The winds of change shifted like obedient guardians of the seasons. Warm, infused with the scents of damp earth and spring flowers, they brought the timid breath of spring, making the world awaken. But inevitably, icy drafts followed, mercilessly driving life back into hibernation, into the cold stupor of non-existence.
So it was inside him. In the soul of a man who only yesterday seemed like a simple, straightforward guy, a metamorphosis was occurring, one far deeper than the changing of the seasons. His very essence was changing. He felt something fundamental shifting with every second of the battle, felt the energy of that player boiling inside, the one who transforms from a losing underdog into an arbiter of fates, leading this cruel game of survival.
He had wanted to be a simple man once. It seemed he desired this an eternity ago. And in truth, he desired it even now. Delicious, home-cooked food. A loving woman by his side. A warm home. Is that really so unattainable? Only one thing is attainable, relevant always, regardless of circumstances: eternal struggle. Meaningless. Filled with blood, cruelty, and pain. But beautiful in its own way.
A boundless emerald field stretched to the very horizon, obediently rippling under the gusts of wind like the surface of a bottomless green ocean. Not a single tree, not a hint of shade, just the blinding brightness of the grass and an endless azure dome of the sky pressing down with its emptiness. An eternal sky, watching you from every corner while you fight.
The wind brought with it only one obsessive sound: a dry, measured crunch, as if old bones were breaking and flesh was tearing somewhere very close. And above this sound, cutting through the silence, a voice rang out. A male voice, low, calm, devoid of any tremor:
— I forgot to tell you something important. You probably don't remember, but I see right through you. I had enough time to grow roots into your memories, — AFO spoke, finally ceasing to resist. He was no longer fighting for his life; he was ending this endless, agonizing spectacle. His interlocutor, however, showed absolutely no signs of fatigue from their endless struggle. It seemed he enjoyed fighting. This spark of eternal combat, the desire to conquer what was his or someone else's, regardless, was still inside Taiko. Now it had amplified, elevated to an absolute within TNO. One could even say it had become his fundamental, inalienable essence.
— Then, in Kyudai's laboratory, you ended up inside that concrete pit along with the rest of your... — he decided not to say that word, — How long do you think you stayed there?
His face had long ceased to be human; it was merely a mask under which something pulsating and viscous hid. Flesh treacherously peeled off, crumbling onto the emerald grass in gray flakes, and pale, boneless tentacles writhed from beneath the remnants of skin. TNO stood nearby, shrouded in a halo of overwhelming calm. Apathetically, almost mechanically, he tore the flesh of his enemy, sucking the last drops of energy from it through gaping wounds.
They resembled old friends, although the history of their relationship was written in blood and mutual hatred. TNO reveled in this moment: he was in no rush to finish off his defeated foe, enjoying the hoarse, dying revelation.
— A question, — TNO's voice sounded different in his domain than before. The longer he stayed in his domain, the more he changed. His voice sounded like a vibration from the abyss itself: dry, even, without a shadow of pity, stripped of any human trait. — Why the hell did you turn the quirks inside you into this garbage? They lost their identity, their integrity... you just crushed them into dust. This junk is of no use now.
— I could only feed on the remnants of the energies you stole, — AFO wheezed, and a dark, thick liquid splashed from his "mouth." — You have no mouth, you haven't known the taste of food for an eternity. No matter how much food or... women you create here, they will not satisfy your mental hunger. Your brain merely simulates hunger, but it is real, deep, just like back then... in Kyudai's lab. You are just as hungry now as you were in those days, and you can never get full.
— Enough riddles. What was in that pit? Spit it out, it's time for me to get out of here. — his demonic voice, simultaneously female and male, made the grass vibrate slightly.
AFO let out a dry, gurgling chuckle.
— Kyudai kept you there for weeks. He was afraid you would break out and turn him into a puddle of blood. But you crossed that out, right? You were weak then, and forgave him... no, you probably weren't in a state to even understand what was happening. Your child's psyche simply couldn't withstand the realization of what you had done. What happened in the pit stayed in the pit.
TNO frowned, peering into the void of his own past. A ringing silence in his head.
