Chapter 10 - Act 10: A Heroes Reqiuem

"Impure Beam!" 

"DAMN YOU!!!" Sukuna yelled into the abyss and for one tenth of a second the world went white.

Sukuna's four eyes widened as the light consumed his vision. His chains were pulled taut against the strain of his body recoiling from something that every fiber of his existence recognized as lethal. Then the beam stuttered, a flicker so fast it could have been mistaken for the natural oscillation of an energy output at maximum capacity. 

The beam sputtered again as the yellow electricity that had been arcing from the palm in those singing patterns went silent. The warmth died and what remained was raw unstable power hemorrhaging from a point that could no longer contain it. 

Rivet Stab went dark, sliding back beneath the skin with a wet sound that was far too loud in the sudden quiet. Spring Like Limbs decompressed and Fa Jin's stored kinetic energy dissipated into the arm's musculature.

The aperture in the palm closed like an eye shutting and the compressed air that had been feeding the attack dispersed in a single weak pulse.

"Wha-" Before All For One could even question why this was happening he felt a sharp pain from inside Izuku's skull. 

A hemorrhage in the left side of the brain followed the sharp pain, causing All For One to stumble forward from the sudden pain. Then the left eye ruptured from within as it's blood vessels behind the cornea began bursting simultaneously.

"W-What is happening..." Red began flooding the white with a deep crimson that swallowed the left iris. 

The right eye darted wildly with the pupil contracting and dilating in rapid alternation. What All For One hadn't realized was that he was suffering from something similar to cursed technique burnout. 

This burnout typically occurs when a sorcerer suffers the temporary inability to use innate techniques immediately after expanding a Domain, because of high strain on the brain. But in All For Ones case he was operating a broken body and mind that could barely withstand 25% of it's own power at this current moment. 

Since All For Ones quirks were converted into cursed techniques, activating them all at once with the maximum 100 percent output of One For All caused a similar effect. With this temporary lapse in control the blackwhip chains holding Sukuna broke before turning into harmless vapor.

CRRAAAAACK!! 

SHATTER!!

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!" Being so close to death had it's own effects on Sukuna.

"YOU FLEW TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN ALL FOR ONE!!" The words ripped out of him with a smile that could only be classified as inhuman.

Sukuna crossed the gap between them in a blur. All For One's remaining white eye went wide with the first genuine flash of panic he had experienced since inhabiting this body. The right hand rose on instinct, reaching for Air Cannon in order to create distance between himself and the thing bearing down on him.

Air Cannon activated in the right palm for a quarter of a second. The compressed air built, the pathway lit, and then the quirk misfired. The output detonated inside the palm instead of projecting outward, the compressed air expanding within the confined space of the hand's structure.

Two of Izuku's fingers dislocated at the knuckle and the skin across the back of the hand split in a jagged line that wept red. By the time he tried reaching fir something else Sukuna's fist connected with his face. 

CRASH!!

He hit the lower level in a cascade of shattered tile and structural debris. His body bounced once off the concrete before tumbling into a graceless roll that scattered rubble in every direction. He came to a stop face down in the wreckage with one arm pinned beneath him while the other clawed at the floor searching for purchase.

The right eye darted in its socket with the rapid movement of something that had been knocked from its throne and was trying to remember where the exits were. What he had soon discovered was that this floor had civilians too but unlike the frozen evacuees above, these were already in motion.

The crash through the ceiling had been the spark to the stampede that had begun before the dust settled. Hundreds of bodies surged toward every visible exit in a crush of limbs and screaming that compressed into a single sustained note of terror.

They knocked over displays and trampled abandoned bags. A man fell and was stepped over by three people who didn't look down. The orderly evacuation that someone had carefully organized was gone, replaced by run and don't look back.

Above him the ceiling groaned around the hole his body had made on the way down. Dust sifted through the gap before a shape filled it, Sukuna was coming for him. All For One processed the stampede as noise then forced himself upright.

His right hand found a chunk of concrete and shoved it aside while the left arm dragged behind him. He pushed forward into a lurching stride that bore no resemblance to the composed gait of the sovereign who had descended through smoke with his hands clasped behind his back.

Sukuna dropped through without urgency before he landed in a crouch that cracked the tile beneath him. Once he stood however, he didn't chase All For One and instead simply walked towards his prey with a casual pace. All For One was losing and that fact was evident by every step being a negotiation between a mind that needed to move and a body that was tearing itself apart from the inside.

"Tell me something, All For One..." Sukuna's voice carried over the screaming.

A young woman froze mid-stride, too close to the impact zone to have joined the stampede yet she stood directly in All For One's path. So he shoved her aside, she hit a pillar before crumbling to the floor but he was already past her.

"That speech you gave me about transactions and never being fond of a bad bargain..." He stepped over a fallen display case without looking at it. His eyes never left the figure staggering through the crowd ahead of him.

"What's the exchange rate on a false god's humiliation?" The question was almost conversational.

Sukuna has been weakened. That last attack damaged his ability to use reverse cursed technique. Under normal circumstances this would be the moment to press the advantage..."All For One ignored Sukuna as he shouldered past a man.

"I cannot fight him externally while losing the body internally. The only remaining option is distance...warp is still accessible" The equation simplified itself with a cruelty that matched the situation.

The left leg stuttered mid-stride and All For One nearly went down. He caught himself on the pillar but the stumble cost him two seconds and Sukuna was still walking.

"W-warp!" All For One raised an arm.

The quirk sputtered before a dark oily fissure opened a few feet in front of him. The edges of the spatial tear flickered with an instability that reflected the deteriorating state of the brain producing it.

The portal was functional but barely, like a door being held open by a hand that was losing its grip. All For One pushed off the pillar and made his way towards the warp with a limp.

"You're running?! The Demon Lord is RUNNING?!" Sukuna's condemnation tore through the lower floor aa he abandoned his walk despite his injuries.

The distance between them began to evaporate quickly as Sukuna came through the last of the stampeding civilians like a boulder through a wheat field. He shoulder checked one of them into a storefront and sent another spinning with a backhand without registering the contact as an action.

All For One crossed the threshold shoulder first before the spatial distortion pulled at the rest of Izuku's body. The warp was drawing it through with the sensation of being folded through a space that didn't have enough room.

Sukuna reached the fissure in the final seconds before it sealed, shocking All For One as he looked back. Sukuna's left hand shot forward and closed around the collar of Izuku's hero suit. He felt the spatial distortion pull at him, felt the geometry of the world try to fold around him but he didn't care.

VWORP!

WHOOSH!!

They emerged midair roughly fifteen feet above the flattened ground. Sukuna's left hand was still locked around Izuku's collar and in the brief suspension between gravity's reassertion, the King of Curses made his move. 

"YOU ACTUALLY THOUGHT YOU HAD THE RIGHT TO PUT ME DOWN?!!" The words tore out of him in the same instant his knuckles connected with Izuku's face.

All For One hit the flattened ground of the destruction zone and the impact was loud enough to echo off the hollowed facades. His body bounced once, the second impact driving him shoulder-deep into the compacted earth before momentum converted to a tumble.

Sukuna hit the ground a moment later, cracking the flattened earth beneath him. His knees absorbed the impact without bending more than an inch before he straightened and stood in the center of the destruction like he owned it.

All For One forced himself to stop quickly by using his fingers to claw into the earth. He thought quickly to formulate a plan of attack as he activated rivet stab in the same breath.

In an instant they traveled underground, threading through the compacted earth that covered the space between All For One and Sukuna. The surface above them cracked in thin lines that traced their path which was a mistake.

"I'm done with this farce... Spiderweb!" Sukuna knelt down with haste before planting his own palm on the floor to activate the technique.

The slashes propagated through the dirt, intersecting with the Rivet Stab tendrils at dozens of points simultaneously. The metallic tendrils that had been threading toward Sukuna's body were reduced to inert fragments embedded in cross-sectioned earth. The cracks in the ground that had been tracing their paths went still and the surface settled.

"You are not my opponent.." The distance between them collapsed in a single explosive stride.

Sukuna's right foot came around in a scything arc aimed at the left side of Izuku's head. All For One brought up the right arm but the kick connected with the temple anyway. Izuku's head snapped sideways with his body follow, causing the right arm to drop. The neural signals scrambled by the impact arrived at the wrong muscles in the wrong order.

"You're a parasite wearing the skin of the only thing in this era that earned the right to stand where I do!" Sukuna's left fist was already in motion before All For One could do anything. 

The hook came from below the sight line, rising at an angle that threaded between the dropped guard. It connected with the right side of the jaw and the force of it reversed the lateral momentum entirely.

CRACK!!

All For One's head whipped back to the right. The jaw shifted in its socket, not dislocating but coming close enough that the joint screamed. Blood from the already-ruined left eye sprayed in an arc that caught the dim light and turned it briefly.

