….
Back on the battlefield, a sudden, heavy silence fell across the frozen arena.
It was almost a ceasefire; no one moved, and no one attacked.
The wind howled softly against the towering glacial spires that walled off the outside world, carrying a strange frost-bitten static.
Dabi stood dead center, his glowing eyes resting on the two titans of the old era.
"Let's end this once and for all."
His declaration carried an unnatural weight.
To both All Might and All For One, it felt profoundly strange.
A war that had been raging in the shadows of society for almost a century, a blood feud forged over generations, was being nonchalantly scheduled for its expiration date by a third party.
All For One's hissed, mocking chuckle rumbled from his chest–
"End this? A single piece removed from the board does not end the game. You speak with the short-sightedness of a mortal who has only witnessed a fraction of history."
Behind him, Tomura Shigaraki bared his teeth, a fractured, manic grin splitting his cracked lips. "You think you're special just because you've managed to survive every time? I will grind your pretty little ice into dust, and then I will take everything you–"
But Dabi didn't care enough to let him finish.
"Don't open your mouth while the adults are talking."
He shut the villain down, with a flick of his wrist, unleashing a towering wave of concentrated blue fire straight at Shigaraki's torso, every ounce of it carrying an unmistakable intent to kill.
The air shrieked as the searing blaze threatened to reduce him to ash in less than a heartbeat.
All For One's grin disappeared.
Reacting on pure instinct, the mastermind thrust out his left hand, instantly layering overlapping redirection and reinforced bone Quirks into a defensive barrier.
BOOM!
The collision detonated in a violent explosion, the blue flames superheating the shield and flooding the frozen arena with a sapphire glare.
Behind the barrier, Shigaraki went rigid.
The sheer speed of the attack and the horrifying realization that death had reached him without the slightest hesitation struck his mind like a hammer.
His face drained of color as his hands trembled uncontrollably against the frozen floor, overwhelmed by a primal fear he had never experienced before.
A dark, furious aura spread from All For One as his jaw tightened behind the mask.
"You dare reach for my successor, boy? Tomura is the one who will inherit everything. He is not a toy for you to break."
Dabi ignored him completely.
Turning his back on the Symbol of Evil, he met All Might's gaze instead.
"Today, I will set the stage for you, All Might." Dabi said, his voice cutting cleanly through the crackle of the lingering flames. "This is your fight, and it's only right that you bring it to an end yourself."
All Might's jaw clenched, his legendary heroic smile strained under the sheer gravity of the moment.
"Anyway, I have interrupted enough." Dabi continued nonchalantly, pointing a thumb back at the shivering apprentice. "I will be taking Shigaraki with me. Don't worry, I won't kill him just yet. That way, you can finish off this cockroach today without any baggage."
Dabi's heightened, dragon-slayer senses could feel it clearly.
The embers of One For All inside All Might were flickering rapidly, down to their absolute, burning limit.
This was the final boundary.
All For One finally snapped.
To be completely ignored, treated as a secondary nuisance, and have his chosen successor casually claimed as stolen property was an insult his centuries-old ego could not tolerate.
"Arrogant brat! You are nothing but a broken and abandoned child playing hero!"
His right arm swelled into a grotesque, titanic amalgamation of Springlike Limbs, and Multiplied Boosters, driving a cataclysmic shockwave straight toward Dabi's skull–
"I will strip everything from you!"
But he never reached him.
A golden blur split the frost.
All Might intercepted the blow mid-air, his boots grinding into the ice, generating a massive shockwave that cracked the arena floor.
"I have always shown you my weakest side, young Dabi!"
All Might's roar resonated from the very depths of his chest.
Beneath the shroud of billowing steam, his sunken eyes suddenly blazed like twin supernovas, burning away the shadow of his mortality–
"And truly, you were a colleague I could always depend on! But as you said... this is my fight! From here on out, watch closely! I will show you a glimpse of my prime!"
The air pressure detonated inward as the golden sparks of One For All went from a flicker to a blinding, era-defining inferno.
