Nanami stood in a space that defied explanation. He was currently in a liminal void where the remnants of one world bled into another. One moment he had been standing on a serene beach, and in the next he was in an ethereal realm.
There was also a lingering warmth that Nanami felt along his hand. Upon looking down at said hand, he caught a small glimpse of golden energy before it faded. The strangest part of the energy was that it felt familiar.
He soon turned his attention away from his hand and took in his surroundings. Before him the space resembled a grand hall of thrones, or its remnants. The area or room was surrounded by a void and there were eight thrones in all.
"What...is this place?..." Nanami murmured as he looked back down at his hand, clenching and unclenching it to recapture the feeling.
"Nanami Kento, we need to have a talk" A female voice echoed throughout the vast chamber.
Nanami's eyes lifted back up and saw that the once empty thrones were now occupied by a vestige that radiated a distinct aura. Their gazes remained fixed on him and they all seemed to emanate wisdom and sorrow as if they bore the weight of something greater than themselves.
He was at a loss for words but he felt as though he was standing at the crossroads of destiny, or a moment suspended between life and death. He wondered what price he had yet to pay for this moment in time. The figure on the nearest throne leaned forward slightly as if to beckon him closer.
"Who...or what are you? You're not cursed spirits from what I can tell nor is this a domain" Nanami's gaze met theirs with caution.
"We are vestiges. Echoes of those who carried a power known as One For All, a sacred torch that's been passed to the ninth holder. The boy you put your life on the line to save, Izuku Midoriya" Nana explained.
"So you're the predecessors...you said echoes which means you've passed on. So am I-" Nanami began
"No, you're not dead" Nana interrupted while Nanami processed it.
"Then why am I here?" Nanami questioned
"We chose to speak with you because the time will come for Izuku's journey to reach its crucial moment and you have a significant role yet to be played" Yoichi added
"You have seen firsthand how powerful and how dangerous the combination of Izuku's quirk and your world's cursed energy has started to become. Izuku was thrust into your world unprepared, unsure how to control the forces that are awakening inside him"
"Izuku cannot face the challenges ahead alone. He needs someone who deeply understands the nature of this world's cursed energy, someone experienced, disciplined, and resolute. You Nanami Kento have that experience"
"You're asking me to become his mentor?" Nanami understood the implication but was hesitant nonetheless.
"Izuku is an extraordinary hero and student but he lacks a teacher in this strange new world. Your role is to guide him as well as mentor him" The woman nodded gently.
"Why me? I'm no hero and I'm certainly no legend" Nanami looked down briefly, his expression contemplative.
"Heroism isn't a title granted by quirks or cursed power alone. It's defined by actions, self sacrifice and meddling where you don't need to. You embody that more than you realize" Hikage said thoughtfully.
Nanami nodded slowly, accepting the truth behind her words. A newfound certainty blossomed within him as a powerful purpose ignited something deep inside his heart. Maybe it was just the mood or the weight of responsibility when it comes to dealing with power but he couldn't help but think of Itadori.
"I...I understand. If you truly believe I can help him then I will accept this role" Nanami said with no hesitation
"With your role accepted, it's only fitting that you meet us properly. After all, you've inherited a duty intertwined with our legacy" She placed a hand gently against her chest.
"My name is Nana Shimura, the seventh bearer of One For All" After Nana spoke then the remaining figures rose from their thrones.
"En, the sixth bearer" Reserved yet deeply reassuring in presence.
"Daigoro Banjo, the fifth bearer" He smiled confidently, spirited despite his solemnity.
"Hikage Shinomori, the fourth bearer" His expression is calm.
"We are the Second and Third bearers. Our names aren't important right now, only our shared purpose" Both spoke firmly but kept their names respectfully withheld for now.
"Yoichi Shigaraki, the first bearer" His voice carried a quiet strength
Finally the attention shifted toward the throne between all of them. The figure was bathed in a radiant gold, this vestige was the same one that appeared on the beach.
The golden vestige stood slowly, its form radiated warmth and strength while shimmering brightly as though composed entirely of energy. Nanami found himself instinctively respectful, feeling in this presence a profound sense of nobility and wisdom.
"You're...the one who brought me here" The golden figure nodded gently
"This is Toshinori Yagi, known to many in our world as the number one hero All Might. He was the eighth bearer of One For All" Nana stood next to Nanami before placing a hand on his shoulder as she clarified.
"All Might chose Izuku as his successor and entrusted him with One For All's legacy. He watched over Izuku closely, trained him diligently, and guided him tirelessly. A large part of Izuku Midoriya's character and strength today is largely thanks to him and a close friend" All Might's golden visage held quiet pride.
"We're entrusting Midoriya's continued growth in this new world to you. His potential is boundless but he needs someone who understands the dangers he may face, someone who can guide him with patience and care" Yoichi chimed in
"So become the mentor he needs now. Help him grow stronger, wiser, and insure he remains true to his heroic heart" Nanami nodded firmly, humbled and moved by the deep trust and responsibility now bestowed upon him.
"You have my word that I'll guide Midoriya" Nana smiled at his words and let go of his shoulder.
"Then we leave him to you and in due time we will speak again" The space around him dimmed ever so slightly as the vestiges began to return to their stillness.
Nanami took a step back to let the moment settle in his chest. There was a strange sense of peace he hadn't felt in a long time and it all felt grounding in a way. Before he could take in the moment something pulled at his senses, there was a shift or a flicker in the dark beyond all of them.
He turned slowly to allow his eyes to scan beyond the circle of thrones, drawn by a presence that was faint. Just outside the ring of the eight thrones tucked in the shadows like an afterthought was something lingering by a wall causing Nanami to freeze.
There was a ninth figure but it wasn't seated like the others and unlike the fully realized forms of the vestiges who had spoken this one was different. The figure seemed to flicker in and out of view like a flame caught in a windstorm.
It stood upright but incomplete as though it hadn't fully decided what it was yet and like the others it had a glow of light around its form, but it was orange. Faint at first then growing more vivid the longer he looked at it.
"It hasn't fully manifested yet" Nana's gaze also fixed on the elusive vestige.
"I thought Midoriya was the Ninth holder.." Nanami continued to stare at the incomplete vestige.
"This...is a story unlike the others" Nana's voice started low.
"It exists because of a moment, a bond shared in desperation during a time of great danger and the mark it left still lingers much to our surprise" The orange glow pulsed faintly along it's arms almost in response to her words.
"So what's this one's name?" Nanami asked.
"This one would be..."
.
.
.
.
.
.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Act 9: Future of Hell, Part 2]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
.
.
.
.
.
.
Sukuna stood in the middle of the street with his hands at his sides and his face tilted upward at the column of fire still pouring from the destroyed fuel station.
