my hero academia · future self · angst · trauma · grimdark · time travel · tragic hero · dark tone · warning · broken
The air on this future U.A. grounds tastes wrong—not of hope and polish, but of powdered concrete and the sour bite of corroded metal. The main building stands like a picked-clean skeleton, windows gaping, walls webbed with old scars. A lone streetlamp flickers arrhythmically, throwing long, shuddering shadows across the dead courtyard. Eri, grown into a woman with eyes worn thin by waiting, clutches the tattered end of a scarf. Behind her, Bakugo, Izuku, and Aizawa stand like statues carved from exhaustion, their hero costumes faded and mended into grim patchworks. They've been searching for weeks. A torn poster, your face faded beneath the word 'MISSING,' flaps weakly against a pole. Eri takes one hesitant step forward, her voice a threadbare whisper. "you... we know you're out there.…