Izuku felt it in an instant: three candles snuffed out at once, three sighs lost to the air. Three souls that now rested forever. He looked at his hand for a few seconds and clenched it tight; the joy he'd felt a moment ago had vanished. In its place burned a cold anger, controlled but overflowing, a rage demanding punishment. They had touched something he was searching for, and now someone was going to pay. Unfortunately for the Nomus beneath him, they would be the ones to help appease that fury.
A single blink was enough for him to leave that distant space and materialize violently onto the massive fragment of stone floating thousands of meters up, already within a breathable layer of the atmosphere. Waiting for him were seven Nomus, tense, ready to strike. The first to react was the Sato Nomu: it roared in its monstrous form and lunged with a blow that fractured a quarter of the debris, kicking up a hail of rocks. When the dust cleared, the sight that appeared struck fear into everyone: the Nomu's colossal fist was buried in Izuku's face... without a single scar, without a scratch. Izuku hadn't moved. He didn't need to.
Before the surprise could turn into a reaction, Izuku was no longer in the same spot: he appeared pressed against the Sato Nomu's head. A dry impact, a brutal crack, and the head burst into fragments. He returned to his original position in less than a blink, as if it had all been an illusion. What remained of Sato were legs that fell lifeless, and a black puddle that stained the stone with an almost muffled sound.
—Let's see if that keeps you from crawling out of hell again —he said coldly.
Izuku turned his head gravely and looked at the other Nomus. Though they held their combat stances, their retreat was noticeable: Izuku's presence had steeped them in fear. His expression didn't change, remaining serious, relentless. He crossed his arms, and a monstrous pressure spread out from his body, a force that compressed the air and bent light itself until, within seconds, it formed a gigantic crater around the debris, nearly the same radius as the mass of stone they stood on. The ground vibrated, what little wind there was roared, and the whole scene seemed to bow before the intensity of his will.
—Listen well, Nomus. Right now, before I take it out on you, I'll give you time to land a hit on me. I won't move —The pressure radiating from Izuku made the very air creak, and his voice rang out like an unshakable sentence—. Attack, friends.
Though they hesitated for a few seconds, the tension broke. The six Nomus lunged at the same time, the roar of their movements echoing like a storm of steel and gunpowder.
The first to strike was the Shoji Nomu, which emerged behind Izuku with a dozen metal limbs multiplying endlessly. They stretched out, splitting apart to look like bullets, and began a rain of blows hammering the air with enough force to shatter mountains. Each impact made the colossal debris shudder, sending fragments of stone flying into the void. A screen of dust covered everything, as if Izuku had been buried.
Then, amid the rumbling, a cold, clear, cutting voice rang out:
—One For All... 55%.
With that, a simple flick cleared the dust, and Izuku was seen still standing without a single hit landed.
—Pathetic.
Immediately, black whips surged from his back like a frenzied pack. They tore through and shredded every one of Shoji's metal limbs. The fragments were flung into space, pulverized within seconds by the pressure of the void. Shoji fell back, its regeneration cut off cold.
—Next —Izuku said coldly, building more tension toward the Nomus.
The Kirishima Nomu was next to charge, hardening its body into a living wall. Every punch it threw boomed like a cannon, and with each impact it scattered red spores that stuck to the stone and sprouted into giant fungal threads, as if trying to devour the whole slab of debris. The fungus spread fast, wrapping Izuku in a poisonous, brittle forest.
The Momo Nomu reacted too, immediately creating two enormous machine guns, modified to fire bottle-sized projectiles, colossal rounds that broke the atmosphere with sonic booms as they fired. A swarm of metal fire launched at Izuku in a barrage impossible to dodge.
The Mineta Nomu hurled its sticky spheres, which fused with matter and had begun expanding, adding to that senseless destruction. Each sphere glowed with concentrated energy, a field that, if it closed, would trap even Izuku and immobilize him completely.
Izuku didn't even blink.
—One For All... 60%.
