Chapter Text
Melissa Shield had seen many terrible things.
That was not arrogance.
It was a fact.
Epitaph did not allow innocence to last long, and hers had died long ago.
But this…
Her artificial eyes remained fixed on the field.
On the warped elephant monster.
On Izuku Midoriya, shaking so badly in front of it that the entire stadium seemed to tilt around his horror.
On All For One, more than anyone else.
The Quirks I took.
Melissa heard the sentence again.
The Quirks he stole.
Her thoughts caught on it, rejected it, circled back and struck the same impossibility from another angle. It could not be true. It simply could not. A Quirk that stole other Quirks was the kind of story people whispered at the edges of old disasters. A bogeyman from the dawn of Quirks, half myth, half cautionary tale, the sort of thing Epitaph archivists might mention once before dismissing it as pre-institutional panic.
The Quirk bogeyman.
Melissa’s eyes widened.
For one suspended second, the field, the screaming monster, Izuku’s horror, even All For One’s ruined smile seemed to recede behind that single impossible idea.
A man who could take Quirks.
A man who could give them.
A real man.
Standing there.
Breathing through a mask.
Smiling.
Melissa felt something twist deep in her chest, sharp enough to cut through even the tactical calculations screaming for her attention. Her body knew the old absence before her mind named it.
Quirkless.
The word had followed her all her life in ways people with Quirks rarely understood. Not always cruelly. Sometimes with pity. Sometimes with kindness, which was worse. Sometimes with admiration for how much she had accomplished despite it, as if every invention, every sleepless night, every piece of armor she built around herself had been a clever workaround for a defect she was not supposed to notice.
She had built machines because her body had given her none.
She had forged eyes because the world had not given her power.
And now, in front of her, stood a man who had possessed the ability to erase that line.
Not only for her.
For anyone.
A Quirk like that could have rewritten society.
Children born Quirkless could have been given one. People with dangerous or self-destructive Quirks could have been freed from them. Families ruined by hereditary mutations could have had hope. Rescue workers, doctors, farmers, engineers, heroes, how many lives could have changed if such a power had belonged to someone even remotely human?
Everyone could have had a Quirk.
No child would have needed to look at their own hands and wonder why the world had moved forward without them.
No parent would have needed to smile too gently and say that different did not mean lesser while society spent every waking moment proving otherwise.
No genius would have needed to build herself into a weapon just to stand in a room where others were born armed.
And instead…
Melissa looked at All For One.
At the mangled face.
At the rotten Chaos dripping from him like old blood.
Instead, this vile creature had hoarded them.
Collected them.
Worn other people’s miracles like trophies.
He had taken the one power that could have made the world fairer and turned it into an empire of theft. He had not distributed gifts. He had not healed anyone. He had not corrected an injustice written into the bones of modern society.
He had fed.
For more than a century, he had fed.
Every Quirk he stole had left a body behind. A life broken. A family ruined. A person reduced to silence, and now, if Izuku was right, even the echoes of those people had not escaped him. He had taken their abilities, dragged pieces of their souls with them, grown tired of the voices, and shoved them into monsters so their suffering would be somewhere more convenient.
The legends were true.
But then…
No.
That was impossible too.
Because if the legends were true, then Epitaph should have known.
A man like this did not pass through history without leaving scars large enough for even blind institutions to trip over. A Chaos-aware Quirk thief from the dawn of Quirks, a living archive of stolen power, a butcher capable of turning soul-fragments into cards, there should have been files, kill orders, emergency protocols, sealed briefings written in red and black and hidden under enough encryption to make lesser agents weep.
There should have been something.
Anything.
Melissa’s artificial eyes narrowed one after another.
Theia shifted inside her, cold and precise and deeply unsettled.
How had Epitaph not collected anything concrete on this?
Not even the obvious enough fact to put the name in a classified file with thirty warnings and a kill-on-sight order.
Something had gone wrong.
Beside her, Mei Hatsume had gone very still.
The usual spark in her eyes had not vanished, but it had changed shape. It was pure survival now, the mind of a girl who had realized the machine in front of her was a bomb already ticking.
“Mel,” Mei said quietly.
Melissa did not look away.
“Is he who I think he is?”
Melissa’s throat tightened.
The answer should have come as a report.
Threat profile unknown but consistent with legendary Quirk thief. Confirmed ancient villain. Possible primary enemy of All Might. Extreme caution advised.
Nothing so clean arrived. And who could even blame her.
She only nodded.
Mei swallowed.
“And if that is true…”
Her voice thinned.
“Then Izuku really is seeing…”
She could not finish.
Melissa’s fingers curled.
Hundreds of tortured souls.
Inside a card.
Her hands trembled.
She looked down at them in surprise, as if the motion belonged to someone else. Her nails pressed into her palms. The Dark Crown’s lenses tightened one after another, focusing, recalculating, measuring distance and angle and probability.
She could reach him.
She knew she could.
In his current state, wounded, weakened, medically sustained, All For One was not beyond her. Theia had already weighed him. The numbers had already whispered through her. Melissa could cross the field, cut through the false hospitality, and find out how much of that ruined neck remained under the mask.
She could not let this continue.
She could not.
She…
Black chains.
The memory rose without permission.
Melissa’s breath caught.
Then steadied.
Mei noticed immediately.
“Melissa?”
Melissa did not move.
“Are you okay?”
For one moment, Melissa Shield wanted to laugh.
Because okay was a word so far away from the room they stood in, from the field below, from the monster smiling behind a table and calling a prison of souls cardboard, that the mind almost turned it into absurdity.
“I would love nothing more,” Melissa said softly, “than to feel this bastard’s blood under my fingernails for a week.”
Mei went silent.
Melissa’s artificial eyes stayed on All For One.
“But I cannot move.”
Her voice did not tremble now.
“The objective takes precedence over… everything.”
Mei looked at her.
Then at Izuku.
Then at the monster screaming on All For One’s field.
Her mouth tightened.
“Where exactly is the limit for that?”
Melissa had no answer.
Or perhaps, she had far too many.
On the field, Izuku was still struggling to stay upright.
His entire body wanted to fold. His stomach had nothing left to give, and yet the urge to retch stayed in him, convulsing uselessly through a body that had heard too much pain to remain whole. Demon Overlord Ganesha writhed on All For One’s side of the field, and every movement tore another chorus of screams through the inside of his skull.
Help us.
Please.
I don’t want to be here.
My name-
My name was-
Izuku clutched his head.
The scream from the souls rose all at once, a hundred copied lives crashing together in agony, and his knees nearly gave.
Ochako slammed one hand against the barrier.
“Izuku!”
All For One watched with visible delight.
“You should be very wary of your next moves,” he said. “Anything you do could result in…”
He paused, as if searching for the most delicate possible wording.
“…unsavory consequences for the poor vestiges inside my monsters.”
Izuku’s fingers dug into his hair.
His Chaos flickered around him, warm light stuttering beneath the pressure of horror.
All For One placed one hand over Demon Overlord Ganesha’s card.
“I activate the effect of Demon Overlord Ganesha.”
The elephant beast convulsed.
Its four arms spread wide, chains clattering across its misshapen body. The screams inside it twisted, becoming a single metallic shriek that scraped against Izuku’s nerves.
“Once per turn, Ganesha can destroy one monster on the field, then add one Demon Overlord monster from my Deck to my hand.”
One of Ganesha’s arms lifted.
Its clawed hand pointed toward Super HERO Ocean Marvel.
Izuku’s eyes sharpened through the pain.
No.
He could not let All For One choose the terms.
Not even now.
Not even with all the screams.
“I activate the effect of Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker!”
Scarlet Breaker stepped forward, scarlet flames erupting around both fists.
“When a monster effect is activated, Scarlet Breaker can negate that effect.”
All For One’s smile widened.
The red hero drew back one fist.
“And if he does,” Izuku forced out, “that monster loses half its ATK, and that lost ATK is added to another HERO monster I control.”
Scarlet Breaker struck the air.
A beam of crimson starlight slammed into Ganesha’s chest.
The effect froze.
The elephant monster arched backward.
And the souls screamed.
Izuku saw it.
Felt it.
The attack did not simply reduce a number. It tore power away from the prison holding them together. It ripped through the gestalt, dragging strength from the stitched mass of copied souls, and every one of them seemed to feel the severing as if a nerve had been cut while still alive.
Izuku’s knees buckled.
“Izuku!” Ochako screamed.
He caught himself with one hand on his Duel Disk, teeth clenched so hard pain shot through his jaw.
Do not fall.
Do not fall.
