Chapter Text
Rain came down hard over Osaka as Izuku Midoriya was crouched on the edge of a rooftop watching it flood the street below.
Osaka still had people able to move through the city without too much worry, which made it better than most places.
He could see a few of them moving under umbrellas down on the street, hurrying home with their heads down. A woman was pulling a child along by the hand. An old man with a bag of groceries walking fast to beat the weather so they can get home.
'It's really been almost a year…’ Almost a year since he has left U.A., since the war and the scar it left on Japan, since he has seen his friends and his mom in person. He had turned eighteen out here alone somewhere between Kyoto and Kobe, and he hadn't told anyone about it until All Might called and he had let the call go through by accident.
It's been a while since then and Izuku is nearing nineteen now.
The past year had done things to his body that no structured training plan would have predicted. He was broader across the shoulders than the design had accounted for, heavier through the arms, the frame underneath the green fabric carrying more muscle than when he first put it on.
His face has lost most of its softness, it's become more mature and less plain. But his freckles still remain on each cheek of his face.
The cape given to him by Gran Torino that's around his neck like a scarf, and worn since before he died, was fraying badly at the edges. But he stopped caring about how it looked three months into this.
Same with his iron soles, which had warped over time into something almost talon-shaped, and his gloves, which had taken enough punishment to develop a faint resemblance to claws. He lost count of how many people had mistaken him for a villain.
"...You're doing that thing again." Banjo's voice came from behind him, easy and unhurried.
Izuku didn't turn. The vestiges didn't need him to look at them to know they were there , it had been that way since his second-year at U.A., since the wall between him and all seven of them had started coming down, and two years with them in his head had made their presence almost natural.
“I’m not doing anything,” he replied quietly.
“You’ve been crouching there for almost forty minutes,” Banjo continued, as he folded his arms, “in the rain, not moving, staring at nothing. That’s the thing.”
Izuku sighed slowly, resting his elbow against his knee as he adjusted his position just enough to ease the tension in his shoulders. “I’m thinking,” he said simply after a moment.
“Yeah,” Banjo shot back, “that’s what I said.”
Izuku grumbled and he let his eyes drift across the abandoned cars three floors down, noting the way two of them still had their doors open, angled awkwardly as if their occupants had left in a hurry.
"You need to eat something, you can't keep going without food," Nana said, appearing at the corner of his vision.
"I ate," Izuku told her simply.
"That protein bar you ate two hours ago doesn't count." Nana scolded.
"It had protein in it..." He didn't put much effort behind the words, coming up with convincing excuses required energy he didn't have to spare anymore.
"What about sleep then? When did you last actually sleep? Not the twenty-minute naps you call rest. Real sleep." Nana asked him.
“It’s fine…I'm still functional without full sleep or food.” Izuku responded to her.
Nana put her hand on her face and shook her head. “You'll collapse before you ever get to fight All For One or your body will not function as well as you'd like.” She said to him.
Izuku paid no mind to her words and just kept staring below.
Kudo was there, somewhere at the edge of things, saying nothing. He rarely did unless there was something tactical to note.
Which unfortunately at the moment there was nothing, it was just raining within a city All For One wasn't in once again.
His jaw tightened slightly as he leaned forward. He had run down every lead the assassins AFO sent after him, gave him. He got better at getting information out of them, though….he wasn't proud of how, and every single lead had put him somewhere AFO had already been and left.
His grip tightened against the guard over his knee.
He followed assassins through collapsed districts, tracked escaped villains from Tartarus across prefectures that barely had infrastructure left to support the people still living there, stepped into fights that weren’t his because there had been no one else close enough to respond in time.
He did it all while chasing a bastard of a man who always seemed to be just out of reach.
‘It's always just another dead end…,’ he thought, his frustration edged through, tightening in his chest.
AFO moved like smoke. Like he knew, every time, exactly when Izuku was coming.
"He probably does," Kudo said flatly from somewhere behind his thoughts. "He's been reading people for two hundred years, don't underestimate that."
'I'm not underestimating anything…,' Izuku thought back.
There were nights when he didn’t even know if what he was chasing had ever been real in the first place, where the idea that All For One was still out there started to feel less like certainty and more like something he needed to believe so everything he had been doing didn’t collapse in on itself.
His breath came out a little sharper than before, and he exhaled slowly through his teeth.
‘Stop it,’ he told himself. ‘That kind of thinking doesn’t help anything.’
But knowing it didn’t stop it from creeping in at times.
A flicker of memory surfaced, he remembered an alleyway in a different city, a man bleeding out against a wall while Izuku pressed his hands down to try and stop it, the smell of smoke still hanging in the air from the fight that had ended minutes too late, the sound of distant sirens that hadn’t arrived fast enough.
‘I got there as fast as I could…but I couldn't—,’ Izuku blinked once, hard, and forced himself back into the present, his fingers pressing briefly against his forehead before dropping again.
“You really need to stop doing that,” Nana said quietly, and this time there wasn't an attempt to soften it.
“Doing what?” Izuku replied, though he knew exactly what she meant.
“Letting everything pile up and pretending it’s not there,” she answered, her gaze steady on him. “That only works for so long.”
“It’s been working…,” he said with a slight edge.
“Has it?” Banjo cut in, raising an eyebrow as he leaned back slightly. “Because from where we’re standing, it looks more like you’re running on fumes and stubbornness.”
Izuku groaned, his eyes dropping back to the street as he watched a pair of people cross at an intersection, one of them pausing to adjust the other’s umbrella before continuing on.
‘Fumes and stubbornness…,’ he repeated internally, and for a moment, he couldn’t even argue with that.
His hand moved almost unconsciously to the side of his belt, taking his phone out from his pouch, turning it on and he looked at it.
There were messages and missed calls, which all were from All Might, who he hasn't directly spoken to in months.
He just stared at his phone for a while before turning it off and tried to put it away.
The phone buzzed in his hand.
He sighed, pulling it back up and glanced at the screen, already preparing to decline.
But the number he saw made him stop immediately.
It wasn't a person he ever called, but he knew who this was, he made sure to memorize it when he had given out his number before.
He answered after a moment of hesitating. "Hello…?"
"...Midoriya…" The voice came through rough and strained and so quiet he almost couldn't hear it over the rain. "You're... still alive…"
He shifted, his grip tightening around the phone. "Nagant…Yeah I am… I'm glad you're well enough to be conscious… but don't—" He stopped himself. Telling her to not push herself, would be hypocritical because when she was already pushing herself to make the call.
"I assume you know why… I had a doctor have you contact me the moment you were awake…" Izuku said, getting straight to the point.
Kaina exhaled and swallowed. "...Haibori Woods," she said. "There's a... mansion. Used to be the Creature Rejection Clan's. All For One kept me there sometimes... between missions..." She paused, trying to catch her breath. "He was still there... when I was moved. He'd been—"
A cough cut through the sentence, rough and wet. "...been working on something for months. Something he wouldn't leave behind."
Izuku was already standing up. "Did you see what it was?"
"...No. I couldn't get close enough... most of the time. But whatever it was, it had him... fixated." Another shallow breath. "He didn't care that I'd seen through him. He stayed. Whatever he found... he thought it was worth the risk."
That made his chest feel cold. 'All For One is staying put? When he has been running from me and other heroes for almost a year… that means whatever he is working… it is worth the risk…' he thought while clenching his fist.