All For One's composure finally cracked.
Watching his offence being neutralized by the same Quirk that had been passed down by his brother through decades made him sick of it.
Nevertheless, his gaze immediately shifted to Tomura Shigaraki for a moment, who remained frozen on the ice, trembling as the lingering terror of Dabi's killing intent left him completely detached from reality.
Leaving his chosen successor captivated under Dabi was something he can't let happen, it might be the end for real.
All For One thought of an escape route for his successor as he forcefully activated a long-range spatial gate.
The same thick, foul geyser of tar-black sludge erupted out of thin air directly beneath Shigaraki's body, rising to forcefully extract his successor.
But there was absolutely no way Dabi would let him slide.
What followed next was a chaotic, unnatural usage of multiple hundreds of stolen Quirk's being fired by All For One, who began to fight with a savage, desperate ferocity.
Air Cannons, laser torrents, and kinetic drills ripped through the ice surface.
Yet All Might stayed true to his word.
For one brief, terrifying moment, the Symbol of Peace seemed to cast aside the limits of his battered body, moving with unnatural speed as he unleashed a storm of punches so fast that even space itself appeared to lag behind his fists.
"Detroit... IMPACT!"
He roared, driving All For One backward with a brutal exchange of pure raw force, anchoring the villain entirely to the epicenter.
Even with All Might acting as an overwhelming distraction, intercepting a high-speed spatial warp was incredibly difficult.
All For One was desperately split-second directing secondary shockwaves and jagged bone spikes toward Dabi's blind spots to disrupt his advance.
Dabi's reflexes operated at absolute peak.
Pivoting sharply across the cracking ice, he unleashed frost and blue fire simultaneously, the two elements weaving into a blinding defensive barrier that vaporized every stray blast racing toward him.
Using the opening, he burst through the superheated steam, his right hand enveloped in a hyper-compressed mass of absolute-zero ice.
Before the rising black sludge could fully engulf Shigaraki, Dabi drove his frozen palm into the heart of the vortex.
The overwhelming Frostfire architecture overpowered the spatial gateway itself as the cold crystallized the bubbling mass, freezing the dimensional rift into a brittle block of dark ice that shattered and imploded beneath its own collapsing pressure.
"Let go of me! GET OFF ME–!"
Shigaraki shrieked, his mind fracturing further under the sheer helplessness of his position.
Dabi's fingers closed tightly around the back of the villain's collar.
With a dismissive yank, he dragged Shigaraki out of the collapsing rift, pulling him face-first across the smooth, reflective ice ground like discarded trash.
Without breaking his stride or even looking down, Dabi stomped his heel hard into the earth.
The frozen surface shrieked as a massive, soaring pillar of frost rapidly elevated beneath his boots.
The ice platform shot fifty feet into the air like a high-speed elevator, lifting Dabi and the struggling Shigaraki well above the immediate combat zone, creating a secure, isolated perch to overlook the historic battle clash below.
Just before the platform reached a few hundred feet above, Dabi paused.
He tilted his gaze down toward the base of the arena, where Endeavor stood.
The Flame Hero's white-hot hellfire was roaring, his knuckles bleeding as he gripped his own arms, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked ready to shatter.
Every ounce of his lifetime of obsessive pride, his status as the number two, and his burning drive screamed at him to throw himself into the battle.
"Leave, Enji."
Dabi's voice dropped from above.
"This fight is entirely out of your league."
Endeavor's flames spiked to a blinding furious crimson.
He wanted to scream and prove his worth.
But as Endeavor looked up at his eldest son casually holding the leader of the League of Villains by the throat with one hand while the Symbol of Peace unleashed an era-defining storm below…
The Number Two Hero could only stand rooted in place, staring at the burning, humiliating reality of his own limitations.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
Author Note:
Visit Patreon to instantly access +1 chapter for free, available for Free Members as well. For additional content please do support me and gain access to +12 more chapters.
-->[email protected]/WrightBrothers