Do not fall.
The red energy ripped from Demon Overlord Ganesha and flowed across Izuku’s field toward Super HERO Solarblaze Wind.
Demon Overlord Ganesha
ATK 2000 → 1000
Super HERO Solarblaze Wind
ATK 3300 → 4300
The wind around Solarblaze roared, sunlight sharpening into a storm-bright mantle.
Ganesha’s effect fizzled.
All For One clapped once.
Then again.
Then again.
“Excellent,” he said. “You actually managed to stop part of my action.”
Izuku stared at him, breathing hard.
The names still rang in his head.
Ganesha sobbed through its tusks.
All For One’s fingers drifted to another card.
“However, my turn is far from over.”
He placed a Spell Card onto the table.
“I activate Return of Darkness.”
A black circle opened beneath All For One’s field, but it did not shine like Allure had. This darkness was flatter. Heavier. The kind that did not invite temptation, but unearthed something buried poorly.
“This card allows me to Special Summon one banished DARK monster.”
Izuku’s blood went cold.
Another one.
His throat tightened.
Another one of these horrid gestalts.
All For One’s smile turned soft.
“You should be careful with this next one, Midoriya Izuku.”
The banishment zone opened.
“Assuming, of course, you can remain on your feet long enough to appreciate it.”
A card emerged from the void.
All For One placed it on the field.
“Return, Demon Overlord Hanuman.”
The darkness split.
A new shape dropped onto the field with simian violence, striking the ground on long, knotted arms. It was taller than Ganesha when hunched, wrapped in blackened prayer beads and torn fragments of ancient cloth, its body part ape, part warrior, part corpse animated by rage it did not understand. A crown of broken gold sat crookedly on its head, and its mouth stretched too wide when it opened.
Then it screamed.
Demon Overlord Hanuman
DARK / Beast-Warrior / Level 10
ATK 3000 / DEF 1000
Izuku tried to brace himself.
It did not help.
The second impact was worse than the first.
Now the Eyes of Gold did not need to teach him the shape of the horror. His mind recognized it the moment the card took form, and recognition made every scream sharper. Names flooded him. Faces. Little fragments of lives attached to stolen powers and then cut away from the thief’s mind because their suffering had become inconvenient.
Hanuman’s body twisted, muscles bulging and collapsing beneath its skin as copied souls slammed against the inside of the monster’s form.
Izuku swayed.
He felt weak.
As if the world had placed too much grief inside his body and his bones were no longer structurally capable of holding it.
He could not do this.
The thought came before he could stop it.
He could not.
Not against this.
The screams climbed higher.
Izuku’s vision blurred.
He thought he might pass out.
Then a voice pierced through the inferno.
“Izuku!”
Warm.
Familiar.
He heard it once and almost lost it under the souls.
Then again.
“Izuku, listen to me!”
He focused.
Hard.
So hard that the act itself felt like tearing his mind away from barbed wire.
Ochako stood behind the barrier.
Tears ran down her face.
Her hands were pressed flat against the transparent wall, fingers spread as if she could reach him through it by wanting hard enough. Her own Chaos trembled around her. Gentle gravity trying to hold him in place when everything else wanted to drag him down.
“I’m with you,” she said.
Izuku’s eyes widened.
For one second, the screaming dimmed.
“I know it hurts,” Ochako said.
Her voice shook.
“I know it must hurt more than anything. I can feel a fraction of it, and it already feels like…”
She swallowed.
Her tears kept falling.
“Like despair.”
Izuku could not speak.
Ochako shook her head, forcing herself on.
“But you cannot give up now.”
His breath caught.
“You did not give up for me.”
The words struck him somewhere deeper than the screams.
Ochako pressed harder against the barrier.
“You did not give up when Tragoedia was in front of us. You did not give up when everything was impossible. You reached for me anyway.”
Her voice cracked.
“So, you cannot give up on them either.”
Izuku stared at her.
For one impossible heartbeat, the field receded.
All For One. Hanuman. Ganesha. The screams. The duel. The Tower. The audience.
All of it moved far enough away for Ochako’s voice to become the center of the world.
If he collapsed, all the souls would remain with All For One.
A single tear ran down Izuku’s cheek.
He turned back toward the field.
Toward the smiling man behind the wretched flesh.
His teeth clenched.
“I will not give up.”
His voice was hoarse.
Shaking.
But it stood.
“No matter what.”
All For One sighed.
“How very cute.”
The spell circle beneath Hanuman pulsed.
“But I am afraid Return of Darkness is not finished resolving.”
Izuku froze.
All For One lifted one finger.
“As the price for its activation, after the Summon resolves, I must destroy one DARK monster I control.”
Izuku’s heart stopped.
“No.”
All For One turned his ruined smile toward Demon Overlord Ganesha.
“Ganesha has outlived his usefulness.”
“No- !”
All For One snapped his fingers.
The sound was tiny.
Demon Overlord Ganesha cracked.
Like a statue made from bone and prayer splitting under divine contempt. Lines of black light tore through the elephant’s body. Its tusks shattered. Its four arms seized at once, claws curling inward as if trying to hold itself together.
Then all the souls inside it screamed.
At the same time.
The sound struck Izuku without sound reaching anyone else in the same way.
His body went completely still.
The screams filled everything.
Ganesha’s form collapsed inward, crushing into a knot of darkness and agony, the copied souls inside it flaring one last time as the card’s vessel broke. Izuku saw faces tear into light. Hands reaching. Mouths open. Names scattering like ash in a storm.
Then the monster vanished.
The field registered the destruction.
All For One’s Spell resolved.
And Izuku Midoriya remained frozen.
He could not process the moment.
Could not decide whether those souls had been freed or mutilated further.
Could not tell whether the silence where Ganesha had stood was mercy, death, or simply another locked room he could no longer hear through.
Hanuman screamed in its place.
A new chorus.
A new cage.
Izuku’s thoughts began to fracture.
He had to make this stop.
Somehow.
Anyhow.
The price did not matter.
He had to end this.
He had to…
his throat tightened.
Somewhere deep in his mind, beneath the horror, beneath Ochako’s voice, beneath the screaming souls and the impossible rage, the answer was already there.
He knew exactly what he had to do.
The Shadow Kingdom.
The thought opened like a door.
All For One was monstrous, powerful, layered with stolen Quirks and rotten Chaos and ancient knowledge, but even he had no defense against that technique if Izuku set the rule correctly. The Shadow Kingdom did not care about muscles, and neither it did about Quirk factors.
If Izuku declared the condition…
if he made it a rule…
All For One loses the oxygen in his blood.
The man would die. The fact that he needs a respirator mask is enough of a hint.
Immediately.
No more monsters full of tortured souls.
No more rotten smile.
Japan’s most powerful criminal, All Might’s enemy, the thief of Quirks, the butcher who had shoved copied souls into his creations…
Gone.
In an instant.
The world would be rid of him.
Izuku’s hands trembled.
Then began to rise.
The arena changed.
No one knew why at first.
Nothing visible had happened yet, but the air drew inward around Izuku. His warm Chaos, still bright, still electric, began to sharpen at the edges. Sunlight condensed toward eclipse. The shadows beneath his feet deepened by a degree too precise to be natural.
All For One tilted his head inside the mask.
Izuku’s fingers shook as they lifted.
The line was clear.
He had the power to do it.
He had the right…
did he?
The souls inside Hanuman screamed.
A hundred knives of sound drove through his skull.
Yes.
No.
It did not matter.
It had to matter.
It could not matter.
Everything became silent around him, though the screams continued inside. The field, the stands, the Tower, the ocean, the world, everything seemed to hold still as Izuku raised his arms.
Katsuki’s eyes widened.
“Deku…”
Ochako went rigid.
Her tears stopped falling for one terrible second.
“Izuku?”
Carlo’s mouth opened.
Izuku’s hands kept rising.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
As if every inch of motion had to pass through a wall of screaming before his body allowed it.
The shadows beneath his feet deepened.
They did not spread yet.
Not fully.
But the field felt them.
The arena felt them.
That ancient pressure coiled beneath the holographic ground, waiting for a command. Waiting for the rule. Waiting for Izuku Midoriya to decide what kind of world would exist inside the boundary of his will.
The Shadow Kingdom answered him.
And that was the problem.
It answered far too easily.
All For One stood across from him, tilted head and ruined smile and medical mask, a monster wearing human shape because history had failed to kill him properly. Behind him, Demon Overlord Hanuman writhed in pain, long arms scraping against the field, its simian mouth open in a scream that was no longer a monster’s cry in Izuku’s ears.
