Fanfic / Switchblade

For one week, Izuku disappears. The police spend that time combing the city for him but can't find any trace of him. He then shows up to school, completely unaware he was even missing in the first place.

Confused by what happened, Izuku tries to live his life and becomes a Hero Student at U.A., but flashes of memories of what happened during his missing week, and from long before he was born, proves to be a mystery that he needs to solve, with the fate of Japan being at stake.

Switchblade by Cacid is a My Hero Academia Alternate Universe story.

It also has a companion story, Switch Perspectives, which expands on the story from other characters' points of view.

The main fic was completed on October 30th, 2022, with 92 chapters and 333,807 words.

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Contains Examples of:

• Accidental Truth: During the Battle of U.A., Izuku tells Nagant that he's seen War Dog on the battlefield in an attempt to distract her from sniping the heroes. Nagant dismisses him because he couldn't give her any relevant details... only for War Dog to actually arrive, tearing her way through PLF soldiers to get to Shigaraki, then going after Nagant herself when the major tries to shoot her.
• Adaptation Expansion: In canon, the Meta Liberation Army are barely mentioned, mostly serving as a platform to introduce the neo-MLA (later the Paranormal Liberation Front), and explain Re-Destro's motivations, and the only named member of the army was its leader, Destro. In this story, Destro and his Generals are the topic of much discussion and speculation, and Izuku having dreams about them gives a lot of insight into their personalities, goals, ideals, and actions. This is especially important because of the role two of the generals directly play in Izuku's life; All for One gave him Tripswitch's Quirk, and it was the former general Switcher who was responsible for his disappearance.
• Adaptational Name Change: A few of the students choose different hero names than in canon.
  • Izuku picks the name Fossa instead of Deku.
  • Katsuki goes by Crater instead of Dynamight.
  • Todoroki picks Zuko, purely to spite his father.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Shouto is a lot more actively cheerful compared to canon. The main reason for this is due to being given the perfect opportunity to snub his father by picking Zuko as a codename for the Sports Festival.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Katsuki is a nicer person in this fic since Izuku's disappearance forces him to re-evaluate his own behavior much earlier. He becomes a much calmer and more approachable person as a result.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Katsuki's guilt over Izuku's disappearance, where he thought that Izuku had taken his advice, leads to him apologizing for his actions much earlier, and after Izuku forgives him they become best friends. They also become close friends with Ojiro and Shouji because the four trained together in preparation for U.A.'s entrance exam.
  • Izuku and All Might are more distant than in canon due to not having the student-mentor dynamic from All Might training Izuku for One for All.
  • On the other hand, Izuku has a closer relationship with Aizawa since he was the one who encouraged Izuku to become a hero after getting involved in his case, and he takes to supporting Izuku whenever he remembers something disturbing or horrifying about his missing week.
  • Because Izuku is never even offered One for All, Nighteye has no reason to be hostile to Izuku and their relationship is a lot better, with Nighteye even bonding with him over their shared experience of receiving terrifying visions that they don't understand.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • In canon, Lady Nagant was an Anti-Villain who ultimately came around. Here, she has been radicalised and supports an outright terrorist hate group.
  • While the Stain in canon was a Hero Killer, he still had some very valid complaints about the corrupt and broken hero system that idolized flashy heroes. In this story, Stain is similarly radicalized as Lady Nagant and joins the PLF, becoming Shigaraki's bodyguard.
• All for Nothing: Katsuki and Tokoyami confronting Hawks and Dabi over Hawks murdering Best Jeanist, resulting in the deaths of Hawks, Dabi, and Tokoyami turns out to be completely pointless when it turns out Hawks faked Best Jeanist's death.
• And This Is for...: When Izuku beats Nagant to death, he lists that it is for the heroes she killed in Hosu, for her part in Camie's execution, and the killing blow is for everything else.
• Anti-Villain: Magne may be a member of the League of Villains, and later the Paranormal Liberation Front, but she comes across as much more reasonable and less bloodthirsty than her teammates. After being injured by War Dog in the Battle of U.A, she became a logistics officer and therefore was able to directly see how much the war was costing the PLF and how many of their own were dying. After Shigaraki's death at Destro's hands, she takes charge of the remaining PLF forces and declares a ceasefire, later working out a peace treaty with Nedzu and properly bringing the war to a close.
• Appropriated Appelation: The PLF gives the nickname "Chain" to the Democratic Forces, likening them to a chain holding people back, imprisoning and oppressing them. However, the Heroes themselves take to using this name because a chain could be a unifying force binding people together and allowing everyone to pull together equally.
• Arc Words: The term "Switchblade" comes up throughout the story and Izuku spends time trying to figure out what it meant to the original Meta Liberation Army. Some historians think it refers to Switcher in disguise, while others believed that it was a blanket term for Destro's bodyguards. False Flag reveals that the truth is that it refers to anyone who gets possessed by Switcher when he's body surfing.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The more powerful a person's Quirk, the higher the rank they get in the Paranormal Liberation Front's military hierarchy. Izuku hates this part about them as it is a perfect representation of their toxic Quirk Supremacist beliefs since they don't consider anything else about a person when determining rank unlike the original Meta Liberation Army, specifically discussing the original Destro as an aversion since he was in charge not because of his powerful Meta Ability, but because he was a master orator, a naturally gifted strategist, and a good delegator.