"That can't be good… but it's a lead I can work with…." His voice had dropped, quieter. "Thank you for—"
"Don't," she cut him off sharply. Then, quieter: "...Midoriya. He's expecting you. Whatever you walk into... he's already planned for it." She shifted before continuing. "You throw your life away like it doesn't... belong to you. Don't prove me right about that."
"I'll be careful…," he said.
There was a long pause. He wasn’t sure whether she believed him, though he wasn't sure he did either.
"...Okay," she said finally. Then the line went quiet, and he could hear the faint sound of the rain before she ended the call.
He stood there for a second, staring at his phone. Then he put it back into his pouch.
"It’s a trap," Kudo said flatly.
‘I know,’ Izuku replied, his gaze shifting toward the edge of the rooftop as he stepped forward. ‘But it’s also the best lead I’ve had in months.’
“And the one most likely to get you killed,” Banjo added, not sugarcoating it.
Izuku moved his hand up to his mask, pulling it into place as he took one steady breath through the respirator.
‘If I don’t go…,’ he thought, ‘then I lose this chance completely.’ And he couldn’t afford that, so he activated Full Cowling and leapt off the roof, activated Float and kicked off the air, flying off through the rain.
After nearly an hour of flying and using his phone to find the location, he arrived at Haibori Wood's.
He came in low over the treeline, slowing his speed on his descent, and landed in the undergrowth about two hundred meters from the edge of the woods, then moved in on foot from there.
‘Danger Sense is quiet,’ Hikage noted, his voice low but alert. ‘But it doesn't mean he isn't here.’
‘If he’s here, he would want me to come in cleanly.’ he replied.
“And you’re just going to give him that?” Banjo questioned.
‘I don't care if that bastard All For One has a trap set, I'll deal him and Shigaraki no matter what’s thrown at me.' He moved through the trees, watching for movement. Rain made it harder to hear, which was annoying, but it also masked his footsteps, which helped. He got about sixty meters out from where the treeline broke into the grounds of the mansion, then he heard voices up ahead and stopped.
He recognised them, which only made him groan as he stood up straight.
He crept forward until he could see through the last stretch of bushes, and his eye twitched seeing who's here.
Endeavour, Hawks, Best Jeanist and Mt. Lady were all standing on the grounds just outside the mansion's front, gathered around a cluster of tied-up guards, all unconscious.
Hawks had a couple of his feathers doing lazy slow circles in the air above the entrance. Jeanist was retracting his fiber threads.
Mt. Lady had her arms crossed and was pacing a short tight line, her expression making it clear she wasn't happy about something.
'How the hell did they—?' Izuku thought, as he stepped out of the treeline.
Endeavour saw him first and didn't say anything, turning to face him fully with a measured look.
"You were going to do this alone, weren't you, Izuku?" Endeavour asked flatly.
Izuku ignored the question and kept walking toward them. “How did you find this place?”
"The doctor monitoring Lady Nagant flagged us," Hawks answered, dropping from a low branch in a crouch before straightening up.
"We figured you'd get the lead from her before you thought to share it, so we made sure we would hear it at the same time." Hawks pointed at Izuku.
Izuku turned his head, and glared at him.
“You’re still trying to baby sit me?” His eye's narrowed more. “Of course are, you always do when you guys have the chance.” He replied.
Hawks shrugged slightly. “We took precautions,” he replied, while sharpening his gaze. “You’ve got a habit of not looping us in, kid. We couldn't exactly let you go do something catastrophic on your own, now could we?”
Izuku groaned, but he shifts his attention back toward the mansion. “You didn’t need to come,” His voice drops with an edge. “This is something I have to handle myself.”
“Again? Seriously? Do you have any idea—” Mt. Lady cut herself, stopping her pacing and turned to Izuku. “Do you know how many scenes we’ve walked into after you were already gone? Burn marks, wrecked ground, people saying some guy scary looking guy in a dark green costume handled it, then vanished and we're told you clearly are exhausted and hurt, but you continue to move on without rest…”
Her voice rose out strained as she looked at him steadily.
“You don’t wait…,” taking a step forward, she continues. “You don’t call. You don’t even stop long enough to make sure you’re okay. How long do you think you can keep that up?”
Izuku glanced at her for a moment, seeing the frustrated look on her face mixed with her concern. He shifts his gaze back forward.
“I’m still here…,” he replied. “Still functional …that means it’s working.”
“That’s not how that works,” she shot back immediately.
“And it's quite an issue, because if you collapse and die due to pushing yourself too much,” Best Jeanist added, his tone calm but firm, “then we lose the only person capable of stopping All For One and Shigaraki.” Best Jeanist said quietly and directly. "You know that as well as we do."
Jeanist’s threads drew back into his sleeve completely as he studied Izuku in the rain. “Your efforts are admirable, Midoriya, but admiration doesn't make recklessness sustainable.”
Izuku's jaw tightened, as he clenched his fist. “Stop wasting my time with your lectures! I am going in there, no matter what you fucking tell me.” He shot out.
"You're not doing a solo operation, Deku," Endeavour told him. "But you'll keep ignoring what we tell you…. So we'll compromise. We'll let you go in alone and confirm whether All For One is actually here. You only have 10 minutes, no more, and the second we hear a noise that suggests fighting, we will move in."
"That's as good as you're going to get, take it or leave it." Hawks added.
Izuku glared at him, then at the others, his gaze lingering briefly on each of them.
His eyes narrowed. This wasn't something he could go against; they would jump in no matter what he said so it's better to let it go for now. "Fine… do what you want," Izuku responded coldly and just walked past them towards the mansion.
Hawks sighed while rubbing the back of his neck. "Sometimes I wonder if letting him stay out there alone this long was the right call."
"We didn't have a choice in that either," Jeanist replied. "We can only hope this ends soon." Best Jeanist said while smoothing out his hair more.
They all weren't sure if this would work out, but they couldn't let themselves get dragged down by the possibility of failure.
Izuku entered the mansion and immediately smelled old blood, the League hadn't cleaned up after themselves properly. He had read the reports on what happened to the Creature Rejection Clan here, but made himself forget the details.
He moved through the ground floor, checking corners, and watching for any traps or if anyone was watching him. Danger Sense hummed low at the back of his skull but didn't spike.
'He's waiting somewhere inside,' Kudo said. 'Keep moving. Don't stop in any room long enough for him to box you in.'
Izuku passed through a hallway with a collapsed ceiling and into what seems to have been a dining room, the double doors groaned as he pushes through them.
A white light bloomed on the far wall before he was halfway through the door.
Izuku stopped, looking up to see a hologram of All For One being projected by a device.
'Tch… of course he isn't here…' he rasped. He stared at the All For One hologram intensely.
All For One's face coalesced in the projection, smiling in the way he always smiled, like he was genuinely delighted by his own patience. "Izuku Midoriya…" he said warmly. "You really are tireless. It's almost admirable. A boy your age, barely nineteen, spending a year hunting me down and taking down everything I send at you, though not without some struggles."
"Where's Shigaraki!?" Izuku replied, ignoring what AFO was saying. All he cared about was getting him and Shigaraki.
"...I thought we might talk first." AFO sounded mildly injured by the interruption. "You've gone to such lengths to find me. The least you can do is listen to what I have to say."