— You devoured your brothers and sisters so you wouldn't die of starvation! — AFO suddenly burst into hysterical laughter, transitioning into a suffocating cough. He waited with greedy curiosity for a reaction.
TNO's face twitched for only a moment. No horror, no remorse. Only a slight, almost academic surprise.
— I'm surprised, — TNO admitted quietly. — But I don't remember the taste of human flesh. Hell, I don't remember the taste of food at all. And what does it matter? It was just material. If they were so insignificant that they became fuel for my survival, then that was their only purpose.
AFO fell silent, looking at him with perverted admiration.
— You... you are a monster. I did everything to prevent you from getting out of here. Look around, — he swept a trembling hand over the silent field. — In reality, only ten minutes have passed. But here... how long have we been tearing at each other? Did I at least put up a resistance worthy of you?
— You exaggerate your own importance, trash, — TNO replied. — How could I fail to notice that right inside me a tumor was feeding on a portion of the quirks I took... Your place is in the dustbin of history.
— Ha-HA! You are no better than my original. Just like your father. You are just as much of a thief! You will slowly go mad, trapped inside a barrier whose time is so severely distorted by me that no one will save you or wake you up. Thousands of years of isolation!
— Call it what you want, but I didn't steal these quirks. I am not a thief, I am a conqueror.
The last thing AFO's matrix mind saw was a tight, vibrating cable made of Mite threads, the ability that became his final executioner. A dull pop echoed, like an overripe fruit bursting, and all that remained of AFO dissipated into the domain's space. His death was accompanied by the voices of those from whom TNO himself had taken quirks. They screamed in pain. Their souls were dying.
TNO exhaled, and his body, previously distorted in the monstrous clash, began to change. His flesh condensed, taking on the form of Nomura, a familiar, comfortable shell. The face turned out a little different from how he remembered it. He had only seen this face a couple of times. To an outside observer, he appeared faceless. With one movement, he wiped all traces from the battlefield: no blood, no scars on the earth, not even the smell of death.
He landed on the grass. The bastion, erected by AFO at the moment of his highest power, still stood as an impenetrable wall. It was a barrier AFO raised to prevent TNO from escaping his own domain. TNO estimated the time: they had been fighting not for hours, but for months. Half a year? A year? It was a grueling, dragging time spent on the systematic exhaustion of the enemy.
— I hope, — he whispered, looking into the empty sky, — when I wake up in Nomura's body, there won't be a fuss around. No nurses dropping trays in terror at the sight of a patient who "miraculously" woke up after a year in a coma. A real comedy.
Just silence. And the opportunity to finally rest. Right now, little remained in his arsenal: "Black Hand", "BodySwap", and the crown of his adaptation, the bloody regeneration of Mite. He slowly closed his eyes, feeling the borders of his domain begin to tremble under his will, but nothing more. Will was such a phenomenon that even in the domain, a metaphysical world, it did not manifest externally. As soon as the will of the matrix parasite AFO was destroyed, he was able to gain full control over his domain.
Thoughts slowly spun in his head:
"In theory, after AFO's death, the barrier encoded by him should have disappeared. But in fact, it is not subject to my will, although the space around me changes according to my desire. This is comparable to a nesting doll. He created a prison inside the domain. The sysadmin died, I became the sysadmin, but it seems the barrier was insured even against himself from the very beginning." — he lay there for an unknown amount of time until his thoughts settled. He constantly replayed AFO's words about "hunger" in his head. Now that he had gained power over his domain, he could revel in drinks, food, and surround himself with the best women. Lock himself up here forever and never leave his mini-Eden.
But TNO understood that this Eden would turn into his personal hell. Hedonism would cease to bring pleasure. Human hunger would not be truly satisfied. This desire is an illusion created by his imperfect human origin. From heaven to hell is just one step. The only thing he truly wanted was to find an opponent like AFO and continue fighting. This irrational desire for risk did not appear during these years of battles. It had always been there, and it was precisely what prevented him from living a simple life of a simple man. It was what made Taiko into Grimm from the very beginning, and as a consequence, now made him TNO.
