….
The fluctuations of battle finally seemed to calm down in the shattered basin of Kamino Ward.
All For One was beyond standing on his last leg.
He was utterly broken, his spine splintered by the full force of All Might's strikes, his boosters burned to cinders, and his face was reduced to jagged, bloodied shards grinding into his flesh.
In this timeline, there was no secret vial of the "Rewind" drug in his pocket.
He had never gotten his hands on Eri's Quirk-reversing cells.
Every single attempt to secure that volatile contingency had been dismantled by one person:
Dabi.
First, Dabi had hijacked the Kai Chisaki medical transport before the League could touch Overhaul.
Then, when Nine's squad was deployed as a secondary retrieval unit, Mirko had crashed through them, tearing the unit apart before they could secure the asset.
Standing in the crater, wheezing through a throat choked with black blood, All For One's sightless, scarred face twitched toward the high ice wall.
A cold, venomous realization settled into the old tyrant's mind.
For over a century, All For One had viewed humanity as mindless chess pieces on his personal board.
Yet every single time he had tried to move a piece in this war, Dabi had already flipped the square.
'You...'
All For One thought, his blood running cold with hatred that eclipsed even his obsession with Shigaraki–
'It was you at every turn... Dabi...'
He knew this body was finished and would draw its final breath here in the dirt of Kamino.
He could no longer shatter All Might's spirit.
But All For One still had one final card to play.
The ultimate secret that would dismantle the last pillar of sanity holding Tomura Shigaraki together.
"HAHAHAAA…!"
Draining the very last embers of his life force, All For One forced a wet laugh from his crushed chest.
His voice, amplified through a stolen broadcast Quirk, echoed across the entire battlefield and carried straight into the live media choppers hovering above.
"Toshinori... you think you've won...?"
All For One wheezed, a grotesque, bloody grin splitting his pale face as he stared blindly up at the sky–
"And Tomura... my precious, broken masterpiece... listening up there on your throne of rot..."
High on his isolated mound, Shigaraki's thumbless hands twitched, his red eyes narrowing as he paused his continuous clash against Dabi's ice.
"Did you really believe you were born with a curse, Tomura?!"
All For One cackled, the sound like dry glass grinding together–
"Did you really think the universe just happened to produce a child whose natural Quirk rots everything he touches?! You spent your entire life drowning in guilt... believing you murdered your mother, your sister, your family because your body was inherently flawed!"
Shigaraki went completely motionless, his breath catching in his throat.
"It was me, Tomura!"
All For One roared with sadistic delight, blood spraying from his lips–
"I stole a mutated destruction factor from a dead line! I modified it in Dr. Garaki's lab, stripped away your original Quirk, and implanted Decay directly into your seven year old body! I gave you the hands that rotted your family! I manufactured every drop of your tragedy! I built the monster that stands here today!"
High on the ice, Dabi's jaw tightened, his glowing eyes darkening into cold embers.
Obviously, he already knew the truth, but he had deliberately withheld the finer details, forcing All Might to connect the dots himself.
It was Shigaraki he was concerned about.
"Damn old parasite..."
Dabi cursed under, his knuckles whitening as he kept his sub-zero ice locked around the perimeter.
For Tomura Shigaraki, those words didn't simply strike home.
They killed the person he thought he was.
Up until this exact second, Shigaraki had fought Dabi in a state of awakened focus.
He had come to accept that he and Dabi were two sides of the same coin: victims of a broken hero society.
He had accepted that he was the Symbol of Destruction, driven by a pure desire to turn the world to ash.
Even if he claimed he didn't care about All For One anymore, in the deepest, darkest corner of his soul, Tenko Shimura had always carried the crushing weight of guilt.
Believing that his own tragic existence was ultimately his fault.
And now... he was being told that even his guilt was a manufactured lie.
The world hadn't just stood by and watched him rot.
The devil himself had written the script, handed him the knife, and pushed his childhood hands onto his family's faces.
Instead of relief or vindication, his mind simply shattered.
The psychological overload broke every remaining circuit of his sanity.
The realization that his entire identity, his trauma, and his absolute hatred were nothing more than a puppet show created by All For One drove him into a state of madness.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
Shigaraki let out an inhuman shriek that split the sky.
His [Decay] Quirk, already evolving, detonated outward in a berserk, mindless wave.
Black, fractal disintegration spread wildly through the ice spires, abandoning the sharp precision he had displayed against Dabi in favor of a chaotic storm of directionless destruction.
Yet, as terrifying as this berserker state appeared to the media choppers watching from above, for Dabi, it actually made the fight dramatically easier.