• Atrocious Alias: Shouto picks "Zuko" as his hero name with the specific intention of making his father cringe every time his son is called that.
• Badass Normal:
  • Izuku doesn't have One For All in this story, but the skills in hand-to-hand combat and weapon mastery he gained from his possessor make him an effective hero anyway. Later turns out to be Subverted, when it's revealed that Switcher threatened All For One into giving Izuku Tripswitch's Quirk.
  • Fractal was Quirkless, but that didn't stop him from being a general and excellent fighter in the original Meta Liberation Army.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Dark Shadow fights Re-Destro and Shigaraki among the flames of the burning Nomu lab.
• Becoming the Mask: Influx was meant to spy on the Meta Liberation Army but fell in love with fellow general Epona and sympathized with their cause.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Both Best Jeanist and War Dog pull this during the Battle of U.A, with their timely intervention stopping Shigaraki and Nagant respectively from murdering the heroes that were holding them back and changing the tide of the battle.
  • In Chapter 86, War Dog pulls this again, saving Izuku from Stain and ending the Hero Killer once and for all.
• Bioweapon Beast: Like canon, The League of Villains have Nomus, the genetically engineered monsters capable of wielding multiple Quirks. Unlike canon, the different circumstances of the LOV's merger with Re-Destro's neo-Meta Liberation Army results in the newly-formed Paranormal Liberation Front's scientists making contact with Doctor Garaki and the additional Nomus they are able to create as a result is one of the key reasons the PLF are so powerful and dangerous. This is why Izuku destroying the Nomu lab is a huge blow to them.
• Bittersweet Ending: Leaning more towards the sweet. Japan has suffered through a terrible Civil War where many people lost their lives, including children and members of U.A.'s Hero Course, like Tokoyami and Ashido, those who survived have many years of recovery ahead of them, and it's strongly implied that the Hero industry will no longer exist in its current state. However, ultimately the worst villains and threats to peace have been wiped out or arrested, those remaining are able to reach an accord with the Chain and negotiate a peace treaty, and Izuku managed to reunite with his friends and family and finally has the closure he's been looking for since his disappearance, deciding to spend some time running Black Forest with Switcher.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Hero Public Safety Commission are not clean, having done things like human trafficking, extra-judicial murders, and imprisoning people without just cause. However, they are far, far better than the Paranormal Liberation Front who wants to implement a new society where the strong are at the top and they get to do whatever they want to those weaker than them with no consequences whatsoever. At least the HPSC were doing some good while they were doing a lot of bad.
• Body Surf: Switcher's true Quirk is the ability to transfer his consciousness to different bodies.
• Bookends: The story starts with the direct aftermath of Switcher possessing Izuku for a week where the both of them had faulty memories of that week. The story ends with Izuku willingly letting Switcher possess him once more, and this time, they will remember all of it.
• Break the Believer: Camie joined the neo-Meta Liberation Army and later Paranormal Liberation Front because she genuinely believed they were better than the HPSC and will help the oppressed. Seeing them commit war crimes causes her to lose faith in them.
• Call-Back: In Chapter 11, when Izuku and Shigaraki meet at the USJ, the latter recognises the former when they say "You!" while Izuku lets out a confused "Me?". In Chapter 84, as Izuku watches Shigaraki gets killed by Destro, Shigaraki once again recognises Izuku and manages to say "You" while Izuku calmly says "Me".
• Cassandra Truth: The Paranormal Liberation Front refuses to believe that the original Meta Liberation Army not only had Quirkless people in their ranks, but one was a general in Destro's inner circle, even though this is the true history of the MLA in spite of all attempts by anti-Quirk bigots and Quirk supremacist bigots alike to say otherwise.
• Civil War: Over the course of the story, the situation in Japan deteriorates to the point of an outright civil war being fought in the nation between the Paranormal Liberation Front and the sides of good (collectively known as the Democratic Forces or the Chain, and consisting of the Heroes, Police, and Military forces as well as any civilians with fighting experience).
• Chase Scene: Izuku tries to escape from the PLF after his cover is blown, but their forces pursue him out of the Citadel, the surrounding settlement, and into a forested area. Izuku manages to deal with most of his pursuers himself but Stain proved a tad too good and would have succeeded in killing him if not for War Dog's timely arrival.
• Chekhov's Gun: Kesagiri Man teaches Izuku about Stasis Tranquilizers, special drugs that make it look like someone is dead without actually killing them. Hawks used these drugs to fake murdering Best Jeanist when infiltrating the Paranormal Liberation Front.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The woman that interrogated Izuku as part of his Undercover Hero exam turns out to be War Dog's civilian guise.