The whips crossed in front of him and began spinning at an abyssal speed, forming a dense circle that instantly tore the fungal forest apart, disintegrating spores, spheres, and stalks as if they were paper. Then, with a sharp motion, Izuku created a new construct.
—Leviathan Shield.
The whips compacted into a colossal wall, dark and reinforced, with a relief pattern resembling a roaring sea monster. Kirishima struck head-on with all his hardened strength, but the impact was absorbed and returned. All three Nomus were sent flying like projectiles, tearing through dozens of meters of rock and leaving a smoking crater.
The Uraraka Nomu took over: it lifted dozens of debris chunks and grew them in size until they were nearly mountains, then hurled them at Izuku with surgical precision, trying to bury him under tons of stone. The strategy was clear: crush him completely.
—One For All... 65%. Sky-Splitting Katana.
The air collapsed at once. The whips joined together, forming a long, sharp silhouette that gleamed like a black blade, charged with energy. With an upward slash, the black edge expanded and swept the blocks aside as if they were paper, splitting them into a thousand pieces before they could even touch him. The air trembled from the impact.
The Bakugo Nomu roared, leapt violently, and ignited titanic explosions from each palm, bigger than missiles, each detonation trying to erase Izuku's figure from the rock. It bombarded him relentlessly, the ground shaking, craters multiplying, and the whole scene seemed to be breaking apart.
—One For All, 70%.
With a single cut, Izuku split the explosions themselves apart. The black sword cut through the air and sliced through the pressure, dividing the fire into two perfect halves that crumbled away like ash. The Bakugo Nomu barely had time to react when the black blade traced another line and tore off one of its explosive hands, ripping it from the rest of its body. The Nomu's roar was a burst of pure fury, but black blood was already gushing from the stump, which had begun to regenerate.
The six Nomus had given everything, unleashing their most brutal arsenal, and still hadn't managed a single scratch. Izuku remained in the exact same spot, with barely a couple of dust marks on his clothes.
Izuku breathed deep and lowered the katana. His gaze was empty of patience, cold and condemning.
—Enough playing around. You couldn't even scratch me. Now you'll see what true terror looks like —His voice rang out like a dry thunderclap in the void—. One For All... 75%!
In the blink of an eye, he vanished from everyone's sight. The first to suffer it was the Kirishima Nomu, which didn't even manage to blink before Izuku appeared in front of it and gripped its face with one hand. In that same instant, he dragged it across the entire colossal debris at an absurd speed. Every turn was so violent it tore whole slabs of stone away, reducing the mass of the fragment bit by bit, pulverizing whole stretches of surface within seconds.
The other Nomus could barely dodge. Every charge changed direction without warning, a black, bloody line cutting through the air, and more than one ended up injured just from the graze. It was in the middle of that frenzy that the Mineta Nomu had no such luck: it took the hit head-on. Its body vanished instantly, leaving only a trail of purple stains scattered around the debris, like a macabre painting marking its end.
Finally, Izuku stopped. Dust darkened the battlefield, covering everything in an oppressive shroud. And from within that gloom came another verdict:
—One For All... 80%.
He reappeared in front of the Shoji Nomu, this time wielding the Kirishima Nomu's two severed arms like clubs. Holding nothing back, he brought down a dry blow onto the Nomu's head. The impact ran straight through it, opening a clean tunnel in the rock. But Izuku didn't stop: he appeared beside it again, caught it mid-air once more, and threw it back into the same hole, chasing it down to land another blow. Again and again. With each strike, the diameter of the hole grew wider, until the gigantic slab of debris ended up turned into a kind of floating ring in the void, fracturing with every brutal blow.
The Momo Nomu watched, its face contorted. For the first time, terror consumed it as it realized not even its calculations could keep pace with the scale of destruction. Without a second thought, it grabbed the Bakugo Nomu's arm and transferred the two quirks it had stored. In an instant, both began creating heavy weaponry, high-caliber cannons, launchers for monstrous projectiles that spread across the whole new ring. Explosions rang out in a chain reaction, in a desperate attempt to contain Izuku and wipe him off the map.
