….
"No..." Uraraka whispered, her knees hitting the floor.
"He can't be-"
"There's no way." Kaminari said, his voice hollow as he stared at the dust cloud. "Even him... nobody could take a hit like that after a fight like that."
Midoriya didn't hear any of it, he stepped forward as One For All surged to life, emerald bio-electricity snapping violently around his limbs.
"I have to–"
Beside him, the class moved in a desperate, uncoordinated surge:
Kirishima's skin cragged into jagged stone, Bakugo's palms hissed with the scent of nitroglycerin, and Shoto's right side began to frost over, his breath hitching as he stared at the spot where his teacher had disappeared.
"STAND DOWN!! WHY ARE YOU MOVING?!"
The students skidded to a halt, paralyzed by the sheer authority in Aizawa Shouta's voice.
Aizawa stood at the center of the plaza, barely holding together, blood running from multiple cuts across his forehead, his capture weapon reduced to charred, useless ribbons hanging around his neck.
Yet, his eyes burned with a terrifying, unblinking clarity.
"To help your teacher?" Aizawa barked, his voice vibrating with a lethal certainty. "Look at the field. Dabi is still in the fight!"
The certainty in his voice was absolute.
Aizawa had worked with him before.
He knew exactly what kind of man Dabi was.
He kicked the unconscious body of a villain aside, his gaze never leaving the Mountain Zone. "You think he is like you? He is an Underground Hero. Do you have any idea what that entails?"
"It means he fights in the gutters, where applause is absent, backup is rare, and mercy doesn't exist. A man like that has already died more times than you can count and walked it off out of spite. If Dabi is truly down, then the sun itself must be on its last breath. Now, watch."
As if responding to the call of a peer, the rubble shifted.
A single hand - pale, scarred, and trembling - erupted through the jagged concrete.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
A primal, seismic roar tore from Dabi's lungs, a raw release as every nerve in his body was rewritten by the [100% Super Soldier] integration, the force of it rippling through the air like a shockwave.
Heat surged in its wake, sending a chill down the villains' spines while the students felt it crackle through them like electricity.
A secondary hand clawed upward, its fingers wreathed in a flickering, ethereal ultraviolet.
Dabi hauled himself out of the mountain of stone, and the students collectively recoiled.
The students' collective intake of breath was audible.
If he had looked bad before, now he looked like something dragged back from death itself.
What remained of his hero costume hung from him in burned fragments, most of the fabric torn away or fused to his skin, leaving behind a brutal map of bruises, burns, and open wounds while dried blood covered nearly every exposed surface of his body, and his left arm dangled at a crooked angle that made it painfully obvious the bone beneath it had snapped.
He took one step forward, then another.
Emerging slowly from the rubble with the quiet, unstoppable certainty of something inevitable - like a collapsing mountain or an approaching storm that no one could stop once it had begun.
A cold chill washed over the students as the moment stripped away everything they thought they knew about heroism they had seen on TV or All Might's shining smile, but the harsh, unsettling reality of a man too stubborn to die.
This... is this what Heroes really are? For the first time, the word Hero felt different.
Dabi stopped ten paces from the mutated Nomu, swaying as his body fought to stabilize, then leaned aside and spat a thick glob of blood onto the white-hot concrete as silence fell - total and absolute.
His turquoise eyes were glassy, unfocused from the concussion and the pain, yet they remained locked on the Nomu with a predatory steadiness that made the creature hesitate.
The world held its breath.
Then–
Snap.
The sound was small, but in the vacuum of the USJ, it sounded like a gunshot.
Dabi's right hand had twitched, his thumb and middle finger meeting in a sharp, casual flick.
??The villains blinked, and Shigaraki tilted his head, confused.
Everyone was confused. What was–
Then, the Nomu ignited.
It wasn't the roaring, chaotic blue inferno they had seen before.
Something far worse…
…and far more terrifying.
The flames twisted through the air like a sentient organism, the color fluctuating between a ghostly, electric cyan and a pale, ultraviolet white.
The heat radiating from it felt strangely hollow, as if the fire wasn't just incinerating flesh, but stripping away the very molecular bonds of the creature's existence.
Snap.
The flames intensified.
The Nomu took a ragged step back - the first true sign of primitive, instinctual fear it had shown since the breach began.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Dabi's other hand joined the rhythm, his fingers trembling with the strain of his shattered bones and the raw power of the [Super Soldier] 100% integration.
Each movement sent a fresh surge of that unnatural fire crawling across the Nomu's body, weaving through its muscles like luminous vipers.
…and the creature began screaming.
But it shouldn't be.
The Nomu were engineered masterpieces of apathy, their pain receptors cauterized and their nervous systems rebuilt to function as mindless weapons.
They were incapable of suffering, and yet, this one was screaming.
"What… kind of fire is that?" Shoto Todoroki murmured, his own left side pulsing with a heat that felt like a flickering candle compared to the sun standing before them.
Yaoyorozu watched the flames trace swirling, mathematical patterns across the monster's hide - patterns that looked less like a quirk and more like a cosmic law being enforced.
"It's... beautiful…." she whispered, before immediately recoiling. "No… I mean…. it's horrific, but..."
"I get it." Jirou whispered.
If Dabi's flames had previously looked like a dancing sun, they now looked like the embodiment of entropy.
It was [Sun Breathing] pushed to its logical, lethal extreme.
Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.
