….
The silence in the forest was absolute, suffocating, broken only by the ragged, pathetic sobs echoing from the dirt.
Yuga Aoyama was on his knees, the pristine, sparkling facade he had worn since the first day of U.A. completely shattered.
A few feet away, Toru Hagakure's light-refracting invisibility flickered erratically, her tears catching the pale moonlight as she stared at the boy she had called a classmate.
Dabi stood over them, the heavy, dark canopy of the Beast's Forest swallowing the ambient light.
He was the one who asked Toru Hagakure to keep an eye on during the whole Summer Camp; for him she is the best spy to keep tabs on Yuga Aoyama, without notifying him.
At his boots lay the cheap, black burner phone Aoyama had dropped. The screen was cracked, and the transmission icon had already faded.
….and as he wanted, their location has already been revealed.
Dabi simply reached into his vest and pulled out his secure, encrypted earpiece, and put it into his ear.
He tapped the comms channel linked directly to the lodge.
"Shota." Dabi said, his voice flat, carrying the lethal calm of a man watching a bomb's timer tick down to zero. "Our location is compromised."
Inside the lodge, a mile down the valley, Aizawa Shouta had been standing in the dimly lit staff kitchen pouring his third coffee of the night.
The moment Dabi's voice crackled through the earpiece, the mug stopped halfway to his mouth.
Aizawa's exhaustion vanished instantly, replaced by the bone-deep, icy focus of the Underground Hero.
[What?] Aizawa's voice was a low, jagged whisper in Dabi's ear. [Are you certain?]
"I am looking at the leak right now." Dabi replied, his turquoise eyes fixed on Aoyama's trembling form. "The coordinates were just broadcasted."
[Understood.] Aizawa shifted into immediate operational command. [I will wake the Pussycats and Vlad. We will immediately prepare the students for departure. I can have the buses loaded in ten minutes–]
"There is no time for the buses, Shota." Dabi interrupted, his gaze shifting from the terrified French student to the pitch-black tree line surrounding them.
His spider-sense hummed at the base of his skull, an electric warning of impending violence.
"They will probably be here in a few more minutes."
How was Dabi so sure?
Because his spidey sense had already picked up a disturbance coming from the northeast.
[...] There was a fraction of a second of dead air on the comms.
[How is that even logically possible?] Aizawa demanded, the raw disbelief bleeding through the encrypted channel. [We have their 'transporter' locked in a vault at Tartarus.]
Dabi hadn't explicitly mentioned that the location had likely been leaked to the League of Villains, but at this point they were the only group he could realistically imagine attempting something like this.
There was also a harder edge beneath Aizawa's voice, the kind reserved for people who made his friend suffer even after death.
But he didn't let his anger cloud his judgment.
For now the safety of the students was the top priority.
While what he stated was also true.
Kurogiri, the League's mist-based teleporter, was currently strapped to a high-tech restraint chair five hundred meters below sea level, heavily sedated and muzzle-locked.
Without his Warp Gates, the League of Villains possessed no rapid-deployment capabilities.
Moving an entire strike force into an uncharted mountain range should have taken days of logistical planning.
"It's All For One." Dabi replied, the name alone seeming to drop the temperature in the forest.
Just hearing the name seemed to make the forest feel colder.
Over the past few days, following the revelation of Kurogiri's true identity, both All Might and Dabi had decided Aizawa needed to know more about the enemy they were dealing with.
Not everything.
The truth about One For All remained carefully guarded, as did the details surrounding All Might's inherited power.
But Aizawa had been told enough.
He knew about All Might's emaciated form and the devastating injury that had ended the Symbol of Peace's prime.
More importantly, he now knew that there had always been someone standing on the opposite side of that conflict.
A monster who had operated from the shadows for generations, and he was called All For One.
The mastermind who had built an empire of villains while remaining almost invisible to the world.
At first, Aizawa had thought the story sounded absurd.
Then he had seen the evidence.
Now, hearing Dabi speak the name in connection with the current situation, he felt a knot tighten in his stomach.
Because if All For One was personally involved, then nothing about this operation could be considered normal.
"If we think a century-old demon relies on a single parlor trick to move his pawns, we will be underestimating the devil. I think they still have their other ways."
Whether it was a specialized mud-warp quirk, a cloaked aerial drop, or a secondary bio-engineered asset, the method no longer mattered.
The Vanguard Action Squad was in the woods.
In the lodge, Aizawa set his coffee mug down on the counter. His knuckles were white, as he thought of the exhausted teenagers sleeping in the rooms upstairs.