"I can see you in there boy!" Sukuna planted his left foot, rotated his hips, and put the full torque of a body into the next punch. 

SLAM!!

Every muscle locked simultaneously in a full-body seizure that lasted less than a second but registered in his expression as something far longer. The remaining white in the right eye flickered. The green in the left eye surged and the boundary between the two consciousnesses, which had been a gradual territorial war of inches blurred into static.

The lights were on but both tenants had been knocked away from the switch. The eyes were open but unfocused with the pupils dilated to different sizes and the irises caught between white and green.

"Either you drag yourself out of that hole and fight me with your own hands...or I make the brat watch as I tear your heart out!" Sukuna grabbed Izuku's suit once again before head butting his skull.

WHAM!!

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[Act 10: A Heroes Requiem]

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When Izuku opened his eyes he found himself standing, but it wasn't like transitioning from darkness to awareness. The ground beneath his feet was grey and cracked into a network of fissures that spread in every direction like the skin of a world had stopped breathing a long time ago.

It felt as though he had always been here and he was only now deciding to wake up. He looked down and saw that his hands were at his sides so he raised them to look at them. The scars were still there so were the bruises, even the dried blood that had soaked them.

It had been dry for a while with cracks running across his knuckles. His body was intact and not covered in mist so he wasn't in the vestige world but he had already guessed that. He looked up and saw the sky or if that's what it could be called since it was featureless with an ashen grey tone.

"Where...am I?" He continued looking up as he turned to his right before finally beginning to look down.

He took a step, then another before stopping as he noticed a white cross in front of him. He stared at it blankly for a moment due to his brain not being able to process it. Then he looked beyond it then to left and to his right, he was standing in a row of graves that were arranged in perfectly even lines. 

Each one marked by a simple white cross driven into the grey earth just like the first one. There were no names, no dates, and no epitaphs just crosses standing in silent formation like an army that had been asked to lie down and stay.

His hand involuntarily came up to his chest to passively verify his presence. He walked past the first row then into the second row and allowed his fingers to brush the top of one cross as he passed.

"How many..." He whispered while his gaze shifted to the rows that followed to the horizon. They seemed to repeat infinitely with no end in either direction.

His hand tightened on the cross he'd touched because of a pressure building behind his eyes. It had nothing to do with this place and everything to do with a floor he'd been lying on for what felt like several lifetimes. He already knew what they were or what they represented at least, he just hadn't counted yet.

"You counted them didn't you?" Izuku's whole body went rigid.

Izuku turned and saw All For One standing among the graves thirty feet away, occupying the center of a row like just another marker in the formation. But where the crosses were white and plain, All For One was a figure rendered in deep shadow that stood out against the grey landscape like a wound in pale skin.

He wore a long coat that hung to his mid calf, stirring in a breeze that Izuku couldn't feel. The movement was a slow but subtle rhythmic flutter at the hem, as if the coat were breathing on behalf of the thing wearing it.

His face was shrouded in shadow clinging to everything below the hairline instead of a mask. All For One was facing away from Izuku with an almost contemplative posture. One of his hands rested at his side while the other held a shovel.

The shovel's blade was buried in a mound of fresh grey earth, it was the only disruption in the uniform flatness of the ground. A newly filled grave with the dirt still loose and the cross already planted.

"What are you talking about?" Izuku questioned.

Izuku watched All For One lift one final shovelful of earth and placed it onto the mound carefully. The dirt settled into place thus completing the grave he made. All For One planted the shovel blade first in the ground beside it before resting both hands on the handle.

"Seventy. The number always leads back to seventy" Izuku's jaw locked as he took a step back and lowered his gaze, it was difficult not remembering them.

"That's the number isn't it? The one that looped in your head. The one you couldn't stop counting" All For One said calmly as a breeze moved through the graveyard again, ruffling his coat.

"How do yo-" His fists tightened at his sides.

"Because I'm inside the head that's counting them" All For One said while still facing the grave as his thumb traced a slow circle on the shovel handle.

"I offered to bury your burdens because that's what I do, what I've always done" All For One's grip tightened on the shovel handle.

"I find the people who are drowning under the weight of what they've lost and I offer them a way to put it down" He lifted a hand from the shovel and gestured the entirety of the grey world they stood in.

"This is where they rest, a place where you don't have to carry them anymore. Where the seventy faces stop appearing behind your eyelids" All For One's hand hand returned to the shovel.

"All you had to do was let me take control which you did. For one moment you understood it was the right choice" He turned around to face Izuku across the rows of graves slowly and when he finally faced him, the full weight of his presence settled into the space between them.

"But you just had to throw it away..." Bottomless fury began to emerge from All For One.

"You were given a hand that could grasp the world! Yet you used it to cling to dying strangers!" This was the fury of something that had invested in an outcome and watched it be destroyed by the very thing it had invested in.

"I...I had him chained to the floor!" All For One took a step forward but Izuku held his ground despite his shaking fists and burning eyes.

"Helpless and staring down the barrel of something that would have erased him from history!" He slammed the shovel into the ground which caused the grey earth to crack outward from the point of impact in jagged lines.

"Then you reached up from the nothing I buried you in and you took back control! All because there was what? People in the building!?" All For One looked away from Izuku and looked back at the graves but the disgust in those last words was absolute.

Izuku's hands were trembling while the sting behind his eyes lingered as the pressure behind them was enormous now. They were a dam holding back everything the night had poured into him. He could feel the grief, the guilt, and the suffocating weight of seventy faces pressing against the inside of his skull.

"You're wrong..."Izuku raised his head to met the where All For One's eyes would have been. 

His green eyes were red and swollen and filled with everything the night had done to him but they were open. And what lived behind them refused with the stubbornness that had defined Izuku Midoriya since the day he was born without a quirk and decided it didn't matter.

"What?" All For One turned fully toward him with confusion.

"I said you're wrong!" The first drop of rain hit the gray earth between them. The clouds above pressed down and rain began to fall across the graveyard in a steady, soaking curtain that turned the cracked earth dark. 

"You stand in a field of seventy graves and you want to tell me I'm wrong? Look around you boy, these crosses aren't metaphors they're people! People who are dead because you FAILED them and you dar-" All For One tilted his head.

"THEY'RE DEAD BECAUSE SUKUNA KILLED THEM!!" The shout erupted from Izuku's chest with a force that surprised both of them.

The rain intensified with heavy drops that hammered the gray earth and turned it to mud. Izuku's fists clenched at his sides as his body shook from a pressure of that had been building behind his ribs since the moment he'd watched seventy people cease to exist.

"He killed them! NOT ME!" Izuku stepped forward through the mud. His shoe sank two inches and he pulled it free without looking down because his eyes were locked on All For One across from him.

"I was on the floor unable to move and he killed them because that's what he IS!! Because that's what MONSTERS DO!!" His voice cracked on the last word from the strain of containing everything behind it.

"And YOU!!" He pointed a finger at All For One. 

"Used my body to try and do the same thing! You pointed that beam at Sukuna with a building full of people around you and you DIDN'T CARE!!" Izuku charged at All For One. He was closing the distance towards the very thing that had hollowed out his body and worn it like a coat. 

"Caring is the weight that slows the hand and a slow hand kills more people than a cold one ever will" All For One stood his ground while the rain continued to pour.

He watched Izuku's approach with a flat expression or rather a lack of any expression. All For One moved without any care as he went to redirect the boy's attack but Izuku feinted with his left before flowing into an uppercut with his right fist.

All For One staggered half a step and then Izuku hit him again with a second punch followed by a third. There were no fancy moves or flashy attacks just raw anger, momentum, and every ounce of refusal he had left.

All For One's caught the fourth one with an iron grip that locked Izuku in place. He called upon One For All and let another fist fly but it lacked any and all power of One For All to Izuku's surprise.

"What is a vessel without what it carries? Perhaps it's because these people died due to your imprudence!" All For One struck back and caught Izuku across the cheek and sent him stumbling sideways but he managed to stay up.

"Perhaps I should remind you how power is meant t-" All For One raised an arm of his own to call upon his power but nothing happened as well.

All For One looked down at his hand completely shocked and before All For One could try anything Izuku tackled him through a row of white crosses. The crosses snapped at their bases before they toppled into the mud as the two of them crashed through them. 

They hit the ground together but Izuku on top raining blows down using both fists with nothing but the brutal artless violence of a boy who had run out of words and found that fists still worked when language didn't.

SMACK!! 

"THOSE PEOPLE!!"

CRACK!! 

"THEIR LIVES!!"

WHAM!!

"YOU DON'T GET TO TURN THEM INTO A WEAPON!!" Izuku screamed while his fists hammered down. 

