Midoriya Izuku was told he couldn't be a hero. All Might never got his name. But Midoriya left the scene knowing that, even if he couldn't be a hero, he was going to help everyone he could. How was he supposed to help people when he was the weakest person he knew? Sure, he doesn't know anything about working out, but it should be fine. No pain no gain, right?
Unlimited is a My Hero Academia For Want Of A Nail fic with elements of One-Punch Man, where Izuku gains the phenomenal strength of Saitama. It can be read on Archive of Our Own here
and on Fanfiction Dot Net here.
Unlimited contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass:
- Izuku was already about as strong as All Might during their spar, and he's only gotten stronger from there.
- Dabi seems to be undead and his flames are even hotter than Endeavor's.
- Stain is outright supersonic.
- Bakugou quickly becomes stronger than the rest of Class 1-A combined.
- A variant with the Subterranean and Sky Kings. In One-Punch Man, the Subterranean King is only badass in Saitama's dream, and the real-life version of him goes down even easier than Saitama's usual enemies, while the Sky King was effortlessly destroyed by Boros' ship. In this fic, the Subterranean King manages to give actual heroes trouble and didn't go down until Izuku showed up, and the Sky King required the Number 3 hero Hawks to defeat him.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Rather than being merely very intelligent, Mei is an Anomaly who regularly creates technology that's at least fifty years ahead of the rest of the world, such as a self-evolving AI.
- Artificial Limbs: Bakugou gets a robotic arm made by Melissa Shield after he loses one to Shigaraki.
- Ascended Extra: Melissa Shield is one of the main characters, unlike canon where she's a movie-only character.
- Battle in the Rain: Izuku's showdown with fellow anomalies Stain and Dabi takes place in the middle of a heavy rainfall, which only gets worse for him when the Deep Sea King and his soldiers show up. The incident is appropriately nicknamed "the Storm" by people afterwards.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Hatsume Mei is so flighty and easily distracted that she had trouble remembering who certain people are (beyond vaguely recalling certain attributes) let alone hold a grudge. Because of this, her AI creation Monitor tends to get offended on her behalf, constantly threatening and antagonizing Izuku whenever Mei's antics causes him to be "rude".
- Later, Melissa and Izuku (to a lesser extent) also become minders for her, being the ones to handle her eccentricities and making sure her projects and inventions don't get anyone killed.
- Curbstomp Battle: As befitting Izuku basically being Saitama, anytime he gets involved in fights they become this.
- Izuku vs. Bakugou vs. Todoroki is one to Bakugou and especially Todoroki. Todoroki in particular is all but ignored, his every ice attack instantly negated by Izuku as he easily avoids everything his fellow Anomaly Bakugou throws at him. Momo doesn't even know that Todoroki is attacking until she notices that he's beginning to suffer from frostbite.
- This happens particularly when he was put up against Classes 1-A, 1-B, Katsuki Bakugou, and Togata Mirio. They never stood a chance, and the fight is mostly Izuku casually (from his perspective) walking around and watching the other students in the hopes of understanding their Quirks before easily KOing them.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Several unnamed villains are disgusted with the police for allowing Izuku to wander into danger, not knowing that he's invulnerable and thinking he's being written off.
- Some of the League of Villains members try to steer Izuku away from Stain, saying the man is seriously messed up and Izuku seems like a good kid.
- Monsters like the Subterranean King and Deep Sea King are both disgusted by a child apparently being sent to fight them. They rescind their opinions once they see just how strong Izuku actually is.
- Eye Color Change: Izuku's friend Tachibana has a Quirk that lets her change her eye color. While she can do so intentionally, they'll also change in response to her mood.
- Face of a Thug: Kurobayashi has a shark head but is a very friendly teacher.
- For Want Of A Nail: The story kicks off when All-Might is slightly slower in tracking down Izuku, leading to the boy never gaining One For All or joining U.A, causing all kinds of differences as a result.