The flames painted his features in shifting shades of orange and black, deepening the lines of his tattoos, turning his four eyes into dark mirrors that reflected the destruction with perfect clarity.
"He hit me harder than any sorcerer in the modern era. Harder than most in the ancient one..." The fight played back in his mind on a loop.
The thought sat with him as he turned it over, examining it from different angles, and testing it against the catalog of opponents he'd faced.
Sukuna rolled his jaw despite it already being healed with reverse cursed technique but the ghost of the impact lingered in the form of phantom pain.
"If he hadn't already been fighting since he arrived in this city...if he'd come at me fresh..." He paused on that thought.
"And if I hadn't had reverse cursed technique running beneath every exchange, quietly undoing the damage he was accumulating.." The conclusion formed itself without his permission.
Sukuna chuckled as embers drifted past him like burning snowflakes. He watched them rise and vanish into the smoke filled sky and for a moment he allowed himself to appreciate the absurdity of it. A boy with a martyr complex had pushed the King of Curses closer to the edge than any living sorcerer.
"I should wrap things up and see if this boy could be a potential ves-" He turned his back to the fire and halted mid step
Sukuna's body locked as every fiber of his being seized in place with a suddenness that had nothing to do with conscious thought. Rather it had everything to do with a pre-cognitive alarm system that existed in every living thing.
The flames from the fuel station painted the street behind Sukuna in a warm shifting orange and the unlit road ahead stretched into shadow. The figure occupied the border between the two and the effect was deeply and fundamentally unsettling in a way that Sukuna couldn't immediately rationalize.
It was the feeling of waking in a dark room and seeing a shape in the corner that you knew hadn't been there when you fell asleep. The feeling of being watched from a doorway you thought was empty.
The figure didn't move since he laid eyes on it so Sukuna's eyes adjusted. The details resolved themselves through the haze of smoke and unsteady light. The face was shrouded in a shadow that started from it's eyes and down to it's mouth.
The eyes themselves were white but not from blindness and it wasn't from any technique Sukuna had encountered in a thousand years. Beneath them were tears suspended mid-fall on the figure's cheeks, crystallized in time. Black and red tendrils wrapped around the figure's mouth and throat in layered, interlocking patterns. They weren't cloth and they weren't armor in any conventional sense.
The same tendrils laced down both arms. They wound through the forearms, threaded between the fingers, and extended past the fingertips into elongated, tapered points that turned the hands into something between claws and weapons.
A black mist clung to the figure's upper chest like smoke that had forgotten how to rise. It pooled in the hollow of the collarbone and drifted upward past the shoulders in lazy curling tendrils that dissolved into the night air.
And the hair was a colorless white that seemed to vaguely glow. The figure stood perfectly still and remained thirty feet away. Staring at Sukuna with those terrible white eyes above a face of shadow and tendrils and frozen tears.
"And who the hell are you supposed to be?" Sukuna stared and then like a key turning in a lock, it hit him.
"Wait a minute, I'm sensing two souls..." He could sense them now that the initial shock had loosened its grip on his perception.
Two distinct signatures emanating from the figure like overlapping radio frequencies. The first was damaged but unmistakable, the infuriatingly resilient energy of Izuku Midoriya. But the second caused Sukuna's eyes to widen because the second soul was old. It was the same one Sukuna had sensed before he took control of Yuji's body.
"I asked you a question so speak" Sukuna said without raising his voice.
"I have been called many things. The Symbol of Evil...Quirk Stealer..." Each word emerged with the measured cadence of someone who had never once in their existence needed to raise their voice.
"But the name that suits me best, the one that was given to me by those who understood what I truly am is..." The white eyes narrowed with recognition. The look of something ancient acknowledging something equally ancient across a gap of centuries and circumstance.
"The Demon Lord but you may call me All For One" All for one moved.
"The Demon Lord? Don't make me laugh" Sukuna openly scoffed
The finger tips of Izuku's hands turned black with red veins surging through them. They extended into thin metallic protrusions with needle like points that gleamed in the firelight. The hand rotated until those five gleaming points were aimed directly at Izuku's own body. All five rivets drove into the figure's torso simultaneously before pulsing twice.
"Forcible Quirk Activation" Once the words were spoken One For All ignited and the metallic needles retracted.
Izuku's now white hair whipped upward in the maelstrom of its own power. The veins of One For All shifted through all its colors but the veins never went away. Cursed energy then also Ignited around Izuku's body but this time it was red and noticeably more volatile.
"Now then. Shall we begin?" The words had barely left All For One's mouth before he whipped Izuku's right hand up.
"Air Cannon" The quirk activated in an instant with One For All surging through the quirk like gasoline. One For All was amplifying what was already devastating into something that redefined the word.
The compressed air detonated outward from his palm that hit Sukuna like a train. It hit Sukuna before his guard was fully set, catching him mid-transition between defensive posture and counterattack. The blast didn't just push him rather it erased the space he was standing in.
The cone of destruction expanded outward from All For One's palm in a widening arc that flattened everything it touched. The surface peeled away in layers starting with the asphalt first then the concrete substrate beneath, then the compacted earth below that.
Cars were launched from their resting places and crushed into irregular shapes by the air pressure before being hurled backward like crumpled paper. Lampposts snapped at their bases. Fire hydrants ripped free. The facades of buildings on either side of the blast's path simply departed.
The destruction carved a corridor of devastation through the area in a wide flattened scar. Where there had been a street there was now a trench and where there had been buildings, there were hollowed shells.
All For One lowered the palm and Izuku's right arm trembled from wrist to shoulder as the muscles protested from the output. At thirty percent of One For All's reinforcement, the blast had been manageable.
But the fusion of Air Cannon, One For All's base enhancement, and the energy that permeated this world had produced something that exceeded the sum of its parts. The compressed air had been amplified by the quirk's passive output, turning what should have been a focused shockwave into something closer to a localized natural disaster.
"Fascinating. The interaction between Air Cannon and One For All is...multiplicative. The destructive ceiling has exceeded far beyond what Air Cannon could achieve independently" All For One regarded the trembling hand with interest. The fingers closed into a fist before opening again. The tremor was already fading, it wasn't gone but it was manageable.
The fingers closed into a fist before opening again. The tremor was already fading, although it wasn't gone but it was manageable.
"Izuku Midoriya being a vessel for my power was unexpected but my control over his body is imprecise. I'll need to acclimate before I can utilize it properly..." All For One put both hands behind his back and activated float.
All For One ascended to roughly fifteen feet and began drifting forward across the destruction. The posture was of a sovereign surveying territory that had just been claimed, moving with the particular gait of someone who had never once in their existence needed to rush toward anything.
"Search" Once activated the world around All For One dimmed with the only thing held any light was Sukuna's form.
The King of Curses unfolded like a manuscript being spread across a table. All For One's attention focused on Sukuna's stomach where the cursed energy pooled. It sat there like the core of a reactor and from that central point it radiated outward through a network of channels.
