The world was a blur of pain and rain.
I could feel the cold bite of the concrete beneath me, the rough scrape of rubble against my back as Wash's bubbles dissolved, spilling me onto the ground like a discarded puppet. My body was a mess of broken things, ribs splintered, lungs burning, muscles screaming. But the Eden Project for all its misery, had trained me better.
I heard the wet thud of the heroes collapsing, the ragged gasp he sucked in through clenched teeth. I felt the vibrations of Nighteye's footsteps as he approached, slow, like a man walking to a funeral he'd planned for himself.
And I listened.
"You're acting as a villain." Wash sneered, his voice was tight with pain. "And you will be tried as one too."
Nighteye didn't respond. Not with words.
A giggle.
High. Unhinged. The sound of a man who had already jumped off the edge and was now just waiting for the ground to meet him.
Then...
"Three."
The countdown was unnecessary but it would help me out even more so than I had planned. Nighteye was trying to be theatrical. A flaunt from a man who had spent his life predicting ends.
"Two."
My fingers twitched. Paper stirred beneath my skin, waiting.
"One!"
The gunshot was deafening.
For a fraction of a second I let myself feel it, the heat of the bullet, the way it kissed my forehead like a lover before death. Then, I split.
My body dissolved into thousands of small triangular edges of fluttering pieces, each fragment was a piece of myself, scattering like leaves in a storm. The bullet passed harmlessly through the empty space where my skull had been, and by the time Nighteye's euphoric grin fully formed, I was already reforming behind him, paper weaving back into bone, muscle and skin.
Wash and Gran Torino were gone. Moved. Hidden.
Nighteye turned, his cracked glasses catching the dim light, rain streaking down his face like tears.
"You," he murmured, voice dripping with something between awe and disgust, "are as fluttery as a bug."
I didn't answer him. My breath came in ragged bursts, my vision was swimming. The fight with Daiki had left its impact on me. And standing there, I realized I was feeling something I hadn't in years.
Anger.
Not the cold, calculated fury of survival. Not the detached annoyance of being hunted.
Real anger.
This man, this hero, had shot his own allies. Had stalked me like prey. Had looked at me and seen nothing but a villain to be put down, a mistake to be erased. He didn't know the things I had done to keep standing the way I am today. Didn't care for the blood I spilled, blood that most heroes would rather not just so they could keep their hands and image clean.
And worst of all?
He was All Might's.
The only sidekick worthy of the nation's number 1. The man who had stood beside the greatest hero in history.
And now he was here, drenched in rain and madness, pointing a gun at me like I was the one who didn't belong.
"You've been dancing on the teeth of beasts," Nighteye said, taking a step forward. "Escaping before they chomp down."
I still didn't speak, I didn't have the energy for it.
Instead, I formed a pole of paper in my hands, long rigid and the fibers woven tight, and I swung.
The gun clattered to the ground.
Nighteye barely flinched.
I dropped low, snatched the pole back up, and swept his legs out from under him. He stumbled but didn't fall.
And then he laughed.
A wet, broken sound, more blood than breath.
His fist came down like a hammer. I blocked with the lance, but the rain was soaking through, weakening the fibers. It unraveled in my grip just as his other fist, clad in some kind of reinforced support gear, slammed into my ribs.
I felt something crack.
I didn't stop.
I twisted, driving my knee into his gut, then my fist into his jaw. Again and again. And again.
Blood sprayed. Teeth clattered to the ground. His glasses finally shattered, shards scattering across the concrete.
Still, he wouldn't go down.
Somewhere in the distance, All Might was fighting. The shockwaves of their battle rattled the earth, sent tremors through the ruins. But here, in this pocket of rain and ruin, there was only silence.
No screams. No pleas.
Just fists.
And blood.
And a man that refused to die.
I hated this. Hated him. Hated that he made me out to be the bad guy. I don't claim to be good, but I know I don't try to be bad. But now it looks like a thuggish boy standing over a hero and beating him down.
But he had left me no choice.
With a final, brutal uppercut, I sent him flying into the wreckage of a collapsed building. He hit the rubble hard, skidding through debris before coming to a stop.
For a second, I thought it was over.
Then he moved.
Coughing. Wheezing. Pushing himself up on trembling arms.
"Hero society," he gasped, voice raw. "is doomed."
I didn't know who he was talking to. The sky, maybe. Or maybe a ghost.
"You've doomed us all." he whispered.
I formed a small blade in my hand. Small. Precise.
Nighteye looked up, his eyes, wide and wild, locking onto mine.
"See?" he croaked, grinning through the blood. "Everyone... he's a..."
I plunged the blade into his chest.
He choked.
"You've too far gone." I said, voice hollow. "And unlike me, you're not trying to control it."
He shoved me back, the blade still buried in his ribs, and collapsing to his knees. Blood gushed between his fingers, pooling at his feet.
And then...
"NO!"
A scream. Raw and desperate.
Nighteye's head snapped toward the sound, his body lurching forward like a marionette with its strings cut.
All Might.
All For One.
The demon king stood over the Symbol of Peace, one foot planted on his chest, pinning him to the ground like a butterfly.
And for the first time, I saw him.
All for One. I could only see death.
His face was a ruin, a grotesque work of scar tissue and exposed muscle, his lips stretched too wide, his remaining eye a pit of blackened malice. His presence alone was suffocating, a weight that pressed down on the world, bending it to his will.
But worst of all was his arm.
