Inheritance of Giants

When the Levee Breaks

Ace didn't flinch.

But Izuku watched a thin puff of steam curl from his sleeve.

"I acted in defense of the outpost," Ace said, voice low but firm. "Birdon wasn't going to wait for your protocols."

Murmurs rippled through the board. A few members avoided eye contact.

The lead Commander's jaw ticked. "That decision was not yours to make."

"And if I had waited, Birdon would've made it for us."

Inko exhaled through her nose. Sharp. Quiet. But deadly.

"You should be thanking him," she said, voice like steel hidden in silk. "He saved lives."

The Commander looked at her now. "Doctor Midoriya, your position—"

"My position is unpaid, unranked, and completely irreplaceable," she said, standing. "I'm not just a civilian consultant. I built your thermal grid. I stabilized your cooling systems. I've kept this base operational through more crises than any of you have sat through sober."

"It's got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home. Oh well, oh well, oh well..."

She stepped forward once, slow and measured.

"And I'm telling you now," she said, quieter, "if you punish this boy for saving my son's life, I will shut down your perimeter defenses by hand."

The words didn't echo. They didn't need to.

They settled.

Like water behind a crumbling wall.

"Don't it make you feel bad, when you're tryin' to find your way home, you don't know which way to go?"

Izuku's vision blurred. Not from tears. From light.

The room wavered, suddenly too wide, too tall. Shadows lengthened. The sunlight through the windows turned amber — not gold, but old.

"If you're goin' down south, they got no work to do, if you're going to Chicago!"

Visions came with a vengeance as a burning city came to view, footsteps made in ash and bones. Warriors and heroes, ununitable yet will to work, unable to stand against the unknown. Eyes glowing in the dark, skin as red as blood, rubbed rough by clay and reality.

"A-ah, a-ah, a-ah!"

The guitar riff continued as buildings fell on civilians, hands reaching for the skies, six brothers in suits of silver and red crying over the unsaveable. Screams of those unheard, laughs of those unseen, and the sigh of the arbiter.

"This is not what I wanted. We could've had peace! Yet, the hatred in my soul for these walking hellspawn sits true. Do you wish for me to deny that?"

"No," a voice answered — fractured and ancient, echoing not from a throat, but from existence itself.

"Cryin' won't help you, cryin' won't do you no good..."

A king sat in the sky, the six fallen heroes who cried tears of sorrow, his single foothold. His eyes glowed an orange-red, a metallic beard sitting on his face. "You chose this fate. You chose your own over humanity. As a ruler myself, I can understand that."

"Cryin' won't help you, cryin' won't do you no good..."

"Yet you chose to intervene! You made these people rebel against us! This is your fault! They were given hope, that is why they are dead now!"

"When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move, ooh!"

"They gave themselves hope," The metallic king responded, not moving an inch. "Their hope is what allowed us to intervene... it's what allowed you to care."