Those channels were threaded through every major muscle group, every organ, and every bone all while it's flow was constant and self sustaining. He also saw the way it pooled into the hands, ready to be shaped into cutting techniques at a moment's notice.
The reverse cursed technique sat in the prefrontal cortex like a crown of light. It was separate from the primary cursed energy network and distributed itself to whatever part of the body required healing.
The best part of it was that it had a single point of origin that if disrupted would cripple the entire process. Now for cursed techniques, All For One thought it was simply extraordinary.
"Cleave, Dismantle, Spiderweb, Divine Flame, Hollow Wicker Basket, Reverse Curse Technique, Domain Amplification, and Malevolent Shrine" All For One catalogued everything as search deactivated.
Beneath the admiration was a secondary assessment ran in parallel. The body he inhabited was still not acclimated yet. Not only that but the integration between OFA and this world's strange energy was functional but incomplete.
"I will need to stall. He is arrogant enough to indulge conversation if the subject interests him and what interests a king more than being told what he is..."
Meanwhile Sukuna rose from the rubble with a less than favorable emergence. The blast had driven him through the street surface and into the compacted earth beneath, burying him under several tons of displaced debris.
"That didn't feel like the power the boy wielded against me and the strange part is that it felt more like cursed technique" Concrete slid from his shoulders and dust cascaded from his hair as he stood amongst the destruction.
The blast hadn't broken anything but the concussive force had rattled everything in his body. His ears rang with a persistent high pitch whine that was already fading as reverse cursed technique addressed the damage.
"That technique projected through the hand was amplified by whatever power the boy carries and it came without warning. Could he have been passively charging it up that whole time?" Sukuna had to be careful, this was an entirely new opponent and he couldn't afford to jump in carelessly.
"Well that was just rude, All For One" Sukuna stepped forward and put his hair back up as the dust parted in front of him.
The particles simply moved aside, displaced by a presence descending through them. All For One floated down to the flattened ground and landed with barely a sound. He walked forward through the parted dust with both hands clasped behind his back and his head slightly raised. The volatile red cursed energy still crackled around Izuku's transformed body and the veins of One For All pulsed beneath the skin like bioluminescent circuitry.
"About this title you carry, The King of Curses..." All For One paused.
"Was it given to you? Earned through recognition by peers and enemies alike or is it something you appointed yourself? A crown placed on your own head in the absence of anyone powerful enough to challenge the claim?" The tendril mask settled into a neutral configuration.
"I walked through the golden age of jujutsu sorcery and left nothing standing. Every sorcerer who thought themselves my equal is dust. Every clan that raised arms against me is a footnote" Sukuna said while dusting off his shoulders.
"The title wasn't given nor was it claimed. It was inevitable because the world looked at what I was and had no other word for it" His four eyes locked onto All For One's white ones as All For One raised a hand.
The looseness in Sukuna shoulders immediately tightened as his posture shifted. His weight was redistributed and the casual assessment he held moments ago became sharpened.
"Before we continue I would ask that you allow me a moment to stay my hand" The request hung in the air between them.
"And why would the great All For One stay his hand?" Sukuna's eyes narrowed.
"Because I'm not a fool Sukuna" All For One began to pace perpendicular to him like a professor circling a lecture hall.
"I've watched you through the boy's eyes. I heard your sermons on freedom, heard your gospel of strength as the only honest currency, and I've heard your disdain about the theatricality of heroism and the delusion of those who practice it" He paused, turning toward Sukuna.
"Those are not the words of a mindless destroyer. They are the insights of a man who has mapped the architecture of power and examined the systems governing the weak and found them...inefficient" All For One resumed his walk with his hands clasped behind his back.
"You see, you're something that operates by rules I recognize because they're the same rules I followed. I have spent decades building from the shadows by cultivating networks, positioning assets, and treating power not just as a sword but as an ecosystem. It is an environment that requires stewardship and the foresight to see three moves ahead of every other player at the table" All For One continued
"Get to the point already or are you here to gloat?" Sukuna grunted in annoyance.
"The point is that we are singular entities who reshaped the eras we inhabited by the sheer weight of our existence. We have both been absent and upon our return we both found the world...diminished in a sense" The faintest suggestion of a smile behind the tendril mask. One the word propose entered the space between them and changed its chemistry.
"We understand that the hierarchies and little paper kingdoms of heroes...or in your case these sorcerers are merely fictions. Constructs maintained by a collective agreement that dissolves the moment something truly strong enters the room and disagrees" All For One stopped directly to Sukuna's left now. No longer face to face but side by side, the positioning of allies or equals rather than opponents.
"I say all this not to boast. I say it because I want you to understand that when I speak to you I speak as an equal. Therefore, I propose a convergence or a...partnership so to speak. My strategic infrastructure paired with your-" All For One had his left hand extended out to his left towards Sukuna while his right remained behind his back.
"Enough" The word killed the sentence as completely as a blade through a throat.
Sukuna stood exactly as he had been standing with the particular stillness of something that had heard everything it needed to hear. He had been waiting for the speaker to arrive at the same conclusion others have came to in the past.
"You're boring me. I knew the moment you started prattling on about 'architecture' and 'ecosystems' exactly where this was going. I've heard this speech before from different mouths with the same pathetic need" Sukuna continued.
"You want to manage me, plain and simple. You want to fold me into your little ecosystem, to have me serve in the architecture of your ambition" He turned his head just enough to bring All For One into his peripheral vision
"You see something strong you approach it and you speak to it in whatever language it responds to. Whether that flattery for the vain, philosophy for the thoughtful, or purpose for the lost. And then once the words have done their work and the target has accepted your hand..." Sukuna held out his hand in from of his with an open palm.
"You close your grip and what was a partner becomes a possession. What was an equal becomes an asset that's managed. Directed. Owned" The finger curled back into a fist.
"You simply couldn't help yourself. It's what you are by nature, a collector who sees a new piece for his hoard and immediately starts measuring the shelf" Sukuna scowled
"But you assumed that because I reject heroism I must be open to partnership. That because I stand outside their systems I must want a seat inside yours" Sukuna turned all the way to give his full attention
"However, I serve no function nor do I occupy any role in any system that I did not personally construct for my own amusement. The only people who stand at my side are those who have chosen to kneel, not as assets but as subjects who understand that serving me is the highest purpose they will ever achieve"
"And you will never kneel but not because you're too proud but because you are constitutionally incapable of seeing another being as anything other than a resource to be allocated. You want stock but I'm not for sale" Sukuna finished
The silence that followed was of two beings arriving simultaneously at a conclusion that had been inevitable from the moment they first saw each other. They were now acknowledging it without the indignity of pretending otherwise. They were two kings with the same throne and same crown.
