The office was a monolithic cube of silence at the heart of UA, but the silence was a lie. It was built upon the hum of servers desperately trying to delete the truth. Nezu sat behind his desk, his small paws resting on a console that displayed the jagged, low-res silhouettes of three Commission officials. Their faces were obscured by the high-contrast glare of their own monitors, digital ghosts in a dying bureaucracy.
"The primary nodes have been scrubbed," the lead official's voice was a cold, synthesized rasp. "But the 'Adaptability' leak is a biological wildfire, Nezu. The public is no longer asking if All Might is coming back, they are asking much more invasive and unnecessary. And you never saw fit to inform us."
Nezu's eyes were black stones, reflecting the scrolling data of a world falling apart. "Information of that magnitude is a burden, not a tool. I managed the secret to prevent the very panic you are currently failing to contain. The leak didn't come from my office, it came from the fracture in the system itself."
"The system is fractured because its core is rotting," the second official interjected, her voice sharp as a surgical blade. "You were in control of the curriculum. You were in control of the exams. You claim to be the finest mind in the nation, yet you allowed your star pupils to transform into a national security crisis. You lost Midoriya Izuku. And you lost Katsuki Bakugo. They were the most potent kinetic assets produced in the last few years, barring perhaps the Todoroki boy or the Amajiki prodigy. Now, one is a missing child the nation is demonizing, and the other is a legal nightmare."
Nezu tilted his head, his whiskers twitching. "The irony is not lost on me. The public sees the footage of the fight and they don't see a bully and a victim. They see a 'saviour' in Bakugo. They believe he was trying to stop the 'Monster' Midoriya after the boy struck down the Symbol of Peace. They've turned a domestic tragedy into a martyrdom."
"Then we lean into it," the first official said. "If the public wants a martyr, we give them one. We rebrand Bakugo. We use the animosity in your class to validate the narrative, that they were all afraid of Midoriya, and Bakugo was the only one brave enough to act."
"It won't work," Nezu said, his voice dropping an octave. "The students of Class 1-A are traumatized, not stupid. They know the history. If you try to force that lie down their throats, you will lose the rest of the 'assets' you're so worried about. You are trying to paint a masterpiece on a burning canvas."
A heavy silence followed. On the screen, the officials exchanged a look that Nezu didn't need to see to understand.
"It isn't a suggestion, Nezu," the lead official said. "This was your final strike. Your tenure as Principal of UA is over. Within the next forty-eight hours, your replacement will arrive to oversee the transition to a full Commission-operated military facility. As for you... you will be placed 'under watch' at a secure location."
Nezu let out a soft, dry chuckle. "'Under watch.' A polite euphemism for a carefully selected prison you have made for me. You're imprisoning the only mind that understands the variables currently in play."
"We are stabilizing a liability," the official countered. "Many still believe that the security breaches, the USJ incident, are direct results of your experimental approach to education. You are a genius, Nezu, but even a genius can be a fault in the system."
Nezu began to respond, his mind already calculating the biological and political flaws in their logic, but he stopped.
The air in the office changed.
A sudden, immense shadow swept across the reinforced, bulletproof window of the office, a silhouette that blotted out the pale autumn light. In the same heartbeat, the Aegis sirens tore through the air. It wasn't the standard rhythmic pulse of a drill, it was the high-pitched, continuous scream of a "Level Zero" breach. The floor beneath Nezu's paws vibrated with the sound of something monolithic striking the school's outer shell.
Nezu didn't wait for the officials to ask what was happening. He didn't say goodbye. He reached out and slammed the laptop shut, the digital ghosts of the Commission vanishing into the dark.
The League of Villains were back.
___
Shigaraki Tomura stood on the broad, pulsing shoulders of a High-End Nomu, his boots sinking slightly into the creature's synthetic, exposed musculature. The beast hovered in the gray, turbulent sky above UA, its massive wings beating with a rhythmic thrum-thrum that vibrated through Shigaraki's bones.
Around him, the League stood like a collection of broken teeth. Dabi leaned against one of the Nomu's protruding bone-spurs, a blue flame dancing idly between his scarred fingers. Twice was twitching, muttering to himself about the height, while Toga peered over the edge with a predatory shimmer in her eyes, her tongue tracing the line of her teeth. Spinner and Magne stood ready, their weapons drawn, looking down at the fortified bunker that used to be a school.