CRACK!! WHAM!! BAM!!

All For One was actually beginning to take damage from the pure rage and emotion behind each blow. They wouldn't stop and All For One was only being driven further into the mud. All the while his shadowed face began to form the faintest of cracks which meant his control was slipping.

CRACK!! WHAM!! 

"I WON'T LET YOU!!" Izuku's eyes were bloodshot with rage.

Izuku raised both arms and clasped them both hands together then slammed them down but All For One finally managed to catch his wrists then threw Izuku sideways. The boy tumbled through the mud, crashing through another row of crosses causing the white wood to shatter around him until they came to rest in a heap.

Izuku was on his back with his chest heaving and mud in his hair. His head was pounding from All For One clawing at the edges of his control, pressing against the boundaries Izuku had reclaimed.

His vision narrowed for a second which made the graveyard collapse to a tunnel. That was before he forced it back open through sheer stubborn and the refusal to let the darkness have the last inch.

"Get up! Get UP!!" He rolled onto his side then got an elbow under him then a knee but the mud sucked at his limbs like it wanted to keep him down.

He managed to get up but All For One had already rose up and pulled the shovel from where he had planted it. It struck him across the face and sent him stumbling backwards before he just barely caught what little light that made the shovel glint in his peripheral vision. 

All For One drove it toward Izuku's chest without wasting any time but Izuku's hands shot up. The blade aimed for the center of Izuku's chest, the conversation was over and the burial was back on schedule. 

Izuku's hands caught the shovel six inches above his sternum but the force managed to drive him back another step.

"You see? This is why you were never fit to carry what you were given!" All For One reeled in the spade and punched Izuku in the throat.

Izuku's breath vanished so his hands flew to his throat like they were trying to take it back. His legs buckled and he hit the mud on his back once again with his mouth open, chest spasming, and the world reduced to the reality of not being able to breathe.

A thin wheezing sound scraped through his compressed windpipe but it was not enough air to sustain consciousness and it was barely enough to prevent its loss. His vision greyed at the edges while the rain hit his face and he couldn't close his mouth against it.

"You cling to sentiment!" The shovel descended upon Izuku.

WHOOSH!

"To ideals that demand sacrifice from you but never from the world around you!" Izuku's hands flew from his throat and caught the spade three inches from his neck.

But All For One didn't relent so instead he shifted his weight forward with both hands on the handle. He used the full leverage of his position to drive the blade downward inch by inch.

"One For All was the greatest mistake ever made. "A gift" passed hand to hand among the weak, the frightened, and the desperate!" The rain streamed down the handle then over Izuku's fingers until they dripped onto his chest.

His grip slipped which caused the blade to drop a fraction of an inch before he readjusted. His fingers began to cramp then his forearms began burning and every muscle from his wrists to his shoulders engaged in the singular task of keeping the metal from reaching his neck.

"Nine vessels...nine carriers..." All For One lowered his head closer.

"And you insignificant, self destructive boy have the audacity to take the accumulated strength of eight lifetimes and use it to lose!" The shovel descended another inch.

"I'm the only one who seems to understand that managing and centralizing power is necessary. I gather what others squander then place that power where it belongs" Another inch was dropped and Izuku's arms shook even more. 

"Our world descends further into chaos with each generation. So I was bringing it structure through hierarchy. I was bringing it peace through control in my own right!" The shovel pressed down with the weight of years and the conviction of something that had never once doubted its own supremacy.

"THAT is what separates a ruler from a rabble of idealists. THAT is what separates a god from the crawling masses beneath him!" The tip of the shovel slip just enough to tap Izuku's chin.

TINK!

The contact lasted less than a second before Izuku's hands wrenched it back into position. Resetting his grip with fingers that were slick with blood and rain and rapidly losing their ability to hold.

"You are unable to dirty your hands in any way that matters! You're unable to discard the expendable and the unwilling! THAT IS WHY YOU LOSE!!" All For One yanked the shovel towards him then back down, planting it just above Izuku's left pectoral muscle 

SHRRKK!!

Izuku's mouth opened but produced no sound because his throat remained too compressed for anything beyond a strangled wheeze. His hands found the shaft of the shovel where it protruded from his chest and gripped it. 

"That is why people die around you...that is why One For All at it's core was always doomed. I still question why you ever thought you were worthy of carrying what they left behind" All For One's grip lessened, thinking his work was done. 

"O-One...For A-All..." The words pushed through a throat that was barely open

"I-it was never meant to be managed...o-or locked away in the hands of someone who thinks... they know better than everyone else" His grip shifted then found purchase on the shovel again, his arms shook from the task of reversing the direction of it

"It was meant to connect people" Izuku's voice was strained but his grip tightened on the shovel and it began to withdraw.

"Not because they were strong... b-but because they were willing to carry it and pass it forward when the time came!" The rain intensified followed by thunder rolling through the grey sky above as if the world itself was listening.

"T-that's...what you've never understood!" Izuku pushed and the shovel rose out of the wound.

"To think you're still so naive..." All For One's mouth curled beneath the shadow. The shape of contempt without the features to carry it.

"You call it n-naive because...you've never had anyone truly stand beside you" Izuku shot back.

"The strength of One For All isn't in the power. It's that eight people...eight ordinary, scared, and mortal people chose to carry something bigger than themselves to change lives..." Izuku grunted and continued pushing the shovel away.

"I've even seen people with quirks that you would call worthless do things that change lives..." His voice rose as a familiar blue electricity sparked across his arms. 

"Small quirks, weird quirks, and quirks nobody thought could matter. Even a quirkless boy who followed his dreams despite people telling him to give up!" The electricity sparked again but more violent.

"So you may call yourself the Demon Lord or think yourself a king or a god...but you know what I see?..." Izuku's green eyes burned through the rain as the thunder grew louder.

"I see a scared man who never grew past the part of himself that decided it was easier to take than to give!" Izuku's jaw clenched as gathered the strength to yank himself upwards which also pulled All For one towards him.

"YOU'RE NO DIFFERENT FROM SUKUNA!" Izuku drove his forehead into All For One's face.

CRRRAAAAAACCK!!

The headbutt connected with every ounce of force a human skull could produce at that distance. The darkness on All For One's face compressed slightly inward as the form destabilized around the shape of Izuku's forehead.

All For One staggered back as he grabbed his own face. The momentum carried Izuku but he used the shovel to stop himself from going any further.

"You both act like monsters because being seen as men would expose how empty you really are!" Izuku took a step, reeled back his fist but this time bits of blue electricity sparked across his arm and fist along with cursed energy.

SMASH!!

"GAH!!" The punch had force behind it this time.

All For One skidded through the mud, his heels carving twin trenches through the grey earth before he caught himself. The shadows on his face rippled from the impact as the darkness that comprised it was undulating.

The punch left All For One stunned completely, the cursed energy that had momentarily enveloped his fist had a strange reaction with his body that he didn't understand. Izuku straightened slowly then tossed the shovel into the mud behind him. 

The sky above the graveyard split with a crack of thunder so deep and so vast it vibrated the crosses in their graves, pooling rainwater, and the grey earth itself.

KA-THOOM!!

It had become the exclamation point at the end of a sentence that Izuku had been writing with his fists and his blood since the moment he'd arrived in this dead colorless place. Izuku took a step forward despite his legs shaking and body aching with the phantom memory of every wound it had sustained in the real world but he kept walking.

"You questioned why I think I'm worthy of this power but the truth is that I was never worthy of it..." Izuku said without shouting as he presented his words with utmost honesty.

"I was a quirkless kid from a nothing neighborhood who cried more than he fought. A kid who broke his bones every time he tried to be what everyone else was born to be!" He took another step as the mud sucked at his feet but he pulled through it.

Izuku closed the distance before All For One could stabilize and threw another left hook. It had the same force behind it but this time All For One was sent tumbling away from him.

SMASH!!

"But one day when everyone else stood still and the world decided that someone else would step in to save someone...I MOVED!!" The rain shifted in quality, the drops that had been cold and lifeless began to carry a resonance and the warmth in his chest grew.

"There was someone in front of me who needed help and my legs started running before my brain could tell them to stop!" Izuku took another step then another until he began sprinting as the faintest hum of energy vibrated at a frequency Izuku recognized in the marrow of his bones.

It had lived there since the day All Might had pressed a strand of hair into his shaking hand and said "you can become a hero" The electricity returned in full, sparking One For All to life mid sprint.

The veins of One For All blazed across his skin with each color representing a life spent using it. Each life was a choice and each choice was the same one made independently across generations.

"You dragged seventy innocent people into this and tried to use their deaths as a weapon against me!" He leapt into the air towards All For One with the might of eight wills behind him along with a secret ninth one that he had yet to meet.