Fighting for so long, resorting to so many different tactics and strategies, was very intense and exhausting. This battle was like a chess match in the fourth dimension. Having achieved his goal, he felt no joy. TNO even started to miss their battle. It was unforgettable. Ultimately, it wasn't him controlling the battle, but the battle controlling him. He adapted as needed, and he had to admit that he fucking loved fighting. Now, he didn't even see the point of existing in this prison. Why did he need a prison if he wanted an arena?
But there, in the outside world, which he had even managed to forget, existed many enemies, many trials, many battles. And far more restrictions than here. The taste of this mortal body of Nomura. Tired, exhausted. How he missed that feeling. In his domain, his limbs were much more mobile, able to bend at inconceivable angles. He didn't experience real hunger, there was no need for food, even if his human mind still rebelled, demanding it.
TNO exhaled. — You threw some problems my way, of course. We'll figure it out. — he was rather upset that he had killed his opponent instead of locking him up somewhere to fight again someday.
He got to his feet, and in his eyes, which gleamed with the coldness of an ancient Byzantine mosaic, infinity was reflected. His vision could see the slightest fluctuations of metaphysical matter. During this time, he had relied only on that. Often, when physical sight failed, he could count only on his Byzantine eyes. For kilometers around stretched a landscape tinged with a light haze, but the sky overhead was fake. It was merely a dome, a masterful projection that promised expanse but in reality turned out to be an insurmountable cage. It softly but inexorably threw back anyone who tried to approach, turning the horizon into a mocking decoration. Even touching the dome was impossible; therein lay the main problem of hacking it.
He froze, absorbing the sensations. Right now, the only way to get out of here was to think like that tumor. To understand all those aspects that he had perfectly controlled. He really knew more, because he had existed here for his entire short life, or maybe longer considering how slowly time flowed here. It's funny that in the end, over perhaps hundreds of years, he didn't come up with a better way to take control of the body and defeat TNO than simply provoking him into emotions.
"A domain... It is not just magic or reality distortion. It is a symbiosis of quirk, will, and the soul itself. Or rather, a metaphysical space formed from the pressure of the will of the quirk itself. Will is a property of character traits, as well as the result of the quirk's nature. Oneself is a 'quirk with two minuses'. Therefore, like a black hole, it will pull everything into itself. That might be why my domain seems so boundless."— he mused, feeling Nomura's shell respond to every movement of his will. Yet he still couldn't wake up.
"AFO manifested himself through an illusory facade, hiding a 'matrix' beneath it: a core consisting of a plexus of entities. Matrix. The perfect word: a personality pattern, an imprint of the quirk, the very focal point of existence."
He stared intently at his hands, as if trying to see not skin, but the invisible geometry of the universe. TNO remembered the records from Kyudai's computer and his "Quirk Singularity Theory." They were well-written and confirmed what TNO was seeing now. In any case, accepted scientific theory only affirms the material DNA chain called Plus Alpha, but does not suspect that it is also connected to personality.
"Metaphysics and Genetics, it turns out... If you dig deeper, the structure of this matrix is nothing more than myriads of ultra-thin threads of Plus Alpha with a taste of a hostile presence, an alien agent. This is the imprint of the personality to which the quirk previously belonged. The equation of abilities could look like this..." — TNO thought, mentally deriving the formula. — "Matrix = +alpha + Pattern."
Plus Alpha (+alpha) — pure energy, the biological code of the mutation.
Pattern — the imprint of the soul, the will and memory of the previous owner, tightly stuck to the gene.
"In AFO, these threads of Plus Alpha and Patterns were like a patchwork quilt sewn by a madman from scraps of different fabrics: rough burlap of alien power, fine silk of stolen talents. Each thread pulled in its own direction, trying to create order where the chaos of accumulated garbage reigned. He was a seamstress trying to patch the abyss with multicolored rags. But give him credit: he knew and understood more than I do. Maybe I can learn something from him?"
TNO felt the absorbed power pulsing inside him. Unlike AFO, his own internal fabric was monolithic, monotonous, pulled into a tight knot in the area of his head by his main quirk: Oneself.
