The room was a cathedral of shadows, illuminated only by the sterile, blue glow of several dozen monitors. The hum of cooling fans and the rhythmic beep-hiss of All For One's life support systems filled the silence, sounding like the breathing of a mechanical god.
On the center screen, the stolen medical files from UA's encrypted servers were laid bare. On another screen was the video footage that the league still has not released of the failure of a final exams that UA was holding.
They were not involved with the hack that took place, they attribute that to the MLA, for what reasons? All For One still didn't know, but he welcomed the solid information.
Graphs of fluctuating brain waves, cellular regeneration data, and the word "Comatose" stamped in digital red.
A sound vibrated through the air, a wet, wheezing chuckle that escalated into a full, chest-deep laugh. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph.
"Look at him, Tomura," All For One said, his voice a smooth, velvet rasp. He gestured with a scarred hand toward the image of All Might's hollowed, unconscious face. "The Symbol of Peace, the man who stood as an immutable pillar, has finally been reduced to a biological curiosity. He is trapped in a cage of his own cells, his body 'adapting' to injuries it can no longer understand. He isn't even a man anymore. He is a glitch in his own design."
The quirk fascinated All For One and he did think of snatching it, it was just the make of his own quirk that made him so antsy when it came to new quirks. But he held himself back. It was not a good time to show himself, although he has been given much more time thanks to his student's surprisingly careful actions that led to all this.
The master turned his sightless gaze toward the corner of the room. Shigaraki Tomura sat in a high-backed chair, his posture hunched, his chin tucked into his chest. He wasn't laughing. His red eyes were fixed on the floor, and his fingers were working rhythmically at the skin of his neck, the dry scritch-scritch-scritch of his nails the only response to his master's joy.
"You aren't pleased," All For One noted, his tone shifting to that of a disappointed parent. "The great wall has fallen, Tomura. The era is over. Why do you still itch?"
Shigaraki stopped scratching for a second, his hand hovering over a fresh red welt. "It's hollow," he spat, his voice like grinding stones. "This isn't a victory. It's a bug. I spent all this time levelling up, grinding through the side-quests, waiting for the final boss encounter… and the game crashes before the first phase is even over."
He looked up at the monitors, his expression one of pure, venomous loathing. "He's sleeping. He's not even aware that his world is burning. If I kill him now, he won't see it. He won't feel the despair of knowing he failed. It feels like a crappy DLC pack, Master. Low-effort. No emotional payoff. I wanted to stand over him while he watched his 'precious society' crumble, but he's found an easy way out."
All For One went silent for a moment, the monitors reflecting in his dark mask. Then, he let out a soft, knowing hum. "I see. You feel cheated of your catharsis. You want the player to feel the weight of the 'Game Over' screen."
The master tapped a command onto his console. The medical files vanished, replaced by a single, high-resolution photo from the Sports Festival. It was a boy with messy green hair, his face twisted in a roar of exertion, green sparks dancing around his limbs.
"Then don't focus on the man in the bed, Tomura," All For One said softly. "Focus on what the man left behind. If you want to hurt a man, you don't strike the body, you strike the legacy. You destroy the students he nurtured, the halls he walked, and the hope he tried to plant in the next generation."
He leaned closer to the screen, his finger tracing the outline of Izuku Midoriya.
"Especially this one. His favourite student. The one currently holding his quirk."
Shigaraki stopped moving entirely. His hand dropped from his neck. He stared at the image of the brat who had consistently gotten in his way, the one who had looked at him with those terrifyingly earnest eyes at the USJ before killing his nomu.
"His quirk?" Shigaraki repeated, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The brat is a mutation. A powerhouse. What do you mean his quirk?"
"All Might was not born with that strength, Tomura," All For One explained, his voice brimming with a dark, historical weight. "He was the eighth holder of a passing flame called One For All. It is a quirk that grows with every vessel, a torch passed from one hero to the next. And before All Might withered away, he gave it to that boy. Midoriya Izuku is not just a student, he is the physical embodiment of everything All Might believes in. He is the ninth successor. He is the 'Golden Light's' last gamble."
Shigaraki stared at the screen. The confusion on his face slowly curdled into a wide, jagged grin, a terrifying expression that split his chapped lips. The "DLC" wasn't a glitch, it was a secret level. A hidden boss.
"The successor," Shigaraki whispered. He stood up, the joints in his knees popping. He felt the itch again, but this time, it wasn't out of frustration. It was anticipation. "So the old man isn't just sleeping. He's passed the save data to a New Game Plus."
He walked toward the exit of the vault, his heavy coat billowing behind him. He stopped at the threshold, looking back at the monitors one last time.
"The Harvest was fun," Shigaraki said, his eyes glowing with a manic, red light. "It'll keep the heroes busy, turn the public into vultures. But side-quests don't end the game. It's time for the League to stop playing in ruins and go back to where it all started."
He reached up and gripped the doorframe, his thumb hovering just off the wood to prevent it from decaying.
"We're going back to UA," he said, the grin widening. "If the old man won't wake up to watch his world die, I'll just have to kill his legacy in front of the cameras. Let's see how his 'successor' handles a total system collapse."
___
The holding room was stripped of everything that made a space human. The walls were reinforced steel, painted a clinical, unforgiving grey, and the air smelled of ozone and industrial bleach. There were no windows, there was only the buzzing of a single fluorescent light overhead that made everyone's skin look jaundiced.
Katsuki Bakugo sat at the bolted-down metal table, his hands cuffed in quirk-suppressant bracers. He didn't look like "Cataclysm." He didn't look like the boy who had roared at the sky during the Sports Festival. He looked small. His shoulders were hunched, his gaze fixed on a scratch in the metal table, his breathing shallow and forced.
The heavy door creaked open, and the sharp, rhythmic clack-clack-clack of high heels echoed like gunfire against the floor.