"All I've wanted since becoming a sorcerer was for people to have a proper death..." Yuji's words echoed in his ears and an image of Yuji flashed in his head

"Those souls deserved to leave this world in peace rather than in pieces!" Izuku reeled back his arm just like he did in the entrance exam.

"So this is my requiem for every soul that was taken tonight. I'll rid every last trace of you and Sukuna both!" He clenched his fist and One For All sparked violently around it. The positive energy emerged from the depths of his core and ignited in tandem with One For All.

"I'll be the one who dies with regrets so THEY DON'T HAVE TO!!" All For One staggered as he got up then took an involuntary step backward. He raised his hands in a weak effort to shield himself from the sight of the golden energy.

"SSSMMMMAAAAAAASSHH!!!!" The moment Izuku's fist connected with All For One's face the shadow covering it cracked.

A single fracture line that split the darkness with a sound like ice breaking on a frozen lake. The crack held for one suspended instant then it spread and branched to multiple lines of breakage. The lines traced outward from the impact point in every direction, from across the forehead, down the jaw, around the cheekbones, and finally over the temples. 

The shadow on his face began to fall away in pieces of dark fragments that dissolved into nothing before they hit the ground. The force ripped him off his feet and sent him careening backward through the graveyard spinning and his coat whipping while his hands grasped at nothing.

He hit the mud, bounced, and carved a trench through the earth that stretched twenty feet. He came to rest on his back. In the mud among the broken crosses of the graves he'd built to bury a boy who refused to stay buried.

For a long moment he didn't move but then his head lifted just barely an inch off the mud with the muscles in his neck trembling from the effort. His eyes or the impressions of eyes behind what was left of the shadow found Izuku across the devastated graveyard.

"Y-you..." The voice was broken and what was left was more like an echo.

"You want to talk about...loneliness? A-About...c-c-connection?" All For One's head continued to tremble in the mud while his hands clawed at the wet earth beside him

"Look at where...you ARE Izuku!! You...LEFT everyone!! Every bond you ever...and now you are ALONE! In a d-dimension that doesn't even know your name!" He broke into a coughing fit that shook his crumbling form. Pieces of shadow dislodged from his face with each convulsion. 

"They're on the OTHER SIDE...of a barrier you can't cross! Your friends... Your mother... Haha-" The laugh that emerged was the saddest sound in the graveyard before his head fell back.

Izuku watched him but he didn't look away because All For One was right in the end and Izuku had never been the kind of person who hide from things that were true. After all his mother didn't know where he was or even whether her son was alive or dead. 

Bakugo, Todoroki, Uraraka, Iida...all of them were on the other side of something he couldn't cross. The people who had helped built him, shaped him, made him who he was were gone and present only in memory.

The rain ran down his face and over the bruises, mud, and blood that had dried then washed away then dried again. He looked down at his hands then back to the graveyard of his failures created by his own curse.

He looked down at the blood and the mud that had painted his hands from this endeavor. Then at the scars that mapped every time he'd gone too far and the fresh wounds that mapped the time he hadn't gone far enough.

He looked back at the graveyard itself, at the rows of white crosses were some were still standing, were some broken, and were some had been trampled into the mud by the fight that had raged across their silent formation. 

At the end of the day this was his graveyard built on his own failure and built by curse, populated by his inability to be what seventy people needed him to be.

"I...I won't deny it. I did leave them...now I'm in a world fighting battles I was never trained for and bleeding for people that don't even know me..." The admission settled between them.

"I'll also admit that you're right about those people, except there was one more. Her name was Nanako..." Those words were harder than any punch he'd thrown tonight. The memory of her blood painting his face flashed in his head then the moment he saw her head roll on the floor.

"Even if Sukuna was the one who killed them they also died because of me. Seventy one people thought someone would save them yet I couldn't do it and now they're gone..." The words came from a place that the rain couldn't reach. 

"So I'm going to carry that for the rest of my life because that's the reality of what it means to fail people" His fists clenched at his sides.

"You don't get to bury them in some grey wasteland, shovel dirt over them and walk away with clean hands" His voice rose but there was no anger.

"You carry them with so you remember them and you make sure you swear th-that it n-never happens...a-again" Izuku choked out while looking at the ground as he balled his fists but the graveyard was silently listening.

"S-so..." The composure that had carried him through the admission splintered under the weight of what came next.

"I-I'm..." The rain ran down his face and he couldn't tell anymore where the water ended and the tears began.

"I'M SORRY!!" The scream tore itself from the deepest part of him, aimed at the seventy names he would never learn.

Something stirred in the earth and it started at the base of the nearest cross with a faint luminescence that seeped upward through the mud. The light gathered before it took shape as it continued to rise from the ground in a quiet ascent until a translucent form assembled itself. 

The shape of it suggested that it was a person or rather a spirit. Then another rose from a different cross then another followed by another. They emerged from the graves one by one, seventy points of gentle light lifting from the grey earth. 

They began to move toward Izuku, drifting through the rain in a slow converging migration. They surrounded him in a loose luminous circle but they didn't press in on him just gathered.

"I'm sorry I-I wasn't strong enough! I'm...sorry I wasn't f-f-fast enough! I'm sorry I was on the floor when you...y-you needed me standing!..." His eyes burned with tears that he didn't fight. He was done fighting the one thing that deserved to exist without resistance.

Izuku collapsed onto the ground and the mud received him gently. His fingers sank into the wet earth while his arms shook. Rain poured over him in sheets that ran down his bowed head and soaked through his clothes but none of it was enough to cool the heat burning in his chest. 

His breathing came apart in broken pulls but for a few terrible seconds he couldn't tell whether the ache inside him was grief or guilt or something even uglier. Maybe he didn't deserve to know the difference while being in this place.

"I was too weak...I keep telling myself I'll save people. I keep promising it. I keep running toward it and when it mattered..." His voice broke completely. 

"When it mattered most I still ended up watching people die..." He whispered

"What kind of hero does that make me?..." He asked the ground as the spirits had finished gathering around him.

Although they weren't there to be judges or even ghosts that have come to condemn. Izuku lifted his face just enough for them to see the tears that wouldn't stop falling.

"I hate that I lived...I hate that I'm the one still standing here talking while you..." His breath caught in his throat with the feeling of barbwire.

"While you don't get to go...g-go home. While you don't get another morning or another chance o-or another anything!" The words scraped him at he slammed his fist.

"I hate that I can still breathe when you can't..." Izuku's mouth trembled while he looked at them through blurry vision.

"I-I...I don't want you to be trapped here" His words came from care rather than guilt.

"I don't want your last feeling to be fear or pain..." His shoulders sagged as he slowly pushed himself upright on his knees. 

His hand rose shakily from the ground as conjured somethings he didn't truly know how to do yet. The moment his fingers opened something warm stirred in his palm.

The glow gathered in his palm and spilled through his fingers in thin luminous threads. The nearest spirit stepped forward from the others before kneeling directly in front of him.

"I can't give you back what you lost but I can do this" His hand shook as he extended it.

"Give me your pain...all of it. You shouldn't have had to die with it..." His arm shook harder but he didn't pull back. 

"P-Please...you've carried enough..." He closed his eyes. The spirit that had knelt in front of him had stared at the light in his hand for a moment then looked at the grieving boy holding it. 

The spirit reached out to Izuku's open palm until it was able to close around Izuku's wrist. The spirit guided his hand to his own chest then pressed the palm flat against the space above his heart and held it there.

The energy passed through his skin and into the space where everything he'd been carrying since the floor of that building and beyond.

"N-No, this is for-" Izuku tried to argue but was promptly stopped.

"You first" the spirit began as it did not remove its hand.

"You cannot pour from an empty vessel. You cannot carry our pain if you refuse to tend to your own" The spirit spoke gently but it's tone was etched with seriousness.

"So let us give you this. It's not forgiveness because you haven't done anything that needs forgiving. You were never the one who killed us"

"Allow yourself to stop being a hero for one moment and be the person underneath. Mend yourself, not for us but for everyone you haven't saved yet" Izuku's mouth opened but no sound came out so a sob came out instead.

Then the tears fell free from somewhere buried so deep it feels like part of the soul is coming with it. He bent forward while clutching the light to his chest as the spirit's hand remained over his wrist to comfort him.

Meanwhile the other spirits around him moved in further to gather and kneel around him in unison. They all formed a circle and hugged each other until the closet ones hugged Izuku himself, they refused to let him make their graves besides theirs.

"I'm sorry..." Izuku cried openly with his forehead touching the spirit's shoulder in front of him as he shook.

Each ring of the circle the spirits had created began fading away one by one, passing through the spirits ahead of them. Each spirit flowed into the golden light in his hand due to their accumulated compassion to give.

