The department store was a hollow temple of consumerism, untouched by the seismic rage that had levelled the surrounding blocks. Inside, the air was stagnant, smelling of synthetic fabrics and the faint, sweet scent of floor wax. It was a "House of Needles" without the pain, a quiet, sterile box where the Shadow could finally breathe.
Yoshi Abara, now wearing the skin of the Golden Child, walked through the aisles with a gait that was entirely foreign to Izuku Midoriya's body. There was no stutter in his step, no frantic energy. He moved with the liquid, predatory grace of a silk-wrapped ghost.
In the attic of this heart, the Golden Child was finally silent. He had fallen, his spirit exhausted by the weight of a hero who was a monster and a mother that may shrink to a memory. The Shadow had caught the bones, and now, the Shadow required a new vestment.
He stopped in front of a high-end display. He looked at the tattered remains of the green hero costume, the "feathers" of a bird that had never learned to fly. It was trash. It was a costume for a boy who wanted to be a pillar, Yoshi was something else entirely.
He reached out and plucked a black dress shirt from a rack, followed by a pair of matching designer shorts that flowed elegantly just past the kneecaps. He found a pair of black, flat-soled shoes, reminiscent of the footwear worn by Shaolin priests or the silent assassins of folklore.
Yoshi dressed himself in the middle of the aisle, indifferent to the cameras that were no longer watching. The shirt was too large, the shoulders drooping over Izuku's frame, but Yoshi did not reach for a different size.
He closed his black, void-like eyes. He reached into the air, not with his hands, but with the Ripple Effect. He saw the distances between the threads of the silk, the microscopic gaps that made up the fabric of reality. He pinched the space.
The air around his torso shimmered and distorted, like heat rising off a summer road. The fabric of the black shirt began to crimp and fold, the distances between the fibres shrinking under his mental command.
Within seconds, the oversized garment began to hug the contours of his body with surgical precision. The shorts tightened around the waist, the hem settling into a perfect, flowing line. It was a fit that no tailor could replicate, a suit of armour made of squeezed space.
Yoshi stepped out of the department store and into the sunlight of Ground Omega. He tilted his head back, feeling the hot, smoke-tinged wind against his throat.
"Feels great," he murmured. His voice was Izuku's, but the cadence was wrong, it was deeper, colder, vibrating with a resonance that suggested two souls were speaking through one throat.
BOOM.
The pavement fifty feet away shattered as All Might descended. The Symbol of Peace was a vision of frantic, golden fury, his face twisted into a scowl of pure, agonizing desperation. He looked at the boy in black, the boy who looked like his successor but felt like an open grave.
"What happened?" All Might's voice was a jagged blade. "Where is he? What did you do with Young Midoriya?"
Yoshi's lips curled into a smirk. He didn't look at All Might with fear or reverence. He looked at him with the boredom of a creature that had lived in the dark for an eternity. He felt a chuckle bubbling up in his chest, a mocking sound for the "Golden Child's" idol.
"Wait a sec," Yoshi said, his voice as smooth as polished glass.
In an instant, the air warped. The distance between the department store and the crater where Bakugo lay was three hundred meters, Yoshi made it zero.
All Might's eyes widened as the boy vanished, reappearing instantly in front of Katsuki Bakugo.
Bakugo was struggling to his knees, his face a mask of soot and blood. He looked up, his breath hitching. The change was too much to process, the black clothes, the black eyes, the terrifying, effortless speed. He saw the smirk on "Deku's" face and felt a primal, bone-deep terror he had never known.
"You're a loud one, aren't you?" Yoshi said, looming over him. "A Man of Iron?... But you've been a very bad friend to my Golden Child."
Yoshi raised his right hand. He didn't make a fist. He simply extended his middle finger against his thumb.
"I'm doing him a solid favor," Yoshi whispered. "A little house-cleaning."
He flicked his finger.
The contact was light, a mere tap against Bakugo's forehead. But as the finger touched the skin, Yoshi activated the Ripple Effect. He didn't just strike, he expanded the distance between his finger and Bakugo's skull by a factor of a thousand in a millisecond.
The result was a spatial rupture.
Bakugo was launched by a localized explosion of reality. He was sent screaming backward with such velocity that he became a blur of orange and grey. He tore through the brickwork of a nearby building, then through the reinforced concrete of the one behind it, finally coming to a stop in a heap of pulverized rubble two hundred yards away.
Bakugo didn't move. He was unconscious before he hit the second wall.
Yoshi lowered his hand, exhaling a soft puff of air. He looked back at All Might, who stood frozen in the street, his hands trembling with a mix of horror and confusion.
"That's done," Yoshi said, smoothing the front of his perfectly tailored black shirt.
The Shadow had gathered the White Stones. The Shadow had found the Red Thread. And as he stood in the center of the ruins, Yoshi Abara realized that the sun hadn't forgotten to rise... it was just waiting for him to finish the eclipse.
___
The dust from Bakugo's flight was still settling when All Might turned his gaze back to the boy in black. His hands were curled into trembling fists, the knuckles white.
"Is he alive?" All Might's voice was a low, dangerous vibration that seemed to make the very air itch.
Yoshi shrugged, a casual, loose-limbed movement that looked wrong on Midoriya's muscular frame. "Probably. I didn't expand the distance through his brain, just his skull. He's tough, right? That's what the brats memory always said. 'Kacchan is amazing.'" Yoshi's voice dripped with a mockery so thick it felt like oil.
"Yoshi Abara," All Might said, stepping forward. His voice softened, though the intensity didn't waver. "I know your story. I know about your sister. You were a victim of a system that failed you, and for that, I am more sorry than words can express. I want to help you. We can find a way..."