"I used to think that stolen quirks just dissolve into the void. How wrong I was. They didn't disappear; they layered, settled within me, slowly changing my very structure. The years spent in this domain erased the last boundaries. Who knows, maybe I stepped onto a path at the end of which I will cease to be human. Maybe I already have?"
TNO slowly extended his hand, concentrating his will inside. Everything connected to Oneself and in direct contact with his body could obey his will with some difficulty. His task was to bring the stolen energy of AFO outward without damaging the integrity of his own structure. It resembled open-heart surgery, where every wrong move could result in the collapse of the entire system. No Risk — No Reward.
From the tip of his index finger spilled ultra-thin, almost ephemeral threads. They trembled, writhing chaotically in the air like frightened snakes looking for support. They were tied to Oneself, to his head inside the body, like arteries. Tearing them away from Oneself meant losing control over them. TNO tried to forcefully bind the multicolored streams (red with blue, green with yellow), but they responded with sharp rejection. Everything was not so simple. There were many colors, more than the colors themselves, so his eyes occasionally fixed their combinations in certain sections of the threads. Perhaps Byzantine eyes are not such a perfect quirk, which, by the way, was also tied by an additional module inside Oneself, being its direct attribute.
The energy resisted rough interference; a structure didn't even form. Not surprising, since until recently it had been part of an albeit loose but still stable structure inside AFO, and after going through annihilation and digestion, all connections unraveled.
"You can't connect a red wire to a blue one, and a green one to a yellow one. This is not chaos, but incompatibility," — flashed through his mind. — "They need to be ordered. First classification, then finding points of conjugation."
TNO sank to the grass; a desire arose to sit in that pose Quinn had once taught him. He had always found this pose quite unpleasant, and after it, his legs would go numb, as if blood flow was disrupted. As he crossed his legs in the lotus position, the wind softly ruffled his black hair, bringing a strange, almost forgotten sense of peace. Now, joint flexibility and disrupted blood flow as concepts did not exist in the domain.
Now her name was associated with nothing for him. Just memories of once pleasant days. He hastened to distract himself.
"It seems this body position really disciplines the flow. Either I'm a genius, or the ancient yogis knew something that even the most advanced minds of the laboratories didn't understand. I think one doesn't exclude the other." — Indeed, the +alpha yielded to control better this way, but the Patterns continued to internally resist his will, slightly slowing down the inevitable process. There was nothing to be done about them yet. Trying to separate the Patterns from +alpha could lead to unknown consequences. From the destruction of threads to who knows what else.
This was a synthesis of biology, physics, and systems programming, which TNO actually understood poorly. He untied the rough rope of threads of the Black Hand quirk, which he had previously taken from those perverts in the cell, brought it outside while continuing to hold onto a single thread of connection with Oneself, and peered into its structure. All these machinations took whole days of this deceptive time. Just to bring this quirk out, just to untangle it...
"If there is something I do not understand, then I just need to peek at Mother Nature to see how she solved this problem." — inside the Black Hand was a strictly calibrated hierarchy.
He visualized the structure, transforming abstract power into a comprehensible scheme:
+Alpha — fundamental particles of energy.
Patterns (these are colors, compatibilities) — channels of power transmission.
Nodes (bridges) — synchronization points. These are bundles of intertwined threads that connect structures. Everything above that were structures too complex to understand. Too tangled to comprehend even with his cool vision.
It was a "hodgepodge" of knowledge, but it worked. The lotus position allowed him to enter a state of deep trance: particles moved 15% faster, becoming pliable like heated wax. After days of painstaking work, reminiscent of separating the wheat from the chaff, he managed to isolate the wires. The volume of +alpha from AFO was truly massive. Bigger than his own. If converted into the number of quirks, it was about ten quirks. He pondered what to do with it. He doubted he could just take it right now and build something completely new from it. An absurdly huge amount of work.
"Who knew that creating quirks from scratch is such a tedious and, so far, to be honest, absolutely pointless endeavor. Even if I manage to weave a working web like a spider, it will turn out incredibly small, and the fundamental flows of my own quirks will strive to unravel this quirk back. Besides, if a quirk comes out of this disgrace, it will occupy a full slot. I won't be able to use it anyway..." — suddenly a brilliant idea struck him. He even jumped up joyfully and grabbed his head.
