….
In the hospital room of Musutafu.
On the edge of the bed sat Rei Todoroki, and her hands tightly clutching a pale blanket over her lap.
Flanking her on either side were Fuyumi and Natsuo, both standing completely frozen, their eyes glued to the live broadcast.
"Toya..." Fuyumi's tears welling up and spilling down her cheeks as she watched the screen.
Natsuo leaned forward, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the metal bedrail.
He remembered the screaming, the flames of their childhood, and the father who had discarded his eldest brother because his body couldn't handle his Quirk.
He remembered the funeral they had held over an empty casket, mourning a boy who was supposed to be dead and gone.
Yet there he was.
On the screen, Toya wasn't burning to death or appearing as the broken child who had burned on Sekoto Peak.
He stood tall, cloaked in draconic scales, commanding both their mother's freezing frost and the hottest flames.
"...Is he really this powerful?"
Natsuo murmured, a raspy, disbelieving laugh catching in his throat as a tear traced his jaw.
For a second, he was back at that family dinner, the glass he had thrown in anger still fresh in his mind, and the terrifying realization settled over him that Toya really could turn that entire house into dust in mere seconds.
"He got Mom's ice and that fire that nearly killed him… and he mastered both of them better than the old man ever could."
Rei slowly reached up, placing a trembling, gentle hand over the image of the blue light on the glass screen.
Her pale eyes, once so clouded with grief and trauma, were wide and clear, reflecting the radiant sapphire sun her eldest son had ignited in the sky.
"It's so warm..."
Rei whispered softly, a fragile, tender smile finally breaking through years of sorrow–
"Toya... You are not burning anymore."
….
[Back To Battle]
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The collision tore a soundless vacuum straight through the heart of the district.
The colossal sphere of [Absolute Apocalypse] met the thirty meter fractal tsunami of unchained [Decay].
The sheer magnitude of Tenko Shimura's final strike was apocalyptic.
Driven by the entirety of his burning soul, his grief, and his dying life force, the [Decay] wave possessed enough rot to disintegrate the entire structural base of Kamino Ward and reduce several surrounding prefectures to fine particulate dust.
It surged forward like an obsidian leviathan, devouring thousands of tons of reinforced concrete, severing deep underground transit lines, and dissolving solid granite into cascading ash.
Even the colossal, multi-story ice fortifications that Dabi had erected across the perimeter were instantly caught in the cataclysm.
The moment the black rot brushed against the towering glaciers, the massive ice turned black, rotted away at the atomic level, and was completely pulverized into fine ash in a fraction of a second.
For a microsecond at ground zero, the universe seemed to stall.
Then, the sub atomic absolute zero on the outer shell of Dabi's paradox flash froze the expanding black vectors.
The disintegration was stopped mid expansion, its fractal blades locked inside crystalline sheets of blue glass.
A heartbeat later, the compressed stellar plasma detonated from within.
CRACK-SHATTER–!
VROOOOM!
The blinding azure and white shockwave vaporized the frozen decay vectors into harmless mist, vitrifying the basin floor into glowing, molten slag.
A towering pillar of blinding sapphire light shot straight into the clouds, punching a clean hole through the sky and banishing the darkness for miles in every direction.
When the blinding glare finally faded and the boiling smoke parted, the absolute destruction of the battlefield was laid bare.
The basin had been transformed into a surreal, alien landscape of smooth, scorched glass and steaming frost.
Where skyscrapers and multi-layered roads once stood, there was now only an immense, bowl-shaped crater stretching across multiple city blocks.
At the dead center of the crater lay…
Tomura Shigaraki.
His Quirk was completely burned out.
His pale hair was singed dark with soot, his body limp, scarred, and bruised, but his chest still faintly rose and fell in a fragile rhythm.
Twenty meters away stood Dabi.
Sssssssss–
The brilliant dragon scales along his face, neck, and forearms began to peel away in shimmering azure wisps, melting back into his skin.
The [Dragon Force] also came to an end.
A tremor ran through his limbs as his lungs burned from the sheer volume of oxygen consumed through [Total Concentration].
He rolled his neck with a dull click.
"Hmph." Dabi spitted a thin trail of blood. "Barely kept the promise made to the Green haired bart."
In the center of the vitreous, steaming basin, the last embers of violence flickered out into cold silence.
Tomura Shigaraki, Tenko Shimura, lay flat on his back upon the scorched glass.
His body was completely ruined.
Every single drop of life force, stamina, and cellular vitality had been incinerated in that final attempt to tear down the world.
His skin, once scarred and cracked, was now a pale, chalky white, completely drained of blood and warmth.
The Quirk factors inside his genetics had overridden under the astronomical backlash.