"I don't need help," Yoshi interrupted, his black eyes fixed on the horizon. "I'm dead, old man. My body is a pile of White ash floating out there somewhere. This? This is just a house I'm squatting in because the owner forgot to lock the door. What do you expect me to do? Go back to the dark? Sit in the attic and listen to him cry?"
"You cannot just steal a life!" All Might's voice rose to a sudden, violent roar. "This boy has a future! He has dreams! You are violating the very soul of my student!"
Yoshi turned his head, a slow, predatory movement. He looked All Might up and down, his smirk widening. "Number one hero, huh? You look more like a Number One Retard to me. You talk about 'stealing a life' while you're standing in a graveyard your own society built. What are you going to do? Punch the ghost out of him?"
The air in the street seemed to freeze. All Might's head looked like it was about to physically erupt, the veins in his neck bulging as his face darkened with a holy, righteous fury. He didn't speak. He simply lowered his center of gravity. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, a silent prayer to the vestige of Nana Shimura. I will do right by him. Forgive me for what I must do to his body to save his soul.
Then, the world disappeared.
All Might moved with a speed that defied the laws of physics. His body was locking his muscles into a state of sheer, overwhelming force. Yoshi's black eyes widened. He had calculated the distance. He had measured the gap. But All Might had deleted the gap through sheer velocity.
He's too fast...!
Yoshi tried to trigger the Ripple Effect, to expand the space between All Might's fist and his own face, but he was a millisecond too slow.
BOOM.
The punch didn't even land fully, the mere wind pressure from the strike sent Yoshi soaring backward. He tore through the air like a discarded ragdoll, his black dress shirt whipping in the wind. He skipped across the pavement, smashed through a concrete barrier, and finally tumbled into the center of a ruined plaza.
Yoshi gasped, his lungs burning as he forced himself upright. He wasn't crying. Instead, he started to laugh, a jagged, hysterical sound of pure wonder.
"Incredible," Yoshi whispered, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "The Golden Child's memories didn't do you justice. You aren't a man. You're a natural disaster."
All Might was already there, descending from the sky like a golden hammer. "I am here for you, Yoshi! But I will not let you take him!"
"I told you," Yoshi snarled, his black eyes flashing. "I don't need anyone!"
As All Might swung a massive overhead blow, Yoshi didn't dodge. He reached out and touched the air in front of him.
"Ripple Effect: Vacuum Snap."
Yoshi didn't expand the distance of the punch. Instead, he shrank the distance of the air molecules directly in front of All Might's fist to zero, creating a localized, perfect vacuum. The sudden lack of air resistance caused All Might's momentum to lurch forward, throwing his balance off just enough for Yoshi to slide beneath his guard.
Yoshi didn't stop. He leapt back, his fingers flicking toward the ground.
"Spatial Spike."
He expanded the distance between the atoms of the asphalt beneath All Might's feet, causing the ground to erupt upward in a jagged, spear-like pillar of stone.
All Might shattered the pillar with a backhand, his breath returning in a violent surge. "Clever boy! But I've fought gods, Yoshi! You're just a child playing with a few rocks in the room!"
All Might blurred again. He appeared behind Yoshi, grabbing his collar. He swung Yoshi in a wide arc, slamming him into a standing skyscraper with enough force to crack the foundation.
"I can help you find peace!" All Might shouted, his voice cracking with emotion. "You don't have to play the role of a demon!"
"Peace is for the living!" Yoshi roared.
He used the Ripple Effect to "squeeze" the distance between himself and the ground, essentially "falling" upward at a hundred miles per hour to escape the pin. He spun in the air, his black clothes billowing.
"Ripple Effect: Atmospheric Wall."
He expanded the distance of a thin sheet of air between him and All Might, creating a barrier of pressurized atmosphere so dense it acted like a sheet of diamond. All Might's following punch hit the barrier, the sound of the impact echoing like a cannon blast through the city.
The fight became a blur of gold and black, a clash of raw, infinite power against the manipulation of reality itself. All Might was holding back, trying not to shatter Midoriya's bones, while Yoshi was fighting with the desperate, jagged edge of a creature that had nothing left to lose.
Yoshi was getting faster, his brain adapting to the sheer scale of All Might's movements. He began to "shimmer" through space, shrinking the distance between his steps until he was effectively teleporting, striking All Might from three directions at once with expanded-distance palms that hit like sledgehammers.
But All Might was the Number One Hero for a reason.
He predicted the shimmer. He timed the Ripple.
As Yoshi reappeared for a strike to the neck, All Might didn't move his arm. He moved his head. He caught Yoshi's wrist in a grip of iron.
"Enough," All Might whispered.
He didn't use a punch. He used a headbutt, a raw, brutal collision of foreheads.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. Yoshi's black eyes rolled back. The world of Ground Omega, the fires, the smoke, the golden giant, all vanished into a blinding explosion of white pain.
Yoshi felt his consciousness fracture. The "vessel" was failing. The Shadow was being cast out.
As he fell toward the dark, the pain transformed. The sound of the crack became a different sound.
Bang.
He was somewhere else, somewhere small. The wood was cold and damp against his back. He could smell the dust and the old, metallic tang of blood. He looked up, his small, glass-boy eyes wide with terror.
He saw her.
Hana. His sister made of silk. She was standing in the doorway of the shed, the light of the setting sun framing her. She was reaching out for him, her face a mask of desperate, sisterly love.
"Yoshi, run..."
Then, a shadow fell over her. A Man of Iron with a smile like a trap.
Bang.
Yoshi watched in slow motion as the silk tore. He watched the red thread bloom across her chest. He watched her eyes go hollow as she slumped into the dirt, her hand falling just inches away from the shed's threshold.
The Man of Iron stepped over her, his boots crunching on her silk, and looked into the shed at the boy of glass.
The door slammed shut.