Chapter 13: Hope Arrives
The USJ had become a monument to despair. The air was thick with the scent of ozone from Todoroki's shattered ice and the dry, dusty smell of Gaara's sand. In the central plaza, a tense, three-pronged standoff held the world in a state of suspended animation.
From the shore of the flood zone, Izuku Midoriya was frozen, a prisoner in his own body. Terror was a cold, paralyzing poison in his veins. Before him, across the newly formed dunes, was the entire tableau of his failure. He saw his teacher, Mr. Aizawa, a bloody and broken puppet lying at the feet of the hulking Nomu. He saw the villain's hand, the one that turned people to dust, slowly raising to deliver a final, casual execution. He saw the other monster—the boy, Gaara—a raging, horned demigod perched atop his sandy throne, his monstrous new voice still echoing his desire to "break more."
Every heroic instinct in Midoriya's soul screamed at him to move, to run, to do something. He had One For All, a sacred power meant to save people. But what could he do? A single, reckless smash would shatter his own body, and it would likely do nothing to either of those terrifying creatures. He was a child with a borrowed, uncontrollable power, and he was watching his teacher die. Tears of helpless frustration welled in his eyes, blurring the horrific scene before him.
Shigaraki Tomura, however, was past the point of frustration. He was incandescent with rage. His beautiful, carefully orchestrated debut, his perfect game, had been hijacked by a broken, glitched-out tool.
"Useless, broken shield," he hissed, scratching at his neck so violently that flecks of skin fell away. "First he has a childish breakdown, and now he's hogging the spotlight and taking out my minions! Fine. If a piece is glitched, you delete it."
He turned his head towards his true masterpiece. "Nomu," he commanded, his voice sharp and clear. "Forget the teacher for a second. Scrape that sandy freak off his perch. Shut him up."
The Nomu, which had been raising its hand to crush Aizawa's skull, froze. It slowly turned its vacant, bird-like head, its dead eyes fixing on the transformed Gaara. It let out a low, guttural croak, a sound of pure, mindless obedience.
The beast on the sand plateau responded in kind. The golden, slitted eye locked onto the Nomu, a new wave of destructive glee radiating from it. "A big one! Strong! You want to play too? Let's break you!"
Midoriya watched in abject horror. The two most powerful monsters on the battlefield were about to clash, and the resulting destruction would surely kill everyone, his teacher included. This was the end.
And then came the sound.
BOOM!
It was not an explosion. It was the sound of authority. The sound of two massive, reinforced metal doors being blown clean off their hinges and sent flying into the facility. All heads—student, villain, and monster alike—snapped towards the entrance.
Against the bright, intrusive light of the outside world stood a silhouette. It was a mountain of a man, instantly recognizable, a figure of hope so potent that his very presence seemed to change the laws of physics.
He took a step forward into the light. He was smiling, but it was not his usual, bright, camera-friendly smile. This was a grim, furious, terrible smile. It was the smile of a parent who has just found a wolf in their child's nursery.
"It's fine now," All Might's voice declared. It was not the booming, cheerful baritone of the television. It was lower, deeper, vibrating with a barely controlled rage that promised catastrophic consequences.
"Because I am here."
A collective, shuddering gasp of relief went through the scattered students. For Midoriya, the sight was so overwhelming that the tears of fear became tears of hope, streaming down his face. He had never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life.
The low-level villains, however, recoiled in abject terror. The final boss, the one unbeatable character, had just logged into the game.
Shigaraki's rage did not vanish. It twisted into something new, something manic and ecstatic. "He's here," he whispered, a cracked, joyous giggle escaping his lips. "He came after all! The final boss has finally entered the dungeon!"
In that one, timeless second, All Might moved.
He was not there, and then he was. A blur of red, white, and blue that shot from the entrance to the base of the stairs, arriving without a sound. In that blur, he had already scooped up the broken, unconscious form of Mr. Aizawa. He appeared beside Midoriya, Tsuyu, and Mineta, gently laying their teacher on the ground. The entire trip had taken less than a heartbeat.
"Sorry, Aizawa," All Might said, his voice a low growl. "You did your best." He straightened up, his towering form a literal shield in front of the terrified students.
His eyes, set in the deep shadows of his brow, scanned the plaza. His heroic mind processed the entire, chaotic battlefield in a single, fluid assessment. Aizawa, critically injured. Priority one: secure him. Done. The hand-villain and the large, bird-like creature beside him. Primary threats. The scattered students. Must be protected. And… that.
His gaze locked onto the sand-covered plateau, and the horned, raging boy at its center. The raw, unstable power radiating from him was immense, a wild, chaotic storm that was a threat to everyone in the facility indiscriminately. The entire landscape had been altered by him.
That is the source of the chaos, All Might concluded. It's not a controlled attack; it's a wildfire. I have to put out the fire first.
Before Shigaraki could even register that Aizawa was gone, All Might crouched. The concrete beneath his feet cracked and spiderwebbed under the strain. "I'm coming for you villains," he said, his voice a promise of pain. Then he launched himself into the air.
He was a missile of pure hope, a golden-age comet streaking across the domed sky of the USJ. The monstrous voice from Gaara roared in delight, sensing the approach of a worthy opponent.
All Might positioned himself in the air, directly above the sand plateau. He drew back his mighty fist, the muscles in his arm bunching like coiled steel cables. The air itself seemed to grow heavy, charged with an impossible energy.
"I know you're angry, villain," he roared, his voice finally booming with its full power. "But you are a threat to my students. And I will not allow that!"
"DETROIT… SMASH!"
He did not strike the boy. He struck the air itself.
The world seemed to lurch on its axis. A cone of invisible, unstoppable pressure blasted downwards. It was not a punch; it was a localized hurricane, a meteorological event created by a single, heroic fist. The sand plateau did not crumble or break. It disintegrated. It was blasted outwards in a massive, atomized cloud, the billions of compressed particles thrown into the air as a harmless, roiling fog of dust.
The boy at the center of the blast had no defense. The monstrous, sandy carapace was scoured from his body in a microsecond. The overwhelming pressure slammed into him, and he was thrown from his perch like a leaf in a gale. He hit the plaza floor with a sickening thud, unconscious before he even landed, his small body tumbling in the dirt.
The effect was instantaneous and total. With their power source abruptly disconnected, every grain of sand Gaara had controlled went inert. The colossal dunes and walls that had reshaped the USJ collapsed with a series of soft, heavy hisses, settling into gentle, harmless slopes.
From a massive pile of sand near the ruins, Katsuki Bakugo burst out, gasping for air and spitting grit. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" he bellowed, looking around wildly. Kirishima emerged beside him, deactivating his Quirk, his face pale with shock.
Near the plaza's center, the last of a sand wave dissolved into nothing, revealing Todoroki standing protectively in front of Hagakure. He looked up at All Might, then at the now-clear plaza, a look of profound disbelief on his face.
All Might landed softly, his feet barely making a sound on the stone floor now littered with unconscious villains and piles of ordinary sand. His iconic smile was gone, replaced by a deep, troubled frown. He looked at the source of the cataclysmic power that had threatened to tear his students apart.
It was just a boy. Small, thin, and utterly broken, lying unconscious in the dirt. The demonic horn and monstrous mask had vanished, leaving behind a pale, tear-streaked face that looked far too young to contain such rage.
All Might stared down at the enigmatic enemy, the chaos momentarily quelled, but the mystery having deepened tenfold.
A child? he thought, his mind reeling. What in the world was that… what was that power?