The sky over Gifu was a bruised plum, the early morning mist swirled between the rusted skeletons of the industrial district. But the silence of the dawn was gone, replaced by the wet, rhythmic churning of muscle fibres.
Muscular's laughter was a serrated blade. He swelled, his quirk forcing thousands of pink, pulsating strands out from his skin until he was a mountain of raw, kinetic potential.
"Fifty points!" Muscular roared, his glass eye spinning wildly in its socket. "The boy who broke the Symbol! Shigaraki's going to love the video of me turning you into a red smear on the pavement!"
"Midoriya, focus!" Edgeshot's voice cut through the bloodlust, sharp and cold as a winter wind. The Ninja Hero had abandoned his capture stance, his body thinning into a lethal, silver ribbon. "I don't care what the news says. Right now, you are a combatant, and that is a monster. If you want to live you move when I move!"
Izuku didn't answer. He couldn't. The weight of Muscular's presence was a physical pressure, but the weight of his own thoughts was heavier. Fifty points. A villain. That's all I am now. A high-value target in a game I never asked to play.
"Now!" Edgeshot screamed.
The hero vanished, becoming a microscopic needle of flesh and silk that threaded through the gaps in Muscular's armour of fibres. Izuku gritted his teeth, the green sparks of One For All erupting around him. He pushed his limits, the hum of the quirk rising from twelve percent to fifteen, then eighteen. It felt like his bones were being etched with acid.
"Thousand-Sheet Pierce!" Edgeshot cried, his thin form vibrating as he struck the nerve clusters beneath Muscular's shoulder.
Muscular howled, his fibres snapping back, but the pain only fed his mania. He swung a fist the size of a wrecking ball, the force of the wind pressure alone cracking the concrete beneath Izuku's feet.
"Left, Midoriya! The center mass is exposed!" Edgeshot commanded, his voice a frantic, guiding pulse in the chaos. "Anchor yourself! Don't let him throw you!"
Izuku launched. He felt the obsidian vines of Blackwhip burst from his forearms, not as tools, but as predatory extensions of his own self-loathing. They lashed out, wrapping around a rusted ventilation pipe to pull him through the air at a sickening speed.
I can do this. I have to do this, Izuku thought. But every time he looked at Muscular, he saw the inevitable result of a world without All Might. He saw the chaos he had allowed to fester.
He pushed to twenty percent. The power roared in his veins. Edgeshot was a blur of silver, keeping Muscular's attention divided, slicing through layers of muscle to keep the beast from fully hardening.
"The opening is there! Strike now!" Edgeshot shouted, his body folding into a defensive coil to distract Muscular's main eye.
Izuku surged forward. He pulled his fist back, the green lightning screaming around his arm. He had the angle. He had the speed. He had the opening.
But as he reached the apex of his leap, a flash of memory hit him, not a memory of a victory, but the sight of All Might's hollowed, unconscious face beneath him. The "Golden Light" flickering out.
His resolve fractured. His foot hit a patch of loose gravel on a raised ledge, and the coordination that had been a razor's edge for the last ten minutes simply... failed. He stumbled. The kinetic energy of his charge dissipated into a clumsy, overextended lurch.
Muscular's grin split his face like a canyon.
"Caught you, little mouse!"
The counter-strike was faster than anything Izuku could track. Muscular's fist, wrapped in a thousand layers of reinforced fibre, caught Izuku square in the chest.
The sound was sickening, the sound of ribs groaning and air being purged from lungs. Izuku was launched backward, a human projectile. He crashed through a massive, rusted water tank on the edge of the roof, the metal buckling like paper. Thousands of gallons of freezing, stagnant water erupted, swallowing him in a cold, dark deluge.
Izuku hit the bottom of the tank, the water rushing into his nose and mouth. He felt heavy. Impossibly heavy. Through the shimmering surface of the water, he saw the gray sky. He saw Edgeshot screaming his name, his silver form being batted away by a triumphant Muscular.
I'm so tired, Izuku thought, the cold water numbing his pain. I really am a Deku. With all this power, I'm the 'Champion' of nothing. I'm the boy who broke the world and then tripped over his own feet.
Muscular loomed over the edge of the shattered tank, his shadow blotting out the dim morning light. He raised a fist, the muscle fibres glowing with a dull, murderous heat.
"Die brat!"
Edgeshot lunged, but he was too far. "MIDORIYA!"
The fist descended like a falling mountain. Izuku closed his eyes, waiting for the dark to finally take the vessel it had been haunting.
THWIP-BOING.
The impact didn't sound like bone breaking. It sounded like a massive rubber band being snapped.
Muscular's fist didn't hit Izuku. It hit a shimmering, translucent barrier of solidified air that had suddenly manifested inches from Izuku's face. The kinetic force of the punch was absorbed, reflected, and sent vibrating back up Muscular's arm, making the giant stumble back in confusion.