Copied souls, stolen with Quirks, torn from bodies, shoved elsewhere when their voices became inconvenient.
An entire graveyard forced to keep breathing.
Izuku could end it.
He could end it now.
All For One had no defense against the Shadow Kingdom if Izuku chose the correct rule. No Quirk could intercept it. No stolen shield could block it. No medical apparatus could replace what the Shadow Game decided no longer belonged to him.
The monster would die where he stood.
His ruined body would crumple behind the modified Duel Disk. His rotten Chaos would collapse inward. His smile would vanish. The man who had stolen Quirks, tortured souls, hunted All Might through history and treated human lives like livestock would be gone.
Gone.
Izuku had all the power to do it.
He was right to do it.
He had to be.
How could he not be?
The screams inside Hanuman climbed higher, jagged and desperate, and the thought became almost simple.
Kill him.
Mercy.
Justice.
Protection.
Rescue.
Every word arranged itself before Izuku like a row of shields, each one offering him a reason strong enough to hide behind.
He deserved it.
He had earned death a thousand times over.
A million.
There were people inside that monster who would never go home because All For One had decided their pain was easier to store in cardboard. There were souls inside his body that had once belonged to children, parents, heroes, villains, ordinary people who had woken up one day with a miracle and died or lived to see it taken from them. There were vestiges screaming because this man had grown tired of hearing them.
Izuku’s fingers trembled.
Do it.
The shadows rose another fraction.
His stomach twisted. His throat closed. His hands shook so violently that the gesture almost broke apart. Spots appeared at the edge of his vision, black and gold, flickering in time with the screams. His heartbeat thundered, too fast, too loud, drowning in the cries of the souls and the impossible weight of what his own hands were about to become.
To kill a man.
To decide.
To raise his arms.
To write a rule.
To watch the life leave him because Izuku Midoriya had commanded the world to make it so.
His breath came apart.
Had he been ready before?
The memory struck without warning.
Fear.
Kagemoto’s body.
The old man’s absence opening like a pit where a teacher should have been.
The rage that had burned so hot it stopped feeling like rage and became direction. The need to make Fear pay. To kill him. To erase him. To answer assassination with execution and call the answer justice because grief demanded a body beneath it.
Had he been ready then?
Had he truly been ready?
Or had he only been drowning?
Izuku remembered the feeling of almost crossing that line. The terrible clarity. The knowledge that if he stepped forward, if he let his hand close, if he made that choice, something would remain afterward that no apology could remove.
Blood.
The knowledge of it.
The weight of it.
A life ended by his decision.
He had thought then that he could bear it.
Maybe he could have.
Maybe that was the horror.
Maybe the frightening thing was not that killing Fear had been impossible for him, but that it had nearly been possible.
And now…
All For One was worse.
So much worse that comparison felt obscene.
Fear had killed Kagemoto.
All For One had turned souls into a screaming vortex of torture and pain.
If there was ever a person Izuku had the right to kill, surely it was him.
Surely.
Surely.
The word repeated until it sounded like pleading.
His hands rose higher.
Hanuman screamed.
The copied souls inside it hurled themselves against the walls of their prison, and Izuku felt each impact like fingernails dragged down the inside of his skull.
He could not think.
He had to think.
If he used the Shadow Kingdom to kill All For One, what happened after?
The question arrived small and cold beneath the furnace of rage.
Izuku hated it.
The Shadow Kingdom would cost him.
He knew what the technique demanded. He knew how it consumed focus, Chaos, body and mind. To create a rule precise enough, absolute enough, lethal enough to kill All For One instantly would not be a small act. It would tear through him. Leave him hollow. Leave him vulnerable.
And Melissa was still waiting.
The World Machine still existed.
Ex Machina’s objective had not stopped because All For One had stepped into the arena. The tower above them still held whatever mechanism had dragged this whole tournament toward a conclusion no one understood. Mayura was somewhere in that building. David and Eri and Monriel were moving below.
If Izuku spent everything here…
if he collapsed after killing All For One…
Who would stop Melissa and the Machine?
Who would protect Ochako, Katsuki, Momo, Sam, everyone still trapped inside the shape of this game?
His hands shook harder.
There.
A rational answer.
A clean enough reason not to do it.
He could not kill All For One now because doing so would leave him unable to complete the larger mission. He had responsibilities beyond this duel.
It made sense.
It was true.
It was also awfully convenient, wasn’t it?
Izuku’s throat tightened.
Was it strategy?
Or cowardice wearing a pristine mask coated in self-righteousness?
Was he sparing All For One because the objective required it, or because some part of him still could not bear to feel a life end under his hands?
Was refusing to kill mercy?
Weakness?
Self-preservation?
Heroism?
Fear?
The shadows trembled around him.
He did not know.
All For One watched him from across the field, smile faint and poisonous, as if he could taste every fracture in the boy’s heart.
Izuku lowered his chin.
The screams continued.
Hanuman writhed.
The field waited.
And somewhere beneath the terror, beneath the doubt, beneath the awful seduction of one perfect rule that would make the monster stop breathing forever, Izuku found one truth he could hold.
There would be no change in direction.
Not now.
He could not kill him.
He would not kill him.
Maybe that was strength.
Maybe it was just a pathetic excuse.
He did not have the luxury of knowing yet.
But the Shadow Kingdom still mattered.
His hands stopped shaking.
The shadows beneath him stilled.
Then changed.
All For One’s smile twitched.
Izuku crossed his arms.
The gesture cut through the field like a seal closing.
His Eyes of Gold shone forward brighter than they ever had before. They burned with something deeper, something older, something the man across from him had copied but never understood.
Truth.
Judgment.
Sunlight entering a locked room.
Izuku’s voice tore through the arena.
“I will free them.”
No one moved.
Izuku’s Chaos rose.
“I will free every single soul you have trapped in your monsters.”
Hanuman’s scream faltered.
For one impossible instant, beneath the agony, Izuku thought he felt something else.
All For One’s smile widened again.
“Will you?”
Izuku did not answer him.
He closed his eyes.
The world held its breath.
The roar of the audience vanished.
The humming of the Duel System vanished.
The wind vanished.
Even the tortured screams inside Hanuman seemed to fall away, not silenced, but placed behind an immeasurable wall of stillness.
The room became devoid of sound.
Izuku breathed in.
Darkness unfolded beneath the light.
He breathed out.
The sun inside him opened its eye.
SHADOW KINGDOM
The words entered the silence and became law.
Izuku opened his eyes.
Gold flooded the field.
RULER OF THE SUN
The field remained the same. The holographic grid still glowed beneath Izuku’s monsters. All For One still stood behind the raised Duel Disk, rotten Chaos curling around him like the breath of something buried alive. Demon Overlord Hanuman still writhed on his field, the copied souls inside it screaming where only Izuku could hear them in full.
But the space between those things became different.
Izuku crossed his arms tighter.
His golden eyes shone forward with a light that did not feel like the artificial gold All For One had forced into the world through his experiments.
It was sunlight reflected on a throne made from darkness.
Izuku opened his mouth.
“I impose one rule.”
All For One did not move.
No one did.
Izuku’s fingers dug into his sleeves.
His mind worked so quickly it almost hurt. He could not kill him. He had chosen that, or failed to choose otherwise, and there was no time left to decide whether that was mercy or cowardice. But he still needed something. A way to interfere beyond ordinary card effects.
A way to somehow reach the monsters without only destroying them.
One rule.
The only one he knew with absolute certainty could matter.
“I can fight alongside my monsters in battle.”
The Shadow Kingdom accepted.
The silence deepened.
A ring of black and gold light unfolded beneath Izuku’s feet, then spread outward across the field, passing under his monsters, under All For One’s raised table, and then under the screaming body of Demon Overlord Hanuman.
Izuku felt the weight settle into his bones.
The cost was immediate.
His breath came slower. His muscles tightened. His Chaos sank into the field like roots driven into ancient soil. The next few moves would have to be perfect. Absurdly precise. One mistake would not simply cost Life Points, but likely his entire force of will.
All For One scrutinized him from across the field.
For once, he said nothing.
The ruined face tilted slightly inside the mask, his breathing apparatus hissing through the silence. The absence of his eyes somehow made the scrutiny worse. He appeared thoughtful, almost genuinely so, as if he had expected many reactions from Izuku Midoriya, but not precisely this one.
Then his smile returned.
“I admit,” he said, “I was not particularly expecting to play a Shadow Game in this tournament.”
Izuku’s jaw tightened.
All For One’s tone brightened.
“But one cannot be too picky.”