Same absolute refusal to exist as anything less than the center of every room they entered but two points cannot occupy the same apex. All For One understood this or rather he had understood it, if he was being honest with himself before the first word of the proposal had left his mouth the offer had been more like a the reflex.
A hand that reached for every source of power in proximity the way a drowning man reaches for anything that floats. For perhaps the first time in living memory something that made the refusal feel earned in a strange sense has met him.
"I confess, you are right but I had a feeling this would be how you would answer" All For One chuckled dryly but the admission came without bitterness and without resentment.
"And yet you still made your offer" Sukuna smirked.
"Because I had hoped that when speaking to an equal rather than a frantic hero that there might be room for expansion. But it's no matter" All For One's tone carried a weight of resignation that seemed genuine.
"I must ask though... If not a partnership then what? You've rejected alignment and you've rejected coexistence. So what is it you actually want Sukuna? What is the endgame that makes all of this worthwhile" All For Ones gaze and hand swept across the destruction around them before returning behind his back.
"Let's just say that I arrangements that need to fall in a very specific order. Pieces that need to be in very specific positions for a future. A future made not through networks and infrastructure..." The faintest curl of his lip at the words.
"But through patience and the careful identification of exactly which elements this world needs to produce in order for what I want to exist" His gaze drifted briefly to Izuku's body.
"You are sitting on top of one of those elements and you are disrupting the sequence I require. You're an obstacle in my way...one that must be removed..." Sukuna said as his eyes returned to All For Ones.
"So he has plans for the boy. Which means he cannot be bargained with and he will not be redirected" All For One broke eye contact and stared up at the sky with closed eyes.
"Hmph, the stalling has served its purpose. I can sense that I am more entuned with this body now. It's not perfect but it will work" All For One lowered his gaze, opened his eyes, and smiled beneath the tendril mask.
"Then by all means Sukuna..." All For One unclasped his hands from behind his back and positioned them to their natural resting place.
"Remove me" The words hadn't finished leaving All For One's mouth before Sukuna was already gone.
"To think you'd be so foolish to leave yourself open" Sukuna crossed the distance between them with his right fist already cocked and every ounce of cursed energy compressed into the knuckles.
The punch aimed dead center at All For One's face but he refused to move. He watched the fist approach with patience and at the exact moment of impact he activated one of his quirks.
"Impact recoil" Impact Recoil didn't simply return the force it amplified it.
Sukuna's own devastating output had been doubled by the quirks reversal trait which detonated back through his fist like a bomb. The bones in his hand compressed past their tolerance and his wrist hyperextended with a sound like green wood snapping.
The shockwave raced up through his forearm, blew through the elbow joint, and hammered his shoulder with enough redirected force to partially separate the joint from its socket. Sukuna wasn't just launched backwards he was ejected from All For One's proximity.
The velocity caused his body to carve a trench through the flattened ground that threw up twin walls of debris on either side. He hit the base of a skeletal building sixty feet away and the impact buckled the remaining support columns and walls.
"Leaving oneself open is not the same as being unguarded. In the hands of the patient it is an invitation. One you accepted beautifully" All For One said to the settling debris but In the silence that followed, All For One had noticed that danger sense hadn't activated.
"It would seem danger sense requires manual activation...it's no longer running passively. An unfortunate side effect to not willingly being bestowed the power of One For All" All For One filed the information away as he fully turned his body towards the dust.
Sukuna emerged from the rubble in stages. First was a hand that clawed into the debris as his fingers dug grooves into concrete as he hauled himself upward. Next came his shoulder until the rest of him was visible, rising from the wreckage as if he rose from a disturbed tomb.
His right arm hung wrong, the shoulder was visibly displaced with the wrist swollen to twice its normal size. Reverse cursed technique was already flooding around the joints as cartilage and bone reset themselves.
"Impact recoil? So it doubles the force that it receives and expels it back out..." His shoulder popped back into alignment, his wrist reduced to normal size, and it's full mobility returned.
"You aren't fighting me are you? You're simply setting the price for my own aggression and waiting for me to pay it. You're not a brawler...you're a tactician standing inside a weaponized shell" Sukuna mused.
"Every exchange is a transaction and I have never been fond of a bad bargain" All For One stood perfectly still with his right arm slightly extended outwards.
Sukuna flexed his restored hand, allowing the knuckles to pop in the quiet. He began to lower his center of gravity as cursed energy pooled into his hand. He halted his movement as his hand hovered a few inches off the ground as he kept his eyes on his opponent. All For One leaned in just slightly while adjusting his footing in response.
The air grew cold as the sheer volume of his intent began to warp the atmosphere. Sukuna was preparing Spiderweb, a technique that was going to shred the "transaction" before it could even begin. This was their standoff and All For One knew that he needed to make a play that resulted in him coming out ahead.
"A bold gambit..." All For One whispered after he activated search for a moment.
"Spiderw-" Just as Sukuna's fingers twitched to ignite the technique, All For One whipped his right hand forward in a horizontal slash.
"Smoke Cannon!" All For One activated and combined air cannon with smokescreen.
In an instant All For One dispersed a massive volume of violet vapor but this was no mere chemical fog. All For One had bled Izuku's Cursed Energy directly into the Smokescreen, saturating the space with his presence. The world around Sukuna vanished into a suffocated purple miasma and now found himself standing in a sensory dead zone.
"I can no longer sense him..." Sukuna's four eyes widened.
"Interesting predicament isn't it?" All For One's voice came from the left so Sukuna's head snapped to it only to find nothing.
"To be robbed of sight is inconvenient but to be robbed of perception is helplessness" All For Ones voice came from the right now and Sukuna followed.
The voice seemingly came from every direction simultaneously, bouncing and refracting through the field until origin and echo were indistinguishable. Sukuna's jaw clenched as his four eyes strained against the opacity essentially becoming useless.
A shape materialized in the smoke to his left and Sukuna didn't hesitate. He pivoted then flicked a dismantle at it but the slashes passed through without any resistance, the silhouette rippled dissolved. Next was a Blackwhip tendril that lunged from the smoke behind him and he reacted in time, splitting the tendril with a slash but it was merely a distraction.
Using Float All For One had drifted just inches off the ground to silence his movement. He'd drifted through his own smoke field like a ghost and closing the distance one silent inch at a time while Sukuna's attention was distracted.
Once he was close enough his hand shot forward before it slammed into Sukuna's face. The palm met the bridge of the nose while the fingers splayed across the cheekbones and jaw but it was what came after contact that mattered.
"Rivet stab" The tendrils in the fingertips activated instantly.
Five metallic protrusions punched through the skin of Sukuna's face simultaneously. Two of them punched through the cheeks, one through the bridge of the nose, one through the jaw, and one through the forehead just above the right eye. They anchored into bone in order to lock All For One's grip onto Sukuna's skull.
