The night air was thick with the scent of sugar, a sickly sweet perfume clung to the back of All Might's throat as he stood atop a skyscraper. His frame trembled faintly beneath the weight of his costume.
It was two minutes past midnight.
The reports crackled in through his earpiece, each one a fresh dagger of guilt.
"...rioting in Sector 4-b, civilians exhibiting violent, erratic behaviour..."
"...requesting backup at the Sumida River, possible toxin dispersal..."
All Might was ready to leap into action. But was stopped so quickly it was like someone was reading his mind.
"All Might. Stand down!"
The order was firm, edged with the kind of authority that brooked no argument. Best Jeanist's voice, calm but unyielding. "We have it handled. Stay on the perimeter."
His fingers twitched at his sides, the ghost of One for All flickering in his veins like a dying candle. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to leap into the fray, to do something... but the weight of decades of experience held him back.
Trust your allies.
Nana, his master, her voice was warm in his memory. Her hand on his shoulder, her smile both proud and sad. You don't have to carry it all.
He exhaled, long and slow, watching the fog in the cold night air. It was too late for that last part. He had been carrying it all ever since she disappeared. Ever since she got ripped away from him by that man...
It was too late for All Might to just drop his symbol now. Not tonight.
He knows the UA students were moving through the city. They would be good. United and prepared and only getting better with age. They would not be like him, they would be better in every way.
And he wants to see it.
Midoriya most of all.
The thought was a balm, a flicker of warmth in the encroaching dark. Soon, the boy would rise. Soon, the weight of this quirk, this legacy, would pass to shoulders strong enough to bear it. All Might's lips quirked, just slightly, as he imagined it... Midoriya in his prime, his smile unbroken even with the worst the world could throw at him.
No more secrets. No more shadows. Just a hero, bright as dawn, standing tall where All Might once had.
A gust of wind howled past, carrying with it the distant, echoing screams from Tokyo. In Kyoto, Endeavour was there. All Might's chest ached with a different kind of pain. He'd spent his years running toward the fire, toward disaster, toward the places no one else could go. Now, for the first time, he was hesitating.
What would Toshinori do?
Not All Might. Him. The man beneath the myth.
The answer came softly, wrapped in the scent of his teacher's scarf, the press of her hand on his back.
One For All pulsed weakly in response, what he wanted to do he couldn't anymore. The quirk's light was guttering like the embers of a once-great bonfire. He pressed his hand at his side, where the scar from the first battle with All For One still throbbed, a constant reminder of the cost of his arrogance. This would be his last fight. He knew it in his bones, in the way his breath hitched after even the shortest sprint, in the way his muscles screamed where they'd once sung.
But that was alright.
He'd made his peace.
Class A flashed through his mind, their relentless determination and their unbreakable spirit, even members of class B since he had been training with them a lot more recently. They had a hungry ambition. They'd be magnificent. They'd outshine him. And that was as it should be.
Weirdly enough he found himself thinking about Nighteye, he had received a call from him, but he never answered it. The next day he was briefed by Nezu that he also received a call from him telling him that All For One will be coming for him, to silence him.
All Might didn't want it any other way. If this would be his last dance with One For All he wanted to tie up loose strings.
Unlike his former sidekick, he is of the belief that one can change their own future even if they have the worst fate. He will not die today. He plans to live a long and healthy retirement.
All Might's fists clenched, his knuckles whitening beneath his gloves. Not again. Not for Midoriya. Not for any of them.
All For One would die tonight. By his hands. Here, at the end of all things.
He took a step forward, the rooftop gravel crunching beneath his boots...
BOOM!
The world split open.
Tokyo Tower's dome erupted, steel and glass shattering outward in a deadly hail of shrapnel. The sound was deafening, a thunderclap that shook the very air, and for a moment, All Might could only stare as the structure groaned, its spine snapping like a dying beast.
And there...
No.
A figure, limp and small, strapped to the falling wreckage. A girl. Blonde hair whipping in the firelight, limbs slack as the earth rushed up to meet her.
All Might didn't think.
One For All blazed to life, golden light shearing through his skin as he moved. The wind screamed in his ears, the city blurring beneath him as he pushed his body beyond its limits, beyond what should have been possible. Faster. Faster.
He wouldn't fail.
The girl tumbled through the air, closer, closer.
Muscle memory forged through decades of heroism overriding the screaming protests of his battered frame. One For All ignited in his veins, not with the roaring inferno of his prime, but with the desperate, sputtering brilliance of a dying star.
As he launched himself from a surface he briefly touched, it shattered beneath the force of his takeoff.
