Location: Chiba Prefecture – Secondary Storage Facility
Ti: T-Plus 20 Minutes
CREAK. CREAK. CREAK.
The concrete floor gave another low, dull rumble.
Aftershocks.
Hawks stood on top of a shipping crate, keeping his balance as the heavy steel beams of the warehouse groaned.
The massive earthquake from the Nankai Trough detonation was still tearing up the fault lines.
Outside, the city speakers were blaring at maximum volu.
"GA-TSUNAMI WARNING. EVACUATE TO HIGH GROUND IMDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
It was absolute chaos.
Chiba was on the coast, and the water was going to hit them soon. Hawks had a job to do, and he had to do it fast before the entire industrial zone went underwater.
Down below him, six Tartarus escapees were curled up on the floor, groaning in pain. They were bleeding heavily, but they were very much alive.
Hawks looked down at his HPSC device. Kaito was the one who dug up this intel, handing the governnt a perfect map of where the villains were hiding.
But as Hawks looked at the crying villains, he realized there was one massive detail everyone got wrong about how to handle them.
For the past month, the HPSC and the heroes knew all about the terrifying suicide pact.
If these guys failed their mission or got captured, the purple covenant mark on their bodies would trigger, burning them to ash instantly. Because of that, the HPSC issued a quiet, brutal mandate.
Zero survivors. Shoot to kill.
But about ten minutes ago, Hawks accidentally found a loophole.
During his fight with Mario Kugutsu at the first warehouse, Mario had panicked.
When Hawks swung his massive Red Emperor Sword form, Mario twisted his body at the last microsecond to avoid getting stabbed in the heart.
Because of that sudden flinch, the massive feather blade cleaved cleanly through Mario's right shoulder instead.
It sliced off the exact chunk of flesh holding the purple mark.
Hawks had watched the severed piece of at burst into purple fire and turn to ash on the floor. But Mario himself didn't burn. He just bled and passed out.
Hawks didn't waste ti staring.
The tsunami sirens were already starting to wail. He left Mario for his sidekicks to bag up and imdiately flew to this second location on Kaito's map to verify if it was a fluke.
It wasn't.
When he crashed through the skylight of this secondary warehouse five minutes ago, the six villains inside were already freaking out from the earthquake and the evacuation sirens. Seeing a top pro hero drop in made them fight like cornered rats.
One guy turned the floor into a sticky tar pit. A woman spewed a massive cloud of corrosive green gas, and two others fired hardened bone spikes directly into the smoke.
Hawks just glided right over the tar, flapped his wings hard to blow the gas back into their faces, and went to work.
SWISH. SWISH.
He didn't aim for lethal chest shots. He sent his primary feathers darting through the smoke, specifically targeting their right shoulders. He sliced the marks clean off all six of them before they could even blink.
Now, the villains were clutching their bleeding shoulders, their eyes squeezed shut in pure panic.
"Oh god, the water is coming and we failed!" the lizard guy scread, shivering on the rumbling floor. "It's gonna burn! We're dead!"
Hawks let out a long sigh. He dropped down from the crate and walked over to the terrified mutant.
"Hey. Open your eyes, man," Hawks said casually, pointing his thumb at the open roof. "You have about five minutes before this place is a swimming pool."
The lizard guy slowly opened one eye. He looked at his hands. He looked at the woman next to him.
The severed pieces of flesh on the floor were already gray ash, but the fire hadn't touched any of them.
"We're... we're alive?" the woman gasped, staring at her hands in total shock.
"Yeah, you're alive. Congratulations," Hawks said, tapping his earpiece. "You guys get to go back to your cozy cells. Now get up and start running to high ground before you drown. Follow my sidekicks."
Hawks switched his radio to the secure HPSC command frequency.
"Madam President, this is Hawks. I just cleared the second location on the intel map. And I have a confird bypass for the suicide marks."
BEEP.
Inside the HPSC Headquarters in Tokyo, the command center was a total madhouse.
Red ergency lights were flashing everywhere.
Operators were screaming over the comms about the retreating ocean in Shizuoka and the massive wave heading straight for the coastline.
Madam President stood over the main tactical console, her face pale with stress. She pressed her headset closer to her ear to hear Hawks over the blaring tsunami alarms inside the control room.
"Explain, Hawks," she ordered quickly. "We don't have ti!"
"The execution mandate is obsolete," Hawks reported smoothly over the radio static. "Don't aim for the head. Tell the guys to slice off the shoulder containing the covenant mark. Sever it from the main body before they fail the mission. The severed mark burns to ash, but the host survives. It's an instant knockout."
Madam President's eyes lit up. This changed everything.
Right now, heroes were bogged down in drawn-out fights with 1000 percent boosted Tartarus escapees.
They were wasting precious ti trying to kill them or survive them while a ga-tsunami was rolling in.
If they just aid for the shoulder, they could end the fights in one hit and get back to saving civilians.
And bringing these high-profile monsters back in chains after surviving a national disaster would prove the hero society was still unbreakable.
She didn't waste a single second. She slamd her hand down on the global vanguard broadcast button.
"Attention all Vanguard teams!" Madam President's voice cut through the earpieces of every top hero in the field.
Endeavor paused mid-punch in the fiery, shaking streets of Kyoto.
Ryukyu looked up from a crushed villain in Osaka, steadying herself against the violent aftershocks.
