The trap did not begin in Ota Ward.
It began twenty-one days prior, with the systematic manipulation of the Hero Public Safety Commission's national dispatch algorithm.
All For One sat in the library of his Shizuoka estate.
The room was maintained at a constant eighteen degrees Celsius. He was in his biological prime—his skin smooth, his breathing rhythmic and deep, his physical presence heavy.
On the mahogany desk before him, a holographic projector displayed a high-resolution map of Japan.
Red blips pulsed across the southern coast, each representing a verified villain incursion.
"He is moving," All For One said, his voice a steady baritone.
He watched a golden light representing All Might jump between the red markers. "Toshinori is a creature of momentum. If you give him a direction, he will run until his heart bursts."
Kyudai Garaki stood at his master's flank, holding a tablet that tracked All Might's intercepted GPS coordinates. "The diversionary attacks by the minor villain cells in Kyushu have exhausted the local hero agencies. These cells were instructed to target high-visibility infrastructure—bridges, hospitals, and water treatment plants. This forced the HPSC to deploy their only 'guaranteed' solution."
Garaki tapped a data window, bringing up a graph of All Might's energy expenditure. "He has personally responded to four 'High-Threat' incidents in the last thirty-six hours. He cleared a landslide in Kumamoto, intercepted a hijacked ferry in Nagasaki, and neutralized a kinetic-type villain in Miyazaki. He has not slept in forty-eight hours. Intercepted biological telemetry indicates his travel velocity is peaked at Mach 1.5, but his metabolic recovery time is dropping by 12% with every burst. He is burning through his caloric reserves to maintain his public image."
All For One reached out, his fingers tracing the golden dot's path. "He believes that by extinguishing these small fires, he is protecting the peace. He does not realize he is pouring his own life-force into a drain I have opened for him."
"The logistics are stretched thin," Garaki added. "The northern prefectures are now effectively unguarded by high-rankers."
"Good, good, good" All For One said.
"The goal is not a fair fight. The goal is to lead him to a place where his strength becomes a liability against the very infrastructure he serves. Funnel the remaining alerts toward the Kanto region. Direct the sleeper cells to sabotage the rail lines in Kanagawa to ensure no ground-based reinforcements can arrive. Close the exits. Make the Ota Ward industrial hub the only logical destination for his final stand."
He zoomed the map into Ota Ward, specifically Substation 4-C.
"For twenty years, I have prepared this specific site," All For One continued. "The HPSC invested four billion yen into this telecommunications backbone based on 'security recommendations' leaked by my moles within their infrastructure department. They built this hub with a singular, concentrated power supply. They think they are building a fortress of information. In reality, they are building a cage. I have ensured that the grounding systems of the substation are calibrated to fail under the specific high-frequency vibration of a One For All shockwave."
"What about the blackout Doctor?" All For One continued.
"The blackout?" Garaki asked.
"I have the signal-jamming quirks ready," Garaki confirmed. "But the Master's plan is better. We will let the initial encounter be recorded by the HPSC internal monitors to seed despair within the government. Once the psychological damage is done, we cut the world off. We turn Ota Ward into a vacuum. All Might will arrive with his lungs burning and his mind frayed. We will turn their technological heart into his tomb."
All For One leaned back.
The plan involved more than just physical exhaustion.
Over two decades, he had laundered money through dummy corporations to fund the construction of the Ota Ward hub, ensuring the structural steel was tempered to a specific brittleness that would shatter during a high-tier quirk exchange.
All For One had bribed HPSC officials to ensure the "Redundancy Plan" for the grid was actually a loop that would cause a mass blackout if Substation 4-C was compromised.
He had even manipulated the local zoning laws to ensure no residential buildings were nearby, removing any civilian "buffer" that might force All Might to hold back his power.
Every variable—the weather patterns, the grid load, the lack of local hero support—had been curated for twenty years to ensure this single hour of convergence.
-----
Inside the HPSC's subterranean command center, the air was saturated with the smell of stale coffee and the electrified smell of overheating computer hardware.
One hundred and forty cooling fans hummed at maximum capacity to prevent the server racks from seizing.
Sir Nighteye stood over a bank of ten 40-inch monitors displaying live topographical maps of the Kanto region. His eyes were bloodshot from seventy-two hours of continuous tactical monitoring.