"CUT THE CRAP! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY, JUST TELL ME WHERE YOU AND SHIGARAKI ARE!" Izuku yelled out, sparks of green lightning appeared briefly.
AFO's smile shifted slightly, becoming softer around the edges and more deliberate. "One For All… should have been mine from the start," he said. "My brother chose to give it to strangers. To hand it down through generations of fools who were never its rightful owners. I have spent nearly two centuries trying to take back what Yoichi and that nuisance Kudo stole from me…. But I failed each time, even while in Shigaraki's body… I failed because of those vestiges of yours…."
Izuku's fists clenched harder. 'He's still stalling…but I'll have play along for now if I want any actual answers.' “He left because you imprisoned him. Because he chose something better than the hell you offered him.”
He paused before continuing. “And whatever you think you understand about One For All, about what it carries, you don't. You never fucking did. Every person who held it gave it forward because they believed in something better. Something a bastard like you will never trample!"
"He doesn't see it that way. Not now." Something passed across AFO's expression. "The dead don't retain their grudges, Izuku. I know. I've had time to observe that. But you—" He paused.
"You've met them, haven't you? The previous holders. My brother's inheritors. All those fools who burned themselves up in service of an ideal that was never theirs to carry. And now you're doing the same thing. Alone ,exhausted and hunting me through the ruins of a country you feel personally responsible for…."
AFO tilted his head. "You really are just like every one of them."
Izuku growled, a vein popped on his head as his body shook.
"If I can't have One For All…" AFO said, and his voice had shifted into something quieter, "then I will simply need to remove you from the equation…."
The floor bursts upward.
'SHIT!’ Danger Sense went off too late, but he managed to quickly move out of the way.
He blew through a wall to his right in a burst of green lightning as a wave of air went through the whole area.
He hit the floor of a ballroom beyond, then rolled and came up fast, turning back immediately.
Tomura Shigaraki steps out of the dust on the other side of the room.
'Shigaraki was his trap!?' He immediately moves into a fighting stance and raises One For All up to Full Cowling 75%, making large sparks of green lightning spark intensely around his body and the area around him. His teeth grit at the strain.
'He looks better than he did before…' That was the first thing Izuku clocked. The last time they'd been in the same place, Shigaraki had still been adapting to everything AFO had pushed into his body, and still moving with that jerky, barely-controlled energy.
Now he was still. His shoulders were loose. The tics and twitches were gone, and his red eyes tracked Izuku with a flat, patient attention that Izuku had only ever seen in AFO.
'Losing Garaki didn't slow him down as much as we hoped,' Bruce said quietly.
"I knew another assassin wouldn't be sufficient," AFO said through Shigaraki's mouth. "You've become too difficult to approach that way, so I had no choice but to take you on myself."
‘Looks like he has control of Shigaraki's body fully now…’ Izuku clenched his teeth, he could never forgive Shigaraki for killing Gran Torino and many more people, but he wasn't sure if he felt less disgusted by the fact AFO was now puppeteering his body, but he couldn't dwell on that now.
Shigaraki raised his arm up and fired a Air Cannon.
Izuku ran forward and dodged the cannon and came in from the right, feinting for the head and pulling low at the last second.
Shigaraki stepped back, exactly what Izuku wanted, he wound up for a counter punch into the dodge. But Shigaraki blocked with a shield and fired a black ball that caught Izuku in the left shoulder. The impact threw him sideways; he caught himself with Float an inch from the far wall.
'His reaction time has increased as well,' Kudo said in his head sharply.
'I can tell. Let me deal with it,' Izuku launched himself forward and shot out Blackwhip. Multiple tendrils went to try to catch Shigaraki but he managed to avoid all of them.
Shigaraki shot out Rivet Stab at Izuku, he barely dodges each tendril as moves in and grabbed Shigaraki by the wrists, pushing him back and they crashed through multiple rooms of the mansion.
Shigaraki kicked him off but Izuku attached Blackwhips to his wrists and tied his hands together.
He flips in the air, before landing on the ground, then runs at him to deliver a punch aimed at Shigaraki's side. But Shigaraki used a quirk to harden his body around that area and Izuku felt the impact crawl up his arm after hitting it; it felt like hitting a diamond wall.
Shigaraki took the opportunity to snap the Blackwhips around his wrists, he makes a yellow ring around his feet, using it to push himself forward.
Raising his left arm, he threw his hand forward towards Izuku's face. Izuku twists around the hand and drops under his reach. He has been paying attention to that hand since they started this fight. He wasn't going to let it touch him.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a cold drizzle that clung to Endeavour’s flames. He stood rigid, arms crossed, watching the mansion, and every few seconds his fingers twitched.
“He’s been in there four minutes,” Mt. Lady muttered, pacing a tight line in the mud and chewing on her bottom lip. “I don’t like this. It’s too quiet, and—”
She was cut off by a muffled crash that came from inside. Hawks quickly fans out his feathers and his head tilts. “That’s not just him searching. That’s a fight,” he said, and the lazy drawl was gone from his voice. “He’s tangling with something big.”
Best Jeanist steps forward, threads extend out his sleeves. “We gave him ten minutes, but I think we’ve heard enough to know he found what he was looking for.” He glanced at Endeavour. “We need to move.”
“Agreed,” Endeavour growled, and flames flared up his shoulders and face. “We’re done waiting.”
They start running towards the mansion door. The ground below started shaking below and erupted upwards. Each hero moved out the way immediately.
Endeavour groaned as he stared at what just came out the ground. A bunch of Near high-end Nomu's were standing there and he turns to see more were bursting from the ground behind them.
Hawks goes airborne, and sends his feathers towards the Nomu, slicing into the first one’s shoulder joint, sending it skidding sideways, along with others.
Another Nomu lunged for Mt. Lady, who was still growing, and she caught it across the chest with a forearm that was still expanding, the impact jarring her teeth and forcing a grunt of pain through her clenched jaw. She pushed it off once she was big enough and went to full size.
Endeavour’s flames roared as he sent a wall of heat that caught two Nomu's mid-charge and drove them crashing into trees. “They’re blocking us!” he barked, and even as he said it, three more shapes circled wide, cutting off the direct path to the mansion. “They don’t want us reaching him.”
Jeanist’s threads snapped out, binding multiple Nomu’s legs and he drags them through the ground. “Then we go through them as quickly as we can!”
Inside the mansion, they hear another crash which followed with a quake through the ground.
Hawks head whips toward the sound, while keeping some Nomu's with wings away with his feathers. ‘Come on, kid,’ he thought, jaw tightening. ‘Don’t you dare die in there before we get to you.’
Mt. Lady roars as she slams her fist down on a Nomu that got too close to Jeanist’s flank. “Just once,” she snarled, “I’d like a mission where we don’t have to fight through a wall of these things to save the self-sacrificing idiot.” She kicked a few away and another caught her foot and managed it hold it in place.
“Let go!” She pulled her leg up as hard as she can, managing to lift up the Nomu and she grabs it off her foot and tosses it far away.
Endeavour incinerated the body of the nearest Nomu's and stepped over their dissolving mass without looking down. “Save the commentary. Push through.”
—
The mansion wall facing them bulged outward, the old stonework shrieking, and the night filled with the sound of everything breaking at once.'What the—' Izuku thought but was cut off.
More Near high-end Nomus crashed through from inside the mansion, going towards Endeavour and the others.