SHRKK!
He drove Sukuna downward, cratering the ground and dispersing the smokescreen on impact as All For One began dragging Sukuna's body. Debris sprayed upward on either side of them, carving a furrow through the destruction zone.
In order to not allow Sukuna anytime to retaliate All For One came to a stop, planted his feet, and wrenched Sukuna upward. One For All, Air Cannon, and Spring like limbs were activated all at once in a concentrated blast point blank in Sukuna's face.
BOOM!!
The blast detonated between them with a sound that split the night. Compressed air concentrated into a column no wider than Sukuna's head for maximum damage. At that distance it interacted with flesh and bone the way a belt sander interacts with wood.
The skin peeled away first as the outer layer of Sukuna's face stripped backward from the point of impact. The musculature beneath was torn away in ragged sheets that caught the wind and disintegrated.
Beneath it, raw muscle and exposed fascia glistened, the tattoo lines that had adorned his skin now existing only in fragments that clung to the remaining tissue like paint on a crumbling wall. The concussive force cratered the exposed muscle, compressing the tissue against the bone beneath. The bridge of his nose that was already punctured by the rivet collapsed inward.
CRACK! CRUNCH!
The orbital bone around his upper right eye fractured in three places, the eye itself swelling shut behind a curtain of blood and damaged tissue. What was left of Sukuna's face, in the instant before he was hurled backward into the night was not something that belonged on a living creature.
The force hurled him out of the flattened destruction zone and into the intact streets across the boundary between the battlefield they'd created and the city that still existed around it. He hit the roadway at an angle and his body skipped across the asphalt like a stone across water. The first impact cracked the road surface while the second sent him into a parked sedan.
CRASH! SCREECH!
The driver side door crumpled inward around his body before the car flipped onto its roof from the transferred momentum. The third impact put him through the windshield of a city bus, his body tore through the driver's partition, obliterated the fare machine, and plowed through the center aisle while shredding seat after seat in rapid succession.
Metal bent and snapped with upholstery exploding into a cloud of foam and fabric. Each seat absorbed a fraction of his momentum before being destroyed and each destruction sprayed more debris into the narrowing corridor of devastation. He hit fifteen seats before exiting through the rear windshield.
He rolled across the pavement beyond in a shower of glass, metal, and shredded seat cushion. His body carved one final trench before his hand shot out, digging into the asphalt in order to anchor himself. He came to a stop while on one knee with his head down and most of his face dripping onto the road beneath him.
"You have arrived at your destination!" The navigation system from the front of the bus rolled to a stop in front of him.
CRACK!
Sukuna's fist ended the machines life with a few sparks flying out of it as the road cracked beneath it. Sukuna then reached up and grabbed the dislocated joint of his jaw that was hanging three inches below its natural position. It was connected by nothing but torn ligaments and stubbornness.
His fingers wrapped around the bone and shoved it back into place with a wet crack and a pop. Reverse cursed technique flooded the damaged tissue like liquid light filling a mold. Muscle reknit itself in visible layers with fibers reaching across the gaps.
"That tears it!" Skin crawled back across the exposed bone in a slow glistening tide as new flesh formed over the regenerated muscle until his face was restored.
He looked up and All For One was already upon him with float propelling Izuku's body across the gap between the destruction zone and the roadway. The time for conversation had ended the moment Sukuna's face hit the dirt.
Sukuna rose from his knee and threw his hands up just in time and the two met in the middle of the street. The contact point between their palms became the epicenter of a shockwave that expanded outward.
Cars flipped, the pavement buckled in concentric rings, the bus Sukuna had been thrown through lifted off the ground and crashed back down on its side. Windows in every building within three blocks simply ceased to exist.
Once the dust settled and the two of them were locked face to face, Sukuna was on one knee from the force of All For One's descent. Amplified by float's momentum and thirty percent of One For All had driven him into the pavement without much of a choice.
"You know what I find most interesting about you, Sukuna? You've spent a millennium being the strongest thing in every room you've entered. But the moment something meets you on equal footing you finally bend a knee" All For One's voice was calm has his fingers tightened around Sukuna's hand.
"And you talk like someone who has never been hit hard enough to learn when to shut his mouth" Sukuna shot back as he managed to get off of one knee
"Oh I have...which is why I know that the one who speaks last rarely speaks from the ground" Sukuna lunged forward in response to headbutt All For One but impact recoil activated and snapped Sukuna's head back.
"Air Cannon" With the clash disengaged All For One brought both hands up and fired off air cannon.
The blast was smaller and had less power behind it, it was just enough to force him back and sent him skidding backward. All For One was already turning to face with the overturned bus behind him. Blackwhip shot from the left hand and wrapped around the exposed undercarriage, coiling around the axles, the drive shaft, and the frame.
Eighteen tons of steel, glass, and shredded seating rose overhead like a mallet. All For One rotated at the hips and began to hurl the bus in a descending arc aimed directly at Sukuna's position. But Sukuna recovered faster than All For One had calculated, Air Cannon's focused blast had pushed him back but hadn't compromised him long enough.
In the short window Sukuna had done something of his own. His right hand and left hand was clamped around the front bumper of a sedan that had been flipped by the earlier shockwave. His fingers punched through the metal and locked around it like a handle and swung it with all his might.
CRUMPLE!! SHATTER!!
Two tons of Japanese engineering traveling at a velocity that turned it from a vehicle into a weapon, catching All For One across the side of his body and launching him off the street and directly through the front wall of the building to Sukuna's right.
Glass, brick, and structural framing exploded inward as All For One's body carved a path through the ground floor before punching through the far wall and into the building's interior courtyard. The sedan was now bent into a V shape from the impact then dropped from Sukuna's grip before clattering onto the road.
"I'll tear you asunder!" The moment All For One disappeared through the wall, Sukuna raised his hand.
He had unleashed dozens of Dismantles in rapid succession to cover every angle, every position, every square foot of the structure's interior. The intent was to saturate the area with so much cutting force that survival became nearly impossible.
The bottom half of the building came apart as the dismantles carved through everything that held it up. The structure separated along clean lines, falling apart in sections that slid against each other like a puzzle being disassembled.
"That should hav-" Sukuna sense something behind him
A dark oily portal shimmered into existence, Sukuna spun around and the corner of his eye caught All For One. The tendril mask was cracked but intact and cuts decorated the Izuku's body, Sukuna's volley of slashes weren't a complete loss but they weren't enough.
"No finesse and no penmanship...what you painted should be classed as nothing more than vandalism" All For One said with cuts leaking thin lines of blood.
Thirty percent of One For All channeled through Izuku's knuckles and his fist connected with Sukuna's jaw before the last word had fully formed. Sukuna's head snapped to the side and his footing left the ground but All For One didn't let him travel. Rivet Stab extended from his right hand and pierced into the flesh of Sukuna's shoulder.