Hanuman’s chains rattled.
The screams surged, as if the souls inside the monster could feel the Shadow Kingdom pressing against the card that held them.
All For One rested one hand on his modified Duel Disk.
“Still, my turn is far from done.”
Izuku’s shoulders tensed.
“I activate the effect of Demon Overlord Hanuman.”
The simian monster slammed two of its elongated arms into the ground. Black veins spread through the arena floor from its claws, and the copied souls inside it screamed in overlapping fragments as the effect awakened.
“Since a monster was destroyed this turn,” All For One said, “Hanuman allows me to Special Summon another monster from my hand, then destroy one card on the field.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
All For One placed a card onto the table.
“Come forth, Demon Overlord Mahabali.”
The darkness behind Hanuman split open.
Something immense stepped through.
The monster was broad and low, its body shaped like a grotesque warrior-bull with humanoid arms wrapped in broken gold bangles and strips of black ceremonial cloth. Its head was crowned with jagged horns, one cracked near the base, and its eyes shone with the same empty agony as Ganesha and Hanuman. Heavy chains dragged behind it, each one ending in a different broken symbol, as if entire names had been hooked to its body and forced to pull.
Demon Overlord Mahabali
DARK / Beast-Warrior / Level 10
ATK 1000 / DEF 3000
Izuku heard the voices inside it immediately.
Fewer than Hanuman?
More?
He could not tell.
The pain blended too quickly.
Different names. Different screams. The same wrongness.
Mahabali raised one hand.
All For One smiled.
“With Hanuman’s effect, I target Super HERO Solarblaze Wind for destruction.”
The bull-warrior’s chains shot forward, black hooks screaming toward Solarblaze.
Izuku forced himself to move through the pressure.
“It will not work.”
Solarblaze Wind lifted his arm, and the sunlight around him compressed into a rotating shield of wind.
“Once per turn, Super HERO Solarblaze Wind is unaffected by the first opponent’s card effect that would affect him.”
The chains struck the wind barrier.
For an instant, the shadows clawed at it.
Then they were blown apart in a burst of green-gold light.
All For One’s smile did not fade.
“I suspected something was up with that one.”
Izuku did not like the satisfaction in his voice.
“However,” All For One continued, “we are far from over.”
He placed one hand over Mahabali’s card.
“I activate Demon Overlord Mahabali’s effect. It can destroy itself and one other card on the field, and if at least one card is destroyed by this effect, I may Special Summon a Demon Overlord monster from my Deck.”
Izuku’s eyes widened again.
Mahabali lowered its horns.
“I target Demon Overlord Mahabali and Super HERO Solarblaze Wind.”
“No.”
Izuku pointed forward.
“Ocean Marvel!”
The Rank 8 Xyz raised both hands, the cosmic tide around him surging upward.
“I activate Super HERO Ocean Marvel’s Quick Effect. Once per turn, when an effect would make a HERO monster leave the field, Ocean Marvel negates that effect.”
A wall of deep blue starlight rose before Solarblaze Wind.
Mahabali’s shadowed charge struck it and broke against the tide.
Izuku continued.
“Then I can Set one Heroic Spell, or one Spell that mentions HERO cards, from my Graveyard to my field.”
His Graveyard flashed.
A card rose from it and slammed face-down into his Spell and Trap Zone.
“I Set Heroic Final Assault.”
All For One sighed.
“All of this protection is beginning to get on my nerves.”
Mahabali’s body cracked.
Izuku stiffened.
Ocean Marvel had protected Solarblaze.
But Mahabali had still targeted itself.
And it had no desire to survive.
The bull-warrior’s own chains wrapped around its throat, arms and chest. The souls inside it shrieked as the monster’s body shattered inward, collapsing beneath its own effect in a burst of black light and broken gold ornaments.
Izuku clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
Do not fall.
Do not fall.
The screams tore through him anyway.
All For One’s Deck opened.
“Since at least one of the targeted cards was destroyed, Mahabali’s effect resolves.”
A new card emerged.
This time, even before it touched the field, Izuku felt the pressure change.
All For One’s smile widened.
“Now, this one is a little more impressive.”
He placed the card down.
“Special Summon.”
The ground beneath his field split.
Black fire coiled upward in serpentine loops, and from within it emerged a dragonlike Beast-Warrior of immense length and terrible stillness. Its body was covered in dark scales and armored plates, but its torso rose into a humanoid form crowned by burning horns and a face stretched between reptile, warrior and corpse. Its arms were long, ending in claws that dripped sparks of black venom. Its tail coiled behind it like a living siege engine.
When it opened its mouth, the scream inside was not one chorus.
It was layers of them.
A thousand wounds stacked on one another.
“Demon Overlord Vritra.”
Demon Overlord Vritra
DARK / Beast-Warrior / Level 10
ATK 4000 / DEF 0
Izuku’s vision spotted again.
Mahabali’s dying screams had not ended before Vritra’s captive vestiges began.
They overlapped.
One cage collapsing.
Another opening.
A chain of suffering with no silence between links.
All For One’s voice cut through them.
“This will truly be the end for you.”
Vritra raised its claws.
“When Demon Overlord Vritra is Special Summoned, it can destroy monsters on the field up to the number of differently named Demon Overlord monsters I control.”
His hand gestured toward Hanuman.
“Since I control two, Hanuman and Vritra, I may destroy two monsters.”
Izuku’s breath caught.
“First, Super HERO Ocean Marvel.”
Vritra’s claw swept down.
A black serpent of fire tore across the field and pierced the Rank 8 hero through the chest. Ocean Marvel’s cosmic tides surged, trying to hold. For one second, the hero stood against the inferno, waves roaring at his feet and starlight blazing around his arms.
Then the fire swallowed him.
Super HERO Ocean Marvel shattered.
“Second,” All For One said, “Super HERO Solarblaze Wind.”
Vritra’s other claw descended.
Solarblaze Wind lifted his sun-shield, but the once-per-turn immunity had already been spent. Black fire struck the wind and tore through it. Solar light scattered across the field like dying embers.
Ochako gasped.
Solarblaze Wind dissolved in a storm of green-gold sparks.
Izuku grimaced with every destruction.
The screams had not stopped. Mahabali’s death was still tearing inside him. Vritra’s souls screamed louder with each action, as if the monster’s effects scraped their prison raw to generate power.
But he forced himself to look up.
“It is not over.”
All For One tilted his head.
Izuku’s voice came ragged.
“You still have no way to get past Scarlet Breaker.”
Scarlet Breaker stepped forward, fists blazing red, the last great wall between All For One and Izuku’s Life Points.
All For One’s smile returned to something almost lazy.
“I do not particularly need one.”
The Duel System shifted.
“Battle Phase.”
All For One’s ruined mouth curled beneath the mask.
“You should really reconsider your strategy, Midoriya Izuku. Provoking someone like me is never a good idea.”
Izuku said nothing.
All For One lifted one finger.
“Demon Overlord Hanuman, attack Super HERO Heat Wave.”
Hanuman launched itself forward.
The simian Beast-Warrior moved with grotesque speed, all four limbs slamming against the field before it leapt, mouth open, teeth bared, the souls inside it screaming as though the attack itself dragged them across broken glass.
Izuku’s eyes widened.
“Heat Wave!”
The FIRE Fusion monster braced.
“I activate Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker’s effect!”
Scarlet Breaker’s fists blazed.
“And in response, I activate Super HERO Heat Wave’s Quick Effect!”
Heat Wave’s body erupted, vents along his armor opening as a pressure blast of flame surged around him. His ATK climbed, fire condensing into a white-hot aura.
Super HERO Heat Wave
ATK 2200 → 3000
“Then Scarlet Breaker’s effect resolves!”
Scarlet Breaker struck Heat Wave’s back with an open palm, not as an attack, but as a transfer of heroic force. Red starlight flooded the Fusion monster’s body.
“Scarlet Breaker doubles a HERO monster’s ATK during battle.”
Super HERO Heat Wave
ATK 3000 → 6000
Hanuman crashed into him.
The impact detonated.
Fire swallowed the simian monster completely, and for one blinding instant Super HERO Heat Wave became the center of a miniature sun. Hanuman’s body twisted inside the flames, claws scraping against Heat Wave’s armor before the difference in power became too great to overcome.
The monster was blasted apart.
All For One - 4000 LP → 1000 LP
The arena shook with the damage.
For a fraction of a second, hope almost rose.
Then All For One whistled.
“A courageous decision.”
Izuku froze.
All For One’s smile sharpened.
“Given that it results in Hanuman’s death.”