"I took precautions as well to make sure you couldn't get any help. I knew you wouldn't come alone, even if it wasn't your choice to come with them. You're all so predictable, it's quite fun seeing my predictions coming true," All For One said with a wide grin on Shigaraki's face.
'DAMN IT!' Izuku clenched his teeth and grunted. He couldn't let All For One keep having his way.
Izuku heard Endeavor's flames, then heard Hawks's feathers slicing through the air, and heard Mt. Lady's shouted curses.
Shigaraki raised one hand and set it on the floor. Decay rippled outward in a spreading wave, and Izuku launched upward with Float, Blackwhip snapping from his knuckles to pull himself towards the ceiling near a wall, and then he flew towards it and crashed through.
The decay destroyed the entire mansion and Shigaraki quickly followed him out, flying after him.
He fired a massive radio wave, that caught Izuku causing him to be thrown out of the air and come crashing down towards the trees.
Izuku recovers, getting up and spins around. ‘Enough of this!’ Izuku quickly moves his arms and legs around in repeated motion, making them glow red and the energy surges even the more he moves.
He keeps charging his arms and legs at the same time, Fa Jin building. Moving he positions his body a specific way and motions his arms through the air and his body emits a blue glow around it.
Izuku Layers Gearshift over Fa Jin, his whole body starts running hot. Once he builds enough Fa Jin, he launches himself upwards, destroying the ground below him. Multiple sonic booms go off as he flies through the air towards Shigaraki.
Turning around he flicks and kicks the air, sending him hurling faster towards him. "NEW HAMPSHIRE SMASH!!"
His back slams hard into Shigaraki. The force sent massive shockwaves throughout the area, sending multiple trees flying. "OKLAHOMA SMASH!!" He twists around fast, creating a tornado, as he spins with Shigaraki.
Izuku spins until he has built-up enough momentum and pushes him off his back, sending Shigaraki flying fast towards a mountain, which he crashes into, completely destroying it and leaving only massive crater.
Turning off Gearshift, he charges up his legs again with Fa Jin, then concentrates 75% of OFA into them as they ache making Izuku groan. Izuku kicks the air multiple times, sending air force blasts at the crater, hitting Shigaraki. Each blast caused the crater to sink and grow.
'That's it kid! Keep the pressure on him, don't let him get a chance to counter,' Banjo said in his head.
Izuku double kicks the air one more time before repositioning himself and flies towards the huge crater.
Danger Sense goes off, a weird spiked creature comes out the smoke, that goes to chomp on him.
He pivots left, barely dodging it. Putting his arms up and crossing them, he moves to the long tendrils forming the creature. “CAROLINA SMASH!” Izuku does an X slash with his hands and cuts through the tendrils and the creature starts falling apart.
Shigaraki comes rocketing out the smoke from the crater towards Izuku and he blasts a huge yellow laser that hits Izuku.
“UGHH!--” Izuku screams in pain as the hot laser pushes him through the air back to the area the mansion used to be.
He pushes his hand up, straining against the force of the laser. But he manages to put it straight up and he shots out Blackwhip, a huge amount of the dark energy forms, he expands it making it big enough to shield him from the laser.
Then he flies to side, moving out the way. Smoke comes out of his body and fills the air around him. Izuku starts huffing intensely.
‘Be careful he can still find you in the smoke,’ En said, his voice tight.
‘Using multiple quirks at once is still too straining for him En, he needs a second to breathe.’ Nana said as she appeared beside Izuku and puts her ghostly purple hand on his shoulder.
‘Your body is exhausted and doesn't have the proper strength or energy to handle using your quirks at full strength, your pushing yourself even more by using 75%, if you listened to me before you wouldn't be having this problem,’ Nana said to him.
'It doesn't matter now! I'm still able to deal with him, so shut up!’ He snapped at her.
Nana's grip tightened on his shoulder and her eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth but closes it quickly, pulling her hand away before fading away.
He wipes his face with his hand, then gets into position, motioning his hands again through the air, and his body starts glowing blue intensely.
Everything except the rain was quite and Izuku closed his eyes and waits as he floats.
“You really thought I wouldn't see you through the smoke? How foolish are you?” AFO says as he came pushing the smoke, his arms both had dark purple lightning sparking around them as the holes on his hands glow. He put both arms forward and fires a combined ray of quirks at him.
Izuku disappears from All For One's view before the ray hit him. “Huh? Where did he—”
A kick to his side cut him off and sent him flying through the air fast.
Izuku almost instantly moves far ahead of the way AFO was going and raises his arms up, locking his hands together. “WYOMING SMASH!!” He roars out as he drops his arms down hitting AFO down to the ground.
The impact sent a bigger wave of force, clearing the entire woods of tree's.
Endeavour had to take Mt. Lady who shrunk down to normal with him to the air, Hawks helped Best Jeanist up by using his feathers, and he flew further up with him. The pressure sent them back a bit and all the Nomu were blown away or crushed by debris.
Once the force stopped, there was only a wide and enormous crater with smoke. All For One laid there, his body had multiple cuts and leaked out blood from them. He barely managed to get up, only standing on all fours and coughed up blood.
Looking up his eyes widen at what he sees.
Izuku stood over him, his eyes shadowed under the mask.
All For One tried to raise his arm but Izuku steps on it hard, shaking the ground. Blackwhip comes out of Izuku's leg and wraps around All For One, covering his entire body and he reinforces it with all the Fa Jin he built up, though his body twitches while doing so and Blackwhip almost unravels but he manages to hold it.
He lifts up All For One and puts some distance between them. Izuku then turns slightly lifting leg up before slaming it on the ground lifting up dirt, he winds up his arm so fast it makes a vortex appear around his arm that pulls in everything around him, including AFO.
Once he was close enough Izuku uppercuts him sending him rocketing up to the sky incredibly fast with more force than before all controlled to a specific point so the area barely was affected.
Blackwhip stretches before reaching a specific limit that catapults All For One back down at Izuku.
Izuku clenched both fists. The rest of his Fa Jin surged into his arms. Green lightning sparked violently as he threw punch after punch. Each hit made Blackwhip snap AFO back into position, faster and faster, until Izuku's arms blurred. His hits created a tornado around him.
Izuku's teeth gritted hard, as veins popped on his head, his green lightning sparked violently everywhere as he kept pushing himself further, his arms hitting harder and faster.
He didn't let up no matter how much his body ached and his vision felt like it was blurring. He had to make All For One pay for everything he did throughout years, how he left Japan and what he put him through this entire year. Izuku roared, his nose started to bleed.
'IZUKU THAT'S ENOUGH! YOU CAN STOP!’ Yoichi shouted at him.
Izuku groans, but he listens. He stops his assault and grabs All For One by the neck when he came back a final time. The sudden stop made a shockwave that dissipated the tornado around him.
The glow of Gearshift and Fa Jin faded and his sparks of Full Cowling dropped down in intensity. His legs nearly stumble but he catches himself. His breathing becomes heavier, it felt difficult getting any air in at all. The respirator was barely helping.
'You tried too hard to push yourself, it's a miracle your body didn't give out while you were doing that.’ Hikage said as he appeared by his side.
'Look I get it, All For One is a monstrous asshole who deserves a thorough beat down but you really almost over did it there.’ Banjo added.