The Nomu's Super-Regeneration fought a losing battle. Flesh rebuilt itself in frantic, wet pulses only to be vaporized an instant later as the flames tore through the cellular structure faster than the DNA could replicate.
The screaming reached a final, ragged crescendo that vibrated in the students' teeth.
Then, suddenly…. silence.
The Nomu collapsed to its knees, its body a glowing husk of vitrified carbon.
Dabi lowered his hands, the snapping finally stopping.
But the fire didn't go out - it kept burning, fueled by something beyond his quirk now.
The massive reinforced entrance doors of the USJ suddenly detonated inward.
Steel hinges tore free from their anchors, and the entire frame folded under the impact as a shockwave of splintered metal and concrete blasted across the entrance hall.
A figure stepped through the dust.
"I AM HERE!"
The declaration echoed through the shattered facility like a thunderclap.
All Might stood in the destroyed doorway in his full heroic form, chest expanded.
He had clearly not bothered with subtlety; the reinforced security entrance had been designed to withstand explosions, yet it now hung twisted and broken around the towering symbol of peace.
For a brief moment, the Symbol of Peace stood still, taking in the carnage.
Sections of the USJ lay in ruins, training structures burned under lingering blue flames and villains lay unconscious across the plaza.
Some weird creature lay motionless in the distance, another still smoldering under the unnatural fire…
And in the center of it all - Dabi remained standing.
All Might's brows drew together, his usual smile replaced by a look of profound shock. "What in the world happened here...?"
Before anyone could answer, movement stirred behind Shigaraki.
Purple mist began gathering in the air, first as a faint distortion before thickening into the unstable silhouette of Kurogiri's form, his body flickering as if his earlier damage had not fully dispersed and he was forcing himself back together through sheer effort.
"Tomura Shigaraki." the distorted voice urged. "We must retreat immediately. All Might has arrived, and the Nomu... the Nomu is gone. The mission has failed."
"No! No no no NO!" Shigaraki scratched frantically at his neck. "We were supposed to kill him! We were supposed to prove the system is a lie! This wasn't supposed to happen! That glitch wasn't supposed to be here!"
Before he could finish–
A sharp crack echoed through the facility.
A gunshot.
The sound cut through the facility with sharp, metallic precision as the bullet struck Shigaraki's shoulder, the impact snapping him sideways and spraying red across the pavement.
"What–?!"
Another shot rang out almost instantly, but the purple mist surged forward as Kurogiri's warp gate swallowed the projectile, the bullet vanishing into the void before it could reach its mark.
Across the battlefield, figures began appearing at the edge of the complex.
Additional Pro Heroes had arrived.
Among them - Tenya Iida.
The class representative sprinted across the broken plaza with engine-powered urgency, having successfully escaped the facility earlier to alert U.A. and return with reinforcements.
Shigaraki stared at the horizon, his manic grin twisting into a snarl of pure hatred. "Cheaters... they are all cheaters..."
"NOW, Tomura Shigaraki!" Kurogiri's voice was urgent, flickering with instability.
A swirling vortex erupted beneath Shigaraki's feet, dragging him downward mid-tantrum.
The warp gate attempted to snag the two downed Nomu, but the air around them was a lethal ultraviolet barrier.
Kurogiri's mist couldn't solidify; the sheer thermal output of Dabi's lingering flames was ionizing the fog before it could gain mass.
"This isn't over!" Kurogiri's distorted voice echoed as the portal collapsed into a pinpoint. "We will retu–"
The mist vanished before the sentence could finish, leaving the USJ in silence once more.
….
All Might surveyed the devastation, his gaze settling on the observation deck where the students stood clustered - shaken, pale, but unharmed, with Thirteen likely guarding them throughout.
Aizawa was limping across the plaza, a mask of blood and grit, but his eyes remained sharp.
Finally, the Symbol of Peace turned toward the center of the scorched glass circle.
Dabi.
"Young Dabi." All Might said carefully as he stepped forward. "Are you–"
Dabi's knees buckled.
All Might moved in a golden blur, crossing the distance in a heartbeat to catch the younger man before he hit the blackened concrete.
"DABI!" - "Sensei!"
The cry went up from the deck.
Midoriya didn't wait - vaulting over the railing, [Total Concentration Breathing] kicking in as he dropped into the plaza and sprinted toward him.
The others followed - Bakugo, Shoto, Uraraka - pulled forward by the same force, drawn to the man who had just redefined their understanding of limits, and they reached him together as Midoriya helped All Might ease Dabi onto his back, his hands trembling against the scorched fabric of his suit.
Dabi's breathing was unrhythmic, wet rattle - the sound of lungs struggling against internal hemorrhaging.
"Someone call an ambulance!" Iida was already barking into his phone. "We need medical transport with high-thermal containment!"
"Recovery Girl! Get her on the line!" Uraraka added, her voice cracking.
All Might knelt, his massive hand checking the pulse at Dabi's neck. "He is still breathing…"
Aizawa limped over, his own shattered arm forgotten. "Of course he is. I told you he is too spiteful for the afterlife."
….
Deep within the quiet, neurological darkness of Dabi's subconscious, a translucent interface flickered to life.
It didn't care about the sirens or the crying students - it only cared about his progression.
====
[SUPER SOLDIER] - 100/100% ✓
[ARACHNID GENOME] - UNLOCKED
[WARNING: User's body sustained Grade-4 thermal and kinetic trauma. Beginning emergency repairs. Estimated recovery time: 72 hours]
| LIFE SPAN REMAINING: ??? DAYS
====
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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