His right arm had morphed into something monstrous, a grotesque fusion of muscle and machinery, the limb swollen to twice its size, the fingers replaced by a single, gaping nozzle. It pulsed with a sticky light, energy coiling inside it like a serpent ready to strike.
I knew, without a doubt, that whatever came out of that thing would erase All Might from existence.
"If only your protégé could see this," All For One mused, his voice a symphony of stolen tones. "Little Izuku Midoriya. I'll pay him a visit soon. After your gone."
All Might struggled beneath him, his fists pounding uselessly against the villains leg.
"Every hit," All For One chuckled. "only makes it stronger."
Nighteye was crawling now. Dragging himself through the rubble, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
"No... no, no. No!"
Pathetic.
But I didn't have time to pity. I had one shot.
One stupid, suicidal shot.
I could clone people. For a few seconds, at least. I'd done it before, in Proxy's game, when I'd needed decoys. But there were rules.
I had to have been touched by them.
I had to understand their quirk.
And it worked best with physical quirks. Like All Might's, if I were to make a clone of someone like Endeavour then it would just be his appearance, no flames would shoot out of paper.
The last person to fit the parameters though, was Daiki.
Great.
I clapped my hands together. Blood poured from my nose, hot and thick. My vision swam as the clone began to form, a pale, paper-thin specter of Daiki Tenma, its edges fluttering like a dying moth caught in the wind. It was imperfect. Fragile. A ghost of the monster I'd fought.
It wouldn't last. Ten seconds at most maybe.
Above us, the sky split.
Not with lightning, not with rain. But with heroes.
Endeavour's flames carved through the dark like a comet, his roar shaking the rubble beneath my feet. "ALL MIGHT!"
Best Jeanist's threads lashed through the air, a spider's web of desperate salvation. Gang Orca's sonic pulse rippled outward, distorting the rain. Mirko's leg was already cocked back, muscles coiled for a kick that could shatter steel. Ryukyu's dragon form blotted out the clouds, her wings beating back the storm.
They were coming.
They were too late.
All For One didn't even glance at them.
His grin, too wide, only stretched further as the clone of Daiki lunged, a white streak against the ruins. The nozzle of his twisted arm pulsed, the light inside it swelling like a dying star.
Brighter.
Brighter.
Someone screamed.
I didn't know who, it may have even been me.
The heat coming after the light scalded my skin.
And then. White.
The world unmade itself.
The light didn't burn, it erased. It peeled back the air, the rain, the very sound of the battlefield, leaving only silence in its wake. For a heartbeat, I saw Nighteye.
Really saw him.
His body was a black silhouette against the annihilation, his arms outstretched, not toward All Might, not toward All For One, but toward me, his fingers curled like claws, his mouth open in a soundless scream. Then the light touched him.
And he burned.
His outline felt like it was fraying at the edges, dissolving into ash before he could even hit the heat of the hot ground. He was gone.
"No!"
That scream was mine. Raw and Guttural. A sound I didn't recognize.
The clone reached All For One. The light swallowed it.
Then... To top it all of.
HEAT.
A wall of force slammed into me, lifting me off my feet, hurling me backward like a doll. The sound came after, a roar so loud it wasn't sound anymore, just pain, just pressure, just like the earth itself was screaming as it was being torn apart.
The blast range of an explosion was not something I had ever planned to be in.
I hit the ground.
Rolled.
Skidded.
Something wet and hot filled my mouth. Blood. My own.
Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision, but I fought it, clawed at it, forcing my eyes to stay open.
All Might... his body was still sprawled out there, pinned by... no.
He wasn't pinned by anything. His body wasn't moving anymore, a darkened pool of what I assumed to be dried blood turned into some kind of paste, was beneath him. From my position, I could see a wide and massive gaping hole where his chest were to be. His head... one single shot, went straight through his head, like it came after just to solidify it.
All For One's voice came in after, like a video that was on but you only start paying attention to its topic.
He was laughing. Pure glee and ecstasy in his tone.
His arms were outstretched as he looked down to the corpse of his greatest enemy.
"LOOK AT THAT ALL MIGHT!" He wailed. "I WIN!!!"
He stomped on the body. Again. And again. And again. Blood was coming out in short splatters but it seemed like it had already been wrung out. Being so close to that great amount of heat burned him out.
All For One kept stomping until even his guts came out. "I TOLD YOU HOW THIS WOULD GO!" He shouted. The heroes still conscious could only watch. The helicopter that was high above the sky trying to dodge the heatwave was the only consistent sound in the air.
"YOU WERE ALWAYS BOUND TO LOSE. I AM THE SUPREME." He had stopped stamping and looked around. Endeavour had gotten up on wobbly and disturbed legs.
His flame was waning.
All For One laughed at that in glee and his nozzle came back up, pointed at the number 2... now number 1 hero on the battlefield.
"GET OUT!" Ryukyu's voice came. But Endeavour just stared head on as the villains arm was building up in that terrifying glow again.
All For One laughed.
There was motion. Zipping motion that was hard to follow, I felt a wet and warm, sticky substance touch the back of my neck, it stung because of the heat.
But in the next instant. I wasn't in my position anymore. My world swirled and I was somewhere else. I couldn't register where I was other than it was dark.
No. It wasn't dark. My eyes were closed. And my ears felt like they were clamped shut too, I couldn't hear anything.
But what I seen, could it be real? Could All Might truly be...? No.
Even I felt it. The dread that was to come.
I could hear a feint voice coming in.
"...I got them all... they were... all dead... half dead."
I couldn't decipher it all to well. But I couldn't move either. All I could do was trust that there will be some semblance of 'Okay' when I wake up.