"The statistical variance is gone," Nighteye stated, his voice tight. He adjusted his glasses with a shaking hand.
Nighteye pointed at the screen where eighty-four distinct villain incidents had been logged over the last twenty-one days. "The activity isn't just rising; it is a calculated funnel. Every localized riot in the south and every infrastructure sabotage in the west was designed to deplete the stamina of the Top 10. They are pushing Toshinori toward the Ota Ward industrial sector."
Gran Torino stood against the reinforced concrete wall. His cape was shredded, showing the results of a four-hour skirmish with high-tier kinetic-users in Kanagawa earlier that morning. "He knows it's a trap, Mirai. He isn't blind to the logistics. But the Symbol of Peace is a reactive force. He won't let a city burn to save his own skin. He believes he can break the trap through sheer output."
Nighteye looked at his own hands. "I used Foresight on the patrol route ten minutes ago. The vision lasted only five seconds before the mental strain forced me out. I saw a total blackout of the Ota Ward sector. I saw the structural collapse of Substation 4-C. There was a darkness at the center that my quirk could not penetrate—a void that neutralizes foresight. We cannot send him in without a multi-hero task force. We need Endeavor. We need the Shield Hero. We need a minimum of five pro-hero supports."
"The HPSC has already committed the other Top 10 to the coastal fires and the prison breaks in the north," Gran Torino replied. "AFO has paralyzed the hero response network. If we wait for a task force, Ota Ward becomes a graveyard before we even arrive."
WHOOSH
The pneumatic doors of the command center hissed open.
All Might stepped into the room. He was in his primary hero costume.
His presence increased the local temperature of the room by two degrees. Despite the majestic posture, the deep fatigue lines around his eyes indicated a severe lack of REM sleep.
"The HPSC just received a high-priority alert," All Might boomed. He ignored the tactical maps and looked directly at the live feed of the Ota Ward power substation. "The cooling system for the national data backbone has been compromised. If Substation 4-C goes offline, the digital relay for hospital life-support systems in twenty-three wards will fail. The estimated casualty count from a total grid collapse is over twelve thousand within the first hour. I am not waiting for a task force."
"Toshinori, the darkness I saw—" Nighteye began, reaching out to grab All Might's forearm.
"I have heard the warnings, Mirai," All Might interrupted. His golden aura flared, the sheer pressure of his quirk causing the coffee in the nearby mugs to ripple. "But the people don't need a tactician right now. They need a Symbol. If AFO is waiting for me in that ward, then I will meet him there. I will end this today so that tomorrow doesn't require a casualty list."
Nighteye's Foresight flickered again, a split-second image of a massive explosion and a broken statue. "Toshinori, wait—"
CRACK-BAANG
The floor of the command center buckled under the force of a localized sonic boom.
SWIIIIISHHH
All Might launched himself from the external balcony, bypassing the elevator systems.
He moved at Mach 1.6, a golden streak of kinetic energy that shattered the sound barrier three times in rapid succession.
The force of his takeoff cracked the reinforced concrete of the balcony and sent a cloud of pulverized stone into the command room.
Sir Nighteye stood in the dust, staring at the empty sky on the monitor. He checked the satellite clock. 3:58 PM.
In seven minutes, the golden dot representing All Might would reach the center of the Ota Ward industrial hub.
Nighteye turned to the HPSC operators. "Seal the sector. Issue a Level 5 blackout order. If this goes wrong, I want no witnesses and no survivors near that ward."
-----
16:03 PM.
Ota Ward.
The sound of the initial impact was not a singular noise; it was a physical event that restructured the environment.
BOOM. CRACK
The plume of dust Kaito observed from the substation gantry was the result of All Might hitting the central asphalt of the Ota Industrial Sector at Mach 1.6.
SSSSSSS
The shockwave of his landing traveled through the bedrock, causing the nitrogen pipes in Substation 4-C to rattle violently against their mounts.
CRACKKLEE
Before the dust could settle, the sky over the industrial hub turned a bruised, electric purple.
All For One descended, his descent silent until he was ten meters from the ground.
Then, he simply stopped his momentum, the air around him rippling with the forced pressure of a high-tier levitation quirk.