Down in the coastal cities, heroes like Gang Orca and Selkie were frantically trying to herd people away from the beaches as the water pulled back. They stopped and pressed their earpieces tight.
"This is command," Madam President announced, her voice completely firm and rushed. "We have a confird thod to salvage the Tartarus prisoners and end these fights instantly! Target the purple marks on their bodies and sever them!"
She leaned closer to the microphone, her tone turning desperate.
"Do not waste ti in protracted combat! Slice the marks off, bag them, and get to high ground imdiately! Heroes near the coastlines, your absolute priority is evacuation! Neutralize the targets and outrun that wave!"
*-*-*-*
Location: High Atmosphere – Floating Bedrock
All For One stared at the two heroes hovering in front of him.
He had just detonated the Nankai Trough.
Millions of people were minutes away from drowning.
By all trics of human psychology, All Might should be on his knees in absolute despair, and Captain Celebrity should be begging for a ceasefire.
Instead, All Might dropped into a low, brutal fighting stance. His muscles bulged as Fa Jin and Gearshift flared wildly around his body.
Captain Celebrity simply wiped the blood off his chin and grinned, charging his aerodynamic shield to maximum capacity.
'What's wrong with these two oafs?' All For One narrowed his eyes. He didn't hear the telepathic voice of Hero X reassuring them.
From his perspective, these two just decided to completely ignore an apocalyptic tsunami just so they could rip his head off.
It made zero sense, and it irritated him to the core.
Since they wanted to fight to the bitter end, he would oblige them.
All For One stepped past his Seven Crowns.
He stopped playing and suppressing the raw, catastrophic power pumping through his veins from the 1500 percent God Serum.
FWOOSH.
A heavy, suffocating black aura exploded from his body.
It was so dense that the air pressure dropped instantly, violently cracking the floating concrete bedrock under his feet.
"I don't need to touch you anymore, Toshinori," All For One said, his voice echoing with a distorted, bass-heavy hum. "I'm done playing, I can just rip that quirk right out of your chest from here."
He raised his hand and aid his palm directly at All Might.
VMMMM.
Inside the Quirk Realm, the atmosphere went totally chaotic.
The past users felt a massive, invisible hook slam into their space. It tore through the mist, trying to violently drag them out into the real world.
"What's going on!?" Bruce asked in a panic tone.
"He's pulling us!" Banjo yelled, digging his boots hard into the ground. "Hold on to sothing!"
"This is bad! He isn't even touching him!" Kudo barked, bracing his shoulder against a rock.
"What should we do?" En grabbed and hold of sothing.
"HOLD ON, EVEYONE!" Nana and Hikage both shouted.
But a fraction of a second later, the violent pull just stopped.
It slid right off them like water hitting a slick window. The mist settled down instantly.
"...."
Yoichi Shigaraki stood up from his chair. He looked up at the sky of the vestige world and realized sothing.
"What just happened?" En asked, looking at his own hands in confusion.
"It canceled out," Yoichi said calmly. "One For All is awakened too. It reached Singularity. His All For One awakened theft cannot bypass our awakened defense. The core is locked and way too dense to be pulled through the air."
Yoichi looked at the others, his eyes sharp. "His range pull is entirely useless against us. He still has to touch Toshinori with his bare hands to take it."
Out in the real world, All For One realized his theft just failed on All Might.
"What's going on? Why did it failed?" He clenched his fist tight, but nothing happened.
He didn't panic. If he couldn't take One For All in a distance, he would take the other one.
All For One instantly pivoted, aiming his hand straight at Captain Celebrity.
VMMMM.
The invisible hook locked onto the Arican hero.
"Gah!" Captain Celebrity choked.
His aerodynamic shield flickered violently. He grabbed his own throat, his eyes going wide.
He could actually feel his quirk getting ripped right up his windpipe.
'Toshinori, move!' Nana scread in All Might's head. 'He is taking the Arican's quirk! Get him out of there!'
All Might didn't hesitate. He triggered Gearshift.
SWOOSH.
All Might completely blurred out of visual reality, appearing right in front of Captain Celebrity.
He grabbed the thick collar of the Arican's burned suit with both hands.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Captain Celebrity managed to yell.
All Might spun his hips and hurled him backward with monstrous, raw strength.
BOOM.
Captain Celebrity shot backward through the open sky like a cannonball.
As he tumbled through the air, the invisible grip on his throat suddenly weakened. A few seconds later, it completely vanished.
"It stopped! It stopped right here!" Captain Celebrity yelled over, catching himself in mid-air and flaring his shield back to life.
He looked at the massive gap between him and All For One.
They figured it out dynamically just by feeling the pressure drop. The deadzone was roughly a hundred ters.
"Stay out of that range!" All Might yelled back, keeping his eyes locked on the villain. "If you cross that line, he will steal your quirk directly!"
"Damn it! How absurd is that quirk." Captain Celebrity hovered in the safe zone, gritting his teeth.
His quirk was flight. It grants him high-speed movent and tactile telekinesis, producing a protective barrier of kinetic energy around his body.
CC couldn't shoot energy beams or lasers from a hundred yards away. But he wasn't going to just float there and watch.
He looked around.
The anti-gravity field created by the Utility crown was keeping massive chunks of concrete, steel girders, and ruined buildings floating around the edge of the inverted bedrock.
Captain Celebrity grinned.