• Child Soldier: After Japan's situation devolves into a Civil War, every available person on the Chain's side is needed to fight the PLF, and this unfortunately includes many teenagers, mostly from the Heroics and Support departments of hero schools. Although their teachers and other Pro Heroes try to protect them from it, it doesn't stop them from being frontline fighters and witnessing the many horrors of war, being forced to take lives, and having some amongst them dying. Katsuki tells Izuku in Chapter 89 that everyone in Class 1-A, save Todoroki and Shinsou, have been forced to kill, and that none of them are the same people they used to be.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Izuku and False Flag acknowledge that Izuku could have figured out most of what happened to him during the week he was missing had the two been more trusting of each other when Izuku was interning with her.
• Could Say It, But...: Izuku manages to indirectly tell Shouji that he received a Quirk from All For One and managed to use it to save Monoma's life after the latter was badly injured in a riot in this way.
• Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction: The combination of Switcher possessing Izuku and War Dog's own possession Quirk affecting him at the time causes effects Switcher never intended when he first possessed Izuku. Among other things, Izuku gained copies of Switcher's memories while Switcher's own memories of the week he was possessing Izuku are almost non-existent.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • All for One dies before the Paranormal Liberation Front could release him. The authorities claim it's old age. Izuku thinks they just quietly executed him, which he approves of since All for One was just that dangerous and unlike the case with Destro, All for One actually got a more-or-less fair trial.
  • Tokoyami, Hawks, and Dabi are killed at the Battle of Gunga Mountain.
  • Hound Dog is killed during the Battle of U.A.
  • Camie is executed by Shigaraki for leaking the U.A. attack plans to the Chain.
  • Nagant is killed by Izuku after she finds out he killed one of their soldiers.
  • Re-Destro is killed by Dark Shadow when he rampages after being freed from the Nomu labs.
  • Shigaraki is killed by Destro when Izuku brings the latter to his time.
  • Stain is killed by War Dog to stop him from killing Izuku.
  • After he returns, Aizawa informs Izuku that Mina, Setsuna, Rin and Shoda all died as war casualties.
• Death Faked for You: Best Jeanist has his murder faked by Hawks to infiltrate the Paranormal Liberation Front through the use of special drugs. When he regains consciousness months later, he is upset to find Japan in the middle of a devastating civil war.
• Death Seeker: Izuku discovers that he used to be suicidally depressed before his disappearance, to the point where he was seriously considering taking Katsuki's "advice". It's why he was so willing to let his possessor use him for their mission because he felt like he had nothing to lose and this way he'd at least have a "death worthy of respect" should their mission fail. He's horrified to discover this about himself in the present day, calling himself stupid for ever wanting to throw his life away.
• Decapitated Army: Downplayed. While Shigaraki's death at Destro's hands went a long way in destabilizing the PLF forces and eventually bringing the war to an end, it wouldn't have been possible, or at least would have been much harder, without Destro himself telling the PLF soldiers that he disapproves of their choices, causing many of them to switch sides, and Magne taking over the remains of the PLF and declaring a ceasefire with the Chain, even arresting those who tried to continue the war, like Toga.
• Deep Cover Agent: There are Undercover Heroes whose covers are so deep that sometimes, people think they are outright Villains even though they are actually spies gathering usable intel.
• Defiant to the End: When Camie is about to be executed for betraying the PLF by passing on information to the Chain, she doesn’t cower in front of Shigaraki, Nagant, or the bloodthirsty mob calling for her death. She instead delivers an impassioned speech about how she joined the MLA, not the PLF, originally believing them to be better than the HPSC and wanting to create a world of equality, and how much she despises the PLF for being even worse than the former corrupt and amoral government. She even calls out Shigaraki when he tries to interrupt her, asking if he was too cowardly to hear what she has to say, and claiming to all of the PLF that she is loyal to her ideals and that it is them who have become traitors. Even Izuku is in awe of her in her final moments, calling her "a goddess, doomed, but a goddess for these last few moments".
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Midnight is killed by Stain in the Battle of U.A. instead of Gigantomachia in the Battle of Jakku.
• Disability Immunity:
  • The person responsible for Izuku's disappearance before the start of the story picked Izuku because since he was going against All for One, the Quirkless Izuku was the best choice since he has no Quirk for the villain to steal and use against the original owner.
  • A variation. Because of his dreams of the various MLA generals and having multiple memories that don't belong to him in his head, Izuku starts undergoing an identity crisis, wondering if he's even the real "Izuku Midoriya" or if he's actually an amnesiac Switcher or Bit Weasel in disguise. This comes in surprisingly handy when he and False Flag infiltrate the Shie Hassaikai base to dose the villains with quirk-repressing drugs. When Shin Nemoto uses his quirk to ask for Izuku's full, legal name, he's able to honestly answer with "Not sure", then throws Nemoto of his scent by using Bit Weasel's civilian name and claiming to possibly be a foreigner. This allows him to maintain his cover, and the infiltration and sabotage go successfully.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Influx, one of the generals of the original Meta Liberation Army, was a triple agent turned quadruple agent in favour of the Meta Liberation Army. Sorting out her true allegiance in the middle of the Meta Liberation War was a bit of a headache for intelligence operatives on all sides.