"You are early, Toshinori," All For One said. His voice was not projected; it was amplified by a sound-manipulation quirk that made it vibrate inside the hero's own skull.
All Might did not respond with words.
He adjusted his stance, his boots crushing the pulverized stone beneath him into fine powder.
The golden light of One For All flared, the heat from his body causing the sweat on his skin to evaporate into a thick mist.
CRACK-BOOM.
All Might launched.
The pavement behind him vanished, replaced by a fifty-meter trench of displaced earth. He closed the distance in 0.02 seconds.
"UNITED STATES OF SMASH!" All Might roared.
THUD.
All For One's right hand met All Might's fist. The air between them was compressed until it became a superheated plasma.
The resulting shockwave was a visible white ring of pressure that expanded outward at 1,200 meters per second.
Two nearby warehouses—Structures 8-A and 8-B—were struck by the pressure wave.
The corrugated steel siding was stripped from the frames and turned into twisted shrapnel.
THUD
THUNK
THUNK
The twenty-ton shipping containers stacked near the loading docks were tossed into the air like hollow cardboard boxes, tumbling through the sky before smashing into the distant sea wall.
"You look tired, All Might," All For One said. His boots carved two deep, black trenches into the earth as he slid back ten meters to absorb the kinetic load.
"That sprint from Kyushu has cost you. Your heart rate is 190 beats per minute. Your muscle fibers are beginning to tear under the strain of your own power."
"Tired enough to put you in a cell for the rest of eternity!" All Might roared.
He didn't wait. He pivoted his weight and unleashed a barrage.
This was the Prime Era.
There was no three-hour limit. There was no gaping wound in his side. He was a force of pure, unadulterated physical output.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
"DETROIT SMASH!" All Might shouted, his left hook shattering the sound barrier.
"OKLAHOMA SMASH!" He spun with centrifugal force, creating a localized tornado that tore the remaining roofs off the warehouses.
"NEW HAMPSHIRE SMASH!" He propelled his body weight directly into All For One's chest.
Each impact sent a flare of golden bio-energy into the sky, lighting up the overcast clouds like a localized sun.
All For One countered with a technical display of quirk-layering.
As All Might's fist moved toward his throat, All For One activated his combo.
"Springlike Limbs. Kinetic Booster. Impact Recoil!"
SHATTER.
The collision sent a shockwave back into All Might's own arm, the force of his own punch reflected into his radius and ulna.
All Might's arm buckled, but he didn't stop. He rotated his torso, using the momentum of the recoil to drive a knee into All For One's ribs.
CRUNCH.
All For One activated Hypertrophy and Strength Enhancer at the point of contact, his torso swelling with corded, black-veined muscle to tank the hit.
He grabbed All Might's leg, his fingers digging into the hero's calf with the force of hydraulic presses.
"Air Cannon: Multiplier!" All For One shouted.
WHOO-SHOOOOM.
A massive concussive blast erupted from All For One's free hand.
The air was compressed into a solid projectile that hit All Might in the sternum.
The Symbol of Peace was launched backward, his body skipping across the industrial ward like a stone across a pond.
BANG
He crashed through a reinforced concrete pylon, then through the wall of a chemical storage facility, finally coming to a halt as he smashed into the heavy-duty cooling pipes of a server farm.
HISS.
The pipes burst. Superheated steam and liquid nitrogen erupted into the air, creating a blinding, scalding fog that covered the entire 400-meter battlefield.
All Might emerged from the fog in 0.5 seconds. His costume was shredded.
His knuckles were raw, the skin missing from his fingers, but the wounds were instantly cauterized by the heat of his own golden aura.
He was a vision of raw, gritty determination.
"TEXAS SMASH!" All Might bellowed, the atmospheric pressure of his punch clearing the fog in a single blast.
He didn't fly; he leapt. Every time his feet touched the ground, the concrete exploded.
STOMP.
BOOM.
-----
For thirty minutes, the two titans tore through the Ota Ward.
They were moving so fast that to a normal human eye, they would be nothing but streaks of gold and purple light.
"MISSOURI SMASH!" All Might struck with a flat-hand chop, slicing through a steel girder.
"CAROLINA SMASH!" He crossed his arms, the resulting air pressure cutting through the asphalt like a saw.