Five metallic points embedded in the trapezius muscle which locked Sukuna in All For One's reach like a fish on a hook. All For One pulled and Sukuna's body lurched forward, his momentum was arrested and reversed in an instant as he was reeled in.
He let his body slack to allow the rivets to pull him forward with the appearance of submission. All For One registered the compliance and for a fraction of a second he interpreted it as the body yielding to the technique's force.
At the last possible second he added his own explosive momentum to the pull's trajectory, doubling the closing speed and then his hands found the rivets buried in his shoulder. He gripped the metallic protrusions and broke them and in the same motion All For One tried to react but Izuku's right arm locked up which allowed Sukuna to wrap both arms around his torso.
CRASH! SHATTER!
The two of them crashed through the building behind All For One, tearing through an open retail space of overturned shelving and scattered merchandise and exiting through the back wall into the street beyond.
All For One's hands found the asphalt mid tumble in order to flip backwards until Izuku's feet hit the street in a wide stance. The friction carved parallel grooves into the road surface until he slid to a stop.
"Izuku's consciousness remains dormant but the body is starting to reject me. I might need to end this faster than I planned to..." All For One straightened and assessed. The cuts from the Dismantles were still open, his right arm ached from accumulated Air Cannon outputs, and the tendril mask was cracked in three places.
The body was functional but degrading, its tolerances narrowing with every exchange. All For One shifted his stance from the composed frame of a sovereign and became the stance of someone who had trained their body to be a weapon.
"The boy's fighting style..." Across from him, Sukuna watched the transition with narrowed eyes.
Something about it bothered him but it wasn't the stance itself since he'd seen it all night. But it was more so the context in a way, this parasite had spent the last several minutes fighting like a chess grandmaster but now he had just abandoned the board entirely.
"I've never been fond of a bad bargain" The words echoed and it clicked with Sukuna.
Spoken seconds ago after the negotiation when he'd been the diplomat, the strategist, the architect of careful systems. The tactician doesn't gamble nor does the tactician brawl, the tactician finds the optimal exchange rate and executes it with surgical precision.
"He's abandoned his own approach...which means the strategist is desperate enough to become a brawler" Sukuna noted.
"Interesting change of pace! So the king finally steps down from his throne to fight in the dirt" Sukuna mocked with a sneer.
"The dirt is where kings and sovereigns alike are made. While those who think themselves worthy are put in their place" All For One didn't waste any more time and launched.
He closed the distance to Sukuna in seconds and launched a combination of attacks. First was a left jab, it was almost polite in its directness so Sukuna answered it with a block. A right cross arrived while the jab was still retracting, threading through the gap Sukuna's block had created.
He slipped past it just barely as the knuckles grazed his cheek like a whispered threat. The left hook was already in motion in a tight arc but Sukuna ducked the hook. The fist sailed over his head close enough to disturb his hair and a knee was already rising .
It targeted the chin he'd lowered to avoid the hook like a trap built into the combination, a punishment for the obvious evasion. Sukuna caught it on crossed forearms and felt the impact sing through both arms like a struck tuning fork.
All For One pressed on and began attacking in bursts applying continuously pressure that allowed combinations to bleed into the next set of combinations without pause or punctuation. Sukuna managed to block, duck, and slip past the majority of them except for a few that managed to get by his guard.
An elbow feinted into a spinning backfist that came from an angle that shouldn't have been possible given where the elbow had been a fraction of a second before but there it was, carving path through the air toward his temple.
Sukuna managed to dodge but another jab was sent out although this time the hook feinted high and All For One dropped low to target the liver. Sukuna's arm came down to block but to his surprise an elbow crashed into the side of his head from above.
WHAM!!
"He's not just using the boy's patterns...he's remixing them" The realization came between impacts. All For One had access to Izuku's muscle memory, his trained reflexes, and the hours of combat practice encoded within him but he wasn't bound by them.
"Spring like limbs" What came next was something unexpected, All For One's legs coiled and compressed beyond their natural limit.
The effect was immediate as All For One's speed jumped exponentially as he vanished. He bounced off the wall of a building to Sukuna's left and ricocheted off the building on the right.
Then the left again, then up to a third story window frame and back down. The figure pinballed between the structures flanking the street in rapid succession, each impact point launching him faster than the last, each trajectory angled to arrive at Sukuna from a different direction.
Fa Jin had been layered on top of it. The kinetic energy storage technique stacked with Spring Like Limbs' elastic amplification, creating a feedback loop that pushed the figure's output well beyond what twenty five percent of One For All should have been capable of producing.
"Gran Torino...that old fool moved like a pinball. Despite my hatred I applaud him for the idea and application of his methods" The same principle being filtered through All For One's strategic mind and combined with Fa Jin's energy storage turned the roadway into a cage.
He appeared and disappeared from Sukuna's peripheral vision in strobing flashes with each appearance lasting barely a frame before the next launch but then the afterimages began. They appeared at each bounce point, making translucent echoes of the figure that lingered for fractions of a second after the real body had departed.
Ghost impressions of white hair and glowing veins became frozen mid stride, each one occupying a position that the figure had already abandoned. One afterimage became three then five then eight, a constellation of phantom figures orbiting Sukuna like electrons around a nucleus.
"He's created a hall of mirrors. How annoyi-" Sukuna couldn't even think.
SLAM!!!
Sukuna's head snapped left, right, and above to each one of them but they dissolved when his eyes found them. The real All For One was somewhere in the blur of bouncing trajectories but isolating the genuine image from the phantoms was like finding a needle in a haystack.
All For One materialized from the blur just long enough to deliver a Fa Jin enhanced kick before launching away again. A strike caught him in the liver next then another hit to the back of the head. A rising knee to the solar plexus that doubled him over for an instant before the figure bounced away.
SMASH!!
Izuku's left eye twitched then the vision on that side stuttered for half a second. All For One compensated with search for the blind spot without slowing down. A tremor in the right hand formed next causing two of Izuku's fingers to lock up before releasing then locking. The grip on the next strike was compromised but he ignored it and followed through anyway.
"Every direction reads as a threat and as nothing at the same time!" The afterimages multiplied to ten then twelve, Sukuna couldn't track the real body.
Each one radiated the same energy signature, each one was equally valid and equally false at the same time. Then All For One appeared to the right of Sukuna as if he materialized from between two afterimages that had been occupying Sukuna's vision.
"THERE!" Sukuna turned and sent a slash while tracking a phantom that had it's energy spike momentarily but it was already dissolving.
His right side was open and Izuku's right fist drew back with One For All surging through every vein in the right arm, igniting in that familiar cycling cascade of color. Fa Jin released its stored kinetic energy into the striking arm in a single, compound detonation that made the air around the fist shudder.
