sheer force of Denki’s discharge, a deafening roar engulfing everything. He felt Hitoshi slam into him, both of them tumbling. Through the blinding glare, he saw the ground around the subway entrance buckle and crack, the structure itself groaning under an unimaginable assault. Denki, at the epicenter of his own storm, was a silhouette of pure, incandescent energy.

Simultaneously, NovaBurst’s attack reached them, a wave of concussive force and searing heat. Buildings around them began to crumble. The cacophony was absolute: Denki’s raw power, NovaBurst’s destructive fury, the city tearing itself apart.

In that maelstrom, Izuku, his ears ringing, his vision blurred, thought he saw it – or perhaps felt it. A flicker. A momentary stutter in the fabric of the unfolding chaos, right where Denki’s lightning had struck the deepest. A sound beneath the roar, like immense gears grinding, a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through his bones, different from the usual destructive noises. It was there for a split second, a discordant note in the symphony of their demise, and then it was gone, swallowed by the overwhelming destruction.

Denki collapsed, his light extinguishing as suddenly as it had flared, a limp form amidst the crackling, superheated air. Izuku and Hitoshi scrambled towards him, ignoring their own injuries, the world ending around them.

The pain was immense as NovaBurst’s power washed over their sector directly, but it was distant, secondary to the frantic, desperate hope and terror Izuku felt. *Did it work? Did we change anything for the next time?*

The familiar, sickening lurch of the reset began to pull at him, but this time, it felt… different. More violent, yes, but also… strained. As if it were struggling to take hold, fighting against an unseen current. The sensation was terrifying, disorienting.

Then, oblivion, as always.

Izuku gasped awake in his dorm room bed. Tuesday. Loop 143. The phantom feeling of the violent, strained reset still clung to him, making his heart hammer. He was alive, whole, back at the beginning.

He didn’t wait. He scrambled out of bed, his mind racing. *The anchor point. The residue. Did we do it? Did we make it… messy enough?* He had to find Denki and Hitoshi. He had to know what they felt, what they saw, before the precious, fragile data of that uniquely violent loop-end faded. This time, the dawn felt charged with more than just dread. It held the faintest, most terrifying spark of possibility.

Chapter Text

The dawn of Loop 143 was less about the familiar dread and more about a frantic, heart-pounding urgency. The violent, strained reset of the previous loop, the fleeting sensation of reality itself struggling, was burned into their minds. Before the sun had even fully breached the horizon, Izuku, Denki, and Hitoshi were already moving, their shared purpose a silent, electrifying current between them.

There was no discussion, no hesitation. Their destination was the crumbling maw of the old Shinjuku subway entrance in Sector Gamma-7, the theorized anchor point they had bombarded with Denki’s amplified power just hours ago in their perception.

They reached it as the city was still stretching awake, the streets relatively deserted. And they saw it.

It wasn’t a dramatic, gaping wound in reality, but it was undeniably, thrillingly *wrong*. The air around the graffiti-scarred entrance shimmered, like heat haze on a summer road, but there was no heat. A low, almost inaudible thrumming vibrated through the soles of their shoes, resonating with the ghost of the sound Izuku had perceived just before the last reset. Denki, ever sensitive to electrical phenomena, gasped, his hand flying to his head.

“Whoa… guys, the EM field here is… *weird*,” he whispered, his eyes wide. “It’s not just spiked, it’s… tangled. Looping back on itself. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Izuku pulled out a basic EMF reader he’d managed to “acquire” and keep on his person through the reset – a desperate, long-shot habit he’d developed. The needle didn’t just jump; it spun erratically, then froze, pointing wildly off any sensible scale.

Hitoshi, his gaze fixed on the shimmering air, said, “Look. The graffiti… it’s like it’s rippling.” He pointed to a section of spray-painted art on the concrete archway. The vibrant colors seemed to subtly waver, to bleed at the edges for a moment before snapping back into focus, only to ripple again seconds later. “It’s… unstable.”

“Our energy discharge,” Izuku breathed, a wild, terrified hope blooming in his chest. “It *did* something. It ‘dirtied’ the anchor point. But Denki, you said the EM field usually normalizes within the first few hours of a loop, right? After a particularly violent end?”

