Saturday morning, Ryo stood before Dash's house with an uncertain look. He checked the address on his phone one more time.
"…Looks like this is the place."
He walked up to the door and raised his hand to knock—but froze mid-motion. Taking a step back, he sighed.
"Better to text."
Ryo took out his phone and sent a quick message to Dash, letting him know he had arrived and was outside. The moment he hit send, not even three seconds passed before he heard a sudden whoosh.
The door practically burst open.
"Takeda!" Dash appeared excited, grinning from ear to ear. "Come in, come in!"
Ryo blinked, still processing, before stepping in somewhat reluctantly. The inside of the house clearly blended elements of American and Japanese culture, as if they had tried to keep a bit of both worlds alive in there.
They passed through the main room, with the living room on one side and the kitchen on the other. In the kitchen, Helen was baking cookies. She stopped when she noticed them.
"Mom!" Dash said, excitedly. "This is Takeda, my friend from U.A.! He came to help me study today!"
Ryo stepped forward and introduced himself politely, giving a small bow.
"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Parr."
Helen's eyes lit up.
"Such a polite boy… and you speak English so well!" she said, delighted. "It's an honor to finally meet you. You were amazing at the U.A. Sports Festival!"
Ryo raised an eyebrow.
"You watched it on TV?" he asked. "Or something like that?"
"No," Helen replied, smiling. "We were there. Me, my husband Bob, my daughter Violet, my youngest Jack-Jack… and even Violet's boyfriend, Tony."
She laughed.
"We cheered through the whole festival. Mostly because of your performance!"
Ryo was completely flustered.
"I-it wasn't that big of a deal…" he murmured. "I didn't even try that hard…"
Helen laughed even more.
"Then imagine if you had!"
That just made Ryo blush even harder.
Noticing his friend's discomfort, Dash quickly intervened, starting to push him toward the stairs.
"Right, right!" he said hurriedly. "But now we gotta study. Finals are next week!"
"Alright," Helen replied. "Just don't overdo it."
"We won't overdo it!" Dash answered.
The next second, he simply vanished, taking Ryo with him upstairs, leaving only a trail of wind behind.
As soon as Ryo entered the blond boy's room, he was met with a… chaotic scene.
The bed was completely unmade, clothes were strewn across the floor, posters were crooked on the walls, and papers were scattered everywhere. The only truly organized thing there was the desk, where a high-end gaming PC glowed like an altar.
Dash felt awkward when he noticed Ryo's sweeping glance over the chaotic room.
"I-I'll tidy up really quick! Give me a second!"
Before Ryo could respond, the boy simply vanished. In a few seconds, all the clothes were in the closet, the bed was minimally straightened, and the floor was clear again. The posters remained crooked.
Ryo pointed at them.
"…Is that aesthetic or something?"
"Totally," Dash replied, proud.
Ryo sighed and placed his backpack on the bed.
"I didn't think you were this messy… but whatever."
He opened the backpack and started pulling out books and notebooks.
"What matters now is getting some knowledge into that head of yours."
Ryo stacked everything on the desk with a solid thump. Dash looked at the pile of material as if it were a death sentence. He started sweating, swallowed dryly, clenched his fists, and nodded with determination.
"Okay… I'll do my best. I'll study and learn—"
Ten minutes later, Dash had his head buried in the notebook.
"…I give up."
Ryo furrowed his brow.
"We barely started and you've already collapsed?"
Dash raised his head slowly, metaphorical smoke coming from it.
"I know, I know… but starting right off with algebra and quadratic functions is inhumane."
"Of course it is," Ryo replied. "But that's exactly why we start with the hardest and then move on to the easy stuff at the end."
Dash made a face.
"I don't know if my brain will last that long. It'll melt along the way."
Ryo sighed, running a hand over his face.
"…Well then, this is going to be a very long study session."
----------------------------------------
After an hour and a half trying to get Dash to understand numbers and equations that, to him, seemed like alien hieroglyphs, the miracle finally happened.
"…Ah."
Dash blinked a few times, staring at the paper.
"…I can read this now."
