….
The screen replayed the absurd, lightning fast traversal combo:
Class 1-A bypassing the police barricade, Shoto erecting a massive frozen ski ramp, and Katsuki Bakugo using an explosive stun blast to catapult Midoriya straight into the sky.
Spinner's jaw dropped. "Wait... did those high school brats just slingshot a kid over a blockade?"
Twice blinked, his mask scrunching up. "That was the coolest thing I have ever seen!"
In the shadowed corner of the room, Chizome Akaguro, Stain, leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.
His notched katanas rested silently at his hip, and his eyes were locked firmly on the monitor.
He watched Bakugo, who during his internship had been nothing more than an arrogant, screaming volcano tossing around empty threats of murder, grit his teeth, swallow his pride, and execute a flawless point blank blast to propel his rival forward, while Shoto Todoroki laid down an ice path and Midoriya launched himself towards probably the most dangerous place in this earth currently.
Even he would have had second thoughts to ever commit such an act.
By the way, he wasn't talking about All For One.
"Puffff…"
A faint rasp escaped Stain's throat.
'Putting your own body on the line... discarding glory and status... just to build a path for your comrade's reach.' Stain thought, his gaze lingering on Bakugo's determined face in the broadcast.
The explosive brat would never admit it out loud, but the venom was gone. In its place was the steel of a true warrior.
"The boy actually grew up." Stain murmured, genuinely impressed. "Dabi... your students might not be complete fakes after all."
His mind briefly returned to something Dabi had said during the Sports Festival, back when Stain had dismissed the boy as nothing more than another product of the Hero system.
-He has the drive, and the heart comes later. Trust me-
Stain wondered if Dabi had been right.
….
The ozone dense air hanging over the broken basin carried a tang as the debris began to settle.
Dabi remained firmly anchored in the cracked dirt with the shimmering draconic scales along his neck and forearms.
Hovering several meters above the frosted earth within a golden, weightless aura, Midoriya carefully drifted downward until he touched the broken icy bedrock.
His breath hitched, adrenaline still surging through his veins.
Dabi still didn't turn around.
He flicked a stray piece of charred rock off his knuckles, his eyes locked onto the silhouette of Tomura Shigaraki across the crater.
"So?" Dabi questioned–
"Care to explain what the hell kind of stroll you're taking in the middle of a disaster zone, brat?"
?!Midoriya flinched; still trying to adjust to the immense cold around him.
Dabi didn't actually need an answer.
He had seen this exact expression on the kid's face at Dagobah Beach, during the USJ aftermath, and at the Kiyashi Ward shopping mall.
Midoriya was physically incapable of walking away when he sensed someone was suffering in front of him.
"Sensei..." He began, his fists clenching as emerald sparks flickered between his fingers. "I don't know how, but when All For One revealed the truth about Shigaraki to All Might earlier, I could hear everything. He was just another victim..."
"He is a mass murderer who tried to kill your entire class at the USJ." Dabi stated flatly, his tone stripped of warmth. "Victim or not, that vessel is currently loaded with enough decay to turn Tokyo into dust."
"I know that!" Midoriya shouted, stepping forward despite the blistering heat rolling off Dabi's scales–
"I know what he has done, but All For One created this whole tragedy. He stole Tenko's Quirk, gave him Decay, and pushed him into destroying his own family! If we burn that body now, then All For One wins. We're proving that Tenko was never worth saving!"
"Sensei, please, listen!" Midoriya pressed. "All For One hasn't completely taken over his body yet! He only managed to take control because Tenko's mind was already breaking under everything he had been through!"
Dabi's slit-pupiled eyes remained locked on the crater, tracking the shifting debris as his draconic senses mapped the heat.
Midoriya tried to explain in a rapid rush. "The moment the host fights back from inside, All For One's control will weaken! I can't touch him without risking Decay or breaking your containment field, and if I hit him, his body will just react on instinct.
"But I don't need to touch him! I can use Float to get over the hazard line, avoid the debris, and reach Tenko with my voice before All For One can lock him out completely!"
Dabi stood silent for a long moment, slowly exhaling a thin trail of blue smoke.
"You're an absolute idiot." He said, though the venom in his voice was gone, replaced by the grim realisation of an instructor who knew his student wouldn't budge–
"And your little theory has about a two percent survival rate."
Across the basin, All For One forced Shigaraki's mangled body upright.