— Holy fuck. What a genius I am. Since I have a limited number of quirks, does that mean I can try to expand this limit? — he felt Oneself more deeply. A very greedy quirk; it sought to absorb all these unstable structures...
"What if..." — he relaxed one thread, and it very slowly began to shorten under the power of Oneself, barely noticeable. Moreover, already organized quirks like BodySwap, Mite, and Black Hand did not yield to its power. It was as if they faithfully served Oneself, and it didn't touch them.
TNO didn't just relax the thread, he even started pushing it, until he brought it to the borders of Oneself where the gravitational pull was the strongest. Inside, beyond the event horizon, something could barely be distinguished. Some incomprehensible structure.
"Truly a black hole." — he pulled this thread taut again and barely touched Oneself with it. — He was struck as if by electricity, and an unknown, incomprehensible memory immediately appeared in his head, coming from nowhere. It was a frame of a city, and a person in unknown clothes was walking through nighttime Tokyo. The smell of the city immediately hit his nose, and the loud hum of city life could be heard. This short memory gave him some nostalgia.
"Could it be... Is this the memory of some person? A former owner of the quirk?" — he hesitated. "I... I cannot allow someone else's memory to destroy me. Nomura's memory previously forced me to change. And what will happen from this pile of garbage if Oneself absorbs it?" — the conclusion suggested itself. Why did the memory of another personality penetrate his brain upon contact with Oneself? Is his brain the quirk?
"What am I? Am I... this quirk? Oneself? Was AFO right? I am not a person with a quirk. I am a quirk with a person."
The silence of thoughts forced him to spend another ten minutes digesting this. Overall, nothing surprising. Just another fucked up day for TNO. It turns out Oneself never existed, and his real body is locked in this prison. Just fucking great!
— I observe a conflict of interest. Since I called this... object inside the body Oneself. Then if it's me, it means the quirk is named TNO too. That is, now it's me... That is, the object has turned into the subject... — he sat in the lotus position again and felt It. This black hole inside him was... him. His heart, his brain, it doesn't really matter. Fascinating. This black shell hiding what's inside, and barely noticeable red veins of +alpha, as if an entire universe was inside. It was truly beautiful. So greedy and demanding. It knows its place in this world, and wants to obtain its rightfully deserved prey...
— This is definitely Me. This cluster. — he exhaled.
Gathering new strength, he continued.
— I need to purify the material. Remove independence. The memory, the character. — before him, he wove a ball out of all the energy he squeezed out of AFO. The question arose: how to do this without breaking the connection? Everything converged on one thing. He looked closely at the thread that connected this ball and Oneself, that is, himself now, TNO. This connecting thread emerged from the main quirk, and it prevents a hostile will from pouring into his abode and imposing unnecessary memory and personality. These are hostile Patterns. This is a natural defense mechanism against Patterns. They are invaders, they want to take over his body and push their will by uniting right now inside this ball.
In reality, this is a united bunch of pathetic ants who fought inside AFO for his body, and are now fighting TNO himself. These ten quirks. Ten personalities that went through polishing inside AFO; they were slightly distorted, broken. They are glitches of the universe, and they cannot be allowed to drown out TNO.
Right now before him was a ball where previously disjointed fragments of souls began to unite against him and slowly push through the communication channel to break through to TNO's outer shell. Their struggle was like an army of ants trying to gnaw an elephant to death. Although TNO's very nature was such that energy itself rushed inward and wouldn't mind eating memories too, a defense mechanism still existed. This is called individualism. If not for it, TNO would now be a concentration of dozens of personalities. A true swarm. A parliament in a mad head, damn it.
— Excuse me, gentlemen, but I am against democracy. Your desire to live and have the right to vote is truly astounding. But you have never encountered me before. I am not like AFO. The kindness is over. But I will have my own kindness for you. I will free you from suffering. Surrender. You will pass easily. Otherwise, I will burn you out with my will. I will run my +alpha, my energy, through your channels. I will leave a scorched field behind. I will slaughter an entire universe just to obtain what belongs to me! It's time to end your pathetic attempts. — he addressed them, perfectly aware that they heard him. Right now, he sounded to them like a supreme being, a celestial addressing peasants.