Wind howled in his ears as sharp as knives. The towers wreckage was now twisting around him, twisted beams, jagged glass, chunks of concrete disintegrating midair. He dodged on instinct, weaving through the debris like a comet through asteroid fields.
Closer.
There weren't supposed to be people within the tower due to todays events. Meaning that Kurogiri and the League were the most likely culprits of this.
The girl couldn't have been older than twelve.
Three meters.
A steel beam hurtled towards him. He twisted midair, feeling it graze his side, tearing the fabric of his costume and flesh alike. Pain flared, but it was minor, inconceivable, not enough to slow him down in the slightest.
Two meters.
The ground rushed up to meet them. The girl's head lolled, her small boy seconds aways from becoming a red smear on Tokyo's streets.
One meter...
"GOT YOU!"
His hand closed around the metal frame, wrenching it toward his chest. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs as he cradled her against him, his other arm shielding her face from the debris. He pivoted, putting his back to the falling wreckage...
CRACK.
A chunk of concrete slammed into his shoulder.
They were still falling.
With a grunt, All Might angled his body, firing off a weakened Air Force cannon toward the ground. The backlash of wind slowed their descent just enough.
THUD.
He hit the pavement knees first, cracks spiderwebbing outward from the point of impact. The girl jolted in his arms, but he absorbed the shock with his own body, curling around her like a human shield.
Silence.
Then...
A weak cough. The girl stirred, her eyeballs fluttering. Dazed, terrified eyes met his.
"P-please..." she whimpered, her voice barely audible.
All Might's throat tightened. He smoothed her hair back with a trembling hand, forcing his signature smile onto his face even as blood trickled from his lip.
"Its alright, young one." His voice was hoarse, but steady. "Why? Because I am here-"
A wet gasp cut him off.
The girls pupils dilated abruptly and turned a deep and menacing bloody red. Her back was arching and her mouth unhinged, too wide, impossibly wide. A voice then followed that was not hers, it slithered out, guttural and as familiar as the one in his nightmares.
"Hello All Might."
All Might's blood turned to ice.
The girls small hand latched onto his wrist with bone-crunching strength. Her lips split into a smile that stretched ear to ear.
"It's been such a longtime!"
That voice belonged to him!
The mouth opened again but this time the edges wrinkled and shrivelled up, wide enough to reveal a face. It was him.
He was here.
Right in front of him.
Tormenting him again with the lives of the innocent.
He was here... to kill him!
"ALL FOR ONE—"
He received a punch to the face faster than his brain could compute. He skidded back and instantly snapped his head up only to come face to face with his arch-nemesis.
The world narrowed to this, the shattered ruins of Tokyo Tower, its skeletal frame groaning under the weight of its own collapse. Glass shards rained like diamond dust, catching the inferno's glow as flames licked up the steel girders. Smoke coiled in the air, thick and acrid, stinging All Might's eyes as he staggered back from the blow, his boots carving trenches through the rubble.
And there... there stood the devil himself.
All For One loomed like a monument to ruin, his silhouette warping the very air around him. The girl's body had split open, her form collapsing like a discarded puppet as his true figure emerged, taller, broader, a grotesque mockery of human shape. His suit was immaculate, tailored obsidian, the fabric swallowing the light. No restraint.
His face was a horror.
Pale as a corpse, skin stretched too tight over jagged bone, lips peeled back in a grin that showed too many teeth. The scars of their last battle mapped his skin... ridges of knotted tissue where All Might had shattered him, the hollow pits of his eyes glowing with a sickly crimson light.
"Did you miss me?" All For One crooned, tilting his head with a wet crack. His voice was a symphony of suffering, layered with the echoes of every life he'd ruined. "I've missed you, Toshinori." He flexed his fingers, the air around them warping as quirks seemed to stir under his skin waiting to be released. "I've brought the big guns for you today, so I hope you know how this will end."
The ground trembled. Not from the towers collapse, from him. From the sheer, suffocating weight of his presence. The rubble shifted, rising in jagged shards as gravity itself bent to his will. A pillar twisted like taffy, metal screeching.
All Might's fists clenched.
The last embers of One For All flared. He knew this would be his last big bout. He'd dreamed of it, dreaded it, hungered for it.
All For One's grin widened.
"Show me," he whispered, "how brightly you can burn."
***
Around me, the city convulsed, a living, screaming organism tearing itself apart at the seams. People moved in jerking motions, their limbs twitching like marionettes with cut strings. Some clutched at their heads, howling wordlessly to the sky. Others lay crumpled against storefronts, their blood painting abstract patterns across shattered glass. No dead bodies yet. Just broken people. People that hoped for a better future after the tumultuous year they had.
And I had helped build this nightmare.