Eventually the only spirit that remained was the one that had knelt in front of him. It raised Izuku's head from its shoulder then gently cupped his battered and swollen face before wiping his tears away.

"Be the hero you were always meant to be..." The spirit held it's gaze for one more moment.

The spirit then leaned back and let the gentle luminescence that comprised itself join the others. With the last one passing through the light in his hand all of Izuku's injuries had started to heal. The golden light in his palm pulsed once then twice then held at a steady warmth that pressed against his chest like a second heartbeat. 

It reached into the places that the shovel and the fists and the mud hadn't touched. The places where seventy faces lived and where the sound of Nanako's head hitting the floor replayed on a loop that he had accepted might never stop.

It didn't vanish completely but it loosened its grip by a fraction, just enough for the breath that followed it to feel like it belonged to him rather than to the guilt. The spirits were gone and their light lived in his palm and the graveyard was quiet in a way that felt different than before.

"You are not a failure, young Midoriya" All Might's vestige stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder.

"A-All Might?.." Izuku's head snapped up to see the essence of his mentor.

"You are not alone and you never will be" The words echoed as if they were from a distant plain of existence.

"One For All has been with you every time you stood up when the world told you to stay down. Which is why all of us know that you were the only correct choice to carry the torch" The golden hand on Izuku's shoulder squeezed once.

Meanwhile, All For One's broken form stirred in the mud. His shadow covered face had cracked into a web of fracture lines that showed something pale and formless beneath. He raised his head an inch off the ground and the muscles in his neck trembled from the effort.

"How touching..." All For One's words came out in fragments, each one pushed through a throat that barely functioned. 

"The golden idol and his pet project...sharing a moment in the rain" He planted a hand in the mud and forced himself to one knee with the slow agonizing effort of something that refused to die laying down.

"It's pathetic. The boy who could never stand on his own, reaching for the ghost of-" He took a step forward then Stumbled but caught himself.

"I think you've said enough All For One" The words hit All For Ones form like a physical force as he felt a presence behind him. 

All For One turned slowly before he took a step backward and Nana Shimura stepped forward until they were 10 feet apart.

"Nana Shimura... The one who gave away her child and called it strategy. The one who fought me and died yet somehow still believes tha-" All For One's shadowed face twisted as the cracks across it shifted to rearrange in a crude expression but stopped halfway.

He felt a presence on his left before another on his right, then behind. Then in the spaces between. All For One's head turned and the sneer died on what remained of his face. Every one for all user had materialized in an instant and directly in front of All For One was Yoichi Shigaraki who appeared a moment later to complete the circle.

"You think this changes anything?!" All For One's head whipped from one to the next. His body turned frantically as the scope of what was happening registered. 

"A parade of ghosts circling me like mourners at a funeral. You think tears from a boy shed over the souls of the damned carry any weight in a war that has lasted generations?!" All For One scowled and swiped his hand dismissively as he caught himself from stumbling.

"I have outlived every single one of you! I have BROKEN every hand that carried this power before it reached this wretched child! You are echoes! Residue! The spiritual equivalent of DUST and yet yo-" He spread his arms wide in a gesture of contempt, that was until a tendril of Blackwhip coiled around his left wrist and yanked at him.

All For One's head snapped down as the dark energy wrapped twice and precise before locking into place. Then another tendril caught his right wrist, both ankles, his chest, just below the shoulders, and finally his throat.

But to All For One's surprise, they were the same configuration that All For One had used to chain Sukuna to the floor of the mall. The fifth holder stood at the edge of the circle with one hand extended as the dark energy flowed in controlled streams.

His expression was the closest thing to amusement that any of the vestiges had displayed. A faint crooked grin that sat on his weathered face like it had been waiting for this moment to make its appearance.

"Y'know for a man who used these to chain a thousand year old king to the floor. You'd think you'd appreciate the artistry when it's turned around on ya" Banjo joked.

All For One snarled as he threw his weight against the chains, they flexed but didn't yield. The other vestiges held their positions in the circle while the sealing began. Each vestige was able to ignite one for all and feed its energy into a pattern below All For One. 

"Should've stayed dead the first time old man" Banjo add as the tendrils tightened once more.

Banjo's Blackwhip served as the physical framework while the pattern beneath it served as the metaphysical one. The vestiges chanted in a register that wasn't quite sound, the vibration of it traveling through the graveyard's mud rather than its air.

"NO!!" All For One's shadow rippled as the scream tore from his throat. The fragments along his face flaked off in larger pieces as the sealing pulled at the edges of his form.

"You can't! I won't allow you to seal me!! This power was MINE before it was YOURS!! I CREATED One For All!! Without me there wouldn't be a torch to pass!! Without ME the-"

"Without you there is peace. You may have created brother but it was all of our hardwork that shaped it" Yoichi's voice cut through his brother's.

Izuku stopped a few feet in front of All For One. He had been walking toward All For One the entire time the sealing had been beginning with All Might's vestige beside him. The Blackwhip chains shifted to give him a clear line of sight to the cracked face beneath the unraveling shadow.

The chains stopped pulling All For One as the sealing paused and for a long moment neither of them spoke all while the rain continued to fall between them. The light from the converging vestiges pulsed steady above the chains. Most of Izuku's injures had heal but not all of them but it was enough.

"This is what it always comes back to, isn't it..." All For One rasped. 

"The villain rises, the hero answers, and the world arranges itself around the lie that one will always rise to meet the other..." His head lifted slowly. The cracked shadow on his face caught the rain and held it in the fissures.

"It's a beautiful lie I'll grant you that. Generations of children sleep easier because of it. Generations of mothers raise their sons on it while generations of broken men go quietly to their graves believing it..." His one visible eye held Izuku's gaze with the steadiness of something that had nothing left to lose and was determined to use that absence properly.

"And the cruelest part of the arrangement my boy, is that we know it. We have always known it. We rise knowing how the story ends and we play our part anyway because the alternative is a world with no story at all" A wet sound left his throat that was somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

"You think you have won tonight but the story doesn't end when one villain falls. It only ends when the world runs out of dark to throw at you. I promise you, Izuku Midoriya that this world is not running out of that dark..." The cracks in the shadow spread further down his arms as the pieces began to flake away into the rain.

"You will never escape this place. You will bleed in it, fail in it, and you will die in it" His head tilted slightly, the gesture of a man delivering the only gift he had left to give.

"I will see you again in whatever form is left to me. Across whatever distance is left between us and through whatever crack the next dark finds in the floor of your story. You WILL recognize me when I arrive..." The silence after the words was heavy.

Izuku didn't move and he didn't look away, he just let the words settle between them. Izuku had the look of a person who had been listening carefully but had just now understood something the speaker had not intended to reveal.

"You know... Even after hearing you not shut up and monologue nonstop, I've realized that you're not him. You're not the real All For One" Izuku said simply.

"The real one is still back home. Hiding wherever he ran to after Tartarus broke open. Sitting in some dark corner plotting the next move on a chessboard I'm not on anymore..." Izuku took a single step closer. 

"He's probably looking at maps of districts I'll never see again and deciding which one he wants to wipe out first. He doesn't know I'm gone or that I'm here and he doesn't even know any of this happened" He stopped close enough now that the cracks in the shadow were visible in detail. 

"But you're nothing more than a cursed spirit. The same kind of thing the sorcerers in this world have been fighting since before either of us got here" Izuku said coldly.

"So you may have his voice, his philosophy, his hunger, and his hundred year patience...but you're not him. Now you're going to be sealed in a graveyard because that's where you belong" He looked at the cracked face with an expression that was neither pity nor satisfaction.

"You may have called everyone here dust and echoes, but so are you" Izuku turned away.

"And I'm not going to spend another second of my life being afraid of a ghost" Pseudo All For One opened his mouth to answer but nothing came out.

The sealing resumed and the shadow the had been peeling away from pseudo All For Ones face continued to fall into the dark depths below. Soon after, his body soon followed as it too was pulled slowly into the dark below.

"It's time Izuku" Nana spoke out to Izuku but he continued to face away from pseudo All For One as All Might patted his shoulder before joining the circle.

"We will finish what needs to be done here but there is one more thing waiting for you on the other side" Yoichi added as a pure white door with no frame manifested in front of Izuku.

"Sukuna..." Izuku said quietly as he began walking.

"We'll join you eventually but in the meantime you'll have someone else watching your back up there" Nana added.

Izuku stopped and turned his head just enough to see her face. He was about to question her but Nana's smirk stopped him. The questions piled up behind his teeth but something about that smirk told him that he would find out soon enough. He turned his head back around then walked toward the white door, ready for what's on the other side.

VWORP!

The white door closed behind him and the graveyard disappeared. What replaced it was the sensation of surfacing through water as the world came back to his senses in fragments.