He flew down to a solid piece of concrete the size of a city bus.
He wrapped his entire aerodynamic shield around the massive rock, perfectly removing its wind resistance and weight.
"Hey, All Might!" Captain Celebrity called out. "I got your long-range support right here!"
"Target the Transportation crown !" All Might yelled back over the roaring wind. "Stop him from swapping them around!"
"You got it!"
Captain Celebrity pulled his arm back and hurled the frictionless boulder.
KRAK-BOOM.
Without air drag, the boulder broke the sound barrier instantly. It shot forward like a railgun blast, aid dead at Temperance.
It moved incredibly fast, but All For One wasn't just a spectator.
They shared a single consciousness. They were him.
With a simple thought, the Patience defense clone jumped in the way.
CRASH.
The supersonic boulder shattered against Patience's giant, reinforced arms, pushing the heavy clone backward but failing to hit the target.
"Push him!" Captain Celebrity roared, imdiately grabbing another boulder.
"Plus Ultra!" All Might shouted.
SWOOSH.
All Might dove right back into the hundred-ter deadzone.
All For One's red eyes tracked the golden blur. He shared perfect parallel processing with all Seven Crowns.
Without a single word spoken, Charity flooded the group with a massive wave of red amplification energy, multiplying their base stats by a hundred.
Diligence, the Speed clone, stacked jet-propulsion and friction-nullification quirks. It vanished, moving at Mach forty to intercept All Might mid-air.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
The sky turned into a chaotic web of sonic booms as they traded heavy blows. But All For One didn't let it beco a one-on-one.
Humility, the Strength clone, leaped up to join the clash, swinging a density-boosted fist the size of a truck.
All Might's Danger Sense spiked.
"Blackwhip!"
Thick black cables erupted from All Might's arms, anchoring directly into the empty space.
He swung himself completely upside down, dodging Humility's massive punch.
Right in his blind spot, Kindness the Assassin clone lted out of the shadows, swinging a bone-blade dripping with stacked poison quirks right at All Might's neck.
All Might shifted gears. He spun in mid-air, unleashing Fa Jin.
"CALIFORNIA SMASH!"
He drove his fist directly into the Assassin's chest.
The stored kinetic energy blew the clone completely in half, sending black suit fragnts raining down.
All For One's mind shifted. Temperance activated instantly to warp the broken pieces back to the Healer clone.
WHOOSH.
Another supersonic boulder from Captain Celebrity crashed into the bedrock, perfectly tid to interrupt the warp.
Temperance had to teleport itself just to survive the blast, leaving the Assassin's pieces useless on the ground.
All For One was getting highly annoyed. The Arican was ruining his rhythm.
He didn't just stand there. All For One raised his own hand, his fingers coated in 1500 percent black energy.
As Captain Celebrity threw a third massive steel girder, All For One used spatial-warping combined with a localized gravity-well.
He opened a micro-warp gate right in front of the incoming supersonic girder, and opened the exit gate directly behind All Might's head.
'Toshinori, behind you!' Hikage shouted.
Danger Sense scread in his mind.
All Might had to burn a Gearshift charge, violently twisting his body out of the way as his ally's frictionless steel girder nearly took his head off.
"Watch your fire!" All Might yelled over the comms, sweating.
"He warped it! My bad!" Captain Celebrity yelled back, grabbing two more rocks.
All For One wasn't done. He used the main body's raw power to lock down the airspace, combining gravity-crush and air-solidification to force All Might closer to the ground.
"You guys rely too much on montum," All For One said coldly.
All Might prid Fa Jin again.
He didn't punch All For One directly. He applied Gearshift directly to the air molecules in front of him.
"NEVADA OVERDRIVE!"
BAM. BAM. BAM. BAM.
"SOUTH DAKOTA CONSECUTIVE SMASH!"
All Might threw eleven delayed Mach punches in rapid succession in different location using Gearshift.
The sheer force compressed the air pressure into solid invisible cannons.
The massive air blasts slamd toward the clones and All For One.
But All For One was just stupid to take the hit. He made the defense crown and utility crown step up.
Both hands of Patience, defense crown, created a massive kinetic-absorption stacked with all support quriks given by Charity.
VWOOOM.
It swallowed the eleven invisible air cannons directly into his palms, the boost from Charity allowed the body of Patience to handle the insane recoil together with the stacked defense quirks.
"Return to sender," All For One mocked.
KRAKOOOM.
Patience blasted the stored kinetic energy back out in a single, devastating red beam, forcing All Might to evade his own attack.
*-*-*-*
Location: Italy – Gollini Underground Base
Valdo Gollini was completely losing his mind.
He was fully rged with the cavern.
The massive, hundred-foot-tall chanical titan stood in the ruined crater, absorbing the sunlight. It looked like a walking mountain of pitch-black tal.
"You think a few planes can stop ?!" Valdo's voice bood out from the titan, shaking the ground. "I have a thousand percent boost! I have unlimited matter!"
Cathleen Bate stood on the cracked dirt, looking up at the tal monster.
Her muscles ached from holding the logic loops, but she was smiling.
"Ethan," Cathleen said into her earpiece. "Drop it."
SWIISH.
High above, an Arican fighter jet banked hard. It opened its bay doors and dropped a single, heavy bunker-buster missile straight down toward the crater.
"Haha!" Valdo laughed.