• The Dreaded:
  • Eraserhead terrifies the Paranormal Liberation Front soldiers. Their Quirk Supremacist beliefs result in them wrapping their entire identity and self-worth with their Quirk, which means that to them, Eraserhead who has the power to negate their Quirks has the power to destroy a huge part of their identity and what gives them their worth.
  • War Dog, the triple-S ranked vigilante/villain that's made it her life's mission to brutally take down dangerous villains and corrupt officials, is this to every single person who sees her and lives to tell the tale. Considering that she's a extremely fast, extremely strong, bloodthirsty werewolf who can deal Wound That Will Not Heal and whose bite turns her victims into People Puppets, it's not surprising. Even Nagant has an Oh, Crap! moment when she sees that the werewolf has joined the heroes in the war against the PLF.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: Izuku dreams of the Meta Liberation War from the perspective of Destro and his generals, which gives him insight into their personalities, ideals, and actions during the war, most of which were glossed over or actively changed in history books. Izuku also dreams about his missing week from the perspective of his body-snatcher, which gives him clues to what they were up to at the time. It's later revealed that all of these were Switcher's memories, which Izuku only retained because of the unprecedented way that Switcher's possession Quirk interacted with War Dog's.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Chapter 50 reveals that during his week-long disappearance, Izuku came into possession of Tripswitch's original Quirk.
• Emotion Bomb: Destro's emotion-based Quirk is able to let him project his emotions onto other people to make them feel what he does.
• Emotional Powers: Destro's Quirk allows him to physically manifest his emotions, especially rage, as a sort of Astral Projection that he surrounds himself with and can use to form weapons or shield against attacks. Izuku gets to witness this in person when the General fights against Shigaraki after being brought into the present.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even while working for the Paranormal Liberation Front, Lady Nagant hates rapists, and PLF offenders are placed in the same prison camps as the captured Chain soldiers, with the implicit expectation that the Chain soldiers will kill them.
• False Reassurance:
  • Izuku manages to fool a recruiter with a lie-detecting Quirk when infiltrating the ranks of the Paranormal Liberation Front. He claims that the generals of the original Meta Liberation Army are his heroes and pledges to fight for the ideals that they fought for before his time. What he doesn't mention and what the PLF don't realise, or refuse to believe, is that the original Meta Liberation Army fought for equality and would never have supported the Paranormal Liberation Front's supremacist beliefs.
  • To gain the support of people with weak Quirks, the Paranormal Liberation Front claims they will create a meritocracy, which sounds nice but still strongly implies those with the strongest Quirks will be at the very top and those with weaker Quirks will be at the very bottom after they run out of Quirkless people to oppress.
• Fantastic Slurs: Neandertoe is an extremely offensive slur against Quirkless people.
• Fast-Forward to Reunion: In the last chapter of the main story, Izuku decides to stay on Black Forest, running the city with Switcher for some time, which separates him from his friends and family. In a Loose Canon 10-year Time Skip chapter from Switch Perspective, the former Class 1-A kids are seen at a reunion party hosted by U.A., which shows what some of them have been doing in the meantime. Katsuki has become a private eye, Shoto works as a zookeeper, Momo is in the military and Izuku is an Isomorph conductor.
• Fate Worse than Death: To be tortured and turned into a Nomu is explicitly acknowledged In-Universe to be worse than dying.
• Fights Like a Normal: Tripswitch's Quirk that Izuku inherits, the ability to trap any living being or non-living thing in suspended animation, while useful for espionage, is not directly useful in combat. Tripswitch fights essentially as a Quirkless, and so does Izuku, a majority of the time.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In Chapter 86, when Izuku escapes the Citadel, he enters a car chase with members of the PLF, including Stain, hunting him. He kept taking unusable dirt roads because his instincts told him to, even when the roads slow him down, and at one point his arm starts hurting for seemingly no reason. It turns out that what he thought were his instincts guiding him was actually a tenuous psychic link to War Dog, established when she first bit him, leading him to her, and his arm was aching because his scar was reacting to her presence. War Dog goes on to kill Stain to protect Izuku.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Katsuki mentions that during his internship with Best Jeanist, he spent a lot of time reading a history book about the MLA, and Best Jeanist had commented that some of the details in the book, like the description of General Fractal's quirk, was wrong (Fractal is actually quirkless). This insider knowledge comes from the fact that Best Jeanist was formerly a resident of the Rebel Isles, the country founded by former general Switcher.
  • One of the key pieces foreshadowing Hawks faked his murder of Best Jeanist is his cryptic message to Izuku that he is sorry, but not for everything Izuku thinks he did.
  • One of Izuku's inherited memories shows Destro briefly disappearing seemingly into thin air during a trip to a bowling alley. That's because Izuku used Shigaraki's Time Travel device to pull Destro into his time.
  • It's brought up at least once that some undercover heroes have covers so deep that most people think they're actually outright villains. War Dog turns out to be one such deep cover Hero.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Japanese Government of the time wanted to make Destro look like a Quirk Supremacist to discredit his equality movement. They succeeded, but actual Quirk Supremacists in Japan latched onto this false image of him and caused a civil war in modern times.
