….
Now standing face-to-face with the devil, All Might vowed to repay everything Dabi had done for UA and for society.
Even if it was a debt of blood and sacrifice he knew he could never truly balance.
"Hand over those young children, All For One!" All Might declared, his voice vibrating with thunderous power.
All For One chuckled behind his dark mask, effortlessly matching the hero's crushing leverage. "Oh? Will you attempt to kill me again, Symbol of Peace?"
Both monsters slid back, parting the dust as they heavily criticized each other.
"You've grown weak and slow, All Might, reduced to a pathetic shadow of your former self." the villain sneered.
"And you look ridiculous hiding behind a life-support mask, villain!" All Might retorted.
Watching from the sidelines, both Bakugo and Shoto breath hitched.
They quickly noticed that All For One hadn't just deflected All Might's maximum output with a complex quirk.
So now they had braced against it with raw strength.
This bastard isn't just a figurehead, Bakugo realized, cold sweat dripping down his neck.
He's the undisputed monster pulling the strings of the entire League.
"I won't make the same mistake I made five years ago!" All Might roared, his muscles swelling as he dug his heels into the dirt. "I will save these boys, and this time, I am putting you and your League behind bars for good!"
All Might lunged forward at maximum speed to deliver the first blow.
But All For One was already in motion, extending a single hand as his veins bulged and a grotesque combination of Springlike Limbs, Kinetic Booster, and Air Cannon activated in perfect, devastating harmony.
"Be blown away."
An invisible wall of hyper-compressed air erupted from his palm.
The force of the blast wave caught All Might squarely in the chest, violently overriding his forward momentum and launching the Symbol of Peace backward through the air like a ragdoll.
The shockwave surged far beyond the impact point, tearing through the street and obliterating several industrial buildings.
All For One raised his hand to examine his fingers, thoroughly amused by his own power.
"An exceptional quirk blend." he mused quietly to himself. "Though... I suppose I should add a few more power-up-type quirks to maximize the yield next time."
Just then, a blazing streak of white-hot hellfire cut through the dark smoke of the perimeter.
Endeavor arrived at the scene at an absolute sprint, his flames roaring as his boots ground to a halt.
His eyes sharpened as he took in the absolute annihilation of the sector, his gaze locking onto the towering villain standing at the center.
The sheer temperature radiating from the Flame Hero caused the surrounding dust to rapidly melt into glass, but his heart plummeted at the sight.
The warehouse was completely gone.
Broken heroes lay scattered, bleeding out in the rubble.
And right there, in the open, stood Shoto and Bakugo, surrounded by the League of Villains.
"Shoto...!" Endeavor called out.
His flames spiked to a blinding brilliance, casting long shadows across the ruined landscape.
Ignoring the crushing presence radiating from the masked man, he remained singularly focused on retrieving his son.
"Ah, the Number Two Hero." All For One noted.
His pleasant tone remained entirely unchanged, completely unbothered by the blazing wall of fire rushing toward him. "I see you managed to clean up the trash at the hideout quite quickly."
"Release them, villain!" Endeavor roared, stepping forward.
He raised his forearms, the air warping into a violent heat haze around his knuckles.
He wasn't going to wait for All Might to climb back out of the rubble, and he certainly wasn't going to let this monster dictate terms. "You will not touch another hair on my son's head!"
With a thunderous explosion of heat, Endeavor launched himself straight into the fray, a roaring stream of concentrated fire erupting from his palms to cleave the battlefield in two.
The blazing streams of fire parted around All For One as if the element itself was afraid to touch him.
He didn't even look at Endeavor, his attention remaining lazily fixed on the smoke-filled crater where All Might had been thrown.
"Impetuous as always, Enji Todoroki." All For One murmured, a light, dismissive sigh lifting his words.
With a flick of two fingers, a hyper-compressed backdraft of air forcefully snuffed out Endeavor's maximum output like a spent match.
Endeavor's boots plowed into the dirt, stopping his momentum as his jaw locked, the muscles in his neck straining under the sudden, humiliating suppression.