The previously pressured communication channel abruptly filled, by TNO's will, with his presence, his energy. The front of the struggle abruptly began to pull back until it reached the main core, burning everything in its path. Memories, faces of loved ones, character traits of once-living people. It was like a beloved home with cherished photos in frames burning in an immense fire, only you are locked inside with them, burning alive. There was no pity for them. When an uninvited invader stands on the threshold of your home, you must fight back. And fight back with such force that he won't return with reinforcements.
— And that's all. And so much squealing. Resisted for nothing, it turns out, ha-ha! Good and peace with rainbow birds end exactly when the interests of opposites intersect.
Energy cleansed of mental patterns finally flowed inside TNO. A surge of strength and a burning sensation made him curl up on the ground. It was an unpleasant and painful feeling. TNO didn't know if he had done the right thing. All thoughts vanished, and he passed out from the pain.
After an unknown amount of time, he opened his eyes again and felt an unprecedented calm and a surge of strength. He examined his metaphysical body and found that the outer shell had expanded its boundaries.
"Ten!? The energy of ten quirks was needed just to increase the maximum quirk limit by one?!" — in his right shoulder, he placed another quirk, BodySwap, while Mite was in his left shoulder. Two loyal servants.
Sensing someone's presence nearby made him jump back a hundred meters. Apparently, the guest didn't even have time to react and was entirely blown away by the wind from TNO's landing; he did not dare to attack.
— Who the fuck are you? One of the rebels? — TNO got into a fighting stance.
— My lord, — a guy with white hair and vampire-like fangs in ordinary casual clothes knelt before him. He reeked of something bloody and a desire to revel in blood. — I have come for your ascension! I waited so long for your victory over that parasite and kept thinking of a time to appear before you, but couldn't dare! — out of fear, he fell face down and trembled.
TNO looked around suspiciously, wondering if this was a play to deceive him, if they were really addressing him. — Who are you? Are you talking to me?
— It's me! I helped you destroy your enemy all these years! I was your right hand!
TNO glanced at his right shoulder and saw the Mite quirk there.
"Could it be..."
— Mite?
— But my name is Blood Regen...
— I named you Mite. I don't give a fuck, it's convenient.
"He seems completely harmless. Although he exudes a fierce bloodlust."
TNO ran an evaluative gaze over him. "Is this really the visual manifestation of the will of the quirk I subjugated?" — from TNO's persistent stare, the guy shrank and became embarrassed.
— Is that how you looked in life?
— Huh? If you mean this appearance, then probably? I don't know, this appearance seems to be my past master's.
TNO looked at him coldly. — History teaches that servants are free to betray their masters. In this place, I must have absolute power. What is the guarantee that you, like the other quirks, won't stab me in the back in a moment of my weakness?
In response, Mite approached and pleaded.
— No, just don't kill me! I'll do anything! — he approached, grabbing TNO by the hand. TNO wanted to throw him aside, but he recoiled on his own, — I....
His eyes rolled back, and he fell, twitching in convulsions. Examining him with his Byzantine eyes showed nothing; he was just a projection of what was actually happening inside TNO's body. The Mite quirk had merely brushed against TNO's will.
— He doesn't even have the right to touch me? Or did he see something that terrified him? — TNO concluded, looking at this pathetic suffering quirk.
— I don't need servants here, in my domain. — he looked up at the sky. Somewhere up there was freedom.
— The bitter experience with AFO showed that it's easy to lose control, to fail to see the changes inside oneself. And one day find an uprising in one's domain aimed at a coup.
TNO finalized his decision once more: — I do not need servants. I need a clean, polished tool that cannot betray me or make independent decisions.
He directed his scorching will into his Mite quirk, and the guy turned to dust in an instant.