The titan raised a hand the size of a battleship, ready to flatten the missile into a harmless drawing.
Down on the ground, the remaining mafia capos recovered from the earlier shockwave.
Paulo scrambled over a pile of rubble and locked his eyes on Cathleen.
"I got her!" Paulo yelled, aiming his hands to erase her New Order.
"Like hell you do!" Ethan Drive yelled over the radio. "Light them up, boys!"
BRRRRRRT.
A massive barrage of laser fire rained down from the jets above.
Ethan, Timothy, and Kishiko perford a perfect strafing run.
The lasers chewed up the dirt and concrete right in front of Paulo, Bruno, and Simon.
Ugo tried to throw a concrete pillar at the jets, but Timothy blew it out of the sky with a quick missile strike.
"Keep your heads down!" Ethan cheered. "Cassie, you have three seconds!"
"That's all I need!" Cathleen yelled.
She jumped, launching herself high into the air, intercepting the falling missile.
She slamd her hand against the heavy tal casing. Her eyes blazed as she tapped directly into the Kaito logic system.
"New Order!" Cathleen said.
"Rule One! If this payload hits a quirk construct, it morphs into a giant piercing drill; Else, it locks onto Valdo's core!"
CLANK.
SHINK.
The heavy missile violently shifted. The tal folded and expanded in mid-air, completely transforming into a massive, spinning drill bit the size of a building.
"Rule Two!" Cathleen continued, pushing her quirk to the absolute limit. "If the drill ets physical resistance, it ignores density and spins endlessly; Else, it detonates with the force of a teor!"
She kicked off the drill, landing safely on the ground below.
Valdo saw the massive weapon spinning toward him.
He didn't panic. He just got angrier.
"You want to play rough?!" Valdo roared from inside the ch. "I'll crush your little toy!"
He slamd his hands onto the titan's controls.
Using his awakened Alchemy, he pulled thousands of tons of scrap tal, iron, and dirt from the mountain. He forced the titan's right arm to mutate and twist.
In seconds, Valdo turned his own giant arm into a colossal, pitch-black spinning drill.
He thrust his drill upward to et hers.
KRAAAANG.
The two massive drills collided in mid-air. The grinding tal created a deafening screech.
A localized shockwave blasted out, blowing the clouds away and knocking the pinned capos flat on their faces.
Valdo pushed hard. His giant tal drill sparked violently, trying to assimilate and break her construct.
"Just break already!" Valdo scread.
Cathleen gritted her teeth. She poured all her stamina into maintaining the New Order loop.
She wasn't going to lose a clash of pure power.
"Texas Giga-Drill Break!" Cathleen roared.
The rule kicked in perfectly.
Her drill completely ignored the density of Valdo's armor. It didn't even slow down.
SHLUCK.
Her drill cleanly pierced right through the center of Valdo's spinning weapon.
It traveled straight down the titan's arm, shredding the tal like wet paper, and plunged directly into the ch's chest core.
"What?!" Valdo gasped.
KAA-BOOOOOOOM.
The secondary rule triggered.
Instead of a massive outward explosion that would wipe out the Italian countryside, the drill detonated all its kinetic energy entirely from the inside out.
KA-BOOOM.
The colossal titan bulged.
Then it blew apart in a contained, blinding flash of fire and shrapnel.
Pieces of the chanical giant rained down across the ruined base.
When the thick smoke finally cleared, the titan was completely gone.
Valdo Gollini was lying in the bottom of the crater.
He was unconscious, bleeding, and totally separated from his assimilated base.
Cathleen cracked her neck. She walked over and casually slapped heavy suppression cuffs on his wrists.
"Ga over, fanboy," Cathleen muttered.
"Target secured, Cassie," Ethan reported over the comms. "The grunts are resisting. What's our next move?"
Cathleen looked up at the sky. "We pack up and continue the global raid back in states. We must deal with his subordinates first."
"Roger that." Eveyone replied. But before they can continue a massive earthquake occured.
CCREAAK. RUMBLE. RUMBLE.
*-*-*-*
Location: Tokyo – Might Tower Secure Data Center
Ti: T-Plus 22 Minutes
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The main monitors inside the data center flashed violently with bright red warning signs.
Yokumiru ra grabbed his hair with both hands, staring at the global radar. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
"He actually did it!" ra yelled, his voice cracking in total panic. "The Nankai Trough just slipped! The fault line is completely broken! We have a magnitude nine earthquake and a ga-tsunami heading straight for the Shizuoka coast!"
His younger sister, Yui ra, dropped her clipboard. Papers scattered all over the floor.
"The coastal evacuation isn't finished!" Yui shouted, pulling up a secondary map. "There are still local heroes and stragglers down there! The wave is a hundred and fifty ters tall! It's going to wipe the entire city off the map!"
The cyber-agents from Sir Nighteye's agency were frantically typing, trying to route ergency broadcast signals, but everyone in the room knew it was hopeless. You cannot outrun a moving mountain of water.
Kaito sat at the main terminal. He was the only person in the room not sweating.
He looked at the red warning lights reflecting in his dark eyes. It was ti to clock out. He already finished reassuring his grandma.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Kaito didn't stand up. He kept his hands on the keyboard.
With a subtle, completely silent shift of his energy, he activated a hard-light projection. It was a flawless copy.