• The Handler: Under normal circumstances, undercover heroes have an HPSC-approved handler to whom they report. When Izuku infiltrates the Paranormal Liberation Front after they take over the prison where he was detained, he manages to re-establish contact with his side and False Flag becomes his handler, being his point of contact with them.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Tripswitch had the ability to put anything, both living and non-living, into snow globes, and Izuku is later given this quirk by All For One. Some of the quirk's requirements (the user needing to be holding on to glass pieces or pebbles in order to form the snowglobe, physical contact with the target, and needing to focus on intensely possessive feelings) made it difficult to use in combat, but its true worth shines in espionage-related applications, allowing the user and accomplices to smuggle anyone or anything past security who wouldn't know what to look for. It's also very useful for transporting critically injured patients to a hospital since it prevents their injuries from worsening until they can receive medical care.
• Hope Bringer: Learning that Izuku not only survived the Paranormal Liberation Front but successfully infiltrated their ranks and is sabotaging them from the inside as well as passing intel to them has Aizawa feeling hopeful and elated for the first time in a long time since the civil war started, False Flag cheering, Nedzu grinning and All Might declaring something went right the day the Battle of U.A. happened.
• In Spite of a Nail: Izuku still helps Shouto use his fire. It just happens much later than the Sports Festival and involves encouraging Shouto to look at other fire-wielding heroes to reduce how much he associates fire with his father Endeavor.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Izuku as Fossa feels a huge sense of relief after he kills Nagant, one of the PLF's best snipers and one of their more fanatical soldiers, especially since he manages to avenge Camie. Izuku as Izuku does not feel the same way, actually feeling empty but not regretting it.
• Institutional Allegiance Concealment: Undercover heroes don't keep their Hero Licenses while doing their work. They memorize their License number for identification purposes if arrested but carrying the physical copy is a huge risk when undercover.
• Internal Reveal: The Chain finds out Izuku survived a Paranormal Liberation Front raid and infiltrated their ranks after the Battle of U.A. Inko finds out her son is alive after he returns to U.A. Katsuki is informed of it by Aizawa afterwards.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The mystery of what happened to Izuku during his missing week is given in bit pieces, with every Flashback, every piece of research into the original Meta Liberation Army, and seemingly unrelated events all slowly painting the bigger picture.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Most of the people who hear of Switcher possessing Izuku says Switcher should have left a note after the fact. It turns out the reason he didn't is because War Dog's own possession abilities combined with his resulted in an unusual interaction that resulted in him forgetting about most of the week he was possessing Izuku.
• Law of Disproportionate Response: A fuss is raised about the minor Villain Gentle Criminal sneaking into UA's Cultural Festival. Nedzu rightfully points out that Gentle Criminal was a model guest and if everyone was as well-behaved as he was, UA could greatly reduce the amount of security they need for the festival.
• Miscarriage of Justice: The HPSC are responsible for many wrongful arrests and outright extra-judicial executions. False Flag and Izuku are both victims of wrongful arrests at their hands, the former because she had dangerous information and the latter due to mere suspicion that he was a PLF sympathiser.
• Mistakenly Attacked Mole: Aizawa attacks Izuku not knowing he's a spy for his side inside the Paranormal Liberation Front. To be fair to Aizawa, he believes Izuku to be dead, Izuku had his appearance changed, and it was not until later that Izuku is even able to make contact with his side.
• Mistaken for Racist: Or Mistaken for Quirkist, at least. After Monoma tries and fails to copy Izuku's quirk during their match in the joint training, Izuku assumes that Monoma is biased towards him for being a Quirkless hero-in-training when the latter keeps trying to corner him to talk and later takes the matter to Principal Nedzu. Monoma later clarifies that he wouldn’t have bothered Izuku about it, considering that his own parents are also Quirkless, and that the real reason he wanted to talk to Izuku was that Izuku does have a quirk, one given to him by All For One.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Camie being expelled from Shiketsu without explanation results in her joining the Paranormal Liberation Front.
• The Mole:
  • By chance of circumstances, Izuku finds himself with the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the Paranormal Liberation Front when they attack the prison he was being held at. He manages to orchestrate acts of sabotage, and after properly re-establishing contact with his side, passes on a code book and helps False Flag free Hatsume who was captured.
  • After the Paranormal Liberation Front committed war crimes against a Chain soldier that she once knew, Camie has a change of heart and passes on battle plans to the Chain.
• My Greatest Failure: Katsuki causing Tokoyami's death and Izuku's disappearance when he disobeyed orders causes him no small amount of regret.
• Near-Villain Victory:
  • The Battle of U.A very nearly ends with a devastating loss for the Chain, when the PLF manage to build a teleportation device that subverts the teleporter-disrupters that the heroes had set up and allows them to enter the heart of Chain territory. They proceed to cause extreme destruction and loss of both hero and civilian life in their attempt to breach U.A.'s walls. Only the timely arrival of Best Jeanist, War Dog, and other reinforcements prevent the villains from succeeding, turning the battle into a draw, with near equal losses on both sides.
  • Tomura Shigaraki and Doctor Garaki almost succeed in bringing All for One back from the dead through Time Travel, which would have been a devastating blow to the Chain, and failed only because Izuku intervened and brought Destro instead.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • War Dog meant well, but her exposing the HPSC's corruption triggers a Civil War.