Ryo leaned back in the chair beside him, letting out a tired sigh.
"See? It wasn't impossible."
"Yes, it was," Dash replied immediately, dropping the pencil and letting himself sink into the chair. "Extremely time-consuming, absurdly torturous, mentally exhausting, emotionally draining, psychologically crushing, spiritually wearying, and so tiring it felt like it sucked out my very will to exist… This was definitely not made by humans."
Before Ryo could respond, Helen's voice echoed down the hall.
"Dash, honey! I'm just running out quickly to go to the market. There are cookies in the kitchen if you guys want some, okay?"
"Okay, Mom!" Dash called back.
The sound of the door closing came shortly after.
The next second, Dash was on his feet.
"Takeda, let's get cookies! My mom's chocolate ones are really good!"
Ryo blinked, surprised by the sudden energy shift, but ended up following his friend down the stairs.
Dash was the first to reach the kitchen, as expected. His eyes lit up seeing the full tray on the counter. He reached out his hand… and stopped.
"Wait."
He turned and washed his hands.
Came back.
"No… I don't think I washed them properly."
Washed them again.
Came back.
"…Darn it, I didn't dry them."
He then shook his hands at high speed, drying them instantly, and finally grabbed two cookies. One went straight into his mouth. The other, he held out to Ryo.
"Here," he said, mouth full.
Ryo, who had watched the entire performance with a raised eyebrow and a slightly confused expression, took the cookie and bit into it.
His eyes widened.
"…Wow."
He looked at the cookie in his own hand.
"That's really, really good."
Dash smiled proudly.
"I told you."
"How does your mom make these cookies?" Ryo asked.
Meanwhile, a tiny hand appeared from the other side of the counter and took a cookie, without either of them noticing.
"No idea," Dash replied. "Maybe… chocolate?"
Another cookie disappeared.
Ryo looked at Dash with a comically neutral expression.
"All cookies have chocolate."
Another cookie was pulled away.
"Not all of them," Dash retorted. "I've seen cookies without chocolate."
Another one vanished.
Ryo rubbed his fingers over his eyes.
"Right, I admit my mistake… But what kind of magic does she put in them?"
Another cookie was taken.
"Like I said, I have no idea."
Ryo sighed, giving up on the conversation. He finished his cookie and reached out to grab another one… only to touch the nearly empty tray.
He blinked, picking up the last remaining cookie.
"…Huh?"
Ryo looked closer.
"Where did all the cookies go?"
He turned to Dash.
"It wasn't me!" Dash replied immediately, raising his hands. "I've only eaten one so far!"
At that moment, the same tiny hand appeared again over the counter.
They both looked.
"No more left?"
A little head popped up right after, followed by a small body that began to float slowly in the air.
It was Jack-Jack.
He was holding a little All Might figurine in one hand, while the other was covered in crumbs. His mouth was too.
"All gone…" he said, sadly.
Dash's eyes widened.
"…Jack-Jack?! You're supposed to be asleep!"
"I wanted cookies…" the little boy continued, chewing. "They were yummy."
Jack-Jack noticed the last cookie in Ryo's hand at the exact same moment. His little eyes lit up, and the toddler began floating slowly toward the boy, tiny hands outstretched.
"Cookie! Give!" he demanded excitedly.
Ryo pulled the cookie close without a second thought.
"This one's mine."
Jack-Jack stopped mid-air. The smile vanished, replaced by a sad pout.
"Hey, hey, hey," Dash widened his eyes. "Give him the cookie, Takeda! Now!"
"No," Ryo answered firmly. "I got it first."
Jack-Jack's sadness turned to irritation in the blink of an eye. He furrowed his brow, stared at the cookie… and suddenly the treat began to tug, shaking in Ryo's grip.
"What the hell?!"
But before Jack-Jack could react, Ryo leaned forward and swallowed the entire cookie in one gulp.
Dash brought both hands to his head.
"YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT!"
"Relax, it's not a big deal," Ryo said, chewing. "It's just a cookie."
"Dude…" Dash swallowed hard. "Now he's gonna go into demon mode."
