Listen to: Hiroyuki Sawano — "Call your name"
The air stank of ozone and something else I couldn't quite place. Burnt concrete, maybe? Or the scent of a fight stretched past its natural endpoint. The city block around me looked like the aftermath of a Nomu tantrum. Craters, glass, broken buildings, the works.
Void Chain was still standing, which was a problem. I was still standing, which was also a problem—for him.
"You're... persistent," he rasped, flexing his fingers as if testing whether his body still belonged to him. His quirk's aura swirled like a black hole trying to remember it was supposed to eat stars, not lose to a teenage upstart with too many quirks glued together.
"Yeah," I muttered, rolling my sore shoulder. "People say I take after All Might in that department."
A lie, technically. I wasn't much like the old Symbol of Peace. I didn't smile in the face of danger. I smirked, cracked a dumb joke, and decked it in the mouth. But the resemblance? Close enough.
He moved first this time. A swipe of his hand pulled the sky downward, warping gravity like a wet towel wrung dry. My body braced on instinct. Overclock bought me precious microseconds, Fa Jin coiled tension into my legs, and Jet prepped for the burst. Muscle Augmentation took care of the rest, knitting the damage even as it happened.
When the air finally snapped and reality bent like a bad Photoshop job, I launched.
This wasn't going to be a fight I won by playing fair.
Void Chain and I clashed midair, a collision so sharp the atmosphere cracked like a broken speaker. His gravity field wrapped around me, eager to crush, and my New Order rule pulsed to life in response.
Rule: "I cannot be affected by external gravity sources for the next 10 seconds."
The pressure vanished. His expression shifted—first confusion, then calculation. He knew what I was. What I could do. But even he hadn't figured out all the rules to this game.
I twisted midair and drove my heel straight for his chest. He barely got his arms up before the blow landed. His black hole aura softened the hit, but even so, the force flung him backward, smashing through two ruined cars and embedding him in the side of an office building.
"Still with me?" I called, half expecting him to answer, half hoping he wouldn't.
Rubble shifted. The void pulsed, deeper and angrier. Figures.
If Shigaraki was entropy made flesh, Void Chain was its introverted cousin. Less hands, more singularities. Every move he made carried the weight of inevitability. His power didn't just erase space; it erased options.
And here I was, trying to beat that with some borrowed quirks and a lot of attitude.
"You think you're the only one rewriting the rules," I muttered under my breath. "Buddy, I am the rules."
I set another New Order rule, this one a classic:
Rule: "All enemy attacks will miss me for 3 seconds."
Void Chain surged forward, gravity claws outstretched, ready to rip me inside out. His attacks phased through me, the world flickering with distortion as reality disagreed with his intent.
"You talk too much," he growled as his hand passed clean through my chest.
"And you listen too little."
I drove a punch into his gut, powered by every quirk I had. The black hole aura cracked.
Progress.
But cracks weren't enough. He regenerated faster than I could break him, and I was running on fumes. Fa Jin's kinetic charge was low, Overclock burned calories like a black market metabolism scam, and New Order was pushing the limits of my brain's ability to hold rules in place without frying itself.
Void Chain dusted himself off, slower this time. "You can't win. You understand that, right?"
I snorted, wiping blood from my lip. "Yeah, I've heard that before. Usually right before I win."
His black hole aura shifted. Less like a power, more like a statement. He wasn't going to brute-force me anymore. He was going to erase me, piece by piece, starting with hope.
Unfortunately for him, I'd already filed hope under 'non-essential.'
I needed something bigger. Something that broke the limits I'd been tap-dancing around this whole time.
And as if the universe heard me, the answer clicked into place.
It was like flipping a switch I didn't know existed.
Domain Expansion: Rulebreaker Drive.
The world folded outward, colors inverted, space stretched thin, and every atom around me vibrated with a new, terrifying clarity. Inside this bubble, my rules weren't limited to one at a time.
I stacked them.
Rule 1: "I am immune to all damage."
Rule 2: "All enemy abilities are nullified."
Rule 3: "My strength is limitless."
Void Chain froze mid-attack, his black hole aura flickering like a dying star. His eyes widened—fear, for the first time.
I stepped forward. No rush. Just one step at a time.
"You know, I spent so long trying to fight fair," I said quietly, knuckles cracking. "But fair doesn't save anyone. Fair's just the excuse people use for losing."
One punch. No wind-up, no fancy quirk stack, just a simple straight to the chest.
His aura shattered. His body followed.
The Domain faded, and the silence afterward felt heavier than the battle.
When the dust cleared, I stood alone in the wreckage.
For the first time, there was no rush of victory. No adrenaline high. Just a quiet, creeping realization that I'd gone too far past the line and there wasn't any going back.
I could feel it, deep down.
This wasn't the life I'd wanted. Not anymore.
I glanced at the rubble where Void Chain had vanished. Gone. Erased. Just like every piece of myself I'd traded away to win.
And I knew, standing there, the choice was already made.
Being a hero? That chapter was closing.
Next came whatever waited beyond it.