Jagged crimson and black electricity arced wildly across his skin as he prepared to unleash an omnidirectional wave of disintegration.
"You get one opening, Izuku."
Dabi growled, blue fire and absolute-zero frost igniting simultaneously across his fists as he settled into a forward lunge–
"I will pin down his limbs and freeze his decay. The second the line clears, you get in his face, use that floating trick, and scream whatever nonsense you need into his skull."
Dabi's golden eyes flared as he drove his boots into the bedrock, detonating a sonic boom through the ice.
"Don't make me clean up your corpse."
….
BOOOM!
The bedrock beneath Dabi's boots didn't merely crack, it atomized beneath the force of his power.
He breached the sound barrier in zero frames, leaving a vacuum cone of swirling frost and steam where he had stood milliseconds prior.
All For One barely registered the shift before the entire front of his vision was swallowed by a wall of sapphire plasma.
Driven by sheer survival instinct, the demon force slammed both hands into the earth, discharging a massive dome of jagged black Decay vectors in a complete three hundred and sixty degree hemisphere.
"Die, you wretched pest!" All For One snarled.
Dabi didn't alter his trajectory.
Extending his left arm, he released an instantaneous tide of frost.
The sub-atomic cold collided head on with the expanding [Decay] wave.
The disintegration reaction never had a chance to spread as the Quirk's range was flash frozen midair, trapping the black fractal blades inside dense crystalline glaciers.
Before the parasite could sever the connection, Dabi closed the final five meters.
His right hand ignited into a blinding, white-hot pillar of concentrated flame, slamming directly into Shigaraki's center of mass.
The impact bypassed the outer skin and sent a concussive shockwave through the host's skeletal structure, pinning Shigaraki flat against the crushed wall of the basin.
Simultaneously, jagged ice scales surged over Dabi's left forearm, embedding into the rock to form a vice that clamped down on both of Shigaraki's wrists, neutralizing every physical vector of [Decay].
"Now, brat!" Dabi's guttural rumble tore through the steam.
Directly above the crater, the golden aura around Midoriya flared with brilliant intensity. Utilizing [Float], he dove down and stopped precisely three meters above the platform.
He didn't throw a punch or engage in combat, instead locking his glowing emerald eyes directly onto the bloodshot pupils of the hijacked boy.
Midoriya drew air deep into his lungs, and through the primal resonance bridging One For All and the stolen Quirk factors, he forced his voice to shatter the silence:
"TENKO SHIMURA! WAKE UP!"
All For One sneered within the vessel, his voice vibrating with aristocratic spite. "Futile! This child gave his will to me long ago! His hatred belongs to–"
Midoriya shouted, cutting straight through the demon's cadence with conviction.
"That's not true! Tenko is still in there, and I know he can hear me! You don't get to decide what he feels or who he becomes! Tenko, you fought your way this far, so fight him again! You don't have to carry everything he made you into anymore!"
The words struck the foundation of the host like a sledgehammer.
….
When Midoriya pushed his consciousness through the resonance of One For All, the physical world of Kamino Ward dissolved instantly.
The deafening presence of Dabi, the monstrous appearance of All For One, and the adrenaline he was feeling were replaced by a pitch-black silence.
Midoriya found himself standing in a vast, dark expanse.
The ground rippled like shallow, murky water under his boots, reflecting nothing.
And there, at the center of the darkness, sat a small child.
It was–
Tenko Shimura.
…and the boy was curled tightly into a ball, his knees pulled up to his chest, drowning in the crushing weight of his past actions.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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A Small Recommendation
Hey everyone!
I wanted to take a moment to recommend another MHA fanfiction to you guys.
My friend OrgoWriters has recently released:
🔥 MHA: I Became Endeavor, Now I'll Fix Everything
If you're an MHA fan, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. It's a different take on Endeavor, with a redemption-focused story and some interesting ideas about how things could have turned out differently.
I've seen some of what he's planning for the story, and honestly, I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes it. 😂
So if you're looking for another MHA fic to read, go give it a shot and show him some support!
And yes, before anyone asks — I'm still here working on MHA: Blue Sun. 😂
— WrightBrothers
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
Author Note:
Visit Patreon to instantly access +1 chapter for free, available for Free Members as well. For additional content please do support me and gain access to +12 more chapters.
-->[email protected]/WrightBrothers