Izuku’s stomach dropped.
His reflexes had taken over.
He had responded like a duelist because if he had not, he would have lost far more.
He had not thought…
Hanuman cracked in the flames.
The souls inside screamed.
Izuku’s entire body seized.
“No- ”
The Beast-Warrior shattered into black fragments, and every copied soul inside it cried out as the vessel collapsed. Izuku staggered as if the sound had physically struck him, one hand flying to his chest, the other trembling uselessly at his side.
The monster vanished.
The screams cut off.
Or moved too far away to hear.
That was way, way worse.
Izuku lifted his head slowly.
His face was pale with horror, but his eyes burned with rage.
“I will not forgive you.”
All For One’s smile glinted.
“You will not have to.”
The field darkened around Vritra.
“After all, the Battle Phase is not over.”
Izuku’s heart lurched.
All For One’s hand moved toward Vritra.
“Now that Hanuman has been destroyed, a Demon Overlord monster has left my field. Which means Vritra has the field completely open to use its overwhelming ability.”
Vritra coiled higher.
Its black fire spread behind it like wings.
“When a Demon Overlord monster leaves the field, Vritra can destroy Spell or Trap Cards on the field equal to the number of differently named Demon Overlord monsters that have left the field this turn.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
All For One counted on his fingers.
“Ganesha. Mahabali. Hanuman.”
Three names.
Three broken prisons.
Three screaming absences.
“That number is three.”
Vritra roared.
Black fire lashed across Izuku’s backrow.
All three face-down cards ignited.
The first shattered.
The second burned.
The third, the Set Heroic Final Assault, was consumed in a burst of dark flame.
Izuku’s Spell and Trap Zone emptied.
All For One hummed.
“Piece of cake.”
Izuku’s hand closed.
“No.”
All For One paused.
Izuku lifted his head.
“That is exactly what I expected you to do.”
For the first time in several exchanges, the villain went still.
“One of the cards you destroyed was my Trap Card, Heroes’ Woe.”
A card flashed in Izuku’s Graveyard.
“When Heroes’ Woe is sent to the Graveyard by my opponent’s card effect, I can banish it from the Graveyard.”
The Trap Card appeared behind Izuku, its image burning with the silhouettes of fallen heroes rising from darkness.
“Then I destroy one monster on the field, and deal damage to my opponent equal to that monster’s Level times 100.”
The arena inhaled.
Izuku pointed at Vritra.
“You miscalculated.”
Vritra was Level 10.
All For One had 1000 Life Points.
“Vritra will be destroyed, and you will take a thousand damage.”
For one heartbeat, the entire arena saw it.
The impossible opening.
The path to victory.
Then All For One laughed.
As if Izuku had just told a charming joke.
“That will only happen in your dreams.”
Izuku’s blood went cold.
All For One’s Graveyard opened.
“From my Graveyard, I banish Demon Overlord Ganesha as the cost for its effect.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
Ganesha’s card vanished into the banishment zone.
“By doing so, I can negate the effect of an opponent’s Spell or Trap Card.”
The image of Heroes’ Woe cracked.
Izuku’s trap shattered before resolving.
All For One’s smile became almost wistful.
“I admit, simply banishing the monsters from the Graveyard does not grant quite the same rush as destroying them. I do not get to hear them scream in pain.”
Izuku’s face twisted with disgust.
“But still,” All For One said, “it will do.”
Vritra’s eyes ignited.
“For Vritra’s final effect.”
Izuku’s field trembled.
“When a Demon Overlord monster is banished, Vritra can target one card on the field and destroy it.”
All For One pointed.
“I destroy Super HERO Heat Wave.”
The serpent-dragon’s black fire lunged.
Heat Wave tried to brace, still glowing with the last residue of Scarlet Breaker’s power, but the attack did not care about battle strength. Black flame pierced the Fusion monster and tore him apart.
Super HERO Heat Wave was destroyed.
Izuku’s last line of defense vanished with him.
All For One’s voice lowered.
“This will remind you of the pain you are fighting against.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
Vritra moved.
The serpent-like Beast-Warrior coiled backward, then launched itself across the battlefield with horrifying speed. Its claws tore through the air, aimed not at Izuku, but at the last hero standing.
Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker raised both fists.
The ace burned scarlet.
For a moment, he looked ready to punch through the monster’s darkness and drag the sun behind him.
Then Vritra struck.
Black fire swallowed red light.
Scarlet Breaker shattered.
Izuku Midoriya - 4000 LP → 2400 LP
The damage hit him inside the Shadow Kingdom.
Pain tore across his chest, not lethal, but real enough to drive him back a step. He grimaced, teeth clenched, one hand clutching the front of his shirt as the field’s law translated battle into consequence.
The audience erupted into panicked murmurs.
Ochako grit her teeth.
Izuku stayed on his feet.
Barely.
All For One exhaled.
“The Battle Phase is over.”
The field settled.
Izuku’s side was empty.
Only the lingering gold-black pressure of the Shadow Kingdom, and Izuku himself, standing in the middle of it with trembling hands and rage burning through the tears still drying on his face.
Across from him, Demon Overlord Vritra remained coiled on All For One’s field.
Its captive vestiges screamed.
All For One placed two cards face-down.
The cards appeared behind Vritra like sealed coffins.
“I Set two cards.”
His smile widened.
“And end my turn.”
All For One - 1000 LP
Izuku Midoriya - 2400 LP
For a moment, he simply looked at the boy across from him.
Then, softly, almost kindly, he asked,
“Will you be able to truly deal some damage this turn?”
The field was tenser than ever.
Izuku’s hand remained at his side.
For a moment, he could not speak.
The field before him was ruined. His monsters were gone, his backrow destroyed, his Life Points cut nearly in half, and across from him Demon Overlord Vritra coiled in the center of All For One’s field like a black wound given scales and claws.
The screams continued.
They did even not fade between turns.
They evidently did not respect game flow, phases, priority or the mercy of silence. The souls trapped inside Vritra writhed in endless agony, and every second Izuku’s Eyes of Gold remained open, the pain pressed harder against his skull.
Still, he stood.
Barely.
All For One’s question lingered in the air.
Izuku lifted his head.
His face was pale. His mouth still tasted of bile. Tears had dried in uneven tracks across his cheeks, and his hands trembled so badly that his fingers almost slipped when they brushed the top of his Deck.
But his eyes did not leave All For One.
“I will have to do way more than damage.”
All For One’s smile widened slightly.
Izuku’s voice roughened.
“However…”
He swallowed.
His gaze flicked, for less than a second, toward Vritra.
Toward the souls inside.
Then back to the man behind it.
“I cannot give up now.”
Warm Chaos flickered around him again, wounded but present, thin streams of gold electricity crawling over his shoulders and arms.
“I promised I would destroy that twisted smile of yours.”
All For One gave a soft, pleased sound.
“Oh?” he said. “And here I thought heroes were supposed to preserve those.”
“Shut up.”
The words snapped out of Izuku hard enough to cut the field.
All For One stilled.
Izuku’s hands curled.
“Never talk about heroes that way.”
His voice shook, but not from fear alone.
“You do not know what half of that word means.”
The arena held still.
Izuku took a step forward.
“You have spent your entire life killing, destroying, stealing, torturing. You have treated people like objects for so long that you do not even understand how monstrous that is. You do not understand that making people suffer is wrong. You do not understand that using pain as a tool is twisted. You do not understand that other people exist for reasons beyond what you can take from them.”
All For One’s smile remained.
But the air around it changed.
Izuku’s golden eyes narrowed.
“Do you have even a single inkling of empathy?”
The question landed.
Something All For One had not expected.
“Have you ever cared for someone?” Izuku asked. “For something?”
All For One froze.
Only for a microsecond.
A shift so small most of the arena missed it completely.
But Izuku saw it.
His Eyes of Gold saw the interruption. The fractional halt in the rhythm of the villain’s breathing. The tiny delay before his smile resumed its perfect place. The almost invisible stillness where the question had struck something that existed beneath arrogance, beneath performance, beneath the layers of stolen power and cultivated monstrosity.
Ochako saw Izuku see it.
And, despite everything, she smiled.
Her hands still trembled on the barrier. Her cheeks were wet. The despair leaking from Vritra was so strong that even the fraction she could feel made her stomach twist.
But Izuku was still there.
Even in this.
Even standing before the most horrifying man she had ever seen, with souls screaming in his ears and the temptation of the Shadow Kingdom still staining the air around him, Izuku Midoriya had asked the one question only he would ask.
Do you care?
Ochako’s chest tightened.