CLANG.
WHAM.
SHATTER.
All For One used Warp Gate fragments to redirect All Might's punches into the ground. All Might responded by grabbing a fallen crane—a thirty-ton lattice of steel.
"ALASKA SMASH!" All Might roared, swinging the crane with enough force to bend the I-beams into a U-shape.
SKREEEE.
All For One caught the crane with one hand, his arm vibrating from the kinetic energy.
"Forced Quirk Activation: Metal Manipulation!"
He commanded, causing the crane to explode into a thousand jagged needles of shrapnel.
All Might didn't dodge.
He flexed his muscles, the shockwave of his aura blowing the shrapnel away as if it were dust.
"Is this all, All For One?" All Might gasped, his voice ragged. He was covered in grit, his sweat mixing with the gray dust of the pulverized buildings. "This is the world's hope! Their fate means you can't break the Symbol!"
"The world will only know a dead man," All For One replied. He was floating in the center of the debris, his suit reduced to rags.
16:32 PM.
The battle neared the perimeter of Substation 4-C. The vibrations from the fight had reached a magnitude that threatened to shake the grounding bolts loose from the primary transformers.
"ALL FOR OOONE!!!!"
"ALMIIIGHT!"
All Might pulled back his right arm. His muscles expanded until the fabric of his sleeve disintegrated. The golden light intensified, turning into a blinding white glare.
"UNITED STATES OF... SMASH!"
"Air Cannon: Kinetic Booster x4! Strength Enhancer x3! Impact Recoil!" All For One countered, his right arm swelling into a grotesque, black mass of bone and muscle.
They were exactly one hundred meters from Kaito's workplace. The energy building between them was enough to level the entire ward.
BOOM.
The two gods collided for what should have been the final time, the sound of the impact silencing the world.
------
Hideki Satō crouched behind the primary counterweight of a collapsed Kato NK-500E-v truck crane.
The steel structure, weighing several tons, acted as a physical shield against the supersonic pressure waves radiating from the center of the ward.
HUFF. PUFF
His lungs burned from inhaling pulverized drywall and aerosolized hydraulic fluid.
He used the sleeve of his press jacket to wipe a smear of blood from a laceration on his temple, caused by a piece of flying gravel.
"Check the frame rate. If it drops below sixty, we lose the motion clarity on All Might's strikes," Hideki commanded. His voice was strained, barely audible over the continuous, rhythmic thundering of the battle.
His cameraman, a freelancer named Nagi, was kneeling in the dirt, his hands white-knuckled as he gripped the handles of a Phony HDC-3500 broadcast camera.
The camera was mounted on a carbon-fiber tripod anchored into the cracked asphalt with steel spikes.
"The feed is... it's perfect, Hideki-san," Nagi stammered.
He stared at the seven-inch high-brightness monitor attached to the camera rig. "I don't understand the physics of this. We are in a Grade-A blackout zone. Sir Nighteye issued a Class 5 signal-suppression order through the HPSC central hub ten minutes ago. Every civilian cell tower in a five-mile radius should be dead. Even the Villain wide-spectrum jammers are active—I can see the interference patterns on the local radio scanner. But our satellite uplink is showing a full 100% signal strength."
Hideki looked toward the northern horizon.
Three kilometers away, the Saitama-Ota Relay Towers stood silhouetted against the dust-choked sky.
These were the towers Kaito Arisaka had reinforced during his Month 21 maintenance contract.
Kaito had not merely reinforced the physical lattice with high-tensile steel; he had replaced the standard HPSC-issue signal processors with custom, interference-shielded fiber optics and military-grade noise-cancellation modules.
Kaito's objective had been to ensure that the substation's automated diagnostic reports would never be interrupted by "environmental anomalies" or hero-related electronic noise.
By engineering a system capable of surviving an All Might-level encounter without a packet loss, Kaito had inadvertently neutralized the HPSC's ability to hide the battle.
The relay towers were currently filtering out All For One's jamming frequencies as "background noise" and ignoring the HPSC's shutdown codes as "unauthorized system interference."
"The uplink is routing through the Saitama backbone," Tanaka reported, his eyes wide. "It's bypassing the HPSC's central server entirely. We're broadcasting directly to the national satellite grid. Every newsroom in Japan—every person with a digital screen—is seeing this right now."