Meanwhile, the Uraraka Nomu pushed its power to its absolute limit, clinging to the ring of rock to keep it stable. The pressure was such that the stone trembled and cracked with every second; without its effort, it all would have pulverized and disintegrated into the void.
But amid the hail of colossal bullets and the roar of explosions, Izuku remained cold, unmoved. A rising monster. The embodiment of chaos without reason, only destruction.
When it was all over, all that remained of the Shoji Nomu was a single metal head, still bearing the grimace of terror carved into its face. Izuku held it for a few seconds, studying that last vestige of failed resistance, and without a shred of compassion let his black whips close around it. The metallic crunch was followed by a dry crack: the head was compressed down into a tiny, useless sphere that rolled off his fingers. With a careless gesture, he let it drop into the void. Friction with the atmosphere wrapped it in flames, slowly disintegrating it until it was nothing more than incandescent dust lost in the air.
Izuku, floating above the battlefield, raised his gaze. The colossal ring of rock had transformed into something else: an improvised fortress, riddled with weapons, colossal cannons, and artillery structures that shouldn't exist in this world. All created by the Momo Nomu in a desperate act of survival. Missile batteries, automatic turrets, and energy cannons lined up in circles, all aimed at him as if he were the only thing that mattered.
—¡¡Fire!!— the Momo Nomu roared, its voice thick with both fury and fear.
The sky lit up. Thousands of shots fired in unison, each one carrying enough power to devastate entire cities. The roar was deafening, even in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The whole ring shook with the force of the attack, projectiles tearing through the air, explosions crossing paths and disintegrating everything in their way. It was a flood of fire and metal, an ocean of destruction aimed at a single man.
But Izuku didn't move. He only narrowed his eyes, letting the glow of that storm illuminate his silhouette.
—One For All... 85%.
He took the attacks head-on, engulfed in a sphere of incandescent chaos that burst with such power it looked like a new sun in the middle of the void. Cannons, explosions, bursts of energy, lasers at full power, all unloading onto him at once, with the fury of an arsenal that would have been enough to wipe a city off the face of the Earth. The collision created flashes so blinding even the Nomus had to shield their faces, and yet Izuku's silhouette remained there, steady, as if he were the center of gravity of that entire cataclysm.
Then, with a simple wave of his hand, a dry sweep across the ring, the entire war machine exploded all at once. Turrets, cannons, and structures were torn out at the root, turned into burning scrap that disintegrated as it fell. All that remained was smoking wreckage, dust, and silence.
The Momo Nomu froze. Its breathing grew ragged, its eyes trembling as it watched its entire creation vanish within seconds, as if it had never existed. The feeling of emptiness in its chest was unbearable: it had deployed everything, poured out all its ingenuity, all its power, and hadn't even managed to make Izuku take a single step back.
—Interesting... —Izuku said, with a calm that chilled the blood— I didn't expect to find a Momo this capable.
The Momo Nomu jumped back out of pure fear, clumsily falling on its back. As it got up, its hands trembled seeing Izuku already floating in front of it, unharmed, without a single scratch on his body.
—You thought well, going for a powerful attack to finish me off. But it didn't work.
—¡¡DEKUUUU!!— the Bakugo Nomu roared, appearing suddenly, wrapped in furious explosions.
Izuku barely turned his gaze. With a dry, almost lazy blow, he sent it flying to the other side of the ring like a rag doll, tearing through rock and leaving a hole that spat out smoke and debris.
Without taking his eyes off the Momo Nomu, he continued:
—Well... let's finish this.
The creature backed away immediately, its feet slipping on the rock, ending up crawling clumsily. The terror ran so deep its movements became useless, as if its own muscles refused to respond. It felt as though the whole ring tilted toward Izuku, as if there wasn't a single safe place left to hide. Was this true terror? Was this true death? She could only cry, out of control.