He was still trying to understand.
Still trying to stand as the best heroic version of himself, even when the world was doing everything it could to make it feel like a cruel joke.
All For One spoke first.
“A meddling child,” he said, voice quieter now, “should not put his nose in the affairs of adults.”
Izuku did not answer.
He could not afford to.
The turn had begun.
The duel remained.
The souls were still screaming.
He had to do this.
There was no other way.
“My turn.”
He drew.
The card slid between his fingers.
Izuku looked at it.
For one second, the world narrowed to the name.
Heroic Retribution.
His eyes widened.
Something moved inside his chest.
A possibility.
Maybe.
Maybe he could do something with this.
But first…
his gaze moved to Vritra.
First, he had to find a way through the monster.
“Standby Phase.”
The Duel Disk pulsed.
Izuku’s Graveyard lit with a faint red-orange glow.
“Since Super HERO Heat Wave is in my Graveyard, during my Standby Phase, I can activate its effect.”
The image of the fallen Fusion hero appeared behind him, distorted by heat haze.
“I add one Spell or Trap Card from my Graveyard to my hand.”
His Graveyard opened.
A card rose.
“I add Heroic Final Assault.”
The card entered his hand, and Izuku stepped into the next phase before All For One could poison the moment with another remark.
“Main Phase One.”
He placed the recovered Spell onto his Duel Disk.
“I activate Heroic Final Assault!”
The Spell opened, the silhouettes of charging heroes blazing beneath a burning star.
“This lets me Special Summon one HERO monster from my Deck.”
Izuku’s Deck shone bronze.
“Sixth star of the firmament.”
A heavy thud struck the field.
A massive warrior emerged in plates of bronze and deep brown armor, each piece engraved with star-shaped rivets and glowing seams of red-gold light. His shoulders were broad, his arms armored like battering rams, and a heavy visor covered most of his face. He carried no weapon. He did not need one. Every line of him looked built to advance through walls until the wall understood it had made a mistake.
“Come forth, Starlight HERO Bronze Juggernaut!”
Starlight HERO Bronze Juggernaut
EARTH / Warrior / level 6
ATK 2200 / DEF 1700
The bronze hero slammed both fists together.
Izuku did not slow.
“Since I control a Starlight HERO monster, I can Special Summon Starlight HERO Blue Defender from my Graveyard.”
Blue-white light rose beside Bronze Juggernaut.
The armored protector returned, shield plates unfolding from his arms as he stepped onto the field once more.
Starlight HERO Blue Defender
LIGHT / Warrior / Level 3
ATK 1500 / DEF 700
“And now I activate Blue Defender’s effect,” Izuku said. “Once per turn, he can Special Summon one HERO monster from my Graveyard.”
A scarlet flame ignited behind him.
Izuku’s voice grew stronger.
“Come back.”
The fire rose higher.
“Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker!”
The ace returned in a blaze of red starlight, one fist striking the ground as he landed in front of Izuku. His armor flared, vents along his arms releasing scarlet light as though the monster himself refused to accept that defeat had been a conclusion rather than a pause.
Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker
FIRE / Warrior / level 7
ATK 2400 / DEF 1500
Izuku breathed hard.
“I activate Starlight HERO Bronze Juggernaut’s effect.”
The bronze hero slammed one palm against Scarlet Breaker’s back.
Heavy armor plates of bronze light unfolded over the ace’s fists and boots, then fused into his scarlet aura.
“Bronze Juggernaut grants Scarlet Breaker piercing battle damage.”
All For One tilted his head.
“And?”
Izuku’s eyes hardened.
“And each time Scarlet Breaker destroys a monster by battle, you take 1000 damage.”
All For One stood perfectly still.
Still smiling.
That smile made Izuku’s throat tighten.
The line was there.
Scarlet Breaker could end the duel.
If Izuku reached battle.
If Vritra fell.
If the souls…
he stopped himself before the thought completed.
All For One’s fingers moved.
“Do not move so fast.”
Izuku’s stomach sank.
All For One’s Graveyard opened.
“Since this is not the turn Demon Overlord Hanuman was sent there, I can banish it from my Graveyard to activate its effect.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
Hanuman’s card rose from the Graveyard, black light curling around it.
“When banished this way, Hanuman banishes one monster on the field without targeting, then deals damage to you equal to that monster’s ATK.”
If he banished Scarlet Breaker, the duel would be immediately over.
“I activate Scarlet Breaker’s effect!”
Scarlet Breaker ignited.
“When a monster effect is activated, Scarlet Breaker can negate it.”
The ace drove one fist forward.
Scarlet fire met the black light of Hanuman’s banished effect and crushed it in midair.
“And after negating that effect, Scarlet Breaker gains half that monster’s ATK.”
A stream of dark force ripped out of Hanuman’s fading card and poured into Scarlet Breaker’s body, where it was immediately burned scarlet by heroic flame.
Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker
ATK 2400 → 3900
Hanuman’s banished card dissolved.
Izuku flinched at the distant scream that came with it.
He still forced himself forward.
“Battle Phase.”
The declaration felt like stepping off a cliff.
All For One’s smile did not move.
Vritra coiled at the center of his field, enormous and screaming, its black fire leaking across the ground. Inside it, the souls wailed louder as if they sensed what was coming.
Izuku inhaled.
This was the moment.
His Chaos gathered beneath his feet.
Ochako’s eyes widened.
Katsuki leaned forward.
Carlo’s face tightened.
Izuku launched himself into the air.
Gold electricity exploded from his body, carrying him upward in a burst of light. He rose above his monsters, above Scarlet Breaker’s flaming shoulders, above the field, until he hovered directly over Vritra’s serpentine neck.
A blade formed in his hands.
Chaos condensed into the shape of a sword, bright and heavy, a radiant edge of gold-white fire that hummed with the pressure of the Shadow Kingdom’s law.
A Chaos Caliburn.
The entire arena stared.
“What is he doing?” someone whispered.
Izuku did not hear them.
He swung.
The blade came down toward Vritra’s neck.
The monster’s draconic jaw snapped upward and caught the sword between its teeth.
The impact nearly tore Izuku’s arms from their sockets.
He gritted his teeth, hanging in the air above the monster as Vritra’s jaws locked around the Chaos blade. Black fire licked along the edge. The souls inside the monster screamed against him, drowning thought, direction, everything.
Izuku released more Chaos.
The sword flared inside Vritra’s mouth, bursting outward in a pulse of golden pressure. The monster recoiled for one second, jaw still clamped around the blade, body locked in place by the sheer force of the Shadow Game pressing through Izuku’s will.
One second.
That was all.
Izuku looked down.
Past the teeth.
Past the black fire.
Into the sea of souls.
He hurled a wave of Chaos through the sword.
Gold light passed into Vritra’s body and spread through the screaming dark like sunlight through deep water.
For one second, they quieted.
Enough for individual faces to emerge from the mass.
A young woman stood closest to the surface.
Or the copy of one.
Her outline trembled as if it had been shaped from smoke and pain. Her eyes were wide, frantic, disbelieving. She looked around first, almost afraid of the silence. Almost afraid that not being in pain for one second was another trick.
Then she looked at Izuku.
As if seeing him for the first time.
Her lips parted.
“Did you say…”
Her voice was fragile.
So fragile it nearly broke him.
“Saved?”
Izuku’s throat closed.
She stared up at him through the gold light.
“Are you a hero?”
The word hit harder than Vritra’s jaws.
“Have you come to save me?”
Izuku almost lost his grip on the sword.
The despair in her voice was absolute.
The flat, trembling hope of someone who had forgotten hope existed and was terrified to touch it in case it hurt worse when it vanished.
He had to reassure her.
Somehow.
“Yes,” Izuku said.
His voice shook.
“Yes. I am here to save you.”
The woman’s face crumpled.
“But I need your help.”
Around her, other souls began to turn.
Faces.
Shapes.
Hands reaching through the dark.
Vritra’s body trembled beneath him.
“You are drowning my senses with your cries,” Izuku said. “I cannot see the path. I cannot hear myself think. I will never be able to get you out this way.”
The woman began to cry.
Tears, or something like them, moved through her smoky face.
“I did not think…” she whispered. “I did not even think it was possible to be saved.”
Izuku’s chest clenched.
“What is your name?”
She stared at him.
For a moment, she seemed confused by the question.
As if names belonged to a place before pain.
Then she answered.
“Yuriko,” she whispered. “Yuriko Amano.”
Izuku held onto the name like a promise.
“Yuriko.”
The moment he said it, her face twisted again.