"Either you drag yourself out of that hole and fight me or I'll keep hitting this body until there's nothing left for either of you to come back to!" Sukuna's words echoed.

His vision soon returned to him and the destruction zone assembled itself around him. The hollowed shells of buildings on either side with their facades stripped away to expose the dark interiors like open wounds in the architecture.

Sukuna was directly in front of him with his fist already in motion to strike him once more. Izuku's danger sense responded to him immediately, prompting him to raise his left arm and catch the fist before it could land.

BOOM! 

Sukuna's four eyes widened in recognition as the grip around his fist wasn't the compromised hold of a body being operated by a parasite anymore. The white hair was gone along with the clawed fingertips. 

Every alteration that All For One had made to Izuku's body had reverted in the space between one heartbeat and the next, shed like a skin that was never his to wear. What remained was Izuku Midoriya himself with his green hair matted with blood and rain along with his green eyes that were open and focused. 

"HAHAHA...THERE HE IS!" Sukuna smiled right before Izuku's right fist slammed into the side of his face.

CRACK!!

The impact launched him off his feet and sent him tumbling backward through the destruction zone in a graceless sequence of bounces that kicked up dust and debris with each contact. He rolled twice then skidded on his back before friction caught up with momentum and brought him to a stop.

Blood welled from the corner of his mouth and he turned his head to the side and spat it onto the flattened earth. He made it to one knee first then straightened to full height and rolled his shoulders once to settle the frame back into alignment.

"I was beginning to think I'd have to dig you out of that parasite myself" Sukuna paused. 

His jaw had shifted slightly from Izuku's punch and he reached up with one hand, gripped his own chin, and popped it back into alignment with a sharp crack that echoed across the flattened ground. He rolled the joint once to test it then let his hand drop.

"You know Midoriya, I've fought a great many things in my life but I have never fought anything quite like what I've fought tonight" He stopped a few feet in front of Izuku.

"I mean just look at this place! We're like two kings walking among ruin with the world crumbling at our feet and neither one of us with the decency to stop and mourn it!" Sukuna spread his arms wide as he looked around.

"I'd say we've earned this! So whatever happens next between you and I...it was always going to end here" He raised his right hand as the cursed energy around it gathered slowly.

"So no more interruptions. No more of this world's noise drowning out what matters! Just you and me!" His four crimson eyes locked onto Izuku's green

"The summit and the fool who climbed it!" Sukuna let the words settle between them and for a moment Izuku didn't speak.

Izuku's hands opened at his sides before he started to move his right foot back and raise his arms. It was hard enough to move his body so he allowed black whip to compress against his skin and weave into the muscle beneath it until they were a second skin.

"I didn't climb your summit Sukuna..." His voice was quiet but it carried.

"I brought my own" He locked eye's with Sukuna across twenty feet of scarred earth and didn't flinch. Sukuna's smile held for one more second then he turned his back on Izuku.

"Your own summit? A bold thing to say to the man standing on the only one that's ever existed" The words came over his shoulder with his head turned just enough for Izuku to see the edge of his profile.

"I think we've both grown tired of trading bruises like children in a schoolyard. So I think it's only fair we stop pretending either of us has anything left to conserve" Sukuna turned his head away. His right hand rose in front of his chest, hidden from Izuku's line of sight by the wall of his own body. His fingers moved into a configuration that Izuku couldn't see.

"Open.."

Sukuna had fully turned around, and the motion was so fast it didn't register as a turn. One frame he was facing away with his back to Izuku and his hands hidden. The next frame he was facing him and the fire arrow was already drawn, aimed, and let go.

The world went bright then the white burned through itself. What remained was the orange within the flame itself that consumed Izukus vision before it shrunk. The orange dimmed and what followed was a pitch black void but what appeared within was something Izuku didn't expect.

The orange reappeared but it wasn't as bright as it once was. It held the same intensity but it was something different than before. It started as a line but then that line opened to form an eye that dimly lit the darkness around it.

The same orange color had also made an outline the shape of a face. It had also outlined hair that defied gravity in spikes that the outline rendered in sharp angular strokes against the black. Then finally the rest of the body was also traced and filled in only with static as if the figure was only partially there.

"...Kacchan?" The familiarity unmistakable, even before he could fully accept what he saw. Standing before him was none other than Katsuki Bakugo with his arms crosse with eyes that were fierce and unyielding.

"We don't have a lot time so just listen"

"You're out here gettin lost in this cursed garbage. You've been out here getting your head hijacked by some second rate version of the bastard that's making our world a living hell! And nearly dying against some four eyed freak who has an ego that could give me a run for my money!" Bakugo's vestige scowled.

"You're the strongest person I know and I hate that I'm even saying that crap! I hate that some quirkless kid from the same neighborhood as me turned out to be the one person I couldn't catch no matter how fast I ran!" The words left Bakugo's mouth like they'd been dragged out at gunpoint.

"But if you die here tonight I swear on everything I am that I will find a way to drag myself into whatever afterlife you end up in just so I can kill you again for wasting All Might's time!" Bakugo's words had a seriousness that only showed when the fire burned closest to his heart. The aura around him pulsed as if the void itself responded to the heat of his presence.

Bakugo extended his hand, the gesture was neither gentle nor hesitant. The hand came out the way Bakugo threw his punches, with full commitment and zero apology. The orange glow gathered around his fingers and pulsed with an ember like warmth that had been building since before Izuku had arrived in this world. 

Since the moment on Nabu Island when two boys who had spent their lives running in opposite directions had grabbed each other's hands and discovered that the same fire that had lived in both of them had to come together in order to win.

"You remember when we shared One For All on Nabu Island don't you? You trusted me with it then" Izuku stared at that outstretched hand that was glowing faintly with an ember that held memories of a moment where two rivals became one flame.

"So trust me with it again, Deku" Bakugo's eyes locked on his.

"I trusted you back then Kacchan and I still trust you now. Even across worlds, no matter the distance, and no matter the challenge" Izuku extended his own hand.

Their hands met with an explosive clap that resonated through the void like thunder breaking open the sky. A powerful shockwave rippled outward, shaking the space around them, and sending sparks of orange and green cascading into the abyss. Bakugo smirked sharply, the intensity of his gaze never wavering even as the energy crackled fiercely between them. 

"You're borrowing my damn quirk you got it?! So you better not screw it up and make me look bad!" He tightened his grip as his eyes burned with familiar rivalry.

"I won't" Izuku tightened his grip as well.

The void began to blur at the edges, pulling Izuku back toward the battle still waiting for him. Bakugo's form started to fade and shimmer like embers carried away by wind but just before his figure fully vanished into the nothingness his voice cut through once more.

"Then let's go light this bastard up together"

KA-BOOM!!!

A column of smoke rose from the impact point in a pillar that climbed into the sky and joined the rest of the night's wreckage. Dirt and dust and debris swirled within the column in a vortex that refused to settle. The thermal updraft from the superheated glass kept it alive and moving and completely opaque.

The smoke and dust billowed outward from the crater in a rolling wave that reached Sukuna at the far edge. It hit him like a wall of heated particulate and obscured his line of sight in an instant. His four crimson eyes narrowed against the debris as he swiped a hand through the smoke in a single lateral arc. 

The displaced air carved a corridor through the dust cloud and the night opened back up in front of him. Sukuna's four eyes fixed on the column because he couldn't see through it. The density of the debris and the thermal distortion made the interior completely unreadable.

"That shouldn't have detonated..." The words were internal.

"When I used divine flame on Jogo I used this exact output. It consumed him from the surface inward until there was nothing left that could maintain his form but it didn't explode..." His gaze swept the perimeter of the crater.

"The flame only produces a detonation when I combine it with my domain like I did against Mahoraga" His jaw tightened.

His four crimson eyes returned to the smoke column at the center of the crater. The churning mass still hadn't settled. The thermal updraft should have been weakening by now as the superheated glass cooled but the column remained dense and active as if something inside it was sustaining the heat.

SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!

POP! POP!

The smoke shifted as lines of light traced through the interior of the column. Green came first, the familiar veins of One For All threading through the dust in branching patterns that Sukuna had seen all night. But woven alongside them through the same channels and burning at the seams were lines of orange. 

A bright crackling orange that pulsed in time with the popping detonations and threw sparks into the surrounding smoke. The green and orange traced its outline in a lattice of interlocking energy that made the shape visible through the dust the way veins of magma make the shape of a fault line visible through the earth above it.

Sukuna's eyes widened by a fraction because for one suspended moment the outline of the figure doubled. The green and the orange separated just enough at the edges to suggest two shapes occupying the same space.

Two silhouettes overlaid on top of each other, one traced in green and one traced in orange, standing in the exact same position with the exact same posture. Then the lines merged again and there was only one figure once again.

BOOM!!

