Hope y'all like this chapter. It's a little longer than normal.
Chapter 59: Cost Of Victory
The attack got close then dissipated harmlessly into the air.
Cid stopped his fall then reoriented himself so he was right side up. He stood there and clutched his ribs and the hole in his side and hissed in pain. Then his eyes snapped to All For One and glared at him in annoyance.
"Oh, don't blame me for this, boy. This is entirely your fault. I offered you a place at my side." He drifted closer, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world. "The youth need to be taught that actions always invite a reaction. You declined my offer. So now I have to kill you. It is as simple as that." he said in a casual tone as if he was teaching a child.
Cid backed off without answering, putting air between them.
Suddenly Shigaraki came in from behind, his hand already stretched out trying to touch him. Cid didn't even look at him, he just casually flicked a red orb that slammed into Shigaraki's chest hard enough to send him flying and fold him, knocking the wind out of him. Cid's eyes never left All For One now refusing to let the man leave his line of sight.
The three of them settled in the air over the burning trees. All For One in front. Shigaraki behind him, still catching his breath, Cid stood in the middle with blood running down his side as his breathing got rougher by the second.
Cid made a much larger red and sent it at All For One, shrinking the trees he'd already shrunk down even smaller. The orb pulled all of them toward itself, then once they had enough speed they returned back to full size mid-flight. Becoming a barrage that tried to spear him.
All For One didn't bother moving out of the way of the trees. He raised his hand and quirks layered over each other, then blasted them tearing the wood apart as it reached him. Then he casually side stepped the red orb like it was a nuisance instead of an attack.
"Is that it?" he asked. "Using your quirk to hurl toothpicks at me?" A quiet, disappointed sound left him. "I'm not impressed."
All For One watched him for a moment, then looked like he decided on something.
"Let's see if you can do better with some….. incentive." he looked to the Nomu that were still on the ground scattered below them.
"Find every student you can," All For One said. "Kill any you come across, do not stop."
The Nomu scattered in every direction instead of coming at Cid, they were now trying to hunt.
Cid didn't Wait. He started killing them as fast as he could in rapid succession. He didn't drop in to fight them at close range. Only blinking around when he needed to, he looked from one to the next and crushed their heads in passing, spatial pressure. One. Then another. Then three more. Then five. As he kept going they scattered further and further through the forest
All For One and Shigaraki started taking shots at him throughout the whole process trying to probe for weaknesses. Air cannons, Bone Spikes, rivet stabs and a long list of different quirks were shot at him. They weren't trying to overpower his defenses so much as test them, waiting to see if it thinned when his attention was on something else.
Cid didn't give them the chance to find out. Taking the hits would have been simpler. But dodging costs him less and gives them less information to work with.
His breathing got rougher the longer he kept this up and the broken ribs certainly weren't helping either. The edges of his vision started to slightly gray ever so slightly, bringing attention back to the hole in his side, still steadily bleeding. He could have fixed it easily, he thought about it then discarded the idea.
He knew doing that meant taking too much focus off Infinity. This made him realize that's exactly what they were doing already.
'They're waiting me out. Trying to bleed me out like an animal they are hunting. Then strike when I'm weak to defend.' he thought annoyed that he hadn't caught on earlier.
'This also means I'm trapped here too. If I run, they would go after the others just to spite me. If I stop to fix myself, they take the opening. If I keep this up, I'll bleed out in minutes and they win anyway.'
Cid killed one more Nomu, then stopped chasing the rest.
'Yui is right, the others can handle the rest, they're stronger than I give them credit for, just like she said. But this can't go on. I have to do something to end this soon.'
All For One noticed the change as soon as Cid stopped moving.
'The boy's breathing is still rough, but his eyes are sharper and he's thinking clearer again. He caught up to the shape of the fight.'
'That wouldn't do.'
"You know," All For One said, pleasant as ever, "I have been meaning to ask. That night your parents died. Do you actually remember it, or did they only leave you with a version they wanted you to keep and scrub the rest?"
Cid didn't answer, but the frowning of his brows slightly gave away he was confused on what he was talking about.