—¡Please, forgive me! I'll be loyal to you... I'll do whatever you ask, I'll worship you like a god to whi—— it couldn't continue; the katana of black whips ran through its chest, making it cough up blood as its eyes searched for Izuku's, who watched it as if it were nothing more than plain garbage.
—I'm not a god... and there's no god left for you to pray to —he pronounced coldly.
A single motion was enough: he expanded his whip-sword, and the Nomu's head burst into a bloody cloud, ending its existence instantly.
Izuku glanced for a moment at his katana stained with black blood and clicked his tongue in annoyance. There was no pride in that gaze, only cold calculation. He took a step and, with that same devastating calm, circled the ring and tore out someone still writhing in the dust: the Uraraka Nomu. He gripped it by the neck with his right hand, and the creature kicked and clawed at the air like a cornered animal, unable to break free.
—I can't stand seeing those I care about defiled —Izuku said, his voice low and sharp—. I hate it.
Uraraka shrieked, its voice broken with terror, as Izuku held it like a dirty toy. His eyes never left the Bakugo Nomu, which was getting up from the rubble, its regeneration working overtime, its ragged breathing showing it had burned through most of its power. Black blood poured from some of its wounds, but it was no longer the unstoppable threat from before; it was wounded, furious, and ready for anything.
Izuku looked at it like someone offering a final chance before judgment.
—You'll be the last one standing. Maybe the one who dies worse than the rest. Put everything you have into this attack... or this is your end.
The monster roared out the name it wasn't supposed to forget:
—¡¡¡DEKUUUUU!!!— Bakugo screamed, its voice breaking into flame—.
A titanic explosion burst around the ring, smoke, fire, and shockwaves that made the rock shudder on the verge of collapse. Projectiles and blinding smoke swept over everything. Izuku didn't blink; his eyes tracked the rock until they located the new form emerging from behind the columns of dust.
A colossal figure rose, weaving desperation into its very being. Its muscles, now shattered pieces of rock and metal, tensed beneath scarlet skin, fusing the explosive fury of a beast with an impenetrable defense. With four imposing arms, each one a promise of annihilation, this being stood ready to shatter any obstacle. An infernal mask concealed an even more terrifying face, while its eyes, two glowing embers in the gloom, froze the soul with an icy stare. Desperation had found a new face, and it loomed over everything with the force of an imminent cataclysm.
Desperation had found a new face, and it loomed over everything with the force of an imminent cataclysm.
Izuku just watched, and after all that chaos, allowed himself a satisfied smile.
—Good, now you'll last longer... One For All... 90%.— he said, blowing the Uraraka Nomu's head apart and beginning the final slaughter.
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Shoto was on the ground, paralyzed, his father's body a few meters away, motionless and bleeding from the wound in his head. The blood spread out like a cruel reminder: Endeavor no longer breathed. For years he had dreamed of this moment, had cursed it, hated it, wished he could scream in his face in his final seconds that he had failed as a father. He'd wanted to see him fall, weak, defeated, and prove to him that all he'd managed to create was a monster.
But reality turned out different. Instead of cruel indifference or stale discipline, Shoto received an act that broke something inside him: his father's hand letting go of him, the knife, the pain splitting open his forehead... and then silence, stillness. In the middle of that emptiness, something impossible slipped through: for one infinitesimal second, in Endeavor's fading gaze, Shoto thought he saw a flicker of what might have been a father, a shadow of pride. That tiny crack in the armor of the man he'd despised so much was enough to break him. Tears came, uncontrollable, for the first time not from anger but from absolute loss. Loss of the condemnation he'd wished for, and loss of the chance to hate with the certainty he needed.
—Pathetic... ¡¡¡PATHETIC, MISERABLE WRETCH!!!— the evil Shoto roared, kicking Endeavor's corpse with rage, sending it slamming into the stadium's concrete walls.
Shoto couldn't respond. He just watched with empty eyes, no words, no strength left.