- Izuku starts doing an exercise regimen matching Saitama's and quickly grows to have similar power.
- Tensei avoids Stain because he was busy pulling Izuku out of oncoming traffic then talking to the boy about his Quirk and his younger brother Tenya.
- Aizawa is nearly killed in an ambush by Stain and gains a nasty scar.
- Bakugou loses his left arm and much of his left side in an attack by Shigaraki, Toga, and Dabi.
- Yuu Muimi, the 20th student of Class 1-A, is kidnapped, tortured and murdered along with his family by the League of Villains in a live broadcast.
- Because All-Might never had his second meeting with Izuku where he offered to give him One For All, Izuku hates heroes in general and All-Might specifically, seeing him as a combination of a Berserk Button and Trauma Button for reminding Izuku that no one believed in him.
- As a test for Izuku, All For One gives him Eri, whom Inko later adopts.
- As a direct consequence of the above, Overhaul and some members of the Shie Hassaikai go on a rampage searching for Eri, which leads to Izuku taking them down single-handedly, leading to their earlier arrest.
- Mirio is given One For All instead of Izuku.
- Because Bakugou was never kidnapped, the Kamino Incident didn't take place. This means that All Might can still maintain his hero form and All For One is still at large.
- Fusion Fic: Being a soft-crossover between My Hero Academia and One Punch Man, many of the anomalies present in the story are not so much Composite Characters as they are My Hero Academia characters that act as placeholders for One Punch Man characters.
- Izuku is Saitama, a Badass Normal who develops God-Mode level physical abilities that outclasses everyone around him.
- Bakugo is Genos, a blond-haired Lightning Bruiser with the ability to emit explosives from his hands who becomes a cyborg.
- Stain is Speed O'Sound Sonic, a jaded-killer and swordsman who develops Super-Speed.
- Hatsume is Metal-Knight, a robotics genius with an army of remote-controlled machines and a skewed idea of heroism bordering on Not in This for Your Revolution compared to her fellow heroes.
- Handicapped Badass: Bakugou loses his arm fighting Shigaraki, Toga, and Dabi.
- Happily Adopted: Eri is adopted by Inko.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Even after gaining his insane strength and accomplishing everything he has, Izuku has spent over ten years being looked down on for his Quirklessness and treated as worthless, so he tends to defer to other people, hates being in the spotlight and suffers from poor self-esteem.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: Downplayed. Izuku has a decent amount of faith in others... but none left in the authorities. As he explains, "I have been scolded by the same hero five times, twice for getting shot and once for walking out of a hostage situation where I was the hostage. I really, really doubt that they could've done more to help." Because the authorities relied on Izuku to save others and even intentionally threw him into crises rather than adequately handling the issue themselves, no authority has any credibility left in Izuku's eyes to convince Izuku he can trust them to save others. Their further refusal to give any post-incident response to him besides scolding makes them appear self-righteous, ungrateful, and/or too rule-bound to care how their actions affect the person who's repeatedly bailing them out, and only fuels Izuku's distrust and disregard. Nezu's callous information manipulation makes it worse.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Momo tutors Izuku for weeks with no idea he's an Anomaly faster and stronger than All-Might. While she does see his work, he moves so fast that she can't perceive him as anything but a gust of wind.
- Medium Awareness: Izuku's friends frequently compare his life to that of a tragic shounen protagonist, with Bakugo being his rival, Kurobayashi being The Mentor, Tachibana being his Romantic False Lead while Momo is his Love Interest.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Izuku is basically incapable of being harmed. Bullets bounce off his skin harmlessly, the front of a speeding truck wraps around him when it hits him, explosions do little more than disorient him, and he can take punches from All Might.
- No Social Skills: As Izuku didn't enter Yuuei, he never made his canon friends and struggles to interact with people his own age. Even after making friends at his new high school, he's still painfully awkward and finds it hard to talk to new people.