An explosion ripped through the right side of the smoke column. A directional blast that tore a hole in the veil and sent a shockwave of heated debris scattering across the crater floor. Something shot out of the breach at a speed that cracked the air behind it and left a trail of orange sparks in its wake like the tail of a comet that had decided to fly parallel to the ground.

The figure broke free of the smoke and hit the open air of the crater to reveal Izuku Midoriya. He landed in a crouch that spiderwebbed the surface beneath his feet. The impact threw embers upward around his frame in a cascade of orange sparks that mingled with the ones already pouring off his body.

"Did he...catch my divine flame?" The thought arrived with a weight that made Sukuna's four eyes widen by a fraction.

Izuku didn't give the moment room to breathe as he commanded the blackwhips from his to wrap around his hands before gripping them. Shimmers and pops crackled off of them while the orange glow from the explosion quirk grew brighter. Izuku raised his arms then slammed the whips into the ground in front of him towards Sukuna. 

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!

The detonations marched across the crater floor like artillery shells walking a grid in a near instant. Each one threw shrapnel and debris upward in geysers that reached fifteen feet before gravity reclaimed them. Sukuna tried to lunge sideways but the explosion hit the ground where his feet had been a quarter second earlier. 

The blast carried Sukuna for the rest of his failed evasive maneuver while searing and burning his skin along with causing gashes from the debris along the floor. Sukuna almost tumbled as he hit the ground but caught himself.

"Disman-" His right hand came up with two fingers extended in order to use dismantle but the spot where Izuku had landed was empty.

During that same time frame, something hot was pressed against the left side of his face. The radiant warmth of something burning at extreme temperatures positioned just outside the boundary of his skin. 

It was close enough that the fine hairs on his cheek singed and curled from the heat alone so Sukuna turned on his heel then time slowed. Izuku was mid-air with his body upside down, with his hands aimed directly at Sukuna's face from less than four feet away.

His hands were pressed together at the heels of the palms with the fingers spread wide and curled slightly toward the palms. The shape of a hand position designed to concentrate everything behind it into a single forward-facing cone of force.

Steam flowed outward from the palms in thin white trails that curled through the air between Izuku's hands. The palms began to glow with the same orange light that had been tracing Izuku's body in branching lines. 

The sound that came from them was a rising whine caused by the pitch of energy being compressed past the point of stable containment or the frequency of a detonation that was one decision away from existing.

Sukuna's four crimson eyes met Izuku's inverted green across the superheated air before the glow reached it's peak. In that moment Sukuna saw a phantom almost like he was seeing a mirage in a desert created from the heat. 

The phantom entire being radiated an intensity as brilliant and arrogant as the explosions coming from Izuku. It was the opposite of Izuku's gentle spirit but it held a fierce of his relentless resolve. The explosion released from his palms in a cone of force that hit Sukuna point-blank in the face.

KA-BOOM!!

Sukuna hit the facade of one of the broken buildings at the destruction zones perimeter. Although the night's earlier violence had mostly destroyed the building it still retained enough structural integrity to receive a body at speed and loudly announce the reception. The impact cratered the interior wall around his frame and the building groaned as the structure came down on top of him.

On the other hand Izuku was flung the other way due to the backblast of how powerful the explosion was. He was a body in flight with no say in where it was going while the floor streaked beneath him in a blur. The sky and the ground traded places three times before he twisted in a violent mid-air correction. 

His iron soles bit into the earth and the friction threw a spray of dirt and debris forward in a fan that painted the ground ahead of him. However, his body was still carrying too much speed for his legs to absorb and the soles carved furrows into the compacted earth as he slid backward.

He proceeded to slam his hands into the ground as he slid to further slow himself down. The friction made his hands feel like they were being fed into a grinder but eventually he began to slow until he came to a complete stop.

Izuku pried his hand free from the floor along with his feet before he tried to fully stand. He put one foot forward and immediately dropped to his hands and knees, causing the orange veins across his body to flicker. His arms shook, his head hung between his shoulders, and blood dripped from a cut above his eyebrow that he didn't remember receiving. 

"Get up" Bakugo's vestige materialized in front of Izuku's collapsed frame with his elbows on his knees and his red eyes level with Izuku's.

"I didn't give you my quirk so you could take a nap on the damn floor!" The vestige's voice had the same quality as a slap delivered to the back of a head.

"I can bare-" Izuku's fingers curled against the dirt.

"Barely is enough" Bakugo cut him off without hesitation.

"Barely is all you've ever had damnit! Barely is what you used to pass the entrance exam and barely is what you used to beat me the first time we fought. So stop lying there and MOVE!" The vestige straightened up from the crouch.

"Now get up and go Plus Ultra on this extra!" Bakugo extended a hand to help Izuku up the same way Izuku did back when they were younger.

Izuku's arms stopped shaking before bringing his right leg shifted to steady himself. He kept his left palm on the floor then lifted his head to the extended hand before meeting it his right hand. The moment their hands came together, the flickering orange adorning Izuku's body stabilized before it flared with tiny explosions across his entire body as he stood up.

"Spiderweb!" The word carried through the dust-choked hole in the facade and the destruction zone. 

The rubble surrounding Sukuna's impact site detonated outward in a sphere of slashing force. The debris that had been burying the King of Curses was obliterated in a single radial pulse that turned the interior of the broken building into a kill zone of cross hatched cuts.

He stumbled through the wreckage, his left foot dragged half an inch on the rubble before his right foot caught the weight and his body corrected itself with a jerk that was visible from across the crater. His left hand found the edge of the shattered wall and gripped it for a fraction of a second before releasing.

The left side of his face was scorched with the skin being red and blistered, already fading as reverse cursed technique addressed the thermal damage but the healing was slow.

The reserves that had been fueling his regeneration were thinning and the body's attempt to address the burns was competing with the older injuries that still hadn't fully closed from the night's accumulation of violence.

Blood ran from a cut above his left eye where a piece of rebar had caught him during the wall impact. His right shoulder sat lower than his left, suggesting damage to the joint or the muscles supporting it that reverse cursed technique hadn't reached yet. 

His breathing was also visible now as the rise and fall of his chest had a shallowness to it that hadn't been there at the start of the night. His right knee dipped at an angle that would have become a full collapse if his left leg hadn't caught the shift in weight at the last possible second. 

"Ha...HAHA...HAHAHA!!!" Sukuna wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"MIDORIYA!!" The name exploded across the crater.

"DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME NOW!! NOT BEFORE I'VE SEEN EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO OFFER!! COME AT ME WITH EVERY LAST PIECE OF THAT POWER AND SHOW ME WHY YOU DESERVE THE SUMMIT YOU STAND UPON!!" His four eyes blazed.

"SO COME ON!! GIVE ME SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING!!" The echo rolled across the destruction zone and died against the skyline.

"YOU WANT EVERYTHING I HAVE?!" Izuku's voice erupted across the crater.

"THEN COME TAKE IT!!" One For All climbed to one hundred percent. 

The green lightning erupted outward in arcs that cracked the air while explosion surged alongside it in volatile orange that merged with the green at the edges. What remained of his cursed energy gathered in his fists and finally, what was left of Fa Jin activated in his legs.

Izuku took a step and the moment it touched back down, the ground beneath his foot melted. The surface liquefied in a perfect footprint as the force traveling through his leg exceeded the structural tolerance of every material beneath it.

Sukuna's hands came together and the cursed energy around him expanded. It poured outward from his body in a sphere of invisible force that Izuku felt hit him like a pressure change in an aircraft cabin. 

"Malevolent Shrine!" The domain didn't unfurl completely since Sukuna's reserves wouldn't allow it and the strain of maintaining a full domain expansion in his current state would have burned him out before the technique served its purpose.

What emerged instead was the skeletal framework of Malevolent Shrine extending outward from Sukuna's position that filled the space between them with the ghost of a domain that should have been whole.

Dismantle and Cleave manifested in overlapping waves. Hundreds of invisible blades materializing in the air between them in a wall of intersecting death that filled the space from ground level to twenty feet overhead.

Danger sense fired but Izuku ignored it, turning the warning into nothing more than white noise. Izuku didn't stop nor did he flinch, he simply walked into the wall of slashes. The first cut It opened the skin on his shoulder so clean it took a full second for the blood to follow. 

The second caught his right forearm while the third crossed his chest diagonally from collarbone to the bottom of his ribs. The fourth and fifth arrived simultaneously, one on the left thigh and one across the back of his right hand. The cuts multiplied, but he kept walking even when a slash opened a line across his forehead that sent blood running into his left eye. 

Another traced a path along the side of his neck that missed the carotid by a margin that could be measured in millimeters. The pain was not a single sensation It was a wave, he wasn't experiencing pain so much as he was walking through a landscape made of it.