—Are you a good father now? ¿Now you wanted to protect me?!— the evil Shoto lost control, screaming until his throat tore—. ¡Where were you when they kidnapped me?! ¡Where were you when they tortured me, when they cut my body open like garbage, when they rebuilt me piece by piece?!
The veins in his neck bulged, fury consuming him.
—¡¡¡YOU, DAMN YOU, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO PAID FOR ALL THAT!!! To make me stronger, ¡¡to turn me into your weapon!!— his eyes overflowed with rage and pain—. And in the process... losing your quirk. ¡MISERABLE! ¡GOOD FOR NOTHING!
Shoto looked up, his own eyes now full of tears, but also rage. Helplessness made him tremble, but he couldn't manage to form words.
The evil Shoto lifted him up sharply with a column of ice that raised him off the ground. He came close until they were face to face, gripping his neck hard. His fingers closed like shackles, squeezing with clear intent to choke him.
—How the hell did you end up with a father like that?— he spat, squeezing tighter and tighter—. You damn piece-of-shit kid.
Shoto choked, struggling to breathe, as his tears fell uncontrollably.
Then the evil Izuku appeared, walking calmly, as if there were no hurry. He put a hand on the evil Shoto's shoulder, smiling with disdain.
—What a surprise— he said in a cold voice—. After telling me I got too angry at my other self, that he was garbage, here you come making this whole scene. You really do surprise me.
The evil Shoto glanced at him sideways, brow furrowed.
—Shut up. This is personal. I just want to take it out on this lucky bastard.— He squeezed Shoto's neck harder, who could barely manage a groan of pain. Then, almost with contempt, he let go and dropped him to the ground with a dull thud.
—But you're right about one thing— the evil Shoto continued, breathing deeply—. What matters is eliminating that Izuku. He's too dangerous a threat.
The evil Izuku smiled faintly.
—Don't worry. My Nomus went to take care of him. Right now... they're killing him in the sky.
—¡¡¡BOOOM!!!
Before anyone could respond, the world exploded.
A blinding white light lit up the stadium like a second sun. The flash was so brutal all three of them had to shield their faces. The roar shook the ground and threw up dust in every direction. The walls creaked, the stones cracked, and for an instant everyone was wrapped in confusion.
The evil Shoto narrowed his eyes in fury; the evil Izuku, meanwhile, kept that cold, unsettling calm. Shoto, sprawled on the ground, could barely process what he was seeing. His heart raced, his breathing turned chaotic. If the Nomus had been sent to kill Izuku... then that explosion in the sky... was that the end? Had he really been defeated? Part of him wanted to believe he hadn't, screaming inside that it couldn't be true.
—See?— the evil Izuku laughed, a laugh thick with arrogance—. Hahaha... he's already been wiped out by my Nomus. Now, let's pull back before...
—¡¡¡BANG!!!!
The words froze in his throat.
The sky tore open at once. Through the shredded clouds descended a gigantic ring of stone, ablaze, broken into pieces, as if the very heavens were falling in flames. The colossal ring burned, consuming itself second by second, and at its center a figure could be made out falling at an inhuman speed: Izuku.
In his arm he dragged a deformed, shattered Nomu, barely holding itself together. Every time it tried to regenerate, it was instantly pulverized by a hail of blows that shattered it into ever smaller pieces. The roar of each impact mixed with the howl of the air, until, with one final devastating blow, the ring of fire turned to dust in the sky. Nothing remained but ashes, which evaporated from the brutal speed of their fall.
The impact at the center of the arena shook the whole stadium. A cloud of smoke, dust, and rock fragments rose like a wall blocking everyone's view. The ground trembled, the stands creaked, and for an instant all that could be heard was the rumble of falling stones.
The confusion didn't last long. From within that sea of smoke a grotesque silhouette emerged: a gigantic Nomu, dragging itself desperately with the one arm it had left. Its body was in pieces, and yet the most terrifying thing was its expression: absolute terror, uncontrolled dread, as if it had seen a demon it could not escape.
