The seven vestiges of One For All stood together, but their light seemed small against the glitching horror of Izuku. Yoichi, the first, stepped forward, his gentle face hard with resolve. "You cannot delete hope, child. It survives."
"Hope?" Izuku's distorted voice echoed. "A useless program that runs on faith. Let's run a diagnostic."
He didn't raise a hand. He just looked at them.
Error Inducement. Logic Defiance.
The very rules of the Vestige World began to break. The ground beneath Yoichi's feet, which was not really ground, suddenly developed gravity.
He stumbled, his spectral form feeling heavy for the first time in centuries. The second user tried to move to help him, but his body lagged. He flickered forward, then snapped back to his original spot, trapped.
The third user cried out, "Our connection… it's fraying!"
"Your connection is a data stream," Izuku stated, his green eye-lights flashing. "And I have admin privileges." He used Reality Hacking. To his eyes, glowing lines of golden code connected the seven vestiges to each other and to the void—the code of the One For All legacy. He reached out a hand made of static and grabbed the lines.
The vestiges screamed. It was not a sound of physical pain, but of existential violation. Their very souls were being tampered with.
Nana Shimura tried to rush at him, her form blazing with light. "Stop this!"
Intangibility. She passed through him, feeling nothing but a soul-deep chill. As she emerged on the other side, Izuku became solid. He didn't turn. He simply issued a command.
Merge.
The glowing lines of code he held pulsed with violent green light. The seven vestiges were pulled together by an irresistible force. They didn't blend. They were compressed.
The second user's sternness, the third's gentleness, the fourth's strength, the fifth's resolve, the sixth's (En's) wisdom, the first's (Yoichi's) core will—all of them were dragged, screaming silently, into the seventh vessel: Nana Shimura.
Her form blazed with chaotic, multicolored light, then solidified. She stood alone, but her eyes swirled with the faces and emotions of the six others inside her. She was a prison of souls, conscious and trapped. She fell to her knees in the void, clutching her head.
"What… what have you done to us?" Nana's voice asked, but it was layered with the voices of the others, a chorus of anguish.
Izuku looked down at her, his head tilted. "Optimized the system. One process is easier to manage than seven."
"Why?" the merged vestige pleaded, Yoichi's kindness fighting through Nana's grief. "Why not just delete us?"
"Delete you?" Izuku said, as if the idea was silly. "That would be a mercy. And you don't deserve mercy. You built the pedestal for the false god. You are the original source code of the lie."
He knelt, bringing his glitching face close to hers. The horrific aura made the merged vestige shudder.
"I'm going to revive you," he whispered, the static in his voice buzzing. "I'm going to put you, all of you, back into a real, living body. You will have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that can feel despair."
Nana's eyes widened with terror. "No… please…"
"You will watch the world you tried to save burn to ash. You will see the 'hope' you passed on become the fuel for the fire. You will live through the correction." He stood up. "And Nana Shimura… you have a grandson, don't you? Tenko Shimura. Who became Tomura Shigaraki."
The merged vestige flinched as if struck.
"He's waiting for you," Izuku said, his tone final. "You can answer why your legacy left him all alone in the dirt. I'll make sure you get the chance."
He raised a hand. Biology Hacking. Reality Hacking. Golden code wrapped around the merged vestige. "Sleep now. The installation of your new hardware… will take a moment."
With a pulse of green light, the merged consciousness of the seven vestiges was frozen, sealed into a dormant state. Izuku clenched his fist, and the data packet that was their souls vanished from the Vestige World, downloaded to a location only he knew.
The void was now empty, silent, and dark. Izuku's glitching form was the only light. He looked around at the barren server he had just cleansed.
"System purge complete," he said to the nothingness. Then, his form dissolved into streaming green data and vanished.
BACK IN THE DOME – LIBERTY UNITY DOME
All Might's consciousness slammed back into his body. He gasped as if drowning, falling to his knees on the hard floor. The sounds of the riot rushed back in, louder than ever.
"Toshinori!" Endeavor's voice cut through his panic. The Flame Hero was beside him, grabbing his shoulder. "What happened? You collapsed!"