‘We can't worry about that, he managed to overwhelm All For One and look at what it resulted in.’ Kudo said as he stared forward.
Izuku and them looked up, seeing the state Shigaraki's body was in. His limbs were mangled and twisted, and his body had various wounds, with blood coming from them, and it seemed like his body was cracking. His face looked like its ready to completely fall apart and eyes were completely white.
Once Izuku properly caught his breathe, he tried to focus One For All in his ears, aiming his hearing towards Shigaraki's chest. He hears a faint beat of a heart, which anyone would miss if they tried to listen normally.
“So…he is still alive…” Izuku's voice came out strained. ‘Doesn’t seem like super regeneration is working… meaning he must have used a hardening quirk because taking too many direct hits would have been risky for him.’ Izuku pondered.
‘Losing Garaki costed him, now his prized new body is ruined.’ Bruce said as he crossed his arms before adding. ‘We shouldn't risk him having it still, you have to finish him completely, we'll deal with the actual him later.’
The other vestiges all nodded, but Nana had a conflicted look on her face and glances at Shigaraki's body, looking at it for a moment before turning away and closing her eyes. ‘Do it Izuku…’ She told him quietly.
Izuku drew his fist back, and looked at Shigaraki's face one more time. “I'm sorry…Tenko…”
His fist charged forward hitting Shigaraki's face and shattered it apart completely.
Black whip finally disappears around Shigaraki's body and Izuku lets go of his neck as well, dropping his body to the ground.
Izuku stood there for a couple of seconds, his arm shaking. He pulls it back down. Using One For All in his ears again he listens towards Shigaraki's chest. Hearing nothing at all, not even a flicker from a vein or any blood moving through his body.
He was completely dead… His eye's stared almost coldly down at his lifeless body.
Izuku's fist clenched and his eyes narrowed. He almost felt like crying but he held himself back.
His body finally gave out and he stumbles back, falling onto the floor with his butt. He took a few more deep breaths.
“It's almost over…” He spoke out. Without Shigaraki's stronger body and All For One quirk, the real All For One wouldn't stand a chance against him or the other heroes, his army of villains won't be too difficult if he is there to help everyone.
He'll finally be able to see his mother, All Might and his friends again. That almost made him smile, but he couldn't until he actually brings Japan back to how it used to be.
Getting up, his legs felt numb and still shook as he tried to move. His arms weren't responding too well either.
After getting himself stable, he started walking forward. 'I should…find Endeavour and the other's, hopefully they got out the way of the crossfire.’
Izuku kept walking, each step sent a dull ache through his thighs, his knees threatening to buckle. He clenched his jaw and kept moving.
'Just a little further…Then—' Danger Sense goes off and he feels a specific presence behind him, that made the hairs on his neck stand up.
Izuku pivoted, slow and heavy, raising his fists despite the protest in his arms.
A puddle of green liquid was spreading across the crater floor. Thick, oily, bubbling at the edges. It rose, formed a column, then split open like a wound.
All For One stepped out. The real one. The scarred face, the life support apparatus wrapped around his neck and chest like a mechanical collar. His breathing was labored—a wet, rasping sound that echoed across the empty crater.
He looked worse than Izuku remembered. His face was pale and sweating. His hands trembled slightly at his sides.
But his smile was the same.
"Well, well, well..." AFO's voice came out thin, strained. "You really did it…"
Izuku moved immediately towards him. He crossed the distance, cocking back his fist, as green lightning sparks around his body despite every muscle screaming in protest.
"You don't get to talk about him!" Izuku shouted.
AFO raises his hand, activating Goop Warp and puts it between. Izuku's fist passed through it along with his whole body. He stumbles, trying to catch himself, then twists around.
He grits his teeth as he looks at AFO who is twenty meters away now, leaning against a chunk of rubble, still breathing hard. "I'm not here to fight you, Izuku. I can't. You made sure of that."
He gestured at his own trembling body. "This shell has maybe one good move left in it."
"Then why show yourself?" Izuku's voice came out ragged. "You could have run and hidden like a coward. Licking your wounds for another year again."
"Because running doesn't work anymore." AFO's smile faded. "You proved that. Every assassin I threw, every trap I set, and every plan I made was all overcome by you… You just kept coming and now managed to defeat my new body despite the state your body was in….”
AFO paused as he clenched his fist. “Trying to face you head on even through other means isn't working…."
He reached into his coat, slowly and deliberately, and pulled out a small, dark object. It pulsed in his palm, black and purple, like a heartbeat. "I've decided to remove you instead."
Danger Sense went absolutely insane. A constant, shrieking alarm that made Izuku's vision blur at the edges.
"What is that?" Izuku asked as he took a careful stance.
"I'm not entirely sure myself…." AFO's hand closed around it before he continued. "It seems to be form of energy or substance possibly…. it's corruptive and unstable. I found it in the ruins of a research facility..." His voice dropped. "It cost me months of work and dozens of test subjects to understand even this much..."
The object began to glow. Black energy crept out from between his fingers, reaching toward the air in front of him like it was searching for something.
Izuku ran toward him. ‘If that thing is dangerous, the safest place is inside AFO's reach, where he can't use it without hurting himself!’ He thought as he ran faster, every fibre of his body screamed at him.
AFO's eyes widened for a second, realizing what what Izuku wanted to do. "Clever," he muttered. "But predictable."
He raised his other hand and activated Goop Warp. A hand appeared in front of Izuku, firing massive beam of compressed air, dark energy, and something that crackled like lightning, and it slammed into Izuku's chest before he could dodge.
"GUH—!" He flew toward the rift, arms flailing, trying to use float but it was difficult in his current state. So he tried another quirk.
Blackwhip shot out from his hand, desperately. Latching onto a chunk of debris. The tendril held—barely—and Izuku jerked to a stop, hanging inches from the rift's edge. The cold coming off it was unbearable, and sinks into his bones, making his teeth chatter.
"Persistent," AFO muttered. He walked toward Izuku—slowly. The rift flickered behind him, unstable. "But futile."
Izuku pulled on Blackwhip, trying to drag himself away. The tendril stretched, thinned, started to dissolve.
"No—NO—" Izuku panicked out.
AFO reached him. He looked down at him with his eyeless face. Raising his arm up towards Izuku's face.
"I'm sorry it had to come to this Yoichi…," he said. “WAIT ZEN, YOU DON'T HAVE TO–” Yoichi tried to speak but was cut off.
AFO fired a Air Cannon directly at Izuku's face.
"SHIT—!" Izuku fell backward into the rift.
Nearby, he heard Hawks scream "IZUKU!"—raw, desperate, nothing like his usual drawl. Mt. Lady's voice cracked: "NO—!" And Endeavour roared "DEKU!!" Louder than Izuku had heard in months, tearing at the edges in a way it never did—
And then the cold closed over him as he completely passed through it.
Everything was dark around him. He couldn't see anything or hear anything. He was just falling with no clear indication of when the ground would arrive.
His body twisted around, and he felt something creeping into his body, something strangely hot. It made him dizzy and a headache started forming.
Each fiber of being ached in pain as he started to struggle to hear and see.
‘W-whats ….ha ….happening…t-to…?’ Izuku barely managed to think. ‘W-where ….am I?’