"Demon mo—?"
Ryo didn't finish his sentence. Jack-Jack launched himself at him with full force, knocking him to the floor. When Ryo opened his eyes, he was face-to-face with a Jack-Jack transformed into a small, red ogre, teeth clenched and eyes glowing.
"You are bad!" Jack-Jack growled.
He began punching Ryo's face non-stop. The blows were strong, but nothing absurd that Ryo couldn't handle.
"That's it?" Ryo asked, getting up with Jack-Jack clinging to him. "This isn't even that b—"
Jack-Jack landed a precise punch to the groin, his tiny fist hardened like iron.
"AAAAAH—!!"
Ryo barely had time to scream before he was lifted into the air by telekinesis and slammed directly into the ceiling, getting stuck up there.
"Cookie stealer!" Jack-Jack complained, scowling.
He threw Ryo back toward the floor. Ryo closed his eyes, covering his face… but there was no impact. A portal opened beneath him, and the boy simply fell right in.
Jack-Jack waved his little hand upward, mending the ceiling as if nothing had happened. Then, he jumped into the portal in the middle of the room and closed it with a plop.
The house fell silent.
Dash stood frozen, looking around, still processing everything. After a few seconds, all he could manage was a murmur:
"…Oh shit."
----------------------------------------
Ryo fell in freefall for a few seconds before crashing onto a white, dusty ground. The impact created a small crater and threw up a thick cloud of dust around him.
"Ngh…" he groaned, getting up while rubbing his head. "Where…?"
As the dust settled, Ryo froze.
The sky above him was completely black, dotted with stars that were too bright, like stickers pasted on dark cardboard. Floating in the void were giant children's toys: broken colored blocks, twisted toy cars, pieces of torn teddy bears slowly spinning in the air. Nonsensical structures rose on all sides: crooked buildings, bridges that led nowhere, staircases that climbed to nothing.
And everywhere… All Might.
Statues, posters, inflatable dolls, giant and tiny versions, some smiling, others with strange, distorted expressions. It was as if the hero's image had been mixed with a child's dreams, games, and obsessions.
Ryo looked down and felt his stomach sink.
He was on the moon… or something very much like it. A cracked, gray ground, but covered in random constructions, as if someone had played at building an entire world without following any rules.
"…Okay," he murmured. "Definitely not in Japan anymore."
Before he could think further, something crashed down behind him with a thunderous noise.
Ryo tried to turn, but a punch hit him square in the face, sending him flying. The boy tumbled across the ground and smashed through a misshapen building, causing an explosion of colorful debris.
"Tch…" Ryo emerged from the hole, shaking off the dust. "This is getting personal."
He looked up… and froze.
All Might was there, standing, staring at him.
"What…?"
Before he could react, more figures began to appear around him. One, two, five, dozens. All Might after All Might, appearing non-stop, surrounding Ryo from all sides.
"You've got to be kidding me…" he murmured.
A giggle echoed from above. Jack-Jack appeared floating in the air, pointing a tiny finger at Ryo.
"He's a bad guy, All Might!" he said, pouting. "Teach him a lesson!"
"Of course, because I am here!" answered the All Mights in unison, as if they were the real one.
They charged.
Ryo narrowly dodged the first blow and countered with a punch to one of the clones' stomachs. For a moment, it seemed to have no effect… until the upper half of the All Might's body simply exploded into a multicolored powder, like paint thrown into the air.
"…Huh?"
The clones stopped, confused.
"How…?"
"All Might is invincible!"
"That's impossible!"
Ryo clenched his fist, a half-smile appearing on his face.
"Nothing is invincible until I decide to punch it."
"YOU WRETCHED VILLAIN!" shouted one of the clones, attacking with both fists.
Ryo dodged, leaped, landed a dropkick on another All Might's head, and used its body as a springboard. His feet began to glow faintly, and he fired a Gamma Blast from his soles, exploding everything below and launching himself upward.
He landed on a floating platform that looked like a broken highway bridge.
"Don't let the villain escape!" shouted the clones, charging again.