All Might looked up, his eyes wild with horror. He saw the faces of his Japanese colleagues—Endeavor, Hawks, Best Jeanist, Mirko, Edgeshot, Ryukyu—gathered around him, their own fear forgotten for a moment in concern for him.
"I saw him," All Might rasped, his voice broken. "He's behind all of it. It's… it's my son. Izuku."
Confusion and disbelief met his statement. Hawks frowned. "Izuku? How is that possible? He's been missing. We looked for him everywhere."
"He was never missing!" All Might cried, a sob tearing from his throat. "He was with us! He's been with us for months! Right under our noses!"
Endeavor's grip tightened. "Explain. Now."
All Might took a shuddering breath, the nightmare vision of Toji burning in his mind. "The winner of the sports festival. Toji."
The name hung in the air.
Mirko's ears twitched. "The one that humiliated me?"
"That wasn't his real face," All Might said, tears streaming openly now. "It was a disguise. A mask. Izuku used some… some power to change how he looked.
He was in my class. He sat in on the lectures. He fought in the Sports Festival. We all saw him. We all spoke to him. And none of us knew. None of us recognized my own boy! I didn't recognise him."
The shock was a physical blow.
Best Jeanist's threads, usually so controlled, went completely slack. "Toji… was Izuku?" He remembered the cold, competent student, the one who showed no emotion and made mockery out of all of them. His blood ran cold.
Edgeshot, who prized perception, felt a stab of failure. He had noticed nothing.
Hawks let out a low whistle, his usual smile gone, replaced by a grimace. "He played us. He played the whole world. He was inside the system while he was planning to blow it up."
Ryukyu put a hand over her mouth. "All those times he was around… he was gathering information. He saw everything."
Her voice was a perfect mix of shock and dawning horror. Her eyes were wide. To everyone else, she looked just as blindsided as they were.
But beneath the performance, her mind was cold and clear.
(Inside Ryukyu's Mind)
'Of course I knew,' she thought, behind the mask of her stunned expression. The surprise on her face was for the others. Inside, she was calm. She had known since the internship.
It started when Momo Yaoyorozu, one of her brightest interns, had asked for a private meeting. Momo spoke of a friend, someone uncovering terrible truths. She spoke of Izuku. Ryukyu agreed to a discrete introduction, more out of curiosity than belief.
Then she saw his evidence. She listened to his quiet, furious explanation of the Commission's black sites, the quota systems, and disappeared. He showed her raw data from Fukuoka.
From Hiroshima. She had seen the official reports calling those incidents tragic villain attacks. Izuku showed her the internal memos that called them "successful containment operations" and "acceptable collateral."
He didn't just show her papers. He showed her results. She went to Fukuoka herself, quietly. She saw the change. The fear that had once choked the city was gone. Not because heroes had saved the day, but because the rotten roots had been ripped out by someone operating in the shadows.
The people there didn't whisper about villains anymore. They whispered about a ghost who had given them justice. She saw the same thing in Hiroshima. Izuku hadn't just fought; he had cleansed. He removed the corruption with a surgeon's precision and a revolutionary's fury.
That was when she realized the full, ugly truth. The system she served wasn't just flawed. It was evil. It ate its own people and called it peace. She was a Top hero. She wasn't stupid. She didn't train her whole life, build her agency, just to die protecting a lie.
So, she made a choice. She became a silent partner. She used her security clearance to guide him to the right files, although she quickly realised he had more access to files then she ever could provide clearance for.
So she simply became his spy in the system, giving him information about the internal investigations. She was his eyes and ears inside the Commission's higher circles.
She saw him, as Toji, move through those secure halls like a ghost. She saw the empty look in his eyes when he passed her—a look that promised absolute, terrifying consequence for betrayal.
Now, she let her hand tremble slightly against her lips. She made her breath hitch, just like Mirko's was doing. She was one of them, a shocked and humiliated hero, wanting a rematch against the traitor.
'Let them have their revelation,' she thought, her internal voice as smooth and cold as polished stone. 'Let All Might crumble. Let Endeavor rage. The old world is dead.'