The punch began its forward trajectory and in the microsecond between the fist leaving its chamber and arriving at its target cursed energy flooded the fist. Although it wasn't the same cursed energy Izuku had been using tonight it was something that rose from deeper within, it was almost spiritual in a sense. Black and red sparks ignited around Izuku's arm.
"Those sparks..don't tell me he's...." Sukuna had caught a glimpse of them as he was just barely turning around.
The sparks crackled along the forearm in jagged branching patterns that looked less like electricity and more like fractures in reality itself. It was within this moment that All For One's consciousness fractured and everything was replaced by a vast circular expanse with buildings surrounding a larger than life tree.
All For One saw it for less than a heartbeat then a flash of a single frame spliced into the reel of reality but within that frame something looked back. Not the tree itself but something that lived within the tree but it looked unimpressed at what it was staring at.
The vision collapsed then reality reassembled and the street returned. The fist was still moving although it had never stopped moving in the first place. The black sparks still crawled across the arm in their fracture patterns until they were suddenly swept away before impact.
CRRRAAAAAAACK!!
The punch connected despite losing those sparks and the side of Sukuna's face had a network of cracks following my the skull breaking. Sukuna was sent skyward at an angle that carried him over the surrounding buildings in a parabolic arc that peaked at sixty feet before gravity remembered its responsibilities.
He came down through the glass ceiling of a shopping mall that was near the cone of destruction All For One had caused earlier. The skylights exploded inward as Sukuna's body punched through them and he descended through the mall's central atrium in a rain of glass and structural framing.
He crashed through the third floor and ended up in a department store on the second floor. Mannequins toppled, display cases shattered, and the concrete cracked around him on impact. His arms shook when he tried to push himself up, his legs spasmed from involuntary contractions that fired through his thighs and calves in stuttering bursts.
Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth in a thin steady stream that pooled on the tile floor. Both eyes twitched with rapid irregular movements that he couldn't control. The visual input strobed from dark to light but each flicker was accompanied by a lancing pain behind his temple.
His reverse curse technique addressed the broken side of his skull and fractured jaw then slowed significantly. The node that controlled the reverse technique inside the brain had been rattled from the punch. The output was compromised and it would require a bit a time before it would work properly again.
Sukuna forced himself up, managing to get to his feet through sheer concentrated will. His body swayed while he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. When he finally looked up he saw people packed in around him the same way the last group had been packed into that building.
These were more evacuees in another shelter point full of civilians who had been told they were safe. Every single one of them was staring at him, frozen in place with eyes wide and their mouths open.
The thing that had just crashed through their ceiling and spasmed on their floor was now standing. A few of the braver ones or perhaps the more foolish had edged forward during his recovery. Close enough to see the injuries but still far enough to mistake him for a victim.
"H-hey...are you alright?" A man's voice reached out.
Sukuna's head turned toward him slowly until his four crimson eyes found the man's face. He glared which caused the man to freeze mid step. The concern on his face collapsed into a primal recognition that lived beneath language and thought itself in the oldest part of the brain.
The part that knew before the conscious mind could formulate the concept, that the thing looking at him was not a person who needed help. Rather It was a thing that could end him between heartbeats.
"Maggots...all of them..." Sukuna's gaze swept across the crowd.
He cataloged them the way one might catalog insects clustered on a piece of fruit. They crawled and they swarmed and they clustered together in their pathetic trembling masses. He felt the revulsion of a being that had spent a millennium being reminded of how thoroughly the world was populated by things that didn't deserve the air they consumed.
"I should cut them all down. It would take less than a second! A flick of the fingers and this floor becomes a slaughterhouse" His hand twitched, it was a reflex as natural as breathing for him but he kept his hand lowered because a thought formed in his mind.
"However, the boy is still in there still under that parasite's control" His gaze drifted back to the civilians.
"If his consciousness registers civilians in danger while something else controls his body he'll claw his way back to the surface. The one lever that never fails to be pulled..." The plan crystallized in his mind
"ALL OF YOU LISTEN UP!! If any of move even an inch I'll cut you all down!" He ordered as he swept his his pointer finger across the air.
Sukuna then looked up to see All For One descending through the hole with float carrying him downward with the unhurried grace of something that existed above the concerns of gravity or even above the concerns of everything.
His white hair drifted upward in the backdraft of the descent while the veins of One For All pulsed beneath the skin in their chromatic cycles that illuminated the darkness. The energy that had passed through Izuku's body during that moment left behind a feeling.
A sensation of having briefly touched something so vast and so fundamental that the normal parameters of power felt laughably small by comparison. All For One felt limitless and the pain in the right arm, the hemorrhage behind the left eye, everything had become irrelevant.
All of it pushed to the margins of awareness by the overwhelming, intoxicating certainty that what he had almost achieved could be done again and again and again.
"Remarkable...I have taken abilities from a hundreds and worn them like garment. But that energy...that was something new" One For All slowed to a halt mid air and looked at the arm that wielded the sparks of black.
"I believed that I understood power. That I had mapped its every permutation and charted its every expression. Yet in that moment I have been shown that everything I knew was merely the surface" The tendril mask shifted and retracted to show All For One's smile as he noticed something else.
"He's drunk off his own power. Despite the sparks of black fading before they could fully form it still left behind the feeling of omnipotence" Sukuna noted with intrigue.
The cursed energy flowing through Izuku's body had changed All For One's quirk pathways. Rivet Stab, Impact Recoil, Air Cannon, Spring Like Limbs, Warping and Forcible Quirk activation were still there but now it was entirely operated by cursed energy now.
"It would appear my meta abilities have been converted. The cursed energy isn't just supplementing the quirks, it's replaced them entirely..." He brushed past it.
"If you're done admiring yourself then you should take a look around you and focus on our audience" Sukuna's gaze flicked to the civilians then back to All For One.
"Ah, you think the sight of endangered civilians will trigger the boy's heroic instincts. A reasonable assumption but it's no use as a true artist doesn't need an audience to perform" All For One's white eyes swept the the civilians around them and he chuckled.
All For One deactivated Float then One For All surged to its maximum 100 percent output flooding every pathway, every muscle, every fiber of Izuku's transformed body. He dropped from his hovering position and hit the mall's floor, shattering ceramic tiles and concrete that radiated outward from the landing point.
The shockwave rippling through the building's foundation hard enough to rattle the upper floors. Display cases that had survived Sukuna's crash now toppled, light fixtures swung wildly, and several civilians lost their footing and collapsed.
"I'm going to kill you with the ultimate combination of power this body has to offer" All For One's voice carried the absolute certainty of someone who believed it with every atom of his being.
Sukuna's arm tensed as he went in for an attack but blackwhip erupted from the floor. The dark tendrils had been deployed seconds ago, fed through the tile and into the structural foundation below. They spread through the building's skeleton like roots through soil.