Kids who had spent the last two days destroying their own muscles to break their biological limits under Dabi's unhinged training.
They were battered, bruised, and completely asleep.
[What do you suggest then, Dabi?] Aizawa asked.
It wasn't a surrender of authority, but a genuine inquiry from one veteran to another who currently had eyes on the field.
Dabi didn't hesitate, because in a way he was the one who built this situation.
"Wake them up." He commanded, his voice cold and absolute. "Prepare the students for battle."
Aizawa closed his eyes, and the weight of that order was staggering.
As a teacher, his instinct was to shield his students, to hide them away from the monsters lurking in the dark.
But as a Pro Hero who had watched those same kids stand their ground at the USJ, who knew the brutal reality of the world they were stepping into, he knew Dabi was right.
If they ran blindly into the dark now, they would be hunted down one by one.
[...I will be on it.] Aizawa finally replied, his voice hardening into steel. [We will hold the lodge. Don't die out there in the dark, Dabi.]
Dabi said softly. "Just take care of any strays that might have slipped by."
He cut the connection, and the silence of the forest rushed back in, heavy and oppressive.
Dabi glanced down.
Aoyama was still on his knees, sobbing into his hands, completely overwhelmed by the weight of his betrayal and the terrifying presence of the man standing over him.
A few meters away, Toru Hagakure remained frozen in the brush. Her usual energy and chatter had vanished, replaced by stunned silence.
She was still trying to process everything that had happened. Although she had heard the conversation, most of it had gone completely over her head.
The names, accusations, and implications; none of it made any sense to her yet.
Dabi crouched down smoothly, bringing himself to Aoyama's eye level. He picked up the burner phone and held it out.
"Aoyama." He said, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut straight through the boy's frantic sobbing.
Aoyama flinched violently, his tear-streaked face snapping up. He looked at Dabi with the wide, doomed eyes of a rabbit caught in a snare.
"S-Sensei... please..." Aoyama choked out, his aristocratic persona entirely dissolved into raw, pathetic terror. "I had no choice... my parents... they..."
"I don't care about your parents right now." Dabi said, his tone devoid of either sympathy or anger.
He tossed the cracked burner phone into Aoyama's lap. "You just invited the wolves into our home. Your masters think they have the element of surprise walking into a camp full of sleeping victims."
Dabi leaned in closer, his turquoise eyes caught the pale moonlight, gleaming with a dark, predatory anticipation.
"Don't even think about trying anything." Dabi ordered, his voice cold and slicing deep into Aoyama's conscience. "Keep your mouth shut, stay exactly where you are told to, and don't move. I will deal with you after this is over."
Aoyama swallowed hard, his breath hitching as he stared at the scarred man before him.
"Let them walk into the trap." Dabi finished, standing back up in one fluid motion.
The spy stared up at him in absolute awe and terror.
He had spent his entire life fearing the shadow of All For One, believing that the demon lord of the underworld was an omnipotent, unbeatable force.
But looking at Dabi, and the chilling, meticulous composure of an Underground Hero who had deliberately lured a strike force of elite killers into the mountains just to slaughter them on his own terms.
Aoyama realized something profound.
The villains weren't the scariest things in these woods tonight.
"Hagakure." Dabi called out without turning his head.
The invisible girl jumped, her refracted outline shifting nervously in the brush. "Y-Yes, Sensei?!"
"Grab this idiot by the collar and haul him back to the lodge." Dabi instructed, his gaze already shifting toward the thickest part of the tree line. "Aizawa is locking the building down. Tell the Pussycats that the Vanguard Squad is here. Stick together, and if you see anything move in the shadows that isn't wearing a U.A. uniform, you don't hesitate. You run, or you fight to kill."
"What about you, Sensei?" Hagakure asked, her voice trembling as she stepped out of the brush and grabbed Aoyama's arm, hauling the weeping boy to his feet.
Blue fire flickered to life across Dabi's knuckles, casting a ghostly, ethereal glow against the trunks of the ancient pines.
The temperature in the clearing spiked instantly, burning away the damp mountain humidity.
"Me?" Dabi asked, a jagged, terrifying smile spreading across his face.
In the distance, the first faint sound of breaking timber echoed through the valley.
"I am going hunting."
.
====
[GENETIC MILESTONE SYSTEM]
THREE EVOLUTION PATHS:
| [BREATH OF THE SUN] – 100/100% ✓
| [SUPER SOLDIER] – 100/100% ✓
| [ARACHNID GENOME] – (41 → 69)/100%
LIFE SPAN LEFT: 120+ Years
====
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
Author Note:
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