‘This substance… this void… it's… cutting into… into your body and our connection…’ Kudo’s voice came through strained in a way that made Izuku’s chest seize, because Kudo was never strained. ‘The energy here… it’s something we’re struggling to fight against…’
Static washed over the link, and Banjo’s voice cut in, fractured and fading: ‘K-kid… just hold onto—’ then swallowed by noise.
Nana tried to say something, her tone desperate and fraying, and Izuku reached for her the way he’d been reaching for all of them every day for two years, but he kept finding less and less of her there. A broken groan clawed its way up his throat.
'What’s …happening… p-please…,' he pleaded. 'Please don't—'
Yoichi’s voice surfaced last, quiet and steady despite everything. ‘We’re still here. We’re not gone, Izuku. We’re just… on the other side of something that’s shut between us. Find your way back to us yourself, and we’ll find our way back to you… at least we hope so…’
Everything fell silent as Izuku fell. His body slowly started regaining it's functions again.
Then the void spat him out, and he was falling through open air with wind screaming past his ears.
He twisted, instincts overriding the panic, and tried to activate Float, but nothing happened. He reached again, pushing harder, and he felt a flicker somewhere deep in the quirk like a muscle severed from its nerve, and a frustrated growl ripped from his chest as the ground rushed up.
He crossed his arms in front of his face, braced himself, and hit the cracked concrete with a brutal impact that drove every scrap of air from his lungs, his body skipping off the street and slamming into the side of a car.
It took a bit for his vision to clear. He was lying face-down on cracked concrete, his ears ringing, his whole body screaming. He tried catching his breath but something in the air made it tough for him.
'Breathe…,' he told himself. 'Breathe, damn it!'
His lungs finally kicked in with a raw, scraping gasp. The air that came with it tasted strange.
He laid there still for a while, taking three more breathes.
His eyes opened slowly, blinking as the sun's light shined on him. Once adjusted he stared up at the sky above.
It was mostly clear, with some clouds scattered here and there. That didn't match up at all with what time was when he arrived at Haibori Wood's.
Izuku sits up, struggling as his body ached. 'W-What…happened..? Where…am I?’
He observed the surrounding area. It looked like a city block. But there were many abandoned cars, he could tell many were old based on the rust and flat tires.
'That thing All For One used…was a some sort of warp quirk?’ He contemplated to himself.
That didn't make sense, AFO wouldn't think simply warping him to another place would actually get rid of him.
‘What he used didn't feel a quirk either…he told me it was a form of energy. I even saw and felt it… That black energy seemed like a separate thing from him. Nothing he said about it looked like a lie…’ Izuku recalled everything All For One said.
He gazed up at the sky again. ‘If it's daytime here, then I could be in a different country…but there's no way All For One would risk using something he even felt was dangerous to him as well to send me to another country…’’
Izuku puts his hand on his chest, reaching inside himself. 'Yoichi? Nana ? Anyone?’ He called out to the vestiges.
No response came back. His teeth gritted. Closing his eyes he tried going into his inner world.
'Somethings wrong…I can't reach them..’ Everything in the vestige world of One For All was completely void. The vestiges thrones and the ground they always stood on was gone.
‘Where the hell is everyone!? What–' He cut himself mid-thought as a remembered what happened in the void.
‘Something went into my body….that energy…it did something…’ His fist tightened. ‘But why? If it warped me why did it affect my quirks and the vestiges!?’
He raised his hand up and tried to use his quirks. A flicker of green lightning appeared on his hand and sparked around it. The power was there but faint. He tried to draw more but he didn't feel any increase.
Moving to his other quirks, he tried Float again. It actually responded but barely took him off the piece of rock he stood on. And he dropped after a few seconds. He checked smokescreen but it barely produced a small fog.
Repeating a motion with his arm, he tried to build up kinetic energy. His arm didn't produce much energy at all. Something was there but so small it didn't amount to anything. And Gearshift didn't seem to work when he touched himself to try to use it. Blackwhip came out his wrist but the energy was thin and he could barely keep it formed.
He growled and shook. 'Everthing is here but weakened …they don't feel like they can even activate on time or stay active….’ Izuku looked up, and stared at the empty space of the vestige world.
His head leans down as he thought. His quirks were something he trained to manage at the levels they were before. And now they were extremely weakened…. The power built over generations was only a spark of what it used to be.
And those who helped build its power were no longer here with him…
Izuku remembered what Yoichi told him, they weren't gone…but he didn't know how he would find them either or where to start.
He didn't even get the chance to apologize for all he had said to them before throughout year. He couldn't do anything he wanted to do after his mission was over.
Tears starting dripping out his eyes, he tried to hold them back but they kept coming.
'I-I'm sorry…everyone…I..I—' The words could barely form. Despite how he treated them, and thought about what they often told him during the year. He found himself getting used their presence.
Each of them came before the war so he got some time with them, even if they could only appear and wanted to appear for a short time, usually in his sleep.
Being alone in his mind like this…wasn't something he ever wanted this way.
Izuku started sobbing, and his body kept on shaking more and more.
He let himself finally break, falling to his knees. A scream that came out his mouth was silent and ragged.
He didn't know how long he stayed there.
Then something pulled him back.
A spike of pain behind his head. Danger Sense gave a sharp feeling like usual.
Izuku's eyes snapped open. He was back in the real world, sitting on cracked concrete. 'Wha—?’ He was brought out of the inner vestige world.
'Danger Sense is still working?' The realization cut through his spiral. 'But why? Everything else is weakened… The vestiges are blocked. Why is this one still functional?'
He took a shallow breath through the respirator. The air still tasted weird and had a strange feeling in it.
And then he heard screaming from the distance. Making his head whip to that direction. 'There's people here…?'
His body immediately stood up without hesitation, he activated Full Cowling, and sprinted towards where he heard the screams were.
It didn't matter where he was, or that his Quirks were on their last legs. Screaming meant people needed help and he couldn't ignore that.
Izuku ran past various cars and he leaped over a few and turned a corner by a building.
He ran a few seconds further, until he saw something ahead.
His brain needed a moment to categorise what the hell he was looking at.
A tall black creature, with long arms ran fast after something. The body had clusters of jagged crystals growing from its shoulders and spine.
Looking ahead of it, there were three people being chased by it and the creature raised its spiked arm as it got closer to them.
'NO–!’ His arm came up fast and he immediately shot out a Blackwhip tendril.
The tendril came out weak, and pale compared to what he was used to, but it shot across the distance and wrapped around the creature's forearm and he immediately yanked on it.
The creature lurched sideways, and it's arm missed the people infront of it.
He ran towards them and then flipped over the creature, landing between it and the civilians.
His eyes widened as he saw it up close. It's head was split open and the interior of it was green. And a almost black hole looking orb was at its centre, with its edges having a weird glitchy affect.
The thing somehow roared at him, despite having no real face or mouth, then it went to strike him.
Izuku blocked it with his forearm and felt the crystalline edge scrape across his Mid-gauntlets.
Groaning he goes in to kick the thing in its chest, pushing it back far.
Losing most of One For All didn't remove all the strength, skill and experience he had built over the years.
The creature recovered from his hit and lunged back at him again, then tried to slash at him aggressively.
Izuku dodges its slashes, weaving each one easily. 'Its movements are predictable… it's just attacking wildly with no coordination,' he thought as he stepped to its side and winds up a punch and slams his fist into its side sending it flying into a car, making it tilt before slamming back down.