- Not So Invincible After All: While Izuku is all but impervious to physical harm, it is revealed that Shinso's Brainwashing quirk is highly effective against him (though not for its intended use), as since Izuku's mental and physical capacity are not as in-sync as a normal person, Shinso's attempt at mind-controlling him accidentally puts him into a coma.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Eventually, Izuku becomes powerful enough that his progress can no longer be measured. Monitor mentions that the most weight Izuku has been recorded lifting was eight thousand kilograms with one hand and there currently isn't a material dense enough to create a heavier weight for him to lift. Similarly, Izuku is measured as having run 100 meters in just under three nanoseconds, but Monitor admits to not having a fast enough framerate on his camera to actually track Izuku properly.
- Self-Deprecation: When Daisuke starts lampshading Izuku's status as a shounen protagonist, Izuku privately thinks that if he was a shounen protagonist, meeting All Might would be chapter 2 in his story, because his backstory would obviously be Chapter 1, "unless whatever sadistic author is in charge is just an idiot." Unlimited's first chapter is random timeskips describing events in Izuku's life that haven't happened yet from various outsiders' perspectives.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Izuku can take on villains, serial killers, Yakuza and literal monsters without blinking, but put him in a situation where he has to try and interact with new people or make friends and he's reduced to an blushing, stuttering mess.Kābā: He’s just like that, Kiri-kun. Forgive him, but he’s chronically awkward. The doctors can’t save any of us from it.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- Ingenium wasn't attacked by Stain and paralyzed from waist down because he was busy pulling Izuku out of oncoming traffic.
- Because Izuku single-handedly stops Overhaul and his bodyguards, there was no raid on the Shie Hassaikai base that left Nighteye dead and Mirio without his quirk.
- Speed Blitz: During a threeway spar, Izuku proves capable of disrupting Todoroki's attacks so fast that the spectators don't even realize said attacks are happening at all.
- Super-Senses: Izuku is capable of increasing the speed of his perception to the point that from his point of view people are standing still, bullets move in slow motion, and explosions seem sluggish.
- Super-Speed: Most Anomalies have this to some extent or other. Stain is supersonic, Bakugou is little more than a blur, and Izuku is fast enough that he appears to be teleporting.
- The Team Normal: Downplayed. Mirio and Melissa are the only members of Class S that are not Anomalies. Mirio is there because he's someone with two extremely powerful Quirks, and Melissa is the only one who can (mostly) understand Mei.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Izuku takes several, going from a scrawny Quirkless teenager to fighting All-Might evenly in roughly a year.
- Bakugou was always fairly powerful, but once he becomes an Anomaly, he quickly grows strong enough to take on the rest of his class at once and win with only minor scratches.
- Mirio is given One For All.
- Underestimating Badassery: Everyone underestimates just how powerful Anomalies are, with Izuku in particular being overlooked. When Shouto insists on a three-way spar against Izuku and Bakugou, he believes he'll be able to beat both without much trouble. Instead, Shouto is basically ignored as Bakugou tries furiously to hit Izuku, who casually dodges every attack and breaks Shouto's ice with little more than taps.
- During the same spar, Momo thinks Izuku is teleporting around and Shouto hasn't done anything at all, until she spots the frostbite accumulating on his right side and realizes Izuku's been negating his attacks as fast as they form.
- Villain Takes an Interest: Izuku catches All For One's eye, which causes him to give the teenager Eri as a test of what he'll do when Overhaul comes looking for her.
- World's Strongest Man: Izuku unambiguously becomes this after the Storm, having far surpassed All Might, and by extension every other person, by that point.
- Wrong Context Magic: Anomalies are this. While almost everyone in the world has superpowers, Anomalies have abilities that are either not related to their quirk or are just too powerful for Quirks to handle. Mei, for example, can create things fifty to two hundred years ahead of the developmental curve, but her quirk has nothing to do with inventing or mental enhancement- it's essentially binoculars. Izuku is another great example, as he's Quirkless yet has strength and stamina that outclasses any enhancement quirk on record.