Three All Mights cornered Ryo, attacking from all sides. He dodged as much as he could but ended up trapped. Then, a combined blow came from above with absurd force.
CRASH!!!
The bridge broke in two.
Ryo crossed his arms above his head, holding back the impact with a grunt. For an instant, his hollow-green eyes glowed more intensely.
"HRAAA!"
He broke through the attack, landed a punch on one of the clones, grabbed it by the wrist, and swung the body around, dragging the other two with him before hurling them toward the other part of the platform ahead.
More and more All Might clones kept emerging on the broken platform, as if space itself were spitting out versions of him nonstop. Ryo advanced without hesitation.
He dodged one clone's punch and answered with a sharp side kick, hurling it off the platform. He spun his body, evading the strike of another, and landed a brutal uppercut that sent the copy flying high, where it dissipated in an explosion of colored dust.
Two clones charged together. Ryo didn't even slow down. A violent snap kick hit the first in the chest, slamming it into the second, and both plummeted into the starry void below, disappearing in silence.
For a few seconds, only the echo of powerful blows resonated through the space as Ryo dealt with the endless stream of All Might clones.
Then… a massive shadow covered the sky above him.
Ryo looked up—and his eyes widened.
A gigantic All Might descended from the sky of that dimension like a meteor. He landed on the platform with a deafening THUD. The structure groaned, tilting to almost ninety degrees, cracks spreading like spiderwebs.
"You've gotta be kidding me…" Ryo muttered, steadying his feet.
The colossal clone said nothing. It merely pulled its arm back and, in a slow, devastating motion, launched a fist the size of a truck.
Ryo barely had time to react due to the imbalance.
The fist hit him squarely and launched him like a projectile, hurtling through space and violently colliding with the surface of the fake moon.
BOOOOM!!!
A gigantic explosion of gray dust and debris spread out, forming a deep crater. Fragments of childish constructions flew in all directions, while the impact echoed through the void of the distorted dimension.
Silence fell for a brief instant.
High above, Jack-Jack floated, watching everything with attentive little eyes, clutching the All Might doll tightly.
"Hehehe…" he laughed, clapping his little hands. "Get him! Get him, All Might!"
The fake All Mights began to fall from the sky and land around the enormous column of smoke raised by the impact. One by one, they approached, confident.
"Is it over…?" said one of them.
"Evil has been defeated!"
"The villain has fallen before All Might once again!"
It was then that a voice echoed from within the smoke, calm… firm.
"Who decided that?"
A burst of green energy erupted from the center of the crater. A pillar of greenish light shot into the black sky of that dimension, tearing through the false stars and sweeping the dust cloud away as if it were nothing.
At the center, Ryo stood firm.
His body was enveloped in a dense, pulsating green aura, greenish bolts of energy snaking across his skin like living lightning.
Inner Transition — 2%
The pillar dissipated, but the pressure in the air only increased. Ryo brought his hand to his chest and thumped it hard once.
"Come at me with everything you've got…" he said, raising his gaze. "Because the one who decides when I fall… is me!"
The All Mights all surged forward at once, leaping and throwing themselves upon him like an avalanche. For a moment, Ryo disappeared under a pile of bodies.
In the next second, everything exploded.
The clones shattered into luminous fragments, and Ryo burst out in a leap, shooting straight toward a giant All Might. His punch hit the copy's face, which simply disintegrated into glowing dust.
Another giant tried to hit him, but Ryo dodged with a precise burst from his feet, changing his trajectory mid-air. He landed on the colossus's arm, ran up it, and landed a punch straight to its face.
More dust. More light.
A section of the highway platform fell in front of him, blocking his view. Before he could react, another giant All Might smashed through the debris and hit him with a brutal punch, sending Ryo flying like a projectile.
A second giant intercepted him with an uppercut, throwing him upward.
A third appeared above and brought down a two-armed hammer blow.
CRAAASH!!!
Ryo was smashed into the ground of the false moon, creating a gigantic crater, fissures spreading for kilometers.
The giants approached to confirm their victory.
A fatal mistake.
A green flash exploded from the ground.