She had promised Izuku she would be by his side. And it wasn't just a promise. It was the only sane choice. Betraying him wasn't bravery; it was suicide. She had seen what he did to those who stood in his way.
He wouldn't need to bat an eye. A command would go out, an "error" would occur in her vicinity, and Ryukyu, the Dragon Hero, would be just another body in the rubble of the old world. No one would care. She would vanish, a footnote in his purge. Her agency, her reputation, her life—all gone, with nothing left behind.
Plus, a deeper, quieter part of her knew he was right. The system deserved to burn. Why should she die on the losing side for a corrupt kingdom she no longer believed in?
She let a single, convincing tear trace down her cheek—a tear for the camera, for her colleagues, for the performance. Inside, she was already calculating. 'The boy, Izuku, had won. My job now was to survive the victory, and thrive in the new world he was building.' Fear and agreement, in equal measure, kept her loyalty locked in place.
Endeavor's hand on All Might's shoulder didn't let go—it tightened, his fingers digging in. The cold rage on his face twisted into something ugly and personal. Then, the implication hit him like a physical blow. His eyes widened, then narrowed into fiery slits.
He yanked All Might closer, making the broken man wince. "So the person who took my daughter Fuyumi… who took my wife Rei away from me… is your son?" he seethed, spittle flying. "What is his problem with me?! With my family?! What is your family's problem with mine?!
First you… you took the number one spot from me! You overshadowed everything I built! And now your son… your bastard son… slinks into my home and steals the women of my house? Is this some kind of twisted revenge?!"
The other heroes stared. Hawks blinked, his feathers drooping in disbelief. Best Jeanist's brow furrowed deeply. In the midst of a nation collapsing, Endeavor was screaming about his rank and his stolen wife and daughter. It was so profoundly selfish it left them speechless.
Mirko was the one who snapped. "Are you serious?!" she barked, gesturing wildly at the monitors showing cities on fire. "The whole damn country is getting deleted from inside, and you're crying about your hero ranking and your messed-up family drama?!"
Endeavor didn't even look at her. His whole world had shrunk to All Might's guilty face.
All Might, under Endeavor's grip, didn't fight back. He just looked more broken. "I… I am so sorry, Enji. This is all my fault. All of it." His voice was a hollow scrape. He looked around at the circle of confused, horrified faces. They didn't understand. How could they? He had never told them.
"You don't understand what he's become," All Might whispered. "To understand… I have to tell you the truth. About my power."
He took a ragged breath. "My quirk… One For All… it wasn't mine. I was born quirkless."
A collective shock rippled through them. The Symbol of Peace, quirkless?
"My master, Nana Shimura, passed it to me. It is not just a strength quirk. It is a legacy. A torch passed from user to user, growing stronger each time. It is a sacred trust."
He swallowed hard. "And inside it… live the vestiges. The echoes, the souls, of all the previous users. A world inside the quirk. A private, mental realm. It is where I go when I commune with them. It is the core of the power itself."
He looked at his hands as if they were foreign. "What Izuku has done… he didn't just attack me. He invaded that world. He forced his way into the most secret, protected core of One For All, a place where even all for one was never able to enter that too forcefully. He stood there, in a place that shouldn't exist, defying its very logic. And then…"
All Might's voice failed for a second. "And then he threw me out. Not by force, but by will. Like deleting a file. He somehow had administrative control over reality itself, and he just… revoked my access to my own soul's legacy.
If he can do that to the bedrock of One For All… there is nothing he cannot touch. Nothing he cannot break. The rules do not apply to him. He is writing new ones."
The explanation hung in the air, heavy and impossible. A secret quirk. A world of ghosts inside it. And Izuku, treating it all like a system to be hacked.
The heroes looked from All Might's shattered face to the shuddering shutters, to the monitors showing their country burning. The truth was worse than any villain attack. The architect of the apocalypse wasn't just a monster in the shadows.
He was the boy they had failed, the student they had taught, the ghost who had walked among them. And now, he was a god with a grudge, who could break the rules of reality itself.
The final, unspoken thought hung in the air between them: If he could invade and conquer the sacred, internal world of the greatest hero's power, if they couldn't even see him when he was right beside them… how could they ever hope to stop him now?
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