In a fraction of a second, the real Kaito teleported out of the room, leaving the solid illusion sitting in the chair, pretending to type.
Near the back wall, Lady Nagant suddenly stood up straight.
She narrowed her eyes. She stared hard at the back of Kaito's head. As a veteran sniper, she was trained to notice the tiniest shifts in the environnt.
Sothing was wrong.
The breathing pattern of the manager in the chair was exactly the sa. But she can't just prove it. It's stuck on her throat.
Nagant took a step forward, her female intuition screaming at her, sothing must have happened in a split second. She opened her mouth to call his na.
"The water is pulling back!" a programr yelled, pointing at the live news feed. "Ten seconds to impact!"
The noise and panic drowned Nagant out. She gritted her teeth and looked back at the screen, putting her suspicions on hold.
*-*-*-*
Location: Shizuoka Coastline & Nationwide Evacuation Shelters
The wailing of the tsunami sirens was deafening.
THWOP. THWOP. THWOP.
Hideki Sato leaned out the side door of his news helicopter. The wind whipped his suit tie wildly.
He held his headset tight against his ears, trying to block out the noise of the chopper blades.
"Keep the cara on the water!" Sato yelled to his caraman. "Do not drop the feed! The whole country needs to see this!"
Down below, the coastal city was a ghost town.
Miles away, hidden deep inland, thousands of terrified civilians were huddled together inside massive underground evacuation dos.
Families were crying. People were hugging each other tight, staring up at the giant broadcast screens hanging from the do ceilings.
The Sato X News feed showed the ocean rising up into a terrifying, dark wall that blotted out the sun.
"It's over," an old man whispered in the crowd, covering his face. "The whole coast is gone."
But.
WHOOSH.
WOOOSH.
Suddenly, a tiny dot fell from the high clouds on the live broadcast.
It didn't drop like a teor. It drifted down smoothly, completely ignoring the laws of gravity.
Inside the evacuation dos, a young boy pointed a shaking finger at the giant screen.
"Look!" the boy yelled. "What is that up there?!"
The crowd stopped crying and looked up. Murmurs rippled through the thousands of people.
"Is it a bird?" a woman asked, squinting at the screen.
"Is it a plane?!" a man shouted.
"No, look at the suit!" a teenager scread, jumping to his feet. "Look at the gold glasses!"
The news cara frantically zood in.
The man drifted down and landed perfectly on the railing of the coastal highway, standing dead center in the path of the colossal wave.
He wore a pristine, glowing white suit.
The entire country recognized him instantly.
"It's X!" Sato scread into his helicopter microphone. "Hero X is here!"
Down on the highway railing, Hero X didn't look worried at all.
The 150-ter wall of water was roaring toward him, threatening to crush the city.
He just raised his right hand and casually slicked his hair back.
SNAP.
The sound echoed through every single microphone and TV speaker in Japan.
The second his fingers snapped, reality itself glitched.
A massive, blinding explosion of colorful neon lights burst outward from his hand.
Bright pinks, glowing blues, and electric yellows shattered the air like broken glass.
The roaring ga-tsunami suddenly stopped.
It didn't freeze into ice. It completely lost its depth.
The massive, 3D mountain of water violently flattened out.
In the blink of an eye, the terrifying wave turned into a giant, two-dinsional drawing of a wave printed on a massive sheet of blue construction paper.
It just stood there, completely harmless and flat.
Inside the evacuation dos, the silence lasted for exactly one second.
Then, the crowd erupted.
"HE DID IT!"
People were screaming at the top of their lungs, jumping up and down, throwing their hands in the air.
Strangers were hugging strangers. The absolute despair vanished, replaced by pure, unadulterated hype.
Hero X jumped off the highway railing.
He walked up to the giant, towering paper wave. He grabbed the bottom corner of it with his hands.
He gave it a hard, casual shake, exactly like a person snapping a bedsheet to straighten it out over a mattress.
FLAP. FLAP. FLAP. FLAP.
The massive paper wave laid completely flat on the dry, muddy seabed.
Hero X raised his hand again.
SNAP.
Another burst of bright, colorful 2D pixels exploded across the coastline.
The giant blue paper instantly transitioned back into 3D reality.
But the montum was completely gone. It turned back into normal, calm seawater, resting peacefully against the shoreline like nothing ever happened.
Up in the news helicopter, Hideki Sato was laughing so hard he actually had tears in his eyes.
"I don't believe it!" Sato cheered to the caraman. "He just folded an apocalypse like origami!"
Hero X crouched slightly and jumped. He floated right up to the open door of the news chopper, hovering casually in mid-air right next to Sato.
Hero X kept his cool, untouchable vibe, but he gave the reporter a nod of respect. After all, Sato was the very first guy to film him back in the day.
"Yo.. Long ti no see, reporter guy," Hero X said smoothly, adjusting his gold glasses. "Thank goodness I made it."
Sato nearly dropped his headset. He leaned out the door, grinning like a madman.
"X! You're really back!" Sato yelled over the chopper blades. "You just stopped a ga-quake tsunami in ten seconds! Where have you been?!"
"Just doing so long overdue cleaning," Hero X said casually, looking over his shoulder at the horizon. "So, where are the other sses?"
Sato didn't waste a second. He frantically grabbed his news tablet, pulling up the national disaster radar.