Denki nodded. “Yeah, the ‘echoes’ fade fast. This… this feels like a much bigger echo. But it also feels… like it’s trying to smooth itself out. It’s not as strong as I bet it was right after the reset.”

The implication was clear. They had a window, possibly a rapidly closing one, where the very foundation of their prison was, for lack of a better term, glitching.

“Nezu,” Hitoshi said immediately, voicing all their thoughts. “If this is a vulnerability, if this is a seam in the loop… he’s the only one who could possibly understand it, let alone exploit it. And we have to move *now*.”

The thought of approaching the principal again, of laying out their insane reality from scratch, was daunting. The memory of Aizawa’s horrified face in Loop 124, the entity’s retaliation, the sheer emotional toll of it all… but then Izuku remembered Loop 137, the cage his intellect had become, the leering threat against Denki. The risk of inaction, of letting this anomaly fade, was far, far worse.

“Okay,” Izuku agreed, his voice firm. “To Nezu. We tell him what we did, what we’ve found. We emphasize the temporal instability. We have… observable, measurable proof of *something* extraordinary happening *right now*.”

They ran, a desperate trio fueled by a fragile, explosive hope, directly towards U.A., bypassing their dorms, their usual routines. They didn’t have a pre-planned speech this time, no verifiable PA system glitch to prime him with. They only had their raw, unbelievable truth and the rapidly fading evidence of their desperate gambit.

Reaching Nezu’s office was a feat in itself, involving some fast talking to a surprised secretary and an almost frantic insistence on the urgency of their visit. They were ushered in, three disheveled, exhausted, wild-eyed teenagers, to face the calm, intelligent gaze of Principal Nezu, who was, of course, enjoying his morning tea.

“Midoriya-kun, Kaminari-kun, Shinsou-kun,” Nezu chirped, his smile unwavering, though his eyes held a keen, analytical glint as he took in their state. “An unexpected, and I must say, rather fervent visit so early in the day. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Izuku stepped forward, Hitoshi and Denki flanking him, a united, desperate front. “Principal Nezu,” he began, his voice tight with the effort of compressing their insane reality into a coherent, urgent plea. “We are in a repeating time loop of this specific Tuesday. We have been for one hundred and forty-two iterations.”

Nezu’s smile didn’t falter, but his whiskers twitched. “A time loop, you say? That is… quite the opening statement, Midoriya-kun. A fascinating, if rather improbable, hypothesis.”

“It’s not a hypothesis, sir,” Hitoshi interjected, his voice raw with conviction. “It’s our reality. And we have reason to believe that *right now*, due to actions we took at the end of the previous iteration, the mechanism of the loop is exhibiting a temporary, observable instability. Specifically, at the old Shinjuku subway entrance in Sector Gamma-7.”

Denki, emboldened by their shared desperation, added, “The electromagnetic fields there are chaotic, sir! Like nothing I’ve ever sensed. And the… the visuals, they’re glitching! We think it’s because we overloaded it with energy just before the last reset.”

Izuku pressed on, “We believe this anomaly might be fading quickly. Sir, your analysis of the loop’s potential anchor point in… in a previous iteration of this conversation… was invaluable. We acted on a theory derived from that and our own subsequent data. We need your intellect, your resources, to understand what we’re seeing *now*, before the opportunity is lost. We know how this sounds, but we are begging you to come with us, or to help us analyze it immediately.”

Nezu set down his teacup, his gaze no longer merely curious, but intensely focused, his head tilted. He didn’t speak of proof, or demand they start from the beginning with verifiable predictions. Perhaps it was the sheer, unadulterated desperation in their eyes, the exhaustion that clung to them like a shroud, or the specificity of their claims about a tangible, current anomaly. Or perhaps his High Spec Quirk was already processing the improbable data, the micro-expressions, the underlying terror, and finding a pattern that resonated with some esoteric theory.

“A localized, temporary instability in a recurring temporal event, potentially caused by a focused energy discharge at a suspected weak point,” Nezu mused, his voice losing its cheerful lilt, becoming sharp and analytical. “You claim to have objective, current data on this phenomenon at a specific location?”