“I remember…” she said. “I was walking home. There was rain. I had bought sweet buns because my little brother liked the ones with red bean paste. There was a man in the alley, and he was hurt. I thought…”
Her voice broke.
“I thought I should help.”
Izuku could not breathe.
“He touched my hand,” Yuriko whispered. “Then everything was gone. I thought I died.”
Her hands shook.
“Then I woke up here.”
More faces pressed closer behind her.
“I kept waiting,” she said, tears falling faster now. “I kept thinking someone would come. A hero. Anyone. I kept thinking it, even when it hurt too much to think.”
She looked up at him.
“I lost that.”
Izuku’s grip tightened around the Chaos Caliburn.
“I will save you.”
The words tore out of him.
“I will save every single one of you!”
The souls stirred.
Vritra’s body shook harder.
“But I need to defeat All For One.”
Yuriko’s face changed.
“Defeat him?”
Izuku nodded.
“Yes.”
“How?”
The question stunned him.
He looked down at the duel interface, then back to the card, the field, the monster.
“I need to bring his Life Points to zero,” he said. “Scarlet Breaker can do it.”
Yuriko followed his gaze.
To Scarlet Breaker, blazing below.
To the numbers hovering in the air.
She did not understand the numbers.
But dread crept across her face anyway.
She looked at Vritra.
At herself.
At the sea of souls around her.
Then at Izuku.
“You want to destroy us.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
“No.”
Her voice trembled.
“You said save. But you want to destroy us.”
“I want to free you.”
“Liar.”
The word struck him like a slap.
Izuku flinched.
Yuriko’s face twisted in panic.
“I can see what will happen. I can feel it. The monster breaks, and we break with it. You cannot do it. You cannot- ”
Her hands flew to her head.
“Oh God.”
The other souls began screaming again.
“The pain- ”
“Yuriko- ”
“No, no, no, please, not again- ”
Izuku could not bear to listen.
Because if he did for one second longer, he would never move again.
He looked toward All For One.
The villain was smiling.
One hand lifted.
Two fingers moved slowly from side to side, mimicking the ticking of a clock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Izuku’s teeth clenched.
He pulled his Chaos back through the sword.
Vritra’s jaws tightened.
Izuku shouted down to his field.
“Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker, attack Demon Overlord Vritra!”
Scarlet Breaker launched forward.
Scarlet fire erupted behind him as he sprinted across the field, fists blazing, Bronze Juggernaut’s heavy glow wrapped around his strikes.
“And when Scarlet Breaker attacks,” Izuku said, voice breaking through the screams, “my opponent cannot activate Spell or Trap Cards, or their effects!”
All For One’s smile did not falter.
Izuku lifted one hand.
“Then I activate Scarlet Breaker’s second effect.”
Scarlet Breaker’s flames surged.
“During battle, he doubles his own ATK.”
Starlight HERO Scarlet Breaker
ATK 3900 → 7800
The arena erupted in gasps.
All For One had 1000 Life Points.
Vritra had 4000 ATK.
The line was very clearly lethal.
Izuku looked back into Vritra’s soul-sea.
“Yuriko, please!”
His voice cracked.
“I am doing this to help you!”
Yuriko screamed.
All the souls screamed with her.
The quiet shattered.
Pain slammed into Izuku’s mind with enough force to drive him backward in midair. His Chaos Caliburn slipped from Vritra’s mouth as he released the blade, and the sword dissolved into gold sparks before it hit the ground.
Vritra roared.
All For One laughed softly.
“You must be thinking you have won.”
Izuku’s breath caught.
“But in reality,” the villain said, “that is the furthest thing from the truth.”
Scarlet Breaker continued his charge.
All For One’s hand rested on one of his face-down cards.
“I know what Scarlet Breaker can do.”
Izuku’s eyes widened.
“And Vritra is the perfect counter.”
The serpent-dragon’s body ignited with black fire.
“Demon Overlord Vritra can banish Darkness Spells and Traps from my field to copy their effects.”
Izuku went cold.
“Bypassing Scarlet Breaker’s floodgate.”
All For One flipped one of his face-down cards.
“I reveal Advance of Darkness.”
The Trap Card opened, showing a dark army marching across a field swallowed by eclipse.
“When one of my DARK monsters battles an opponent’s monster, Advance of Darkness allows that DARK monster to add the opponent’s monster’s ATK to its own.”
Vritra’s black fire swallowed the Trap.
The card vanished into its body.
Then the effect took hold.
Demon Overlord Vritra
ATK 4000 → 11800
Izuku’s mind stopped.
No.
No, that was…
Izuku would take 4000 battle damage.
Enough.
More than enough.
He had 2400 Life Points.
It could not be.
It simply could not be.
“I have one last card,” Izuku said.
His hand moved.
“The Quick-Play Spell- ”
Then he saw her.
Just for a split second.
Yuriko.
In the middle of the writhing sea of souls.
Her eyes were wide.
Crying.
Pleading.
Please.
The word did not enter his ears.
It entered something deeper.
Do not do this.
Izuku froze.
It will not bring salvation to us.
Her face twisted.
Just more misery.
The Quick-Play Spell remained in his hand.
Unactivated.
Scarlet Breaker continued forward.
The Shadow Kingdom trembled.
Izuku hung in the air, silent.
His arms fell.
The darkness beneath the field cracked.
The gold light around him flickered.
Then the Shadow Kingdom collapsed.
It folded inward, withdrawing from the arena like a breath Izuku no longer had the strength to hold. The ancient pressure vanished from the field, leaving only holographic light, rotten Chaos and the scream of a monster that had never asked to exist.
Scarlet Breaker struck Vritra.
For one impossible instant, scarlet fire met black flame.
Then Vritra’s overwhelming force answered.
The serpent-dragon’s jaws opened, and the copied souls inside it screamed as the empowered darkness crashed down on Izuku’s ace. Scarlet Breaker’s fist broke against the black fire. His armor cracked. His red light flared once, desperate and beautiful.
Then Vritra tore through him.
The impact slammed across the field.
Izuku Midoriya - 2400 LP → 0 LP
The Duel System screamed.
Izuku fell from the air.
The last thing he saw before the ground rushed up was Yuriko’s face, crying in the dark.
Then he hit the battlefield, and the light of his Duel Disk died.
For several seconds, no one moved.
The Duel System had already announced the result.
And yet the arena seemed unable to accept that anything had ended.
The holographic interface began to shut down in fragments. Lines of blue-white light flickered across the field, then collapsed into static. The remaining monsters dissolved one by one, their bodies breaking apart into harmless particles, returning to illusion, returning to data, returning to nothing.
Demon Overlord Vritra was the last to fade.
The serpent-dragon’s black fire dimmed.
Its claws dissolved.
Its immense coiling body broke into shards of shadow.
And for one final instant before the image vanished completely, Izuku heard them.
The souls inside the card cried out once more, and then the duel interface swallowed their voices.
Silence followed.
Izuku lay on one hand and one knee in the center of the field.
His breath came in shallow, ragged pulls. His Duel Disk was dark. His monsters were gone. The Shadow Kingdom had collapsed. The warmth of his Chaos had retreated into his body like a wounded animal curling around itself and trying to remember how to survive.
Slowly, Izuku pushed himself up with one hand.
His fingers pressed against the arena floor.
They curled.
Became a fist.
Then he slammed it down.
The crack split outward beneath his knuckles.
The sound made half the arena flinch.
Still, no one spoke.
Monsieur Edgard was the first to break the silence.
His cane rose.
“The duel is over.”
The words passed through the stadium like cold wind.
“Victory goes to the League of Villains.”
The announcement should have brought reaction.
Instead, only a dreadful stillness remained.
Katsuki stood with his eyes wide open.
He was not truly seeing the battlefield.
His gaze had locked somewhere much deeper, fixed on a conclusion he did not know how to punch and could not blast apart. For once, rage had no direction strong enough to become motion.
Ochako had both hands over her mouth.
She trembled behind them, tears still wet against her fingers, eyes fixed on Izuku as if looking away from him now would be betrayal.
Melissa was speechless.
She stared at the boy in the center of the field, at the collapsed shape of his shoulders, at the bloody hand pressed against cracked ground, and something inside her twisted so sharply that even Theia remained quiet.
Izuku stared at the floor.
The despair was too large to fit inside him.
It pressed outward through every breath, every trembling muscle, every thought that tried to form and broke apart before it could become language.
He had lost.
Not only the duel.
He had lost them.
Yuriko.
The others.