Until then, Shigaraki had fought carefully, judging momentum, reading Dabi's stance, and searching for the smallest opening in his [Frostfire] defenses.
Now, he was just a rabid, mindless beast charging blindly forward on raw instinct.
"Mindless trash..."
Dabi said coldly, white frost misting from his lips.
With an flick of his right wrist, Dabi raised a dense, curved wall of absolute-zero ice directly in the path of the oncoming storm.
Shigaraki slammed face-first into the sub-zero barrier.
His decaying hands rotted the front layer of frost, but because he was charging recklessly without a mind or strategy, Dabi simply layered more frost directly over his thrashing limbs, instantly trapping the manic boy in a glacial block once again.
….
Meanwhile, outside the main police barricades–
The staging area was dead quiet, swallowed by tension.
Endeavor sat motionless on the rear bumper of an emergency transport vehicle.
Thick white bandages were wrapped tightly around his chest and back, where dark blood continued to seep through the fabric.
His eyes, stripped of their usual fierce, burning glare, stared lifelessly at the cold asphalt beneath his boots as shallow breaths escaped his lips.
He looked like a living corpse: a hollow husk of a man who had lost his Quirk, his lifelong obsession, and his identity in a single split second.
Around him, the triage team worked in silent panic.
Recovery Girl had already assessed the situation, her expression grim as she tended to Gran Torino nearby.
Per strict orders from the Pro Heroes and the police command unit, the students who had breached the inner ring were forced to retreat behind the secondary barricades alongside the fleeing civilian crowds.
The moment Midoriya, Bakugo, and Shoto crossed the secondary perimeter, the rest of Class 1-A, who had been kept behind the barricades from the beginning, immediately rushed toward them.
Tokoyami, Yaoyorozu, Jirou, and Kaminari were already waiting at the front of the line, having been stationed at the command hub to coordinate regional communications.
Rushing in from the evacuation flanks were Uraraka, Iida, Kirishima, Mina, Tsuyu, and Sero, their faces pale with concern.
"Deku!" Uraraka called out, her voice trembling as she ran alongside Iida and Kirishima. "Are you guys okay?! What's happening inside?!"
"Todoroki! Bakugo!" Iida shouted, his engines idling anxiously. "We saw the news feed! Endeavor's flames... is it true?!"
"Where's Dabi sensei?!" Kaminari added frantically, pointing toward the colossal ice walls.
Midoriya didn't answer a single question; in fact, he didn't seem to hear them at all.
To the rest of Class 1-A, the news reporters, and the police force, the conversation taking place inside the basin between All For One, All Might, and Dabi was completely inaudible.
The massive, hundred-foot ice barriers erected by Dabi blocked all sound waves, and no media helicopter possessed a microphone sensitive enough to pick up the chattings.
And yet, Midoriya was experiencing something horrifyingly abnormal.
Inside his chest, the presence of One For All was something he never felt.
It was thrashing and resonating.
Because One For All was originally birthed directly from All For One's Quirk factor, the two powers shared an immutable, metaphysical link.
More importantly, the vestige of Nana Shimura resided inside Midoriya's soul.
The moment All For One revealed that Tomura Shigaraki was Tenko Shimura, Nana's biological grandson, and that his [Decay] Quirk had been artificially implanted after his original Quirk was stolen, Nana's vestige within One For All suffered an emotional collapse.
Her weeping, grief-stricken scream echoed violently through the vestige realm, transmitting the revelation directly into Midoriya's conscious mind.
Midoriya stood rooted to the pavement on his two feet, cold sweat pouring down his forehead as his vision blurred.
His mind went entirely blank.
The full weight of the revelation, and the tragic nightmare inflicted upon his mentor's teacher and her innocent grandson, struck his soul like a shockwave.
His eyes slowly teared up, tears spilling over his lashes and running down his freckled cheeks as he stared blindly into the distance.
Uraraka stopped dead in her tracks, her hand hovering in the air. "D-Deku...? Why are you crying...?"
Jirou flinched. "Midoriya... what's wrong with you?"
Bakugo and Shoto's eyes snapped straight to Midoriya.
A cold spike of goosebumps broke out across Bakugo's arms, his instinctual alarm bells ringing at absolute maximum.
They had seen that same terrifying look before, in the hospital after the battle in the Osaka region, moments before Midoriya's Quirks had spiraled out of control and manifested [Blackwhip].
"Hey! Deku!"
Bakugo barked loudly, stepping up instantly and grabbing Midoriya by the front of his hero costume, shaking him hard–
"Snap the hell out of it! This isn't the damn time or place for you to lose your mind!"
.
….
[To be continued…]
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