“Yes, sir!” Izuku affirmed. “But it might be degrading as we speak.”

Nezu tapped a claw on his desk. His eyes, bright and unnervingly perceptive, darted between the three of them. “This is, without a doubt, the most extraordinary claim I have encountered this morning. And possibly this fiscal year.” He paused, and for a moment, the trio’s hearts sank, expecting dismissal. Then, a tiny, almost predatory smile touched Nezu’s lips. “Which makes it, of course, utterly irresistible.”

He stood, surprisingly agile. “Alert Aizawa-kun. Tell him to meet us at Sector Gamma-7 with a full spectrum analysis kit from the support department. Midoriya-kun, Shinsou-kun, Kaminari-kun,” Nezu’s eyes gleamed with a terrifying, exhilarating intelligence. “Lead the way. And do be quick about it. Let’s not keep a potentially collapsing temporal anomaly waiting, shall we?”

Chapter Text

The journey to Sector Gamma-7 with Principal Nezu was a blur of adrenaline and suffocating hope. Aizawa met them en route, his usual skepticism warring with the grim determination that settled on his face the moment Nezu rapidly, almost telepathically, conveyed the gist of the situation and the trio’s impossible claims. When they arrived at the old Shinjuku subway entrance, Aizawa’s breath hitched. The air still shimmered violently, the graffiti on the walls seemed to crawl, and the low, discordant thrumming Izuku had sensed now vibrated through the very ground, a nauseating pulse.

“Remarkable,” Nezu breathed, his whiskers twitching, his eyes gleaming with an almost feral intensity as he activated the full spectrum analysis kit Aizawa had brought. Screens flickered to life, displaying streams of impossible data. “The temporal cohesion around this point is… frayed. Your energy discharge in the previous iteration, Kaminari-kun, didn’t just ‘dirty’ the anchor; it seems to have partially dislodged it from its temporal mooring! It’s… exposed.”

Nezu’s claws flew across a console. “This isn’t just a point; it’s a parasitic construct, a trans-dimensional… *leech*, for lack of a better term, tethered to this location. It’s been inducing and feeding off the psycho-temporal resonance of this repeated Tuesday. Your concentrated energy blast appears to have critically injured it, forced it into a vulnerable regenerative state!” He looked at them, his usually cheerful face alight with fierce, brilliant urgency. “We have a window. A small one. We need to sever the tether completely before it can re-establish its grip or fully regenerate!”

“How?” Izuku asked, his voice hoarse, his heart pounding against his ribs.

“The construct seems to be resonating with high-frequency emotional distress, but it’s also, at its core, a temporal mechanism susceptible to specific energetic and psychic counter-frequencies,” Nezu explained rapidly. “Kaminari-kun, we need another discharge from you, but this time, I will give you a modulating frequency to aim for – it needs to disrupt its regenerative cycle, not just feed it raw power. Shinsou-kun,” Nezu’s gaze fixed on him, “your Brainwashing. When its core is exposed and fluctuating due to Kaminari-kun’s modulated energy, I need you to project the strongest, most cohesive psychic signal you can muster directly at it. Not a command, but an overwhelming wave of… *human* emotion. Your shared experiences, your defiance, your will to live – something anathema to a parasitic temporal entity. Midoriya-kun, your role will be to protect them, and, if a physical aspect of the core reveals itself, to deliver a decisive, focused blow with One For All to shatter its physical anchor point if it solidifies.”

Aizawa stepped forward. “I’ll run interference. If that thing tries any physical manifestations or unleashes any localized Quirks from its… victims, I’ll erase them.”

It was a desperate, audacious plan, relying on perfect synergy and timing. As Denki began to charge up, guided by Nezu’s frantic calculations and the readouts from the analysis kit, the shimmering air around the subway entrance intensified. The ground trembled, and a low, guttural moan seemed to emanate from the earth itself – the sound of the wounded entity.

Illusions flickered at the edge of their vision: past deaths, the mocking face of the entity from Loop 137, the shadow of the villain from Izuku’s violation. “Don’t look!” Hitoshi yelled, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration, focusing his own mental energy. “It’s trying to distract us! Izuku, focus on Nezu’s signal for your strike!”

