….
All Might approached the boys, his massive hands easily snapping their restraints. "I apologize formally." he said heavily. "For allowing you to be put in this situation and failing to protect you."
"Whatever." Bakugo muttered, shaking off the metal cuffs. "Just took you long enough."
All Might, the Symbol of Peace stepped closer, looking down at the struggling villain. "It is over, Tomura Shigaraki. Look around you. Your vanguard has been subdued, the warehouse seized, and the police are already identifying every one of your associates, which means the League of Villains has officially reached its end."
"Game over...?" Shigaraki laughed, a cracked, hollow sound that echoed off the damp walls. "Don't make me laugh! This isn't the end, it's only the beginning, and we're going to tear down the fragile peace you've built before extinguishing the very society you created!"
While the police worked diligently to catalog the captured villains, All Might stepped directly into Shigaraki's line of sight, his expression darkening. "Where is he, Shigaraki? Where is All For One?"
The name hung heavily in the air.
Shigaraki suddenly fell dead silent, his crimson eyes widening as his mind fractured back to his childhood. He remembered the blood, the shattered ruins of his home, and the crushing despair of a terrible incident where no one stopped to help.
The crowds, civilians, and the heroes….
They all walked right past him. 'A hero will come save you.' they had muttered, but no one did.
Except for him, and his teacher.
The only one who extended a hand when the world turned its back.
The suffocating memory of his past fueled a sudden, explosive surge of raw hatred. "I HATE YOU!" Shigaraki screamed out, his voice cracking with pure venom as he glared at the Symbol of Peace. "I HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR!"
His voice rising into a ragged, maniacal sneer. "Master… They are here as you planned! Now it's time to gobble up this place…"
"Edgeshot! Kamui! Guard the perimeter!" All Might commanded sharply, keeping his guard raised.
They already knew from the vanguard's escape during the forest training camp attack that the enemy possessed a secondary, long-range spatial quirk user who could forcefully extract targets, so they planned for it, keeping the heroes heavily spaced to suppress any sudden rifts.
But their preparations weren't nearly enough.
Without warning, the air pressure inside the bar plummeted to absolute zero.
Thick, foul-smelling black liquid materialized out of thin air, bubbling up violently in front of Shigaraki and the rest of the League.
"Get back!" Gran Torino yelled, lunging to shield Bakugo and Todoroki as the spatial rifts expanded.
Instead of just pulling the villains out, the rifts violently coughed inward.
To the absolute shock of both the Pro Heroes and the League of Villains alike, several grotesque, brain-exposed Nomus began erupting directly out of the bubbling black sludge, screeching into the cramped room and completely shattering the heroes' tight formation.
"Kamui, hold your ground! Do not let the villains go!" All Might roared over the screeching of the monsters, throwing a massive punch to intercept a lunging Nomu.
But before Kamui Woods could tighten his branches, the foul black liquid began to violently spill directly out of Bakugo's and Todoroki's mouths, rising to swallow them whole.
All Might lunged through the chaos, desperate to grab them. "Bakugo! Todoroki!"
But the two students weren't just sitting still.
They had already been captured by this exact spatial warp during the forest attack.
There was absolutely no way in hell that, as the personal students of Dabi, they would let the exact same trick work on them twice.
Because if they did?
When they finally got back to UA, they knew they would be subjected to a brutal, inhuman training regime courtesy of their fiery teacher.
No one could hear the inner thoughts of the two teenagers in that frantic moment, but if anyone did, they wouldn't know whether to laugh or feel completely stupid.
Amidst a high-stakes villain ambush, what terrified them wasn't the League taking them away–
It was Dabi's wrath.
Beneath that fear, however, was a certainty.
They knew it was only a matter of time before they came out of this situation safely.
It was just the kind of absolute trust they had earned in Dabi, a man who had proven them right time and time again.
Refusing to be helpless victims, both boys fought back with everything they had.
Todoroki unleashed a flash of internal heat to disrupt the sludge, while Bakugo triggered an explosion directly inside his own palms to force the warp away.
For a split second, their sheer willpower almost prevailed, bringing them painfully close to breaking free from the spatial pull.
But All For One's quirk was simply too monstrously strong.
Even as All Might threw himself forward, reaching out with every ounce of his speed to snatch them from the abyss, his fingers brushed empty air.
The sludge violently imploded, swallowing both boys and vanishing completely, leaving All Might to punch the floor in pure frustration.
"All Might! The perimeter is collapsing!" Kamui Woods yelled, struggling to maintain his grip on the remaining villains while shouting into his radio. "Endeavor, we need backup! The Nomu are attacking the heroes and the police force outside as well!"
Out on the streets, chaos had erupted.
The police force fired a barrage of bullets, which bounced uselessly off the regenerating beasts, while Endeavor stepped to the front line, unleashing a roaring wall of hellfire to keep the surging Nomu at bay.
Amidst the gunfire, Naomasa Tsukauchi frantically tapped his earpiece, trying to radio the secondary assault team. "Mirko! Come in! What is the status of the Nomu factory? We have a mass outbreak here!"