His right hand rose to his own chest and the memory arrived not as a thought but as a physical echo. The spirit's hand closing around his wrist before turning his palm inward then pressing it flat against the space above his heart. 

"You first" 

"You cannot pour from an empty vessel"

The positive energy stirred beneath his palm as It came from a place deeper than cursed energy reserves, deeper than One For All's pathways. It came from the place where seventy one souls had given him everything they had and asked him to use it on himself before he used it on anyone else.

The golden light bled through his fingers then into his chest and from that point onward it spread. A slash opened across his left bicep and the golden light sealed it shut before the blood could fully form. Another caught his right side between the ribs and the wound closed in a trail of warmth that chased the cut like water filling a groove. 

The positive energy met each wound with the steady certainty of something that had been given freely and carried no conditions. The cuts opened and the light closed them as Izuku continued to walk through the wall of blades the way someone walks through rain. It was as if the spirits themselves were standing in front of him to take the slashes in his place.

"He's...walking through them..." Sukuna's partial domain strained.

The skeletal framework of Malevolent Shrine flickered as the cursed energy sustaining it began to thin. Blood appeared at the corner of Sukuna's left eye. The strain of maintaining even a partial domain in his current state was exceeding what the body could sustain. 

The wall of blades that had been filling the space between them began to develop gaps as the cursed energy feeding them failed to maintain the density. The heat coming off of Izuku kept growing, superheating the air around him with each step he took. 

"Have I truly...reached my limit?.." The partial domain lost it's cohesion as he fell to one knee.

A thin red line traced down from his left tear duct and followed the curve of his cheek then the same happened with his right eye. He began to taste copper. More blood welled from between his lips, not from a wound in the mouth but from somewhere deeper.

"Time to go beyond..." Izuku's left foot stomped down as he lower his body, the heat began to accumulate beneath him which made the ground heat up. 

The sparks across his body popped and crackled faster before he vanished without warning. The sonic boom hit a quarter second after Izuku had already crossed the remaining distance. It tore outward from the point of departure in a concussive wave. 

The wind pressure that followed carved a trench in the earth beneath his trajectory. Images of the people he's met both new and old flashed through his mind along with the echoes of their words.

"You know what Deku? For a guy who dimension hops, you're alright" 

"Yuji..."

"There are moments when effort isn't enough or when even your best isn't enough. But the fact that you still try despite that knowledge is what separates people like you from the rest. You are one of us now"

"Nanami..."

"Fine, whatever but don't get yourself killed out there! Especially you country hero!"

"Nobara..." 

"Hey don't go dying on us now big shot" 

"Maki..."

"You have never been alone" 

"All Might..."

"Let's go light this bastard up together" 

"Kacchan..."

"Be the hero you were always meant to be"

All of them flashed through him in the time it took his body to cross the space between him and Sukuna. They were fuel, every face was a reason and every reason was a step and every step had brought him to this exact moment in this exact place with his fist cocked back.

The combined force of One For All at one hundred percent and Fa Jin's stored kinetic energy plus Explosion's volatile heat mixed with whatever cursed energy compressed into a single point at the front of his right knuckles.

"PLUS ULTRA!!" Izuku's fist connected uppercut the center of Sukuna's chest and launched him into the sky above Shibuya. 

Then Izuku dropped his body lowered in a single explosive compression, knees bending and torso folding and center of gravity plummeting toward the ground to become a spring. He activated explosion in his palms and launched upward then used the quirk to perform an upward Howitzer Impact.

His body spun on a vertical axis that tightened with each revolution until the centrifugal force began pulling the air around him into the spin. The atmosphere that had been still a fraction of a second ago was suddenly moving with a speed that exceeded the capacity of wind and formed a tornado around him.

It erupted from the point of his departure in a column of rotating air that climbed skyward with his ascending body at its center. The funnel was tight at the base and widened as it rose, pulling debris and dust and shattered glass into its rotation in spiraling streams.

Glowing rings materialized within the funnel, tracing the interior of the tornado in horizontal bands that pulsed with alternating color. Orange from Explosion and Blue from One For All's output at maximum capacity. The rings spiraled upward through the tornado in an alternating helix of orange and blue that made the funnel look like something that had been wrought rather than weathered

Green and orange Lightning bolts jumped between the walls of the funnel in branching patterns that connected and disconnected before reconnecting again in the time it took the eye to register their existence.

Each bolt illuminated the interior of the tornado from within and cast the spinning figure at its center in a strobe of light that made his ascending form appear in frozen frames. The tornado's base carved a perfect circle into the floor of the destruction zone. 

Sukuna was inside the tornado body tumbled within the funnel, battered by the centrifugal force that pressed outward. The alternating rings of orange and blue light strobed across his face in a rhythm that made his four crimson eyes flash like signal fires.

Eventually funnel's rotation flung Sukuna upward from its apex in a trajectory that carried him above the ruin of Shibuya and into the clear sky where the stars had been waiting all night to be seen. His body rose on the momentum the tornado had given it, spinning slowly on an axis he couldn't control, ascending into the dark with the city's fires shrinking beneath him.

Izuku appeared above him like a comet entering the atmosphere of the earth. The rotation had been the engine and the exit had been the launch and now Izuku was overhead with his body silhouetted against the stars. 

Time slowed before their eyes met in a silent exchange that tore into each other's souls, seeing the reflections of what they were, what they had become, and perhaps what they could still be. For Sukuna there was a flicker of confusion danced across his face because trailing just behind Izuku like a shadow of triumph was that blond haired brat once again.

The figure's arms blazed with the same devastating force as Izuku's while mimicking his exact motion and wearing that familiar cocky grin. It was a vision of raw power and unspoken rivalry, a reminder of bonds forged in fire and rivalry turned into legacy.

Izuku caught the flicker in Sukuna's eyes but his own were locked in unwavering focus as this was the final stretch of the summit he began to climb earlier in the night. His heart hammered with a lifetime of borrowed hopes and his own unbreakable convictions. Everything they'd fought for, every drop of blood spilled, and every building laid to waste converged here.

"Heh...you were never all talk were you?..." Sukuna's lips curled into something almost solemn. 

"No pretender could have ever pushed me like this. I guess you truly lived up to that title..." Their eyes met again. No words now, No challenge just understanding, mutual and unspoken.

"Hero..." The word left as a verdict rendered by the only judge whose standards were high enough for the word to mean what it was supposed to mean.

Sukuna didn't want to go out without at least trying to retaliate so he ignited his divine flame in his hands despite Izuku already having his own attack aimed at him. The divine flame roared to life in both palms in a final eruption of cursed energy that he shouldn't have had left.

Izuku saw the flame ignite so the Blackwhip tendrils at his back whipped forward to coil around his forearms in rapid spiraling wraps that covered the skin from elbow to knuckle in layers of dark material laced with orange fire at every seam. 

The tendrils compressed against his arms and locked into place with a finality that made the limbs look less like arms and more like weapons that had finished being assembled. His eyes met Sukuna's one final time across the diminishing space between them and for a moment he didn't see Sukuna.

He saw a face that belonged to a boy who hadn't asked for any of this. A boy who was still in there somewhere beneath the king of curses, a boy named Yuji Itadori who just wanted to give people a proper death.

"I'm sorry..." Izuku shifted his aim away from center mass.

His hands hist and the glow from the explosion expanded from his palms in a cone of force and light that consumed the space between them in an instant. The darkness of Shibuya's skyline was erased in a single frame, replaced by a radiance that could be seen from ten blocks away.

That same radiance soon turned into a beam that descended toward the ground below. The sky itself seemed to crack, splitting apart in a shockwave that thundered out in every direction. Orange and blue electricity entangled the column in spiraling arcs that climbed its length and crackled at its edges with a voltage that ionized the air around it.

KRRRRAAAA-BOOOOOOOM!!!!

A low ominous rumble swelled into a deafening roar as the expanding ball of energy engulfed what was left of the destruction zone in the blink of an eye. Buildings already on the brink of collapse disintegrated instantly under the onslaught. Chunks of concrete and bent rebar became molten meteors, hurled skyward and then crashing back down in the gale-force winds.

Lightning forked across the superheated air while firestorms sparked into existence everywhere the energy touched, swirling up into a towering inferno that dwarfed the remains of the skyline. The eruption was so intense it seared itself onto any surface still left standing. 

A mushroom cloud rose above the skyline of Shibuya and joined the smoke that had been gathering above the district all night. It carried within its structure the intertwined colors of orange and blue that pulsed in the same alternating rhythm as the tornado's rings.

Once the attack faded there was only smoke, ash, and a hellish glow carved into a blackened crater. The last remnants of their titanic showdown shimmered in the cinders drifting on the scorching wind and carried off into the distant night.

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To be continued

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