"Fuji!" Sato yelled, turning the screen so Hero X could see the blinking red alerts. "The fault line slip triggered the Suruga Trough! Mount Fuji is erupting right now! The lava is flowing straight down toward the Yamanashi evacuation dos!"
"Got it," Hero X nodded.
"And Tokyo!" Sato added quickly, swiping the screen. "The basin is collapsing from the aftershocks! Massive sinkholes are opening up right under the main city streets!"
"Fuji, then Tokyo," Hero X repeated, committing the locations to mory.
He looked back at Sato and gave the reporter a cool, two-finger salute from his forehead.
"See ya," Hero X said.
SNAP.
A massive burst of glowing, colorful 2D pixels exploded around him, and Hero X completely vanished from the sky, teleporting to fix the rest of the country.
*-*-*-*
Hero X vanished from the sky in a massive burst of colorful pixels.
Up in the news helicopter, Hideki Sato imdiately grabbed his radio. He didn't even bother talking to his pilot. He yelled straight through the secure frequency to his main broadcast studio in Tokyo.
"Studio! This is Sato!" he scread over the roaring chopper blades. "Did you get that on cara?!"
"We got it, boss! The whole country saw the tsunami turn into paper!" the producer yelled back over the radio. "The ratings are literally breaking the system! He's heading to the other disaster zones! What's our next move?"
Sato looked out at the completely calm ocean.
He grinned wildly. He knew exactly how to fra this broadcast. He needed to give the public their hope back in the most hyped way possible.
"Queue up the track!" Sato ordered. "The exact sa song from the Sky Egg incident! Hack the drone feeds! Connect all the local traffic caras! Put it on the main broadcast right now! Let the whole world know the mythical vigilante is back!"
"You got it, boss!"
Inside the studio, the sound engineer slamd his hand on the master control board.
The heavy, upbeat intro of a familiar song blasted through the live feed. It pumped out of every television, smartphone, and evacuation do speaker across Japan.
[Ain't never seen sothing quite like it, mm
And when we play we don't stop fighting...]
*-*-*-*
Location: Mount Fuji – Yamanashi Prefecture
The side of the mountain was blown wide open.
A massive, roaring river of boiling orange lava was sliding rapidly down the slope, swallowing the forest whole and heading straight for the inland evacuation dos.
Down near the bottom of the trail, a lone pro hero was holding the line.
It was the husband of the Water Hose duo. His wife and his young son, Kota, were already safely evacuated inside the ergency dos miles away. He stayed behind to buy them ti for the other civilians.
He had both hands thrust forward, blasting maximum pressure water from his gauntlets directly into the advancing lava wall.
HSSSSS.
Thick, boiling steam filled the air.
"Co on! Everyone run!" the Water Hose hero yelled, his muscles burning with absolute exhaustion. "Just a little longer!"
CRACKLE-CRICKLE.
But he was losing.
The sheer mass of the volcanic eruption was too much.
The lava pushed forward, evaporating his water instantly. The intense heat was starting to blister his skin through his hero suit. He fell to one knee, panting heavily.
'I'm sorry Kota. I'm sorry Honey.' He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the end.
[Won't see it coming fast like lightning, whoa-mm
We'll save the day, they can't deny it...]
SWOOSH.
A bright, neon light flashed right in front of him.
The unbearable heat suddenly vanished.
The Water Hose hero opened his eyes in shock.
A news drone was hovering just a few yards away, its cara lens tracking the scene perfectly.
Hero X was standing right in front of him, hovering a few inches off the burning dirt.
His pristine white suit didn't even have a speck of ash on it. The glowing aura around him was casually pushing the insane heat away.
"Yo," Hero X said casually, looking down at the exhausted hero. "You held the line pretty well, man. Good job."
"Who... what?" Water Hose stamred, completely stunned.
Hero X reached out and gently patted the man's shoulder.
"I'll take it from here," Hero X smiled behind his gold glasses. "You can clock out."
Hero X turned to face the massive, roaring river of lava about to crush them. He raised his hand.
SNAP.
Reality itself glitched wildly.
A blinding explosion of electric yellow and bright pink pixels erupted from his fingers.
CRACK. CRACK.
The boiling lava didn't turn to stone. It completely shattered like glass.
Millions of tiny droplets of deadly magma instantly lost their 3D shape.
FLAP. FLAP. FLAP.
They transford into flat, glowing, bright orange 2D butterflies.
A massive, beautiful swarm of harmless paper-like butterflies fluttered up into the dark sky, completely replacing the deadly lava flow. The entire mountain was instantly safe.
"...'
Water Hose just sat there in the dirt, his jaw hanging wide open. He looked up at the swarm of butterflies.
"You're... you're him," the hero whispered, tears welling in his eyes. "Thank you. My wife... my kid... thank you."
"Go back to your family, hero," Hero X gave him a cool, two-finger salute.
SNAP.
He vanished to the beat of the song.
[Higher, higher
We're about to set this ga on fire, fire
They can't bring us down...]
*-*-*-*
Location: Tokyo Basin – Shibuya Crossing
CREAK. CREAK. RUMBLE.
The city was literally tearing itself apart. The aftershocks from the Nankai detonation were ripping massive, gaping sinkholes right in the middle of the intersections.
A local news helicopter was circling above, broadcasting the chaos live.
A group of civilians was screaming, clinging desperately to the shattered asphalt on the edge of a massive pit threatening to swallow the subway station below.