  • At Gunga Mountain, Katsuki escalates the already very tense standoff between Izuku, Tokoyami, Hawks, and Dabi and triggers a fight that ends with the latter three dead and Izuku imprisoned by the HPSC.
• Not Hyperbole: Tenya is worried his brother Tensei would hang him from the chandelier as punishment for going after the Hero Killer. Izuku realises that since it's Tenya saying it, he means it literally.
• Off the Rails: War Dog exposing the corruption of the HPSC in Chapter 48 completely derails what remained of the canon plot, and derails it enough that Japan descends into a protracted Civil War where that didn't happen in canon.
• Once More, with Clarity: After Izuku learns from False Flag that Switcher's true Quirk is that he can Body Surf, every single memory of the original Meta Liberation Army generals he has makes sense. He didn't somehow have the memories of multiple MLA generals in his head. They all came from Switcher who occasionally rode his fellow generals' bodies.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Played with. Izuku isn't actually dead, but Inko thinks he is, and she mourns the apparent loss of her son.
• Parental Substitute: Aizawa tells Izuku that his mother had adopted Monoma Neito about a month after his parents were killed. Izuku is actually happy about this since he's always wanted a brother.
• Point of Divergence: Because Shouto doesn't tell Izuku about his family life during the Sports Festival, Izuku being unaware of any problem does not help him try to use his fire then.
• Post-Mortem Conversion: The original Destro was made by the Japanese Government to look like a bigoted Quirk-based supremacist when he actually wanted equality. Too bad for modern Japan that a lot of actual Quirk-based supremacists bought it and use the book he allegedly wrote as their holy text.
• Power Misidentification:
  • History has misidentified MLA General Fractal's Quirk, in that they think he has a Quirk at all. He is actually Quirkless.
  • The world at large believes Switcher's Quirk grants him the ability to shapeshift, copy Quirks, and be immortal. What he can actually do is Body Surf.
• Propaganda Machine: After Japan falls into civil war, Shoowaysha Publishing distributes the West River Review newspaper to their forces which is full of propaganda meant to make the Paranormal Liberation Front side look good and demonise their opponents as much as possible. Among other things, they conveniently forget to report that one of the original Meta Liberation Army generals condemns them.
• Pyrrhic Victory: How Izuku feels about his role as a spy and a saboteur in the PLF ranks. Fossa has managed to obtain vital information which he sends back to the Chain, kill key players on the PLF's side, sabotage many of their plans, and do massive amounts of damage to the villains' side, most prominently by destroying their Nomu creation lab, all while managing to avoid suspicion (and getting rid of the few people who did realize that he's a mole). However, all of this has cost Izuku his morality, his sanity, his peace of mind, and more recently, even his will to live.
  Izuku: I won. I won so much. All I do is win, and I still lost.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Destro goes into detail on how the Paranormal Liberation Front shames and disappoints him for claiming to fight in their names yet fighting for Quirk Supremacy when the original Meta Liberation Army wanted equality.
• Redemption Equals Death: Camie realising what monsters the Paranormal Liberation Front are and turning against them results in her death.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Izuku's friends, family, and teachers all believe him dead after they discover he was held at a prison the Paranormal Liberation Front raided and assumed killed then.
• Reusable Lighter Toss: In Izuku's greatest act of sabotage while undercover, Izuku throws a lit lighter into a large number of flammable chemicals and sets the most important Paranormal Liberation Front's lab on fire, costing them several Nomus and other valuable research projects.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After being killed in the fight with Hawks and Dabi at Gunga mountain, Dark Shadow was revived as a Nomu by the PLF in Tokoyami's body. The grief of coming back to life without his partner and the guilt of getting him killed in the first place, not to mention the horror of undergoing the Nomu experiments and Shigaraki taunting him about Tokoyami's and Izuku's (assumed in the latter's case) deaths, drives the sentient Quirk mad, and by the time Izuku finds him in the labs for failed Nomu, all he wants is to make those who took his Fumikage from him pay. After Izuku frees him, Dark Shadow rampages across the PLF stronghold in a complete Unstoppable Rage, killing any soldiers he can find and causing untold amounts of damage. It culminates when he kills Re-Destro and faces off with Shigaraki, telling the PLF leader that he's not the only vengeful ghost who'll come for the villain's head. Dark Shadow dies at Shigaraki's hands, but not before managing to severely damage the PLF's stronghold and their cause.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Defied. The only thing stopping Izuku from just trying to brazenly destroy the PLF labs in a suicide run is because he wants his sacrifice to deal a huge blow to them, not be something that they can quickly recover from.
• Shout-Out: Shouto decides to call himself Zuko.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The corrupt HPSC agents that wrongfully imprisoned Izuku have minor roles, but their actions accidentally give Izuku the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the Paranormal Liberation Front.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Iida Tensei never becomes paralyzed below the waist and forced to retire, because Stain didn't deliver the final blow he intended (implied to be because the Hero Killer was distracted when he recognized Izuku at the Sports Festival).