"It was my fight with All Might, you know. Not some random villain the Symbol of Peace happened to get pulled into." He let the words sit there, to stew. "He was so determined to kill me that night that he got reckless, so single-minded to kill me that he stopped focusing on what he was causing. The kind of rage that does not stop to think what his actions could do to those down below."
He watched Cid's face the whole time, hoping for the flinch.
"The best part is I don't even have to twist the truth. This is just a simple fact, that all those deaths and all that destruction could have been avoided if he just let me walk away." he said, his voice filled with mock pity.
Cid's glare had gone colder, but he hadn't taken the bait the way All For One wanted, he needed something more.
Then an idea came to him, he smiled under the mask and kept going.
"What happens, I wonder, when it happens again? When the next person caught in it isn't some random easily forgotten civilian." A small pause, like he was searching for the name. "What if it's, Hmm. What was her name again… ah. Yui Kodai, was it?"
The air between them went still, as he noticed the first real reaction out of Cid all night, when his jaw clenched hard enough to see the veins in his neck.
"It would be such a shame if something happened to her wouldn't you agree."
Cid's eyes locked on him, now glaring a hole into him. If the boy's quirk could affect him, All For One was sure he'd be dust by now.
Then Cid let out a long breath, his look shifting to something far colder and more dangerous.
"So you're saying that as long as you're alive, there's a chance of that." His voice came out flat. "Well. I have a solution to that."
A red sphere formed over his open palm. A blue one followed, hovering apart from each other.
As the two spheres hovered over his open palm, he brought them closer, close enough that the air between them warped visibly sparking with purple lightning. He'd never done this before, he'd only ever seen it work in an anime, and that was fiction. There was no telling what would really happen. The science behind it was sound, but in reality it was something he had no business trying while he was in this kind of state.
He forced them together anyway, he didn't have another way to deal with these 2 so it was either die trying or die to them after they took his quirk.
The spheres fought him. The red wanted to push everything away. The blue wanted to drag everything in. For a second they refused to occupy the same space, sparking and shuddering over his hand like they were going to tear him apart first.
Then they collapsed into each other.
The color changed to a bright shining purple point of light that had purple lightning racing around it.
All for one's body language became guarded as he observed Cid and the readings of whatever the boy held in his hand. He didn't like this one bit, every instinct screamed danger.
Before he could think of a plan, Cid vanished.
He appeared right behind All For One, with Shigaraki lined up past him. He didn't wait to see if the thing in his hand would hold. He aimed for center mass and released it.
The beam launched forward at staggering speed.
All For One managed to move to the side slightly.
(BTW apparently this potato head can dodge things from mach 10 to 100, very inconsistent range)
Even surprised, he got his head and heart out of the way. The rest of him was not that lucky. A massive portion of his torso simply ceased to exist, carved out in a ragged absence that left him hanging in the air for a split second like the attack had taken the idea of gravity with it.
That was the good news, bad news? It just didn't stay contained going forward.
The purple beam expanded backward slightly as it grew, enough for purple lightning to arc off the edges of it and rip across Cid's face and body.
Shigaraki only caught part of the beam as Cid's aim had been slightly off due to the blood loss. A portal ripped open around him before it could finish the job and Kurogiri pulled him through.
The beam continued on piercing 4 mountains, making a perfect circle through each before dissipating into thin air.
As soon as it ended they both started falling.
Cid hit the ground hard, drawing an even sharper wave of agony from him
For a few seconds he couldn't move, couldn't think, the pain was worse than anything he'd experienced in his life. When he opened his eyes his vision was cut in half, dirt was in his mouth, his ears were ringing and every breath sent a new wave of pain through him.
Still, he tried to get up by pushing with his right arm only to meet no resistance. He turned his head to find nothing there, where his arm should have been.
There was no reason left in him, no time to worry about what he lost or what he felt. He had one single mission fuelled by will, spite and the need to end this before the man on the ground could ever get near Yui. His remaining hand dug into the dirt. He got his knees under him. Fell. Then got them under him again.
He started dragging what was left of himself forward, moving like the only thought he still had was to end that man.
He made it only a short distance. Then his body gave out and he collapsed, just a few feet short of the unconscious and half dead All For One.