Back inside the ruined bar, Shigaraki looked at the battlefield, the spreading black sludge, and the army of Nomus shielding him from the heroes.
A realization washed over him, and a manic grin spread beneath the hand on his face.
This was the work of his teacher.
….
Earlier, across the city at the Nomu manufacturing warehouse, the raid had been executed with identical synchronization.
Dozens of police cruisers and armored transport vehicles had completely blocked the industrial sector.
Standing at the front line, Mt. Lady grinned, her body instantly expanding into a towering, thirty-foot giant.
With a casual grunt of effort, she ripped a heavy-duty delivery truck straight off the asphalt and hurled it like a missile right through the warehouse wall, shattering the concrete barrier into a gaping hole.
"Secure the floor! Don't let a single asset slip!" Best Jeanist commanded as he, Rumi Usagiyama, and Gang Orca stormed through the dust cloud.
The automated Nomus inside tried to respond to the breach, their mindless instincts took in as the glass vats shattered, but without a direct handler or warp orders from Kurogiri, they were nothing more than powerful, feral beasts fighting purely on defensive instinct.
"Hmph! You ugly bastards think you're tough?!" Rumi roared.
With an explosive display of leg strength, she drove her heel straight into the skull of a mid-tier Nomu, cratering it into the concrete floor before it could even swing its fist.
"Keep your distance!" Best Jeanist yelled, his hands flexing as his Fiber Master quirk took absolute control of the environment.
The denim threads from his uniform and the carbon fibers from the police gear unraveled like thousands of steel wires, snaking through the air to tightly bind three massive Nomus simultaneously, locking their limbs in a high-tension web.
Gang Orca stepped forward, his massive chest expanding as he unleashed a wave of high-frequency sonar distortion.
The invisible wall of sound blasted across the remaining creatures, completely scrambling their internal equilibrium and sending them crashing to their knees in disorientation.
"Secure them immediately!" Best Jeanist ordered the containment units, his threads holding the line. "We need these specimens intact for judicial investigation!"
Within mere minutes, the factory was silent.
The experimental Nomus were completely bound in heavy-duty containment fabric, and the medical computers were seized.
The secondary mission at the Nomu storage facility had been, up until that exact second, a flawless victory.
Mt. Lady leaned back, stretching her arms with a sigh as she looked over the neatly restrained rows of dormant Nomu.
"Honestly, that was way too easy." she complained, glancing over at Best Jeanist. "Are we sure we shouldn't have just accompanied All Might to the main hideout? They're probably having all the fun."
Best Jeanist adjusted his high denim collar, his eyes never leaving the perimeter. "Do not let your guard down, Mt. Lady. Securing this supply line is of the utmost importance to ensure the villains have no reinforcements. Treat every thread of a mission with equal gravity."
Turning to the officers on site, he commanded. "Police force, bring forward the iron maidens. Let's get these creatures securely locked down."
Just outside the perimeter of the warehouse, hidden in the shadows of the courtyard, Izuku Midoriya and his rescue group exhaled a collective breath of relief.
Seeing the heroes completely dominate the situation meant Bakugo and Todoroki were likely already safe.
"They've got it under control." Izuku whispered to the others, his heart finally slowing down. "Let's head home before anyone spots us."
The students quietly began to turn away, stepping back into the dark alleyways to make their escape.
But they didn't make it three steps.
Suddenly, the air pressure inside and around the warehouse dropped to absolute zero.
The temperature plummeted so fast that their breath hitched into instant plumes of white frost.
A heavy, suffocating dread blanketed the entire area, pinning the students' feet to the pavement and causing the Pro Heroes inside to freeze mid-motion.
Through the darkness, a figure stepped through the ruined concrete entrance of the warehouse.
He wore a pristine, expensive black suit, but his face was an absolute nightmare of scar tissue, devoid of eyes or a nose, covered by a sleek, mechanical skull mask that hissed with life support.
Predatory instinct flared in Rumi's chest. "Enemy presence! Strike now!"
Instantly, Jeanist's hands blurred as he deployed his ultimate defense, thousands of industrial-grade carbon threads shooting forward to construct an iron-tight cage around the newcomer, pinning him to the bedrock.
The man didn't even move a finger, as he simply exhaled.
An invisible shockwave of raw force erupted from his silhouette.
The high-grade carbon threads, designed to withstand the force of heavy armor, offered no resistance, collapsing into microscopic dust as if they had been made of brittle paper.
Before Rumi or Gang Orca could even plant their feet to leap, a massive, cataclysmic blast of air expanded from the man's position, blowing out the entire remaining structure of the warehouse.
The concrete roof collapsed, and the sheer atmospheric displacement sent the pro heroes flying across the yard like broken dolls, crashing heavily into the distant wreckage.
As the smoke cleared, revealing the completely flattened, hollowed-out remains of the industrial lot, the figure stood completely untouched in the center of the dust.
All For One adjusted the cuffs of his black suit, his smooth, terrifyingly polite voice echoing across the ruins.
"Good evening, heroes." he said pleasantly, his smooth voice cutting through the heavy haze of dust and blood–
"I apologize for the mess. I have simply come to collect my property."
.
….
[To be continued…]
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