Mitsuki Bakugo stepped into the room. She was dressed in a sharp, slate-grey designer suit, every hair in her ash-blonde bob perfectly in place. She looked like she had just stepped off a runway in Paris, but her face was a mask of cold, sharp-edged fury. Behind her, Masaru hovered like a ghost, his hands wringing together, his eyes downcast and wet with a shame he couldn't voice.
Mitsuki didn't say hello. She didn't ask if he was okay. She walked straight to the table and, with a movement as fluid as a strike, backhanded Katsuki across the face.
The crack of skin on skin was loud in the small room. Katsuki's head snapped to the side, but he didn't snap back. He didn't growl. He just stayed there, his head tilted, his cheek blooming a dark, angry red.
"Look at me when I'm failing you, Katsuki," Mitsuki said, her voice a low, vibrating hiss.
Katsuki slowly turned his head back, his eyes glazed.
"I spend my life building a name," she said, leaning over the table, her perfume, something expensive and floral, suffocating the room. "The Bakugo brand. It's about elegance. And you... you are here trying to turn it into a slur. 'Cataclysm.' Do you have any idea what the shareholders will be saying? Do you have any idea how many contracts I'll lose because my son is a common thug? A schoolyard bully who couldn't keep his hands off a boy ten times the man he'll ever be?"
Katsuki winced at the mention of Izuku. In this room, Izuku Midoriya was the sun, and Katsuki was the shadow that tried to swallow it. He hadn't realized how many people would be watching and would eventually turn their back on him.
"I... I didn't think..." Katsuki started, his voice cracking.
Smack.
The second hit was harder. Mitsuki's rings caught the light. "Don't lie to me. You didn't think because you've never had to. You were the big fish in a little pond, weren't you? You thought you were a god because you could make sparks. But look at you now. You're just fish food."
She paced the small room, her heels clicking a death march. "The school is moving for a full criminal trial. They want to make an example of you to save their own skin after the USJ. You're going to prison, Katsuki. Not a juvenile hall. A bunker for 'Villainous Elements.'"
Masaru made a small, choked noise in the corner. Mitsuki didn't even look at him.
"If you go in there with my name, you'll destroy me," she said, stopping behind him. She reached down and gripped his hair, pulling his head back so he had to look at the ceiling. "I'm already talking to the lawyers about a legal severance. If you're going to be a monster, you'll do it under no name at all. You're a brat, Katsuki. And you had your time to grow up."
Katsuki bit his lip so hard he tasted copper. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to tell her he was scared.
But he knew Mitsuki Bakugo didn't accept fear. She only accepted results.
She let go of his hair and exhaled a long, shivering breath. She walked around the table and crouched down so she was at eye level with him. For a second, her expression softened, but it wasn't a mother's love, it was the pity one felt for a wounded animal that needed to be put down.
"Katsuki," she whispered, her voice chillingly gentle. "I've pulled every string. I've called every contact from Tokyo to Milan. There is no way out of this. Not this time. You've wasted too many chances, and the world is tired of you."
She stood up and smoothed her skirt, looking down at him with a finality that felt like a gavel striking a block.
"It's over," she said. "The hero, the dream has no future with you in it."
Katsuki stayed slumped in the chair. The silence of the room was louder than any explosion he had ever made. He looked down at his cuffed hands, and slowly, a single, hot tear traced a path through the dust on his cheek, followed by another.
She turned and walked toward the door.
The heavy steel door slammed shut, the lock clicking with a heavy, mechanical thud.
___
November 14th.
The air in Tokyo has turned brittle, a late autumn frost creeping over the city like a shroud. The sky is heavy with the promise of a harsh winter. On this morning, the world did not wake up to the news, it woke up to a digital contagion.
Before the Hero Commission could deploy its firewalls, before the UA could scrub the servers of the dark web, the footage was already everywhere. It flickered on the cracked screens of phones in subway stations, it played on the giant monitors of Shibuya, reflected in the terrified eyes of commuters. Two videos. Two recordings that shattered the remaining glass of the hero era.
The first was a raw, visceral descent into madness, a recording of Katsuki Bakugo and Izuku Midoriya. It wasn't a duel, it was a butchery. The public saw the little green bean of UA and his classmate locked in a dance of pure, unadulterated hatred.
They saw the sparks, the screams, and the way the earth itself seemed to recoil from their collision. To the masses, it looked like a glimpse into a private hell, a revelation that the students of the elite academy weren't heroes-in-training, but volatile weapons waiting for a reason to detonate.
But it was the second video that silenced the nation.
It was grainy, timestamped from the chaos of the recent past, showing the impossible, Izuku Midoriya, the timid boy with the emerald eyes, it ended with him standing over the fallen form of All Might. There was no sound in the clip, only the visual of the Symbol of Peace, the man who had held the sky up for decades, collapsing under the weight of a boy who should have just started his hero journey. The video didn't explain why, it only showed the result. The icon was broken.
Their sun had been eclipsed by a child.
By noon, the digital landscape had curdled into a fever pitch of vitriol. For Midoriya there was only one thing the masses were calling for. A terrifying, unified demand: Put him in chains.
In the comments sections and on the street corners, a warped narrative began to take root. If Midoriya could bring down the greatest hero to ever live, then what did that make him? A monster. A sleeper agent. And there were other questions they had for the boy with explosions on how he may have been able to take down the new supposed threat.
Yet, as the city burned with questions and the leaderboard of the Harvest ticked upward in response to the chaos, the ivory towers remained dark.
There were no press conferences from UA. No reassuring statements from the Hero Commission. There was only the sound of the autumn wind whistling through the ruins of Yokohama and the deafening silence of a government that had lost its voice.
The world is waiting for a hero to explain the incoming darkness.