— Whatever you were, you deserved a quick... no, not death. This is not death, but rebirth. Purification. Eternal servitude to me! That's what you wanted so badly, right? — he concluded, reviewing fragments of the quirk's former owner's memories. There were few of them; the quirk takes up only a tiny fraction of the user's matrix. Now that Mite was cleansed, the other two quirks lurked, awaiting their sentence. BodySwap showed up first. He appeared in the guise of Nomura.
— I'd already forgotten that pretty face. — TNO grinned with a toxic smirk, fangs appearing from his mouth, a side effect of fully mastering Mite. He majestically waved his hand and created a semblance of a throne for himself on one of the highest hills of the meadows.
BodySwap just looked at him with contempt. — Well, where is the worship of your overlord?
In response, Nomura merely spat, grinning maliciously. — Like hell I'll swear to you, demon! Even if the master acknowledged you as his older brother, I will not submit to someone who betrays his servants! — Nomura actively gesticulated, looking up from below at TNO sitting on his throne, whose smirk grew wider with every word. The face of the lord of these lands was invisible not only because of the glare of the fake sun. Only purple eyes and a mocking smirk with two fangs were visible. Instead of a face, there was an empty black blotch, shimmering like black noise.
— Ohoho), that face doesn't suit you at all. An angry girl) — over a long time of battles and rare conversations with AFO, he had even adopted this toxic speech style. BodySwap tried to ignore it, but it was clear he was triggered. — What happened? Remembered your conscience? Or should I remind you of the sometimes vile things you did behind your rich daddy's back? Why did you kill that cat at the shelter when you were 8 years old, or run over that boy on a bicycle a year and a half ago? Do all of AFO's bastards have such a mania for sadism? Fucking dark triad. — TNO slowly brought his hand up for a facepalm, remembering those moments perfectly well, and that Nomura's twisted mind had enjoyed it back then.
— Since when did my business start concerning you? Huh, big brother?! Or should I call you Lord One For All 2.0!? — Nomura started yelling.
TNO sharply unleashed his will, launching a simulation of events in the ant arena. Nomura looked away.
— You weren't there, little brother... — TNO said sorrowfully, but his voice echoed throughout the domain, while an absolute nightmare unfolded in the ant arena, not without elements of cannibalism. — The games are over. See what it all came to? — TNO gestured around himself. — Do you think I became like this because I wanted to? All I wanted was to survive. This is where that simple desire led.
Nomura looked at his brother with sadness, now from a different angle. TNO had become the loneliest man on the planet.
— I will never become like AFO. That's it. Goodbye. — TNO waved his hand, no longer wanting to listen to or see him, and Nomura dissolved without a trace.
Silence... TNO believed that such a purge in the ranks was necessary.
The next and last one came to its knees: Black Hand. That pervert.
— Please! Don't kill me! I don't understand what's going on! — begged the old man who had tried to defile him before.
— Shut up, you're not even real! — in a moment he cleansed the quirk of its humanity, just to not see his face, leaving only a bare, beautiful, and innocent quirk.
"Well then. Quirks are not guilty of human deeds. They are pure. They are used by already defiled, distorted individuals. Primates! You can't call them anything else." — The Lord of this domain peered into the Black Hand. — "So what should I do with you? Ah, right! I completely forgot about the plan to escape from here. I completely stopped valuing time here."
No matter how much TNO crashed his might against the barrier of his own prison, the dome remained unyielding. It was a perfect defense created by AFO before his death; it didn't just block blows, it absorbed kinetic energy, distorting and crumpling like a giant invisible sponge, preventing him from getting close to the structure of the barrier itself.
Realizing the inefficiency of standard attacks, TNO resorted to extreme measures. He fused three destructive quirks into a single, pulsating cord: a massive whip woven from pure, unstable energy. Using a floating piece of stone as a platform for acceleration, he put all his speed and mass into one singular strike.
The space shuddered from a deafening roar. But when the dust settled, TNO noted with cold disappointment: the barrier held. A strike of colossal power was only able to punch a tiny, barely noticeable breach in this absolute defense, no larger than the eye of a needle. It was impossible to squeeze through there. Not a single full quirk would fit through, let alone a fusion of three.