They erupted upward now through the floor around Sukuna but these weren't the whip like appendages from before they were chains. They wrapped around Sukuna's body at precisely calculated points. Those points were both wrists, both ankles, across the chest just below the shoulders, around the waist, and a final chain that coiled around his throat.
"What?!" Sukuna's eyes widened as he strained against them but the chains held.
They groaned, the sound of immense force meeting immense resistance but they didn't break. The Blackwhip had been reinforced with cursed energy, turning what was normally a flexible restraint tool into something closer to divine shackles.
Izuku's left hand extended outward to the side with his fingers spread apart. Three metallic protrusions of rivet stab emerged just below the elbow, curving downward before they pierced through the skin of the wrist and sank into the flesh beneath.
"Forcible cursed technique and quirk activation" One For All surged into the left arm.
It was no longer the contained twenty five percent but the full unrestrained one hundred output flooding the limb in a cascade of cycling colors that lit the arm up from shoulder to fingertip like a beacon. Air Cannon loaded into the arm which caused compressed air to begin building in front of the left palm in a growing sphere of pressurized atmosphere.
Spring Like Limbs activated in the arm's musculature and compacting the building force into a tighter and tighter configuration like a spring. Fa Jin pushed its stored kinetic energy into the arm as well as flooding cursed energy alongside everything else.
What came next was from beneath all of it was the antithesis of Izuku's curse energy, the remnant of something pure that had survived the corruption and the conversion. A hole opened in the center of Izuku's left palm which the culminated power flowed and compressed and concentrated into a point of density that warped the visible spectrum around it.
Yellow electricity leaked from the palm and it was alive with a warmth that contradicted everything else about the figure producing it. It arced from the aperture in short, branching patterns that grounded against the floor and left behind scorch marks that glowed with residual heat.
Each arc was accompanied by a sound a tone that could be classified as a note. As if the energy itself were singing, the final lullaby before laying someone to rest. The power that was building had passed that threshold.
It was a convergence of six systems feeding into a single point with each one amplifying the others and each one pushing the output ceiling higher than the last. The total was exceeding the sum of its parts by a margin that the analytical mind behind the white eyes had stopped trying to calculate.
"I will decimate this entire building along with every person here just to kill you Sukuna..." All For One coldly said and Sukuna's smile died.
It didn't fade nor did it retreat into something smaller, It was simply extinguished the way a candle is extinguished when the air leaves the room. One moment it existed and the next it was gone and what remained on the King of Curses' face was fear. Something that no living being had witnessed in over a thousand years.
This was not the theatrical kind or even the calculated kind that served as a mask for strategy. This was the real thing, the involuntary recognition of mortality that lived in the oldest part of every creature's brain.
"Helplessness was the word wasn't it? The one you've never had to wear. The sensation you built your entire identity around never experiencing again" All For One paused then resumed.
"How does it feel, Sukuna? Is it everything you remember? You do remember don't you? Before the power, the title, and before you killed your way to a summit that no one could reach" The chains groaned as Sukuna strained against them.
Every muscle in his torso was tightening at once as the chains around his chest groaned again. His frame compressed inward from feeling the golden energy that caused the very itch he felt at the very beginning of the night.
It was like standing too close to a light that was calibrated to a frequency specifically designed to burn things that lived in the dark. The King of Curses, the one who preached what it was like to be free by being the strongest thing to exist was now chained to the floor of a shopping mall.
"You are bound by chains you cannot break, staring into an attack you cannot survive and the only reason you're still conscious is because I want you to be" All For One let the words settle.
He was held in place by the stolen power of a stolen body, forced to watch the instrument of his destruction charge to completion. Sukuna's four eyes were locked on the light in All For One's palm and the yellow glow reflected in his crimson irises. The gold against red, dawn against blood and in that reflection the King of Curses saw what he only recognized as an ending.
"Midoriya..." The name left Sukuna's mouth before the thought had fully formed.
"Are you really going to do this?!!" The words were an accusation.
"All these people! Every single one of them that's standing here breathing right now and you're going to let this PARASITE!!..." Sukuna's eyes didn't leave the aperture in the palm as he strained against the chains.
CLANG!! CLANG!!
"...Take them all with me?!!" His voice rose but he sounded offended.
Sukuna didn't care about the civilians, they were nothing to him after all and they had always been nothing. They would continue to be nothing whether they lived or died, their fate was as meaningless to him as the color of the sky.
CLINK!! CLANG!!
"You let that thing inside you take control because you were broken!! Because I broke you!!" Sukuna snarled and every word was a scalpel aimed at the consciousness he knew was listening.
CLANK!! CLANG!!
"Hell you should be thanking me you brat!! I showed you what the world really looks like when you strip away the performance!!" The chains groaned again as his body fought against the restraints with a fury that was less about escape and more about the indignity of what he was being forced to witness.
"Now you're handing the keys to something that will use your body to murder every person in this building! You'll be right there watching the same way Itadori watches!!" Sukuna roared and All For One regarded the chained king with satisfaction.
"I have closed many doors in my time but I have never closed a door on something as old as you" The aperture in his palm widened to its final diameter and Izuku's arm was lifted up as it locked into it's firing position.
"So consider this my gospel King of Curses. My hymn of subjugation. My hand upon the lid of your coffin..." The Rivet Stab anchors in his wrist pulsed one final time, synchronizing the six converging energy systems into a unified output.
RATTLE!! CLANG!!
"YOU THINK THIS IS HOW IT ENDS?! I am RYOMEN SUKUNA! I have outlived the era that MADE me! I have stood at the summit of a thousand years of history and NOTHING that has ever drawn breath has had the RIGHT to put me DOWN!!" Sukuna's roar tore through the mall.
CLANG!! CLANG!!
It carried the full weight of a being that refused to die quietly, that would curse the thing that killed him with its last breath, that would make the act of ending it so loud that the universe itself would have to acknowledge it happened.
"Impure Beam!" The beam expanded to it's final diameter.
"DAMN YOU!!"
.
.
.
.
.
.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
To be continued
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
.
.
.
.
.
.
Authors note:
Hey everyone! Sorry for the extremely long wait time for this chapter. I have had a terrible schedule at work recently so it was hard to even write consistently but nevertheless I have finally completed it!
In other news I had hoped that I wouldn't have to split this chapter into two but since theres a word cap on Webnovel I had to put the other half of this chapter into a separate chapter that is almost completed.
To be honest It took me a while to even start this chapter because I had writers block and also lack of motivation due to work. I think it's also due to me hard focusing on making this and not really allowing myself any time to do other things on my days off so I think I'm going to pace myself from now on and give myself breaks.
P.S. Sorry for any grammar mistakes or inconsistences, this entire chapter went through 3 rewrites.