An instant later, a thin, completely human arm emerged from the smoke and caught the Nomu by the neck as if it weighed nothing. The crack of breaking bone rang out above the chaos.
The smoke cleared enough to reveal the scene: Izuku, standing, upright, completely unharmed. Not a scratch, not a bead of sweat, nothing. Just him, breathing calmly, with that serene smile that now seemed more monstrous than any expression of rage.
—Good... I've calmed down now— he said in a plain, almost casual tone, as if what had happened had been nothing more than a light release of tension.
The Nomu hung from his hand, trembling, unable to break free. And all around, everyone present stood in absolute shock, as if what they were seeing shouldn't even exist.
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—¡¡Iida!!, ¡¡Iida!!— Momo screamed desperately as she pounded the door with all her strength—. ¡Director Nezu, please, open the door! ¡Iida couldn't make it through, we have to save him!
—I'm sorry to tell you I can't do that— Director Nezu's voice answered from the one remaining speaker—. If I do, those things will rush straight through the exit and cause more destruction, harming all the civilians currently being treated. And even if I wanted to, the damage to the system won't let me control the door from here. I'm sorry, Miss Yaoyorozu.
Momo was devastated. She couldn't say she liked Iida, because that wouldn't be true, but that didn't mean she didn't want to help him. She had always tried to support him as vice class rep, to advise him, to guide him... even if he never fully accepted it. Everyone had considered him a jerk, an arrogant boor who treated anyone who came near him badly. Getting to the point of outdoing even Bakugo, because at least Bakugo helped—Iida didn't. But now, after seeing him risk his life to save her in the final second, no one knew what to think anymore. All that was left was to pray he was alive, that the door would open, and that everyone could thank the real Iida hiding behind that harsh front.
—Your loss really is regrettable... But I'm a bit busy.
The new voice startled everyone. They turned, tense, and saw him: a man dressed entirely in black from head to toe, utterly out of place. His suit was impeccable, elegant, paired with a dark metal mask that hid most of his face. The only color on him was his white skin and his hair, along with his eyes, both an unsettling shade of dark green. There was something about that hair... familiar. And his walk, slow, composed, had more of a sophisticated butler about it than an intruder on a battlefield. In his hands he carried a very particular metal box.
—Sir... what are you doing here? Civilians shouldn't be in this area— Kirishima said, stepping closer to help him out. But he stopped short. He couldn't move anymore. No one could.
Everyone froze in place. Their bodies refused to respond. They couldn't even speak. It was as if their will had been ripped away by some invisible force. And the man walked calmly among them, as if they were mere statues stepping aside for him to pass.
Then he stopped. He had noticed Uraraka, who, injured and exhausted, was trying to stay standing. She was the only one who suddenly collapsed to the ground, free of that paralysis, though too weak to hold herself up.
The man leaned down with an almost absurd delicacy for that setting. He caught her before she hit the ground, gently settling her as if she were made of glass. And what came next left Momo breathless: a green energy spread across Uraraka's whole body, wrapping her in a strange glow. Within seconds, all her wounds vanished. Not a single scar remained, not a mark. Even her uniform returned to being spotless, as if it had never been damaged in the first place.
—I hope my service has been of great help to you, my dear— the man said in a different language. Spanish. Momo didn't speak it fluently, but she'd learned enough to understand his words.
Uraraka stared at him, eyes wide open, unable to believe what had just happened.
The man stood up, no longer with the gentleness he'd shown the girl, and turned his face toward Momo. His cold gaze pierced straight through her, freezing her blood, before he kept walking, straight toward the metal door.
Momo could barely breathe. The invisible force still held her, keeping her from turning to watch him go. She only managed to see Uraraka, who seemed unable to tear her eyes away from that man. A metallic groan of something bending filled the air, ringing in everyone's ears. And suddenly, as if nothing had happened, they got their movement and their voices back.
Momo spun around quickly, but all she found was the giant door. It remained intact, just as they'd left it. And the man had vanished.