  • Magne never dies at Overhaul's hands because the Shie Hassaikai didn't try to make contact with the League.
  • Similarly, because the raid on the Shie Hassaikai compound goes very differently here, Nighteye doesn't die and Mirio never loses his Quirk.
• Spirit Advisor: After Izuku is able to contact Tripswitch through her Quirk that was given to him, she is able to help Izuku by giving some much-needed advice, or even just plain comfort and assurance.
• Spotting the Thread: Arashiro Haruka sniffs out Izuku as a spy because she decided to join him at the theatre and he wasn't there, so when he later lied about it to their superior, she became suspicious.
• Spy Cam: False Flag gives Izuku a small camera for his mission in spying on the Paranormal Liberation Front and sabotaging them from the inside.
• Super Supremacist: The original Meta Liberation Army is a subversion. Their enemies made them look like they believed Might Makes Right, but they actually wanted equality, to the point one of their generals, Fractal, is Quirkless. The modern Meta Liberation Army that merged with the League of Villains to become the Paranormal Liberation Front are a straight example who genuinely believes those with strong Quirks deserve to stand at the top and do whatever they want.
• Supernatural Sealing: Tripswitch's Quirk is the ability to place anyone or anything in suspended animation in a snow globe. Izuku gains this power when Switcher retrieves the stolen Quirk from All for One and has it given to Izuku.
• Third Time's The Charm: Stain's third shown encounter with War Dog is the one where War Dog finally kills him.
• Title Drop: The term "Switchblade" is mentioned many times throughout the story.
• Token Good Teammate: Arashiro is this among Izuku's squadmates in the PLF. A Wide-Eyed Idealist who joined them because she genuinely believed them to be better than the previous government and wanted to be a force for good, she serves as a contrast to the more sadistic Sone and Shimoda, or the revenge-obsessed Nishida. She's the person Izuku feels most guilty about betraying, and he hates the thought of such a kind-hearted girl being part of the violent and extremist PLF. Unfortunately, it's not enough to stop her from trying to turn him in when she realizes that Izuku is a spy, and he's forced to subdue her and trap her in his Quirk.
• Trapped Behind Enemy Lines: Izuku ends up within the PLF's territory when they attack the prison he is in. It turns out to be a mixed blessing, as while he is surrounded by enemies on all sides, it also gives him the perfect opportunity to infiltrate their ranks and do serious damage.
• Trauma Button: Shinsou's Quirk becomes this to Izuku since the idea of being mind-controlled reminds him painfully of his own disappearance.
• Unluckily Lucky: Poor Izuku's life just keeps swinging between bad and good. He is born Quirkless, which relegates him to being marginalised if not outright abused. Then his disappearance happened and the guilt causes the people around him to treat him better and an actual hero tells him that he too can become one. Then Stain tries to kill him. And then, he gets saved by False Flag. He then gets accused of sympathising with the Paranormal Liberation Front and wrongfully imprisoned, which turns into the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the PLF when they attack the prison and look for recruits. But as a lone agent, he is limited in what he can do and even attacked by his side who believes him dead. But then, he manages to re-establish contact through False Flag, who helps him do a lot more damage than he already was to the PLF. Nagant discovers that he's a spy, but he manages to kill her and dispose of her body before she could take him in. In the Citadel (the PLF's base), Izuku witnesses horrifying nomufication experiments being done to those captured by the PLF, but he's able to free the "failed" Nomu and have them rampage across the Citadel, dealing a huge blow to the PLF. He's then faced with the terrifying prospect of Shigaraki and Garaki bringing All for One back to life using a time-travel device but is able to hijack the process to bring back Destro instead. After Destro kills Shigaraki, Izuku is outed as a spy and traitor, hunted down by the PLF, and almost killed by Stain, but War Dog shows up just in time and saves him.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: After Izuku kills Nagant, though he manages to avenge Camie, a part of him still feels empty since he realises it won't bring back her or anyone else Nagant killed.
• War Is Hell: When Japan descends into a Civil War, the story makes sure to show what a terrible experience it is for pretty much everyone involved, especially children. Izuku and Katsuki discuss how it traumatised and changed them and their classmates.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 43: When Izuku is brainwashed and knocked out by Shinso in the joint training, he recovers a memory of the day he was kidnapped... only to realize that it wasn't a kidnapping at all. His possessor outright asked him for his permission to use him in their mission, and he agreed because his suicidal depression made him value his own life so little that he didn't mind the idea of dying for a good cause. Izuku wakes up shocked and horrified by this.
  • Chapter 50 is a big one. Izuku discovers, through Monoma's Copy quirk, that he's had a quirk all this time. More specifically, he has Tripswitch's original quirk, taken from her by All For One and given to Hirano Niko, and the whole reason his possessor was hunting for All For One in the first place.
  • Chapter 54: Nedzu, Aizawa, and Tsukauchi finally find out that Izuku's Quirk originally belonged to Tripswitch and that Izuku has the MLA leaders' memories in his head when the four confront All For One in Tartarus. As Izuku is being escorted out, he runs into the neo-MLA group, which includes Dabi, attempting to break certain villains out of prison. Continuing from this in Chapter 55, Izuku fights to stay alive and prevent the villains from freeing prisoners. He succeeds in killing Moonfish and the heroes and guards stop the PLF from reaching All For One, but Hawks is freed and escapes with the villains, and Nedzu notes that things are going to escalate from here.
