"What?" Present Tsutsumi was taken aback as his blade met his future self's.
Tsutsumi's eyes widened. His future self stood there in full Decade form, the magenta armor glowing faintly under the trees.
"That's right," Decade said, voice calm in a way that only twisted the knife deeper. "You would become this the moment you read that book. The moment you understood its contents."
He stepped forward, swinging a sharp kick into his younger self's ribs.
The impact blasted Present Tsutsumi backward, rolling him across the dirt.
"So it's best that you don't try to open it," his future self added, lowering his foot. "Or trust Mother."
"What the hell do you mean? You're me!"
Present Tsutsumi pushed himself upright, fury sharpening his breath. He ripped a card free and slammed it into his Driver.
Final Attack Ride: A-A-A-Agito!
A golden Agito emblem flared beneath him, and he shot forward like a bullet, leg pulled back for a flying kick aimed straight at his future self.
Decade only sighed, shaking his head.
"Of course, simple words won't help... I was just the same..."
He slid his own card into place.
Final Attack Ride: A-A-A-Agito!
A matching emblem erupted beneath him, but this one crackled violently, turning crimson with a pale white glow twisting through it.
Their kicks collided.
The shockwave detonated outward.
Tsutsumi was blown back like a ragdoll, crashing through tree after tree, the trunks splintering, exploding, before his body smashed into the side of the mountain and embedded itself in the rock.
He coughed, blood dripping from his lip as he pushed himself free.
Decade approached at a calm pace.
Tsutsumi raised his gun.
Attack Ride: Blast!
A barrage of shimmering light bullets ripped through the air.
Decade didn't even slow down. He slid a card into his own Driver and raised his own gun.
Attack Ride: Hyper Cannon!
A massive energy ball surged forward, engulfing the bullets in a brilliant collision.
Attack Ride: Invisible!
As the Hyper Cannon blast streaked closer toward Tsutsumi, who barely managed to escape as the attack obliterated a section of the mountain behind him, rock and dust exploded outward.
Before Tsutsumi even fully reappeared, Decade turned his back slightly, drawing a sheathed katana with effortless grace.
Attack Ride: Slash!
The sheathed strike hit harder than Tsutsumi expected, knocking him back and canceling his attack mid-swing. He skid across the dirt, boots carving lines in the ground.
He gritted his teeth and rushed back in, attacking relentlessly. Blades clashed again and again, sparks scattering each time. But no matter how fast or how violently Tsutsumi attacked, the sheathed sword blocked everything effortlessly.
Then, they both slid a card at the same time.
Final Attack Ride: De-De-De-Decade!
Final Attack Ride: De-De-De-Decade!
A massive golden card appeared between them, its presence cracking the air.
Both Tsutsumis spun into a roundhouse kick, kicking at the card between them.
The younger Tsutsumi was sent flying, slammed into the ground hard, and his transformation shattered on impact, magenta fragments scattering like broken glass before fading.
"Tch… I'm still here."Future Tsutsumi exhaled quietly as the armor peeled away and he returned to his human form. He stared at his hand, flexing his fingers once, as if expecting to fade.
But he didn't.
"Figures," he muttered under his breath.
He stepped forward and dropped a card and the sheathed sword in front of his younger self.
"Here. Hold onto these. You'll understand soon enough."
His voice wasn't stern, and it wasn't soft either. It held a tired kind of weight, like he already knew this conversation wasn't going to fix anything.
"I'll be waiting for good news," he added, though even he didn't sound convinced.
An Aurora Curtain opened behind him. He walked through it without looking back, disappearing into the light.
Present Tsutsumi groaned as he pushed himself up. Dirt clung to his clothes, and his breathing was uneven, but his attention was already locked on the items left behind.
A card and a sword.
He reached out and picked up the card first.
Attack Ride: Rifle
The moment he touched it, he knew. It was his mother's Quirk. There was no mistaking the feeling that washed over him.
His hand trembled slightly as he tightened his grip around it.
"This... this can't be that method, right?" he muttered.
There are two ways for him to obtain someone's powers it is either by creating a bond with them or by destroying them.
He bit his lip and forced himself to look at the sword.
It felt familiar the moment his eyes landed on it. The shape tugged at something in his memory. He gripped the hilt and activated Tracing, letting the weapon's history flow through him.
Nameless. Once called Tailless.
Before his future self carried it, it had belonged to someone he cared for. Hoshimi Miyabi, his adopted mother.
A sharp vision hit him as the Tracing deepened.
When he became Decade, the worlds began to merge. His adopted mother had been brought into the chaos along with everything else.
As Decade, the only way to restore everything was for him to die. But Miyabi had stood against the merging worlds, protecting him until her last breath, even if it meant becoming humanity's enemy.
"Ryoko… have you… gotten taller again?" she said, smiling faintly despite bleeding in his arms. Her trembling hand reached up and patted his head.
"Mom… No, I… I haven't…" His future self muttered. Her hand slipped off, and her body went cold.
Seeing the horrible memory, Tsutsumi sat up holding the sword in his hand. He pressed his thumb on the scabbard scanner, and the blade was unsealed.
Pulling it out, he saw that the blade was broken, shattered into pieces. The current blade in his hand couldn't even be counted as a knife, with only a bit of metal left that clung onto the hilt.
Raising the broken blade up, blue spiritual flame spread out from the scabbard, as the pieces of the blade flew out, slowly reforming themselves on the broken sword.
Each piece placed together, returning to their original spots and forming back into the full weapon, with its blade being completely cracked into pieces, that somehow still held themselves together thanks to his will.
The true form of Nameless, a blade pieced together from the broken pieces of the Tailless.