But it was Meteor who drew the most air out of the space. Kazuo Hoshikawa stood at the very front of the Nomu's head, his gaunt face set in a mask of cold, immovable granite. The wind whipped his gray-streaked hair, but he didn't blink.
"All Might is sleeping," Meteor said, his voice a low, graveyard rasp that cut through the howling wind. "Like a vegetable. I do not care. I want the heart to stop beating. I want the heat to leave the body. I want him to feel the same silence he gave to her."
Shigaraki tilted his head, scratching idly at a patch of dry skin on his neck. "Stop... Hoshikawa. All Might was just the face of the raid."
"He was the machine," Meteor spat, his eyes burning with a localized gravity. "When they breached my base, they didn't care about the collateral. My daughter... she wasn't a hero. She wasn't a villain. She was three years old. And because her death didn't fit the 'Golden Era' narrative, they erased her. No broadcast. No public mourning. They wouldn't even let me out of the chains to bury her. To the world, she never existed. To All Might, she was a footnote in a victory report."
"Tough break," Dabi remarked, flicking a spark toward the school below. "But you're acting like a main character in a tragedy. Loosen up. We're here to burn the stage, not write a poem."
"Focus on the carnage," Shigaraki commanded, his voice devoid of empathy. "The old man likely isn't even in the main building. It's a hotspot. He's hidden in some sub-basement with a dozen tubes in his throat. Kill the legacy, and the man will die on his own."
A chirping sound erupted from Shigaraki's pocket. He pulled out a black, encrypted burner phone. "Report."
"The plating around the building is thick, boss," Emerald Eye's voice crackled through the speaker, distant and clinical. "My thermal-goggles can see through the reinforced lead on the north and south, but the east wing... there's a dead zone. A localized signal jammer or specialized shielding is blocking the feed. Whatever Nezu is hiding most, it's in that corner."
Shigaraki's eyes narrowed. "The east side. Kurogiri, Toga, you're with me. We'll warp directly into the blind spot and see what the rat is protecting."
Meteor didn't look back. He didn't care about strategy or blind spots. He raised a single, trembling hand toward the heavens. The air around him began to warp, the atmospheric pressure spiking so sharply that Twice fell to his knees, clutching his ears.
"The sky is falling, Kazuo," Shigaraki whispered.
Meteor let out a long, ragged sigh that sounded like the earth cracking open. "Let them bury their children in the dark," he said, and then he dropped his hand.
From the churning gray clouds above the West Entrance, a massive, jagged sphere of meteoric rock, glowing a dull, vengeful red, tore through the atmosphere. The sound was a roar that swallowed the world, a physical weight that flattened the trees on the UA campus before the impact even landed.
This is it, Shigaraki thought, his silent monologue echoing in the hollow chambers of his mind as he watched the West wall of the academy begin to buckle under the cosmic force.
The 'Golden Era' was just a tutorial. All Might, Izuku Midoriya, UA... they were all playing a game with rules that no longer exist. They thought they could build a bunker high enough to hide from the rot they planted. They thought they could shield their 'prestige' from the weight of the people they broke.
The meteor hit. A shockwave of dust and fire erupted, turning the West gate into a crater of molten slag.
But the game is over. The servers are crashing. When the dust settles, there won't be a leaderboard or a symbol or a hero left to save them. We are the system collapse. We are the new world.
Shigaraki Tomura smiled, a jagged, terrifying thing, as the Nomu dove into the smoke.
And in this world, the villains win.
___
The late autumn air was a cold blade, and Eijiro Kirishima felt every serrated edge of it as he trudged across the desolate courtyard of UA. The sky above was the colour of a guttering candle, flickering with gray and charcoal clouds that seemed to press down on the school's reinforced spires.
Kirishima's footsteps were heavy, echoing off the concrete with a dull, hollow thud. He was heading toward the gyms, the one place where the world usually made sense, where sweat and exertion could drown out the noise of a society in decay. But today, the noise was inside his head, louder than any weight he could lift.
He couldn't stop seeing the video.
The footage of Bakugo...Katsuki, the guy he had called a friend, the guy he had defended even when others recoiled, tearing into Midoriya with a savagery that didn't belong in a school. It had been visceral. It had been an autopsy of a friendship. Every explosion, every roar from Bakugo's throat, felt like it was blowing a hole in Kirishima's own sense of self.