“Kaminari, NOW! Modulate to frequency 734.5!” Nezu commanded.

Denki screamed, a torrent of controlled, pulsing lightning erupting from him, striking the epicenter of the shimmer. This time, it wasn't just raw destruction; it was a targeted, piercing lance of energy. The guttural moan from the entity rose in pitch, becoming a shriek of pain. The shimmering intensified, and for a horrifying moment, a vortex of swirling, non-Euclidean colors began to form, a dark, cancerous eye opening into… somewhere else.

“Shinsou-kun, its core is exposed! NOW!” Nezu yelled.

Hitoshi threw his head back, and Izuku could almost *feel* the wave of pure, concentrated emotion that erupted from him – not just words, but the raw essence of their shared 143 loops of suffering, their unwavering love for each other, their desperate, burning defiance, their unbreakable will to reclaim their lives. It slammed into the swirling vortex like an invisible battering ram.

The entity shrieked, a sound that tore at their sanity. The vortex pulsed, and a shadowy, vaguely humanoid appendage, dripping with temporal ichor, lashed out. Aizawa was there, his capture weapon a blur, his Quirk flaring, and the appendage faltered, its form becoming momentarily indistinct.

“Midoriya-kun! The anchor point! It’s trying to solidify a new hold! STRIKE IT NOW!”

Izuku saw it – a knot of crystallizing, dark energy at the heart of the receding vortex. With a roar that was one part terror, one part fury, and ten parts love for his boyfriends, he poured One For All into his fist, leaping forward, dodging another spectral lash from the entity.

*“THIS ENDS!!!”*

His blow connected. Not with a physical impact, but with a sensation of shattering something ancient, brittle, and utterly, profoundly *wrong*.

For a heartbeat, there was absolute silence. The shimmering, the hum, the oppressive weight they had lived with for so long – vanished. The air around the subway entrance snapped back to normal, the graffiti on the walls suddenly still, ordinary. Denki collapsed, utterly drained, Hitoshi slumping beside him, gasping for breath. Aizawa quickly checked on them.

Izuku stood panting, his arm throbbing, staring at the now mundane subway entrance. Had it worked? Was it… over?

Nezu was watching his instruments, his whiskers twitching, his expression unreadable. Then, slowly, a wide, almost manic grin spread across his face. He let out a whoop of pure, unrestrained joy.

“The temporal displacement… it’s gone!” Nezu cried, his voice exultant. “The anchor point has collapsed! The resonance has flatlined! You… you did it! YOU ACTUALLY DID IT!”

The world didn’t explode. There was no grand flash of light signaling their victory. Instead, there was… quiet. A profound, unbelievable stillness where the oppressive weight of the loop had been. Izuku looked at Hitoshi, at Denki, who were now looking back at him, dazed, tears streaming down their faces. Aizawa had a hand on both their shoulders, his own expression one of stunned relief.

A nearby church bell began to toll, signaling the late afternoon hour. Izuku listened, his heart in his throat. It kept tolling. The minutes ticked by on Aizawa’s watch. One minute. Two. Five. The familiar, sickening lurch of the reset didn’t come.

The sun continued its slow descent towards the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple. It was still Tuesday. But it felt like the first day of the rest of their lives.

Denki let out a choked sob, which turned into a hysterical laugh. Hitoshi pulled him into a fierce hug, burying his face in Denki’s hair, his shoulders shaking. Izuku stumbled towards them, his legs weak, and collapsed into their embrace, the three of them a tangle of tearful, gasping relief on the grimy pavement.

“It’s… it’s over?” Denki whispered, his voice thick with disbelief. “Really over?”

Izuku looked up at the sky, at the city moving around them, oblivious to the monumental battle that had just been won in their small corner of it. He felt the cool evening breeze on his skin, truly felt it for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.

“Yeah, Denki,” Izuku breathed, a watery smile spreading across his face as he clung to his boyfriends. “I think… I think Wednesday is finally coming.”

The weight of one hundred and forty-three torturous Tuesdays began to lift, leaving behind an exhaustion so profound it was almost euphoric. They were scarred, they were traumatized, but they were alive, and they were free. Together.