Tsutsumi slid the sword back into its scabbard. The click of the seal locking echoed slightly in the quiet forest.
He didn't say anything afterward.
He simply sat there, card and sword beside him, staring into the endless night sky as he tried to piece together what his future self wanted him to understand.
The next morning, Aizawa dragged everyone out for another round of summer camp training.
He noticed Tsutsumi wasn't with the other sleeping students and, after asking the Pussycats, let out a quiet sigh of relief. Tsutsumi was already up, sitting on the edge of a cliff and staring out at the horizon.
Good, he didn't disappear from training camp like he disappeared during classes.
"Are you awake this early?" Aizawa asked, his usual tired voice carrying as he approached.
"Be honest with me, Aizawa-sensei," Tsutsumi said, his tone unusually serious.
Aizawa froze for a moment. Tsutsumi never used honorifics. He was often blunt, rude even, but this… this was different. Something was off.
He walked over and sat beside him, glancing at the old sword resting across Tsutsumi's lap. He didn't comment. Weapons appearing out of nowhere around him were nothing new.
"Can someone destined for destruction be a hero?"
The question caught him off guard. He blinked, searching for the right words.
"Where does that even come from?" he asked, keeping his voice calm. He wanted to understand first.
"Just answer the question, Aizawa," Tsutsumi said, shifting back into his usual casual, somewhat disrespectful tone.
Aizawa exhaled lightly.
But honestly, Aizawa found this casual disrespect way better than the serious emotional one.
With the casual disrespect tone, he could at least understand that everything was fine.
While the serious emotional tone gave him the feeling of trying to defuse a bomb, one wrong move and everyone is dead.
"Honestly… I don't know," Aizawa said after a pause. He ran a hand through his black hair as the morning wind tugged at it. "Whether someone destined for destruction can be a hero… it depends on their actions and intentions. People they save might call them a hero. Others might call them a villain. There's no clear answer."
"You can be a hero to some and a villain to others," Aizawa said, standing slowly and dusting his pants. "So… for whoever this question is meant for, I hope they make the right choice."
Aizawa turned and waved casually. "Take the day off. You don't need to go to work today."
Watching the tired teacher speak such wise words, Tsutsumi feels like he needs to respect him a bit more.
A faint smile appeared on his lips. An Aurora Curtain shimmered into existence, enveloping him, leaving the cliff behind.
In a ruined future, the older Tsutsumi sat on the remains of a collapsed building. The wind tugged at his hair and coat as he stared across the wasteland. Corpses littered the ground in piles, a silent testament to the chaos that had come before.
His gaze fell to the red and black torn ribbon in his hand. He clenched it lightly, the edges fraying between his fingers.
A faint glow spread over his body. Tsutsumi looked down, noticing magenta light crawling across his skin. Tiny particles drifted off him, dissolving into the wind.
A slow smile formed on his lips.
"Let's just hope I won't have to come back a second time…"
His voice was quiet, steady. There was no panic, no fear in his expression, only resolve.
He lifted his eyes to the shattered moon above, its pale light casting long shadows across the ruins.
"Looks like my journey… is finally ending."
The magenta light expanded, swallowing his form. Slowly, deliberately, he faded. The world around him blurred. The ruins, the corpses, the night sky, they all dissolved from his perspective as if they had never been.
And then he was gone. His timeline erased, leaving nothing behind.
In another world, Tsutsumi exhaled.
He sat cross-legged inside a high-tech, futuristic jail cell.
Honestly, it could have been any world, but ending up in prison after hearing Aizawa's "wise words" left him annoyed.
"So… what ya in for?" He asked, his gaze shifting toward the navy blue-haired woman sitting beside him.
The woman's outfit was odd, to say the least.
She wore a knee-length boot while her other boot reached her thigh. Tight-fitting short jeans, a revealing outfit, with her buttoned up just some of her stomach, while leaving her breasts exposed, covered by her bra. She wore a long glove that nearly reached her shoulder on her right arm, while her left arm was covered by the long, wide sleeve of her "coat".
She tilted her head, long bangs covering her left eye.
"I don't remember..." She spoke in a soft yet confused voice, like she didn't even know why she was imprisoned here to begin with.
Tsutsumi: "..."
"Although… this is interesting," she continued, voice curious, eyes running over him as she crawled closer. "Meeting an Emanator of Finality… it's not every day you get this chance."
Tsutsumi didn't react as she closed in, ignoring, or maybe forgetting entirely, the concept of personal space. She settled onto his lap, eyeing him like he was something rare.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said evenly, unfazed.
"You really don't know?" she murmured, tilting her head before leaning back slightly.
"Well, from what I heard at least..." She began. "The Path of Finality is represented by the Aeon of Finality, Terminus. No one actually knows what Terminus even looks like or what the Path of Finality truly represents..."
She paused, then leaned forward again. "But from what I heard, the Path of Finality represents the end of all things, the end point of existence. And according to some sources, they also represent the beginning of a universe as well."
The more Tsutsumi heard, the more he couldn't help but feel that this sounded familiar...
The end points of existence and the starting points of existence. Both destruction and creation... The beginning and the end...
As long as Decade existed, all world would merge into one, and everything would be destroyed. This is all Decade's fault!
"Oh." The realization hit him. He was technically the future Destroyer of Worlds. The one who would witness the birth of a new world and the end of another.
So being Decade meant that he walked that Path of Finality and became the Emanator of Finality, whatever that is.
"The name's Tsutsumi Ryoko. What about you?" He shifted his gaze back toward her, remembering they didn't even know each other's names.
"I don't remember…" Her voice was quiet, almost distant. A faint unease ran through her as she heard his name, feeling a sense of familiarity toward it. But she couldn't place or remember why. "But you can call me… Acheron."