All the copied souls trapped inside those monsters, dragged from Quirks All For One had stolen, forced into pain, turned into cards, made to scream for a man who smiled through their torment.
He had promised.
He had promised he would free them.
And then he had stopped.
He had not had the guts to push through that Spell.
He had not had the strength.
Now they would suffer again.
For God knew how long.
Izuku screamed at the sky.
The sound tore out of him so violently that Ochako’s hands shook against her mouth.
He slammed his fist down again.
Another crack split through the floor.
His breathing broke into sharp, panicked bursts.
“No,” he whispered.
Then louder.
“No, no, no- ”
His fist rose.
Hit again.
Pain flashed through his hand.
He barely felt it.
How could he do this?
Another hit.
How had he been so weak?
Another.
The ground cracked beneath him, thin fractures branching under his knuckles.
He was not worthy.
Not worthy of calling himself a duelist.
Not worthy of calling himself a hero.
Not after telling them he would save them and then leaving them in the dark.
His other hand curled.
He raised both fists.
For one terrible moment, he looked ready to bring them down together with enough force to break bone.
A hand caught his wrists.
Another touched his shoulder.
Izuku froze.
His head snapped up.
His eyes were wide, wild, terrified, like an animal caught in light after hearing death in every direction.
Ochako knelt in front of him.
She was crying.
Her face had nearly crumpled under the weight of it, but her hands remained steady around his wrists.
“Izuku,” she whispered.
He stared at her.
“You’re hurting yourself.”
His breath hitched.
“You shouldn’t.”
The words reached him slowly.
As if from very far away.
Izuku looked down.
His hands were bloody.
The skin across his knuckles had split open. Red streaked his fingers, gathered beneath his nails, smeared across the cracked floor where he had been striking it again and again. He had not even reinforced them with Chaos. He had simply been slamming raw flesh into the ground because the pain outside was easier to understand than the pain inside.
He looked back at Ochako.
Her face broke a little more.
Then she hugged him.
Izuku went completely still.
For a few seconds, he did not understand the contact.
His body had been ready for impact. For punishment. For the next scream. For All For One’s laugh. Even for the field to open beneath him and show him the souls he had failed.
Instead, Ochako’s arms wrapped around him.
Warm.
Real.
Shaking.
He trembled once.
Then again.
“I failed,” he whispered.
Ochako tightened her hold.
“I failed everyone.”
His voice cracked.
“I failed them. Those souls. Those poor, tormented…”
His face began to crumple.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came faster.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I should have- I should have done something else, I should have been stronger, I should- ”
He broke.
The sob tore through him and folded him into Ochako’s shoulder.
Ochako closed her eyes.
One hand moved to the back of his head.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
Izuku shook his head violently against her.
“No- ”
“It’s okay.”
Her voice trembled, but it did not break.
“Nobody is responsible for the actions of other people.”
Izuku sobbed harder.
“What All For One did is twisted and wrong,” Ochako said, each word soft and fierce at once. “And that is not your fault. Not any of it.”
His hands hovered uselessly at his sides, bloody and shaking.
Then they clutched at the back of her mantle.
Ochako held him.
“It’s okay,” she whispered again. “You can cry with me.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I know you need it.”
Izuku quietly broke down in her shoulder.
Across the field, All For One turned away.
“How… satisfying,” he said.
The words were almost casual.
As if he were speaking of a pleasant meal.
“I must admit, I am rather pleased with the result.”
Ochako’s eyes opened.
Something unreadable crossed her face.
All For One did not look at her yet.
He turned instead toward Shigaraki.
Tomura had been silent for the entirety of the duel.
Unnaturally silent.
The hand still covered most of his face, but his body had gone stiff in a way that did not resemble boredom or rage. He had watched Izuku scream. Watched the monsters. Watched his master explain the origin of the souls inside them. Watched victory arrive like a corpse dropped into the center of the arena.
All For One’s ruined smile tilted.
“Tomura.”
Shigaraki moved.
Slowly, he removed the hand from his face.
His eyes found his master.
“What is the next order, Sensei?”
All For One’s breathing device hissed softly.
“No order.”
Shigaraki blinked.
“You may simply enjoy the next duel.”
The arena shifted.
All For One continued.
“We will forfeit regardless of the result.”
Tomura’s eyes widened.
So did Melissa’s.
So did Mei’s.
“What?” Shigaraki rasped.
All For One’s smile remained calm.
“It has been fun. Truly. But my body is rather frail, and I am not certain I could duel again in the finals.”
He spread one hand, almost apologetic.
“Therefore, I am afraid the Keys of the Heart will continue in the tournament even if you win.”
Tomura opened his mouth.
All For One turned his head toward him.
The movement was small.
The effect was immediate.
“Perhaps,” All For One said softly, “I was not clear enough.”
Tomura took one step back.
His throat moved.
“Yes, Sensei.”
All For One nodded, satisfied.
Then he walked toward Kurogiri.
The mist villain immediately opened a portal, dark vapor stretching into the familiar black-purple oval. Its edge rippled behind All For One like a curtain drawn aside for a king leaving a theatre after the performance had amused him enough.
All For One stepped into it.
One hand remained across the border.
Then a voice cut through the arena.
Icy like winter.
“Get in the arena, Shigaraki.”
Everyone turned.
Even All For One paused halfway through the portal.
Ochako had risen.
Izuku remained on his knees behind her, one hand still clutched weakly around the fabric of her mantle. She had gently released him, but not abandoned him. Her body stood between him and the rest of the field.
Her face was completely unreadable.
Nothing.
That absence was more terrifying than rage would have been.
Shigaraki stared at her.
Ochako’s voice did not change.
“You had better get your ass in the arena now.”
Her eyes fixed on him.
“Or there will be consequences.”
Shigaraki narrowed his eyes.
His mouth opened.
Then he froze.
Chaos rolled through the arena.
Heavy.
Dark.
Ancient in nature.
Tense as a strangling wire.
And tainted.
There was no other word for it.
It poured from the girl standing in the middle of the field, spreading outward in a wave that slammed into the stands with enough force to make spectators gasp. People along the sidelines began panting, hands flying to their throats, unable to draw air properly beneath the pressure. Even Sir Nighteye staggered against the railing, one hand going to his chest as the old, monstrous weight of it pressed against him.
Melissa’s artificial eyes widened.
Mei took half a step back.
Katsuki stared.
“Round Face…”
Ochako opened her eyes.
Then another opened.
On her cheek.
Then another near her temple.
Then three along the side of her jaw.
Five.
Ten.
Twenty.
The skin of her face rippled as irises opened across it, writhing, blinking, looking in different directions and then fixing all at once on Shigaraki Tomura. Her original eyes remained at the center, wide and cold, but they were no longer alone. Her entire face had become a living constellation of sight, every pupil trembling with ancient malice that did not belong to a human girl and yet moved through her body as if invited.
All For One smiled from the edge of the portal.
“Interesting.”
Then he crossed fully through.
The portal swallowed him.
Kurogiri remained.
Tomura jumped into the field.
He landed opposite Ochako, scratching at his neck, teeth bared.
“I have no intention of holding back,” he said. “Even if this match is useless.”
Ochako’s eyes widened.
All of them.
So hard it looked painful.
The intensity of her stare struck Shigaraki like a physical blow. He took one instinctive step back before he could stop himself, and the movement made his face twist in humiliation.
Ochako’s voice came glacial.
“You have misread the situation.”
Tomura’s fingers twitched.
“There is no taking this seriously or not.”
Her head tilted.
“If you do not, you will die.”
Shigaraki’s mouth twisted into something between a snarl and a laugh.
“What kind of hero says something like that?”
Ochako’s head turned.
It rotated once, a full circle, bones cracking softly beneath the motion before settling back into place. More eyes opened along her neck as it moved, each one blinking wetly in the arena light.
Then she smiled.
Her teeth glinted with something inhuman.
“Hero?”
Her arms multiplied.
One became two.
Two became four.
Bones snapped.
Joints unfolded in directions no human anatomy should have allowed. Appendages tore outward from her back and sides, some arm-like, some clawed, some too thin and long, each one moving with a terrible, precise grace. Eyes opened across her shoulders, her arms, the backs of her hands, the curve of her throat. Eyes everywhere, watching Shigaraki from angles no opponent could defend against.
Ochako Uraraka stood in the center of the arena, and something ancient smiled through her.
“You seem to be mistaken again.”
Her Chaos pressed down harder.
Tomura’s grin died.
Ochako leaned forward.
“I am no hero.”
The eyes across her body all focused on him.
“I am a monster.”
Her smile widened.
“And you are my next victim.”