Ryo shot out of the crater at tremendous speed, moving in a zig-zag like lightning. In seconds, he passed by the giants, destroying their legs with precise blows. The colossi toppled… and soon after had their heads pulverized.
Ryo kept running across the false moon at absurd speeds. The kinetic energy generated was so intense that the ground melted under his feet, leaving a trail of incandescent light as he plowed through thousands of normal All Mights, ignoring them, focused only on the remaining giants.
Everything seemed under control.
Until all the All Mights began to float.
They were pulled upward, converging to a single point. One merged with another. Then another. And another.
Until a colossal form blotted out the landscape.
Ultra Might.
The monster lowered its massive arm, and a gigantic punch began to fall toward Ryo, completely filling his field of vision.
Ryo felt something different in his chest.
"What is this…?" he thought.
He pulled his right fist back, holding it with his left hand, as if compressing something. An intense, bright, unstable energy began to concentrate.
High above, Jack-Jack pointed.
"Now you're gonna lose, bad guy!"
Ultra Might's fist approached slowly, overwhelming, leaving no room for escape within a kilometer radius.
Ryo smiled.
"So this is it…" he murmured. "Letting go like this… without worrying… is damn fun!"
His fist glowed even brighter, illuminating the entire shadow cast by the colossus.
The blow came.
And Ryo answered.
He dragged his right fist upward with all his might, meeting Ultra Might's punch head-on. The impact stopped the colossal blow in mid-air.
But Ryo didn't stop.
He pushed his fist upward.
A crack of green light appeared on Ultra Might's fist, small… but quickly spreading across the entire arm like a living web.
Nuclear…
IMPACT!!!
He raised his fist even higher.
Ultra Might's arm exploded in an intense greenish light, followed by the entire right side of the colossal body, which disintegrated into bright fragments, vanishing into the void of that dimension.
Ryo watched the remains of the colossus disintegrating on the horizon of that fake moon, his fist still raised high and a satisfied smile on his face. Gradually, he relaxed his arm and looked up.
Jack-Jack was still floating above.
"So…" Ryo said, tilting his head. "Is that all you've got?"
Jack-Jack's smile vanished.
He grunted, irritated, a childish sound… but laced with something wrong. The space around them began to tremble, as if the very dimension was getting nervous. The black sky rippled, false stars distorting like ink in water.
The little one's body began to glow.
First, it was a soft white glow. Then, intense. Too bright to look at directly.
When the light dimmed, Jack-Jack no longer looked exactly like… Jack-Jack.
In his place was a figure of pure white, almost without defined contours, floating in the void. Two black eyes stood out on that smooth, glowing form, watching Ryo without blinking.
"…oh," Ryo murmured.
From the main body, similar clones began to emerge from it.
One came out of him. Then two. Then four. Then dozens.
And then… clones of the clones.
And then clones of the clones of the clones.
Within seconds, the sky was completely taken over. A white tide spread above, covering everything like living clouds.
Ryo raised his gaze, watching the clones begin to change.
Their bodies deformed, grew, gained color, exaggerated muscles, heroic smiles.
All Might.
But not like before.
One was completely engulfed in flames, its body burning like a living sun. Another crackled with blue electricity, lightning leaping from its skin. A third had eyes glowing with intense red, releasing a crushing pressure just from its gaze.
There was an All Might with a red ogre-like body, reminiscent of Jack-Jack's furious form. Others mixed powers, different sizes, from normal versions to gigantic floating colossi, each with multiple abilities.
Hundreds. Thousands.
A bead of sweat trickled down Ryo's forehead.
"Should've kept my mouth shut…" he admitted.
He turned his gaze to the white figure with black eyes, the original Jack-Jack, still motionless at the center of it all.
What Ryo didn't know…
What no one there knew…
Was that as long as Jack-Jack remained inside that pocket dimension—a world shaped by his childish mind, by his emotions, by his toys, by the heroes he admired—the rules were not the same.
Here, strength, technique, or logic didn't matter.
Here, Jack-Jack did not play fair.
Here…
…he was, effectively, invincible.