  • Chapter 64 deals with the Battle of Gunga Mountain. By the end, Tokoyami, Dabi, and Hawks have been killed, the latter dying with a cryptic message to Izuku, Katsuki is badly injured, and Izuku is taken by the HPSC, clearly to be disappeared into a black site.
  • Chapter 66, Izuku changes his appearance with the Face Fixer's help and successfully infiltrates the PLF when they start recruiting from the prison he was held in.
  • Chapter 80 is a doozy. Izuku frees Dark Shadow and the other Nomus for them to rampage, providing cover for Izuku to set a fire to the labs. The end result is that the Paranormal Liberation Front lost the lab, many personnel, including Re-Destro, die, and the PLF overall suffer a huge strategic loss.
  • Chapter 83 manages to be a huge wham. It turns out the machine Garaki was working on is a Time Travel machine, and he and Shigaraki were trying to bring All for One back. Izuku manages to stop them, and instead brings Destro to his time.
  • Chapter 84 continues from the last, where Destro and Shigaraki have an epic showdown, ending with the leader of the MLA killing the leader of the PLF once and for all.
• Willing Channeler: Izuku turned out to be a willing participant in his disappearance, having granted permission to his possessor to let them possess him for their mission.
• Written by the Winners: After the Japanese Government capture Destro, they make him look like a Quirk Supremacist when what he really wanted was equality. Unfortunately for modern Japan, this comes back to bite them hard as many actual Quirk Supremacists rally behind this false image of him.
• You Are Not Alone: Even trapped behind enemy lines, Izuku still has Tripswitch helping him as a Quirk Ghost through her Quirk that he now wields.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: One of Izuku's dreams of the MLA shows Switcher and Bit Weasel discussing this. While both of them believe that their cause is justified and that they wouldn't be able to live with themselves if they stopped fighting, they acknowledge that the line between "revolutionary" and "traitor" is very blurry.
  Bit Weasel: At what point does “terrorist hiding in the crowd” become less accurate than “freedom fighter standing against the oppressive tyranny of a dystopia”?

Unmarked Spoilers for Chapter 83

The very nature of the tropes related to the development of Chapter 83 spoils the reveal, so such tropes will be kept quarantined in a folder separate from the other tropes.

Unmarked Spoilers

• Alternate Timeline: When Izuku and Destro prepare to send Destro back to his own time, Destro asks Izuku to come with him to the past to save him from being killed by the PLF. Because they were standing in the permissive paradox field, Izuku's indecision creates several realities:
  • Timeline A: The base timeline, where Izuku strongly considers going with Destro, but eventually decides not to, feeling that he needs to see his own war through to the end, even if it's a bad one, and that no one has the right to play god by rewriting history. Destro accepts his decision and they part amicably, both wishing each other luck with their respective struggles. Destro disappears and Izuku runs as the roof of the lab begins to collapse. He eventually makes it back home and reunites with his friends and family.
  • Timeline B: Izuku hesitates to take Destro's offer, feeling that he needs to ensure a Stable Time Loop is maintained and not wanting to abandon his friends and family, but Destro tells him to Screw Destiny and that he deserves better than to die at the PLF's hands, and that his friends would understand needing to survive. Convinced, Izuku frees Arashiro from her snowglobe prison, and he and Destro disappear together, which causes two divergent points compared to Timeline A:
  1. In the past, Izuku becomes General Fossa of the MLA, and with his help, the MLA wins the war and manage to build a world of liberation and equality, where people are free to use their Quirks in public, and no one is discriminated against for their Quirk, or lack of one. In this world that Fossa's actions created, a present-day Izuku receives a letter from his past self.
  2. In the timeline that Izuku left behind, the PLF war still ends, but everyone thinks that Izuku had died when the Citadel collapsed. Ten years later, it's implied that the hero system no longer exists and Katsuki has become a cop. He meets Arashiro, Izuku's old squad mate in the PLF, and they mourn their friend together.
• Stable Time Loop: Izuku sees a memory of Destro disappearing during a bowling game, which gives him the idea of bringing Destro to the future from that event, which is what caused the disappearance in the first place.
• Time Machine: Garaki manages to build a time-travel machine with the intent of bringing All for One back. Izuku hijacks the machine and manages to bring back Destro instead.
• Tricked Out Time: Subverted. Shigaraki and Garaki attempt to bring All for One to the future from the moment of his execution so that the timeline appears to be the same until then, but Izuku stops them from succeeding.
• Write Back to the Future: In Timeline B, Fossa sends a letter to his future Alternate Self, detailing who he is and where he came from, as well as what his own original timeline was like and the changes he managed to bring to the past. Fossa closes the letter by including his hopes that his future self is living a life of peace and happiness, giving him a few words of encouragement and wishing him all the best while bequeathing the future Izuku his house, a diorama of which is included enclosed in a snow globe.

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