Daiki's voice cut through the din, sharp and grating as a rusted blade dragged bone. "...should've been in Kyoto. Could've carved my name into All Might's ribs before he even... Hey. Hey. Earth to Kobe." His fingers snapped in front of my face, the sound like a gunshot. "You dying already? That'd be boring. I told you before, you lose focus too easily."
My lungs burned with every breath. I'd known the cost. This was all supposed to be a part of the plan. I didn't think it would end up like this. Something unaccounted for, but what else would they expect? I couldn't be blamed for this.
I am just one person. One person who lived a life that many couldn't, seen what others would gouge their eyes out to. So of course there were things I couldn't plan for.
But I should have tried more. Right?
It was tiring. Being in this place, and now I couldn't even hear the screams anymore, I couldn't hear Daiki's pestering either. It was all just white noise.
Like when I was in my own personal white room in the Eden Project, constant white noise buzzing through my head, making it a struggle to form any coherent thoughts.
The only thing I could properly think of was... I don't want to be here.
I want to go back. Back before everything went wrong in my life. I don't want these memories, these experiences either. I don't even need for my dad to come back from the dead or anything. I just want to experience that blissful peace again, run around all day in parks and get home aching and then jump in bed to go sleep.
But that was never going to happen.
I almost laughed at how childish the thought was.
I opened my eyes again, only to see a mother drag her sobbing child past a man gnawing on his own wrist.
And to the left, trying to stop the raging citizens. I saw Yuki... my sister.
She stood frozen at the edge of the chaos, her hero costume was no longer the light shade it was when I first seen it. It was an obsidian bodysuit now, etched with silver circuitry that pulsed like living veins, glistening under the erratic glow of lights from the stalls still up. The emergency visor perched on her forehead was cracked, her dark curls matted with sweat and ash. But her eyes... her bright and violet eyes locked onto mine with a recognition that felt like a knife between the ribs.
Time stuttered.
The screams faded. The world narrowed to this single, suspended moment, two siblings standing on opposite sides of a war they'd never asked for. Her lips parted. My name formed silently on them.
Kobe...
Cold fingers clamped on my face.
The world dissolved into fractured memories... My fake kill of the minister of justice. Nagant and I's conversation on the roof. And even my many conversation's with Gran Torino. Secrets. Lies. Betrayals.
Then... agony.
I tore free with a gasp, stumbling back as the purple vortex spat Kaede onto the cracked concrete beside me. Her normally pristine uniform was rumpled, her usually placid face twisted into something feral.
"So the boss was right," she hissed, voice dripping with venom.
My stomach dropped. I didn't need this right now.
Kaede's quirk, it allowed her to invade memories. She had just rifled through my mind like a thief in a vault. And from the way her fingers twitched, she was eager to plunge right back in.
"You've been feeding them everything." she spat. "MLA strongholds. The League's supply routes. Even patrol schedule's for the heroes in Deika. No wonder they just randomly disappeared from comms earlier, they must have been apprehended. Ain't that right rat?"
I said nothing.
She didn't need me to.
With a final, seething glare, Kaede stepped backward into the swirling void, the portal snapping shut behind her with a sound like a ribcage collapsing. Most likely off to try and stop Nagant, well if things went right, Koku was already dead by now.
Silence was all I was met with, before laughter.
Daiki's grin split his face ear to ear, his teeth glinting like a shark's in the half-light. "Ohhh man," he breathed, shoulders shaking with barely contained glee. "I knew it. I knew you were just playing both sides. That's the only reason I told them I'd team up with you instead of Saya."
He always wanted a fight. That's all that's been on his mind.
Stormchaser... his massive, triple edged lance, hummed in his grip, the air around it distorting as his quirk unleashed, you could feel it in the air. Thunder. His absolute dominion over momentum. The ground beneath his boots fractured, dust rising in slow-motion as he readied himself.
Behind him, Yuki screamed my name again, her voice raw with something worse than fear.
Daiki didn't even glance her way.
And neither did I.
My fingers twitched. Sheets of paper peeled from my sleeves, my collar, my very skin, folding, compressing, hardening into a long, curved blade that glimmered like mercury under the firelight. The weight was familiar. Comforting. The last anchor in a world gone mad.
Daiki's smile widened. "There he is."
He raised Stormchaser high, the blade singing as it split the air itself. The air screamed in protest, pressure waves rippling outward as he gathered the stored energy of a hundred collisions, ten thousand steps, the very rotation of the earth beneath us, all coiled into a single, perfect strike.
"Ready?"
I leveled my sword at his throat.
All my senses were on hyper-alert. The only thing I was focused on was him, the demon right in front of me.
The world exploded.