Before he could go attack it further, another one came around the side of a building—smaller, animal-shaped, moving with the same mindless aggression. 'There's more of these things!?’ He growled out.
He sidestepped the creature, and reached for its tail, grabbing it then pulled and spun around with it.
Using what little Fa Jin he had before he got here and what barely built up, he threw the creature into the first one which barely got up.
The impact sent both of them through the car and they crashed into a wall hard.
Izuku watched them, they didn't seem out just yet, they moved but were dazed.
‘They're tough…I might need to try something else.' His eye's analysed them while they still got their bearings.
They landed on that black orb in their centres. A small spark of Danger Sense went off a bit. The feeling they gave off felt familiar…like what that black energy.
The first creature managed to get to its feet and instantly ran towards him, roaring even louder than before.
'Still just mindlessly charging in.’ He grunted as he focused the small amount of One For All he could use into his left leg.
The creature came close about to strike at him again.
Izuku just moves out the way and leaps up a bit, throwing a kick up at its face. Landing in its centre and the hit shattered the surrounding area of its head.
It fell back onto the ground and stopped moving.
And then it came apart. The body broke into fragments that flickered. Each fragment was a small cube that dissolvee completely, and a trace of green light scattered and glitched as it disappeared.
Izuku stared at the empty space where it had been. 'Did… that thing just glitch away…?'
The animal creature roared as it was moving fast towards him.
He turned, and drove a elbow into the side of its equivalent of a skull, and shattered the orb inside.
It fell limp onto the ground and the same thing happened to it like the first after he hit its core.
His vision blurred for a second. He blinked, shaking his head and pushes past it.
Once everything seemed finished a cough scraped out his mouth.
Hunching over he hits his chest hard. ‘This air is getting difficult to handle…what exactly is it!?’
His chest was heaving.
'This place.... it's making less and less sense the more I'm here … these things are made of black crystals … and they give off the same feeling of that that black energy did… but they look humanoid and animal like…' He thought, clenching his fist as he narrowed his eyes.
‘Are these things mutated people and animals?…or are they made directly from the energy…?’ He pondered.
Izuku was starting to wonder if he was in some simulation, but everything felt too real and only those things had a digital effect.
But he wondered why this was never reported anywhere. He was sure world news would report about a city area being filled with a specific type of substance that mutated people or animals or made creatures similar to them.
‘All For One said he found this in a specific place, but this energy is in a area that isn't close to a facility as far as I can see. But this must be where it came from— but All For One didn't seem like he traveled to a different country to get it...’
He checked the world news often to see how the rest of the world was doing and reacting to Japan's current state, so there's no way he missed this.
'There's no time to ponder this. I gotta get these people out of here...' He twisted towards where he last saw the people who were running.
Further ahead, three people were hiding by the side of a car. A woman, a man and an older man.
They were all staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.
He has seen that look in their eyes before. 'Right…I don't look like anything they should be relieved about..’
A sighed escaped his nose as he started walking towards them.
Once he got close enough to them he pulled off his mask. Then unclipped his respirator and held it at his side. They had to show his face if he wants to have them see he didn't mean any harm.
Danger Sense went off, but it was smaller, like small blades kept stabbing the back his neck repeatedly. The sweetness at the back of his throat got stronger immediately without the respirator filtering it, and he swallowed against the scrape of it.
Whatever is in the air was starting to give off the same feeling as the black energy as well, but he forced his mind to focus on what's in front of him.
"Hello, I'm not going to hurt you…" he said in English, due to not being sure which language they understood but English was the most well known language. His accent was off a bit but the words were clear. "Are any of you hurt badly?”
Nobody answered for a moment, and just watched him. Seconds passed without much happening.
Then the woman spoke out first carefully, "...You're not a gang member?" She asked in English.
'Good, they do speak English but they think I'm a part of a gang?’ He thought. His costume and face didn't really look too well and many gang members he often saw didn't look too put together.
"No," he responded. “I heard screams and came to help." He looked at the man who stepped up to guard the woman. His expression read as conflicted and unsure.
"You saved us from those Ethereals…so I guess we can trust you." She said, and both men turned to look at her in surprise a bit.
'Huh? Ethereals? I haven't heard of that name before…Is she talking about those things I took down?’ He contemplated quickly before he replied back.
"Look, we don't have time. We should get out of here. This place is clearly a hazardous zone and I can't risk staying too long and you have a injury on your face ..," He said to all of them, then at the older man.
The old man let out a short breath. He was pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead, slowing the bleeding from the gash above his brow. "You're talking like a Public Security Officer instead of a Hollow Raider… I guess we can trust you..," His voice came out tired.
"I've seen worse. At least you're helpful." He looked at Izuksu. "Can you lead us out? We tried to get our things from our home. This Hollow appeared a week ago. H.I.A. were too busy with other requests and same with Hollow Raiders and proxies, but we couldn't risk our things getting corrupted, so we came ourselves… and things didn't go too well on our way back…."
Each term they mentioned, which he didn't recognize, rattled his brain.
"What… are you guys talking about?... I haven't heard anything you're saying…" Izuku said, sounding genuinely confused.
The three people were all bewildered by what Izuku said and the expression on his face. The man looked at the older man, then at Izuku. "You … don't know?" he said. "Where exactly are you from?"
Before Izuku could answer that, the sound of engines cut through the air from somewhere to the north. Then the crunch of tyres on debris, and voices giving sharp clipped orders.
"It's's PubSec!" The man said sounding relieved.
Two vehicles came around the corner—armoured, large, with the letters N.E.P.S. and PUBSEC in white on the sides. They both stopped and the doors immediately opened.
Officers in blue uniforms moved out fast with weapons by their side, which most didn't look like standard guns, and then a man in a slightly different uniform stepped forward and raised his hand.
"We received a distress call—" His eyes went to the civilians, assessed quickly. "Ma'am, sirs, are any of you injured?"
"We're okay," the woman said. "He helped us. He took down the Ethereals that were chasing us."
The captain's gaze shifted to Izuku. He observed Izuku carefully, scanning every inch of him, which made Izuku a bit worried.
"Sir," he said, "I need you to identify yourself, this is a condemned Hollow and unauthorized entry is a violation of New Eridu Public Security regulations. Are you a registered Proxy or licensed Hollow investigator?"
'New Eridu? Is he talking about a city? I've never heard of it….nor have I heard about a police force that was called Public Security…’ His mind tried to process everything.
Izuku looked at the officer, then at the civilians. The older man gave him a small, almost sympathetic look.
"I'm—" he immediately stopped himself, hearing what that officer just said. It made him start to question his own thoughts and wonder truly where he actually was.
'I can't explain myself… if I'm right.. trying to explain would only get me locked up... I can't… I can't let that happen..' He thought.
He didn't know what exactly these things the people and this officer said. But he knew the look on the captain's face. He was just an officer trying to do his job, but he couldn't let himself go with them, not when he had to first confirm something that really made his heart clench.
"Sir," the officer said firmly. "I need you to come with us peacefully. We can sort out the details at the station. If you've assisted these civilians, that will be take into account."
Izuku looked at him for a long moment. Then he said, quietly, "I'm sorry… I can't .."
Izuku quickly turned around and ran away from them.
"STOP!" The captain's voice was immediate. He turned around to look at them, some officers starting chasing him, while others stayed with the civilians. That him feel slightly relieved but he was still being pursued.