Having no vital energy left to sustain its own activation, the residual [Decay] began to turn inward upon its host.
Small, brittle fractures webbed across his torso.
Slowly, the dry, pale flesh of his chest and ribs began to break down into fine, gray particulates, drifting away into the night air like disintegrating ash.
There was no agony left in his nerves.
The pain had long since burned away, leaving only numbness.
….weakly, Tenko rolled his head to the side.
His cloudy ruby eyes drifted upward, catching the silhouette of Dabi standing twenty meters away.
Then, Tenko's gaze climbed higher… past the edge of the crater, past the shattered horizon, and into the open sky.
The heavy, suffocating smoke, the storm clouds, and the toxic smog that had smothered Kamino Ward for hours were gone.
The unimaginable, dual elemental shockwave of [Absolute Apocalypse] had literally punched a colossal rift straight through the atmosphere, tearing the heavens wide open.
Above him hung a sky of crystal-clear indigo.
The early sun shone down slowly consuming the endless ocean of dark sky, the moon, and diamond-bright stars.
'...were the moon and the stars... always supposed to look this beautiful?'
Tenko thought, the fading spark of his consciousness trembling in childlike wonder.
All his life, the sky had been nothing more than the roof of an alleyway, the ceiling of a dark bar, or a canvas obscured by red blood and black dust.
He had spent fifteen years staring at the ground, drowning in the phantom hands around his neck.
He had never once stopped to look up.
As the ash crept further across his chest, Tenko shifted his fading eyes back to Dabi one last time.
His dry, blackened lips parted, trembling as he tried to force out a single, dying whisper:
'...Take... care of... Toga...'
No sound escaped his ruined throat as the words never formed.
Yet, as Tenko's eyes began to glaze over, he knew it didn't matter.
The Hero standing in front of him wasn't a righteous hypocrite who weighed lives on a scale.
He was a bastard who fought in the gutters and protected his family with his life.
Dabi had already taken the little blonde girl in.
He would protect her, give her a home, and feed her without ever needing a dying villain's permission.
Tenko's eyes gently closed.
With a final exhale, the last traces of his fractured soul drifted peacefully into the clear early morning sun.
….
Up on the high ridge outside the blast zone, Izuku Midoriya pushed himself to his feet.
"DEKU!"
Uraraka's desperate cry cut through the sirens.
She, Todoroki, Iida, Kirishima, and Yaoyorozu broke through the police perimeter, sprinting toward the edge of the ridge.
"Midoriya! Are you injured?!"
"I am fine... I am okay, guys."
Midoriya panted, wiping sweat and ash from his eyes, his gaze never leaving the bottom of the basin–
"But just what in the world did Sensei do?"
Shoto Todoroki stopped at the precipice.
His heterochromatic eyes swept over the glassy, frozen crater floor, and then locked onto the solitary figure of his older brother standing tall amidst the ruins.
Shoto's hands slowly relaxed.
For the first time in years, the crushing weight of the Todoroki name felt entirely absent from the fire burning in his chest.
A few paces behind them, Katsuki Bakugo walked up to the edge.
Bakugo didn't scream, as he simply clicked his tongue, shoving both hands into his pockets with a grudging grunt.
'I've said this so many damn times, but…
'Damn you, show-off'
Behind him, Izuku Midoriya stood still.
Watching the entire battle resolve without major loss or destruction provided a wave of relief.
….
"So... All For One is really no more?"
The quiet, trembling question hung in the vast expanse of the vestige void, cutting straight through the stillness.
For several long moments, nobody answered.
The eight predecessors sat in their chairs arranged in the dark semicircle, their gazes locked on the fading traces of gray ash drifting across the physical battlefield through Midoriya's eyes.
It was undeniable.
The parasitic connection had shattered, the physical vessel had turned to dust, and the ancient malice that had terrorized Japan for over a century had been wiped from the face of the earth.
There would be no second coming, contingencies, or shadow lurking in the dark to strike another generation.
A strange, disorienting sensation settled over the ancient wielders.
For nearly a hundred years, the defeat of that monster had been the singular, all consuming obsession of their lives.
Generations of heroes had bled, suffered, and died in dark alleys and forgotten battlefields, passing on a growing ember with the desperate hope that someone, someday, would be strong enough to deliver the final strike.
Yet here it was.
The nightmare hadn't ended through their hands or a direct smash of One For All.
It had been broken by an underground hero who had outright refused their power to forge his own impossible path, and a selfless, stubborn kid who braved the jaws of hell simply to offer a crying child a hand in the dark.
Then, breaking the stunned silence–
"GAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Daigoro Banjo threw his head back and roared with booming, uncontrollable laughter.
He slapped his knees, pounding his fist against the armrest of his chair until the metaphysical floor shook beneath them.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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