His eyes darted across the wasteland, cataloging the damage.
Right in the center of the opening stood Shoto and Bakugo, pinned under the shadow of the League.
Unbeknownst to them, behind the concrete wall, Izuku's chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged gasps.
The pressure in the atmosphere had mutated from a suffocating aura into a lethal reality.
With Endeavor checked and All Might unable to go all out, an unyielding truth settled over the hidden students.
If they don't act right now, their friends are gone.
And they are betting everything on this plan.
Momo's creation quirk materialised carbon-titanium guide rails, anchoring instantly into the concrete to establish their launch trajectory.
Eijiro braced his weight against the base, his skin shifting into rock layers to serve as the shield.
Beside him, Tenya's engines are ready to flare upon signal.
They were ready to move, their fiery teacher having drilled the brutal realities of survival into them until the lesson became instinct: a direct confrontation meant suicide, but a sudden, high-speed extraction using momentum the enemy hadn't anticipated was a gamble they could take.
"Tomura." All For One's voice cut through the burning lot, entirely ignoring Endeavor as he raised a hand to initiate the black sludge teleportation sequence. "Secure the boys. Our time here is concluded."
"I said get away from them!" Endeavor roared, charging back into the fray as his internal core temperature surged to dangerous, skin-flaking levels, throwing a Jet Burn to force the mastermind's hand.
At that exact microsecond, Momo's steel ramp slammed into the concrete with a heavy thud.
Tenya's engines screamed, his Recipro Burst giving them the initial speed.
He grabbed Izuku and Eijiro by their belts.
But then, they all felt it.
A massive, familiar heat wave rolled across the entire district, distinct from Endeavor's hellfire.
It was a suffocating, dense thermal pressure that instantly pulled everyone's eyes toward the center of the wasteland.
The three soaring students looked down mid-air, and the blinding light reflected in their eyes.
A solitary figure stood directly between the Pro Heroes and the League of Villains, completely altering the battlefield's gravity by his sheer presence.
He didn't have a single scratch on him, let alone bandages.
Thanks to his completed evolutions, his body operated at peak efficiency, perfectly optimizing a flawless homeostatic loop of power.
White frost crawled across his left side in jagged, organic fractals, emitting a mist of absolute zero, while his right side erupted with massive, roaring columns of intense blue fire.
The dual elements clashed and complemented one another perfectly.
His eyes were burning with a protective fury as he stood as an unyielding wall between the devil and his students.
Dabi.
High above the ruined ward, the press helicopter circling the perimeter caught the sudden manifestation on its live feed.
The reporter's voice cut through, completely breathless and fractured with utter disbelief:
"As you can see, an unknown figure has suddenly appeared! One moment the center of the lot was empty, and the next, someone was standing directly between the villain and the Number Two Hero! Wait... that blue sun! It's the U.A. instructor who single-handedly held the line at the training camp, defeated the mighty titan, and now he's standing completely uninjured on the front line!"
….
Meanwhile, miles away at the Central General Hospital, the heavy door to the intensive care unit was violently thrown open.
Stain burst into the room, his eyes wide. "Boss, did you see the ne–"
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The hospital bed was completely empty.
Twice was shoved into the far corner of the room, sweating bullets and wringing his hands frantically–
"Boss was just trying to watch the broadcast, but the reception was terrible! Terrible! He said he couldn't see the screen clearly, so he decided to go see the live recording in person! That makes perfect sense, right?! Totally logical!!"
Stain didn't answer as his gaze slowly drifted toward the glass window, whose entire frame had been melted, shattered, and scorched with blue soot while jagged fractals of ice spread across the edges, as though a human missile had been launched through it at supersonic speed.
The Hero Killer turned back to Twice, his expression perfectly flat and stoic as his hand slowly gripped the hilt of his katana, unsheathing the cold steel with a quiet click.
"Please sacrifice yourself." Stain said quietly.
"WAIT, I CAN EXPLAIN–!" Twice shrieked.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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