I thought he was manly, Kirishima thought, his jaw tightening so hard it ached. He kicked at a loose stone, watching it skitter across the pavement. I thought he had the heart of a hero. But that… that was just a predator finally cornering its prey.
The bitterness tasted like copper in his mouth. If that was who Bakugo really was then Kirishima felt a sickening urge to just... walk away. To switch sides. Not to join the villains, but maybe re-evaluate this whole 'manly' persona and ascribe another saying to himself and others he felt were like him in the endeavour. If the best they had to offer was a bully who nearly killed his own classmate, then maybe...
"I'm an idiot," he muttered, kicking the stone again, harder this time. "A coward."
He felt like he was regressing. UA was supposed to be the place where he stopped being the kid who froze in the shadow of a giant villain. It was supposed to be his "Red Riot" era. Instead, he felt like that middle-schooler again, standing paralyzed while the world moved faster than he ever could. He was just a wall that didn't know what it was protecting anymore.
He stopped in his tracks. The wind had suddenly died, but the air hadn't grown still. It had grown heavy.
The ground beneath his boots began to thrum with a low-frequency vibration that rattled his teeth. Kirishima looked down, noticing that his shadow had suddenly deepened, spreading across the concrete like a spill of obsidian ink. He looked up, and his breath hitched in his throat.
The clouds had been torn open. A massive, jagged sphere of burning rock, a meteor wreathed in vengeful, dulling flames, was plummeting directly toward the West wing of the campus. It looked like the eye of an angry god, staring down at him with a gravity so intense it made the oxygen feel thin.
Kirishima stared for a heartbeat, his eyes wide, his body refusing to move. It was the "Shadow of the Meteor," a literal weight of death.
"Move!" he screamed at himself.
He turned and bolted toward the underpass near the gym entrance. The gyms would be empty, everyone was in their dorms, but he was right in the impact zone. He pushed his legs, his heart hammering against his ribs, but the realization hit him like a physical blow. he was too slow.
He wasn't Iida with his engines. He wasn't Midoriya with his superspeed. He wasn't even Bakugo with his explosive thrusts. He was a tank in a race against a falling star. He had spent the year focusing on his "Unbreakable" form, taking it slow, building his defence, while the world had moved into a new, violent gear. His durability wouldn't save him if he was turned into a smear of carbon on the pavement.
"Dammit!" he cursed, his lungs burning. He could hear the roar of the atmosphere tearing now, a sound like a freight train coming from the heavens.
The heat began to blister the back of his neck. He saw the gym doors, so close, yet miles away. He reached out, his fingers straining, but his legs felt like lead.
Suddenly, a violent shove hit him from the side.
He didn't have time to process it before he was flying through the air, tumbling head-over-heels into the concrete shadows of a reinforced pedestrian underpass. Another body crashed into him, and they both rolled into the dirt and debris just as the world turned into a deafening, blinding roar.
The meteor struck the West gate. The shockwave was a physical wall of dust, heat, and shattered glass that screamed over the opening of the underpass. Kirishima curled into a ball, his skin hardening instinctively, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine from the glass that drowned out the screams of the school's alarms.
As the dust began to settle, a hand grabbed his shoulder.
"Thank God... I made it... in time," a ragged, breathless voice gasped.
Kirishima coughed, blinking through the grit in his eyes. He looked up to see Denki Kaminari slumped against the concrete wall beside him. Kaminari's yellow hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and faint arcs of electricity were still dancing across his fingertips, the residual sign of a high-voltage burst.
"Kaminari?" Kirishima croaked, his voice raw. "What... how?"
"I was just... leaving the gym," Kaminari panted, clutching his chest. "Saw you staring at the sky like a deer in headlights. Didn't think... just moved."
Kirishima looked at his friend, a dull ache blooming in his chest that had nothing to do with the impact. He looked back at the charred ruin of the West wing, where smoke was already billowing into the dark sky. The school had been breached. The bunker was no longer safe.
"You got fast, Denki," Kirishima said, his voice quiet, almost mournful. "I didn't even notice you."
He looked at his own hands, hardened, cracked, and covered in the dust of a failing fortress. He had been so worried about being "unbreakable" that he had forgotten that even the strongest wall is useless if it can't reach the person who needs it.
"Thank you."