Above the tank, a figure hovered in the mist, standing on nothingness.
Gentle Criminal adjusted his gold-trimmed coat, his silver thermos tucked neatly under one arm despite the vertical drop. He looked down at the soaked, shivering boy in the water, his expression one of theatrical, disappointed elegance.
"Young Midoriya," Gentle said, his voice carrying clearly over the roar of the wind. "I have watched many a performance in my time. But I must say... you are remarkably poor at omitting your next actions. Your heart is on your sleeve, and your feet follow your heart."
He swung his cane in a flourish, his eyes sharp beneath his mask.
"However," Gentle added, a smirk touching his moustache. "A protagonist should never exit the stage before the second act. And I find I'm not quite ready for the curtain call."
___
The industrial heart of Gifu groaned under the weight of a war it wasn't built to house. The air was a thick slurry of brick dust, freezing water from the shattered tank, and the metallic tang of One For All's emerald lightning.
Muscular, Realizing the tide had turned, let out a sound that was less a scream and more a tectonic shift. "You think you can break me?! My skin is a fortress! I'll drown you in my own blood if I have to!"
His muscle fibres mutated, bursting through his previous layers in a grotesque, vine-like frenzy that turned him into a heaving mountain of pink-white sinew. He lunged, his footsteps cratering the roof, but the battlefield was no longer his to command.
Gentle Criminal moved with a velvet-smooth precision, staying on the periphery like a conductor guiding a dissonant orchestra. Every time Muscular's colossal fist swung, Gentle snapped his fingers, turning the very air into an invisible, rubberized shield. Muscular's strikes bounced, his own kinetic force vibrating back into his joints with bone-shaking resonance.
"Magnificent, young man!" Gentle called out, his silver hair windswept but his aristocratic poise unshaken. "The rhythm is yours! Take the center stage!"
Edgeshot was the silver needle threading the chaos. He moved through the gaps in Muscular's armour of meat, his paper-thin form slicing through tendons and nerve clusters with surgical apathy. "Now, Midoriya! He's destabilized! Use the torque!"
Izuku felt the golden fire of One For All screaming in his marrow. He pushed past the twenty-percent threshold, the green sparks intensifying until they began to bleed into a blinding, white-hot glare. He saw an obstacle between him and the truth.
He anchored himself with a jagged obsidian vine of Blackwhip, reeling his body in like a human slingshot. He pulled his fist back, the pressure in his arm building until the skin began to crack.
"St. Louis Smash!"
The impact was a thunderclap. Izuku's fist buried itself deep into Muscular's solar plexus, the sheer force of the blow purging the air from the villain's lungs and sending a shockwave through the mountain of fibres. Muscular was launched backward, his massive form skipping across the roof like a stone across a pond, leaving a trail of shattered concrete and torn muscle in his wake.
But as Muscular's body reached the edge of the roof, the air bled.
A bruised, oily purple mist began to swirl out of the empty air. It was a sight Izuku knew too well, a recurring nightmare of the USJ and the training camp. It was Kurogiri. The warp gate expanded like a hungry mouth, reaching out to catch the falling villain before he could hit the ground.
Nasty, Izuku thought, his teeth grinding together so hard his jaw ached. It's always the same. They cause their havoc, they break our world, and the moment they lose, they vanish into the dark. They hide in the shadows until they're ready to bleed us again.
The sight of the purple mist ignited a cold, reckless fire in his chest. He wasn't going to let another one get away. Not today. Not when he was so close to the heart of the rot.
"Gentle!" Izuku roared, his voice cracking with a desperate, singular focus.
He didn't wait for a response. He threw himself forward, sprinting toward the closing portal.
Gentle looked surprised, his eyes widening behind his mask. He saw the trajectory. He saw the madness in the boy's eyes. He didn't hesitate. "A bold improvisation, young Midoriya! Allow me to provide the encore!"
Gentle snapped his fingers, manifesting a series of elastic air-plates directly behind Izuku's heels.
"Stop!" Edgeshot's voice was a frantic blur as he realized what the boy was doing. The hero thinned himself, lunging forward to catch Izuku's tattered cape. "Midoriya, you have no idea where that gate leads! It's a suicide mission!"
Edgeshot's fingers brushed the fabric, but it was too late.
Gentle's quirk activated with a violent boing, the elastic air-plates kicking Izuku forward with the force of a jet engine. Izuku became a blur of green lightning and obsidian shadows, his hand reaching out to grab the mass of Muscular's muscle fibres just as they touched the event horizon of the warp gate.
Izuku didn't look back at the hero. He didn't look back at the criminal. He looked directly into the swirling, stygian void of Kurogiri's mist.
If I want to find them, Izuku thought, his heart a steady, heavy drum, I have to go where the dark is.