"Sobody help!" a teenager yelled, his grip slipping on the concrete. He started to fall backward into the dark void.
SWOOSH.
Hero X appeared right above the chaos, hovering casually in the air.
The news cara imdiately locked onto his suit.
Hero X dove down smoothly, grabbing the teenager by the back of his jacket mid-air and pulling him up onto a stable piece of ground.
He caught an older woman who was sliding down the rubble and set her safely on the sidewalk.
"Hold on tight, people," Hero X joked smoothly, dusting off his gloves. "Dropping down there is really bad for your health."
The teenager looked up, his eyes going wide as he realized who just grabbed him. "No way... you're Hero X!"
"Hi" Hero X smirked.
FWOOSH.
He floated back up into the air and looked down at the massive, crumbling void destroying the city block.
[We're that whole new type of hero, hero
We gon' win wherever we go, we go...]
SNAP.
A massive burst of pink and blue neon pixels exploded across the intersection.
The crumbling dirt, the falling asphalt, and the massive dark void instantly lost their depth.
The entire broken street violently flattened out. In a flash of light, it turned into a perfect, 2D drawing of a solid floor.
The surrounding skyscrapers imdiately stopped tilting.
The earth locked into place.
It looked like soone placed a giant sticker over the sinkhole, completely unbreakable and totally safe.
The civilians standing on the edge of the 2D street looked down, stomping their feet hesitantly. It didn't give way. It was solid like titanium.
"He saved us!" a woman cried out, falling to her knees.
OOOOOOHHH.
The crowd erupted into wild cheers. People were trying to run up and hug him, holding out their phones to take pictures and pointing at the news chopper above.
Hero X just gave them a calm wave.
"Stay safe, Tokyo," he said.
SNAP.
He disappeared again in a shower of pixels as the chorus hit its peak.
[Explosions in the sky
Be-be-be-bending space and ti...]
*-*-*-*
Location: Shizuoka Mainland – The Nankai Fissure
The tsunami was gone, but the source of the earthquake was still active.
A massive, jagged fissure was tearing through the mainland, racing straight toward a densely populated residential zone.
RUMBLE. RUMBLE. CREACK.
The ground was violently shaking from the aftershocks.
Hideki Sato's helicopter had followed the destruction path inland.
The cara was pointed directly at the massive crack splitting the earth open.
Inside the fissure, several unactivated disaster bombs were exposed, glowing with dangerous quirk energy. If the aftershocks continued, they were going to detonate.
Hero X teleported directly into the cara's view.
He hovered a few feet above the massive, tearing canyon. The wind whipped his white suit. He looked down at the violently shaking earth and the bombs.
SWOOOSH.
Hero X dropped straight down.
"So noisy."
Thump.
He raised his right boot high and slamd it directly onto the cracking asphalt right at the edge of the fault line.
BAM.
A massive, blinding shockwave of glowing, colorful neon pixels shot straight through the earth.
Hero X warped it.
Giant, glowing 2D stitches. Thick, neon lines of pixel-tape literally zipped the tectonic plates permanently shut.
CRUNCH. TWHOOP.
The massive canyon violently pulled itself back together, locking the crust tight like a jacket zipper.
The violent aftershocks died instantly. The entire prefecture stopped shaking.
Hero X looked down at the exposed disaster bombs trapped in the sealed ground.
SNAP.
The bombs instantly lost their 3D shape. They flattened out entirely, turning into harmless, flat paper sketches printed directly onto the asphalt.
They were completely deleted.
[We're that whole new type of hero, hero.]
The song faded out across the national broadcast.
Inside the massive evacuation dos, the giant screens shifted to a four-way split-feed.
One cara showed Mount Fuji, completely calm with orange butterflies floating in the sky.
Another cara showed Shibuya Crossing, perfectly stable and full of cheering people.
The third showed the Shizuoka coastline, where the ocean was totally flat.
The final feed showed Hero X standing casually on top of the glowing stitches sealing the mainland fault.
Inside the do, the mother of the Water Hose family was clutching her young son, Kota, tight against her chest.
She was sobbing uncontrollably. The news feed had just shown her husband sitting safely in the dirt, giving a thumbs up to the cara.
Her family was whole.
Across the entire country, from the underground shelters to the streets, millions of people were screaming.
"HERO X"
"HERO X"
OOOOOOHHHHHH
They were crying tears of absolute joy, hugging each other, and chanting his na at the top of their lungs.
In exactly one minute and thirty seconds, the mythical vigilante had completely reversed a nationwide apocalypse live on television.
*-*-*-*
Location: High Atmosphere – Floating Bedrock
Ti: T-Plus 25 Minutes
KRAKOOOM.
The massive red beam of stored kinetic energy blasted straight back out of Patience's giant hands.
All Might was forced to burn another Gearshift charge just to survive.
He violently twisted his body in mid-air, dodging the apocalyptic beam by a single inch.
The red energy shot past him and completely deleted a massive chunk of the floating bedrock behind his back.
Before All Might could even counterattack, a frantic, high-pitched voice buzzed directly into All For One's earpiece.
BZZZT. KRRSH.
Dr. Garaki was shaking so hard his voice was barely understandable over the encrypted comms.
"Master! It's X! He's really back!" Garaki panicked, screaming from his underground lab.