Danger Sense spiked, and he dropped his shoulder as multiple bullets clipped the top of his right shoulder guard.
He cut left, hitting a gap between two buildings, and kept moving. His legs felt heavier than they should. Like something was weighing him down from the inside.
He put his respirator back on his face on instinct. The air through it tasted worse now that he was sprinting, which made his throat burn and his head spin slightly. He could hear the officers behind him, footsteps and they were getting closer.
Blackwhip fired once, weakly, and he used it to pull himself around a corner and buy a few seconds. It dissolved before he could use it again. Float still wasn't working, so he was on his own legs in unfamiliar terrain.
He turned down a side street without really picking it and his lungs were starting to actually hurt, and swallowing felt like swallowing sandpaper, with him getting genuinely angry at how badly his body was handling this place when Danger Sense spiked again.
It was almost pulling him towards a direction. Ahead and slightly right, off the main road and toward an open plaza. The same kind of directional sense he used to get pointing him at a threat—but this wasn't a threat. It was more like an opening.
He cut right and ran faster.
A plaza was open and wide and had a cracked fountain in the middle that had been dry for a long time. His pursuers were closer behind him now. He could hear boots on concrete, getting clearer. He was running out of room.
Pivoting to a alleyway, he ran in but there a dead end, he was gonna run into. He immediately raised his arms and braced to possibly smash throughout it.
But he didn't hit anything at all and everything fell dark suddenly.
‘Wait, what !?’ He stumbles as he tried to stop himself.
Izuku scanned the area. It didn't look like anywhere he was before, and he turned around, looking at where he came from and his eyes widened.
Looking up, he couldn't help but be bewildered by what he was seeing.
A black looking barrier or field was where he just came from.
'D-did… I just come out of that!? But I was already outside…’ He couldn't wrap his head around this. Was he actually inside somewhere that looked like it was normal from the inside? Was it an illusion that was made by this barrier?
He tried to breathe. This was too much… but that made him realize something else. "The air… it's normal. It's far more breathable…’ He thought while taking careful breaths.
His body took in the fresh air, and he stayed crouched on the pavement for a moment, breathing carefully.
The sound of footsteps approaching from the black barrier interrupted him.
‘I gotta move from here first…’ He thought as he got up.
Using Blackwhip, he shot out two tendrils. The tendrils caught a ledge three floors up and he pulls on then to stretch them tendril. And then he sling shot himself up onto the rooftop of the building.
His body bounced off the roof until he came to a stop. Izuku laid there on his back, taking more breathes. The footsteps of the officers below echoed past the building.
They didn't see him. Good.
After listening to be sure they went further away. He sat up and balanced himself with his arms. His gaze spun behind him.
The dome sat there, roughly spherical. Overlapping buildings at the edges where it met the street level.
He sat with that for a moment. 'Am I…?’
Izuku glanced up at the sky and he found his eyes widening in horror.
Izuku had been looking at the night sky his whole life. When he was small and couldn't sleep, his mother would point at the moon through his bedroom window and say things about it watching over them. He had memorised the shapes of things, the way the stars were arranged in the sky over Musutafu.
So he knew that the moon was definitely not like what he was seeing now.
He stared at it for a long time, working out why. The stars around it weren't arranged like anything he knew. And there was a section of it ,a section that shouldn't have what's on it , that the Earth's shadow had no reason to cover at this phase or angle, but it was covered by a patch of absolute black with a violet glow bleeding around its edges.
It had the same black, violet and texture as the dome… as the Hollow.
'T-That's not the moon I know…' He thought in complete horror.
He sat there … shaking … he tried to think of an explanation that fit. Time travel didn't fit…the moon didn't look like this at any point in recorded history. A different country didn't fit; no matter which country you went to, it wouldn't look any different.. besides the moon isn't the only thing that didn't make sense…the stuff the people mentioned, what he saw, and that black dome….
“I'm in another world…” He spoke out quietly and painfully.
Dimensional transport wasn't supposed to be real, or possible… But here he was when he was supposed to be seeing how Japan will finally recover.
His hands move to his head and everything came down all at once. His mother, All Might, Uraraka, Iida, Todoroki and Bakugo, who he had kept away from himself for a year to protect, who he told himself he would see again as soon as this was over.
All the people he could have seen again after he killed Shigaraki and got home… ‘All For One…. he took me away before I could even see them all again…’
A growled escaped his mouth. 'Damn it…. DAMMIT!' He hit the roof of the building hard enough to crack it.
Izuku started screaming and crying. He punched the roof hard again, leaving a bigger dent and kept punching. He couldn't contain himself.
The vestiges were gone and his power was weakend. He didn't have the power he worked so hard to control or anyone to talk to or guide him.
He was alone and weak… It all seemed hopeless and that there was nothing he could do.
His hand stung under his glove. He hadn't noticed when he punched the roof.
'Stop…’ The word came from somewhere deep. From whatever was left after a year of running and a day of losing everything.
'You can't let myself lose here.. they wouldn't want me too….' The thought was the only thing that allowed him to keep himself from breaking down further.
Izuku wiped his face with the back of his hand. Wiping the tears and sweat. He forced himself to breath in deeply.
'I need to survive first. Figure out where I am. Figure out how this world works… I can't let everyone down by just falling apart…’
It was barely an idea. But it was something to hold onto while the rest of him was still falling apart.
Izuku catches his breath more, and his mind immediately went back to the three civilians. He looks at the black dome— the Hollow they called it.
'The officers will help them. They said they came for them anyway and some stayed behind with them…’
It didn't make him feel much better. He left them. But he couldn't just believe they wouldn't get out when they had help. For once he had to trust things were gonna be okay without him.
This made him think about home. All For One, the league, prison escapees and an army of villains were still out there. But even without him, the heroes stood a chance. Shigaraki was the biggest threat, and All For One seemed to be still pretty weak, or trying to figure out that energy costed him more than he planned.
It annoyed him that it took him being sent to another world to believe in everyone.
Everything will be finished and everyone will smile again…just without him. He hoped that everyone will be able to move on without him. His mother wasn't someone he ever wanted to see fall apart cause her son was gone from her forever…
Izuku shook his head. ‘I need to get off this roof, I can't stay here…’
Forcing himself up he tried to walk off to the fire escape of the building. And went down on it.
After getting to the ground he looked around and saw nothing, the officers didn't seem close by anymore.
‘I should probably find a place to sleep.’ He thought as he ran.
He didn't want to go too far, if these officers worked one's at home, they would assume he went far so he should hide out close by.
His scanned around the area and they landed on a apartment building. He immediate runs to it.
Once there he stops running, then carefully makes his way up the stairs until getting to the second floor.
He passed by some doors through a hallway and stopped at the door in the middle. Checking it he twists the knob and it opens, and he pushes inside.
Looking around he saw it was mostly empty with just a desk at the corner. It wasn't much but it's better than sleeping on a roof.
He made his way to the desk put his yellow backpack down onto it. It's something he almost forgot he had with him.
He carefully took off his respirator, cape, irons soles, Mid-gauntlets and gloves. Putting them all down by a wall and then he laid down onto the floor and turned over.
His body immediately started shutting down. His adrenaline was wearing off and whatever else was pushing him stopped. Vision blurred as his eyes closed and his body relaxed.
Everything fell silent, except for his breathing that echoed throughout the room.