TNO froze, looking at the microscopic crack that was already beginning to slowly seal itself. Brute force didn't work here. A scalpel was needed.
"If the door can't be kicked in," his eyes narrowed, "then you need to slip a lockpick into the keyhole."
He untangled his bulky energy whip. Focusing his will to the limit, TNO pulled a single, ultra-thin thread of darkness from the core of the "Black Hand". It was thinner than a hair, but incredibly dense. Slowly, with surgical precision, he guided this black tentacle straight into the microscopic slit of the barrier, pushing his will beyond the domain.
The domain of "One For All".
During the brief moment her consciousness remained active before she fell asleep, she preferred to remain silent. None of the men disturbed her, respecting her grief. They all knew of her tragedy, knew the price she had paid. She sat, hugging herself, deep in her heavy thoughts.
Over the years she had spent here, she had ceased to consider herself alive. They were all concepts of their own soul imprints. Nevertheless, she possessed memories and even feelings, despite having no physical form. Perhaps this was a peculiarity of this place.
At first, it was uncomfortable getting used to this place. Sometimes it was very boring. Previously, she had believed that the previous wielders of One For All were the source of her power. There were mentors and their students here, but she could find no common ground with anyone. Everyone talked about their own things, and they rarely managed to find common ground or agree on anything.
The decision of Toshinori Yagi, her student, to make the timid, Quirkless boy Izuku his heir raised a wave of indignation within One For All. The only thing they could do was continue to observe and merely help harness the power accumulated over generations. After observing him for some time, only two changed their minds about Izuku and sided with him; the rest either abstained, continuing to maintain a wait-and-see approach, or were categorically opposed.
And only two understood that this disagreement prevented Izuku from fully embracing such immense energy. They were the very first user—Brother All For One—Yoichi Shigaraki, and herself—Nana Shimura. But Yoichi remained silent, as did Nana. Both were immersed in their own tragedies.
"How I hate this place," — she thought.
Suddenly, something tore her from her stupor. Years of waiting and boredom suddenly brought her out of her immersion in resentment.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a movement. In the absolute, sterile darkness of the OFA domain, something alien appeared. A small, barely noticeable spark. It flickered not with the warm, heroic light of their quirk, but with a cold, almost hypnotic glow.
A firefly.
It seemed that the others didn't notice this firefly. She had never seen anything like it before. Nana slowly stood up. The conversations of the predecessors in the background turned into an unintelligible hum; all her attention was riveted to this anomaly. The firefly smoothly glided away from their illuminated "camp", leading her further into the gloom. For all the years she had been here in the afterlife, she had never seen anything like it. The OFA domain was a closed ecosystem; nothing from the outside penetrated here.
She followed it until the voices of the others completely dissolved into silence. The darkness around became absolute, thick as pitch, and this tiny light remained the only source of light. The firefly froze, hovering in the void, as if waiting for her.
Nana reached out her hand. The light allowed itself to be touched.
As soon as her ghostly fingers closed on the thin, cool thread, a ringing, dead silence fell. And the next second, the perfect blackness of the domain shuddered.
The space in front of her didn't just crack; it shattered like giant stained glass. A blindingly terrifying web of cracks spread across the invisible wall separating their world from something else. A dull, sucking pop echoed, as if a cork was ripped from a giant, hermetically sealed bottle. An icy, bone-chilling metaphysical draft struck from the rift, carrying with it the scent of an alien, ancient, and incredibly hungry will.
The material world. Izuku's room.
Izuku Midoriya abruptly threw his eyes open, frantically drawing in air like a drowning man breaking the surface.
He had slept fitfully that night, tossing in a fever of incomprehensible dreams, but what woke him now was worse than any nightmare. Red numbers glowed on the clock: 05:00. His heart pounded against his ribs so hard it echoed in his temples.
He shrank inwardly, pulling his knees to his chest. The boy wrapped his arms around himself, shivering from a phantom cold. Izuku didn't understand what was happening. He still didn't know that an entire parliament of souls with its own world was hiding inside him. But right now, in the silence of his room, with his whole being, with every cell of his body, he felt a primal terror.
Someone alien had just hacked the door into his soul.