All For One hovered safely behind his defensive clones. He kept his eyes locked on All Might but tapped his earpiece.
"Calm down, Doctor," All For One said smoothly. "What is he doing?"
"He's fixing it!" Garaki yelled, completely losing his mind. "He stopped the Nankai tsunami! He stopped Fuji! He stopped the Tokyo collapse! He's just snapping his fingers, Master! The disasters are completely gone! The news is broadcasting it live!"
"...."
All For One went completely still.
He didn't panic.
He just looked down at the earth far below them.
He couldn't see Hero X, but he knew the vigilante was down there sowhere in Japan, casually erasing his masterpiece of a terror attack like it was a minor inconvenience.
All For One wasn't afraid.
He had spent years planning for this exact mont.
He gathered the Seven Crowns. He acquired the copy of New Order. He rged with Overhaul and Decay.
He pumped the 1500 percent God Serum into his veins.
All of this was specifically built to hunt down Hero X and steal his reality-warping quirk.
But hearing that Hero X fold a ga-tsunami like a piece of paper in ninety seconds made All For One realize a hard truth.
Standard quirks, even awakened ones, were too rigid. Hero X didn't follow the rules of physics.
To guarantee a flawless victory against a man who manipulated reality, All For One needed a quirk that let him ignore the laws of physics right back.
"I need that awakened peashooter," All For One muttered to himself. "I need One For All right now."
He needed to rip the quirk out of Toshinori's chest before Hero X looked up at the sky.
All For One didn't hesitate.
He closed his eyes and linked his mind directly to the remaining quirk-engineered disaster bombs hidden deep in the ocean trenches.
He controlled them directly. He triggered them all at once.
RUUUMBLE.
Deep underwater, the San Andreas fault, the Gibraltar strait, and the Mariana Trench violently detonated.
The massive seismic recoil was going to shake the entire planet.
"Doctor," All For One commanded, his voice totally flat over the radio.
"Yes, Master?" Garaki gasped.
"I just triggered the rest of the bombs," All For One told him. "Now open the gates. Release the suicide army."
Garaki choked on his own breath. "The 1500 percent Nomus?! They only live for exactly five minutes before their cells degenerate into sludge!"
"Then they will cause exactly five minutes of absolute hell," All For One stated coldly. "Send them to every major city on the globe right now. I want maximum chaos. Give that vigilante so much work to do that he can't possibly interfere with . I trust that guy can save the planet after all."
WARP. WARP.
Down on the floating bedrock, the Temperance clone raised its hands.
Dozens of black warp gates tore open across the remaining chunks of the island, and thousands more opened up in the ruined cities on the surface.
Massive, hulking Nomus poured out of the gates.
ROOAAR.
They were glowing with sickening purple Abyssal marks, roaring mindlessly.
They were heavily mutated and built for nothing but pure, suicidal destruction.
He kept his glowing red eyes locked perfectly on All Might.
Out in the distance, Captain Celebrity hurled another massive frictionless boulder from the hundred-ter line.
KRAK-BOOM.
The Humility clone stepped up, winding back a giant fist and shattering the boulder into dust with a single punch.
All Might hovered a few dozen yards away. The Blackwhip cables pulsed heavily under his skin. He watched the villain closely.
"What did you do? All For One," All Might said.
His voice was low and steady. He could see the slight shift in the villain's posture. Danger Sense was screaming that the threat level just spiked.
"I am simply securing my prize," All For One replied smoothly, though his jaw was clenched tight.
Thud.
All For One stepped forward. He pushed right past the Patience and Charity clones.
He wasn't going to sit in the backline and let his puppets do the work anymore.
He needed to finish this personally, and he only had five minutes to do it.
In perfect, terrifying unison, the Seven Crowns moved to support the main body. They didn't attack.
They poured every single ounce of their energy into buffing All For One to an absolute godly state.
Charity, the Utility clone, slamd its hands onto All For One's back, dumping a massive wave of red amplification energy and stacking Amplifier, Quirk Overdrive, Adrenaline Rush, Stamina Battery, Neural Sync, Forced Activation, Limit Breaker, Energy Output, Power Bestowal, Vitality Boost and 50 more directly into his veins.
Humility, the Strength clone, linked with the main body, transferring the raw physical enhancents of Muscle Augntation, Giantification, Density Enhancer, Steel Body, Heavy Payload, Power Build, Centrifugal Quirk, Gyration, Hardfla Fan, Kinetic Accumulation and 50.
Diligence, the Speed clone, fueled his legs with Friction Nullification, Jet Propulsion, Aero Glide, Sonic Speed, Kinetic Accelerator, Float, Slide and Glide, Air Thrusters, Montum Shift, Velocity Multiplier and 50.
Patience, the Defense clone, coated All For One's expanding flesh with Shock Absorption, Shock Nullification, Hardening, Iron Armor, Barrier, Reflection, Pain Nullification, Adamantine Bones, Thick Skin, Kinetic Redirection and 50.
The rest of the seven crowns did the sa.
CRICKLE. CRACKLE.
BAAAM. BAAAM.
All For One's right arm violently swelled.
The muscles tore and knit back together instantly under the insane pressure of hundreds of stacked quirks.
His arm mutated into a twisted, pulsing mass of dark energy, glowing red veins, and hardened black tal.
All For One locked his glowing red eyes on All Might and Captain Celebrity.
FWOOSH.
.....
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