Hideki peered around the edge of the crane's counterweight.
A kilometer away, a golden flare erupted as All Might's Detroit Smash collided with All For One's Air Cannon.
The resulting flash was bright enough to burn the camera's sensors if the auto-iris hadn't kicked in.
"Adjust the exposure!" Hideki barked. "I want the detail on the blood on All Might's costume. The public thinks he's a Symbol of Peace who can't be touched. Show them the tear in his shoulder. Show them the way the ground is liquefying under his feet."
On the monitor, the image was terrifyingly crisp. The world was watching the Prime Symbol of Peace coughing up a spray of crimson as he was hammered through a reinforced concrete pylon.
They were seeing the "Symbol of Evil" in his biological prime, his face a mask of calm, lethal intent.
"The HPSC mole told me this fight was meant to be a ghost in the records," Hideki whispered, his eyes fixed on the screen.
"Nighteye wanted a controlled blackout to preserve the myth. But those towers an accident or miracle...just gave the world a front-row seat to the end of an era. This isn't just a scoop, Nagi. This is the moment the myth dies and the legend begins. We stay until the last frame is recorded."
"KUWAHAHAHA... My name will be recorded in the annals of history. Those other media will be eclipsed by me!"
BANG
BOOM
A secondary shockwave hit their position, vibrating the thirty-ton crane and sending a shower of rust and paint chips onto their heads.
Hideki didn't flinch.
He stayed focused on the lens, documenting the 30-minute mark of a battle that was never supposed to be seen.
-----
The thirty-minute mark hit.
Ota Ward had ceased to be an industrial hub; it was a churning kiln of fire and pulverized stone.
Prime All Might stood in the center of a two-hundred-meter crater, his cape reduced to scorched rags.
His knuckles were raw and smoking from the friction of his own golden aura.
HUFF. PUFF.
He was panting, his chest heaving as he forced his lungs to expand against the crushing atmospheric pressure of the battle.
Almight steadied himself with conviction.
"This is to go further beyond. PLUUS ULTRAA!!"
Across from him, All For One hovered three feet off the ground. His bespoke suit was shredded, but his face was contorted in a mask of manic, predatory glee.
He began layering quirks with a speed that blurred the air around his right arm.
"IT ENDS NOW, TOSHINORI!" All For One shouted. His arm swelled into a grotesque mass of bone, muscle, and sparking electricity.
"Springlike Limbs. Kinetic Booster x4. Multiplier. Strength Enhancer! DIE IN THE RUBBLE OF YOUR PEAACE!"
"UNITED....STATES...OF...SMAASH..!"
-----
Three kilometers away, at the designated evacuation assembly point, Kaito Arisaka's coworkers were huddled under thermal blankets.
Among them sat a physical duplicate of Kaito, soot-covered and exhausted.
The duplicate was currently accepting a bottle of lukewarm water from a site foreman, complaining about the heat and the ringing in his ears.
His alibi was airtight; he was just another stressed worker recorded on the HPSC evacuation logs.
But on the ground level of Substation 4-C, the true Kaito Arisaka looked at a digital clipboard.
A stray shockwave had just cracked the ceramic housing of the nitrogen cooling intake. He looked at the ground.
CRACK. THUMP.
The vibrations from the golden and purple energy were hitting 400Hz. The soil beneath the ward—reclaimed land sitting on Tokyo Bay—was beginning to liquefy.
"Unacceptable," Kaito thought.
He checked his bank account on his phone. The 2,500,000 JPY bonus was exactly twenty minutes away.
If the ground turned to liquid and the transformers sank, the payroll server handshake would fail.
Kaito transition from his work clothes into his sleek white-suited Hero X suit. A golden glasses. A white slick hair.
Kaito simply stepped into the path of the two strongest beings on the planet.
SNAP.
The sound was a dry, clinical pop that shouldn't have been heard over the roar of the fire—but it echoed through the ward like a gunshot in a library.
Suddenly, the world went silent.
The kinetic energy in All For One's arm didn't just stop; it was deleted.
The golden light surrounding All Might was extinguished as if a candle had been snuffed out by a giant's thumb.
The swirling debris, the smoke, and the fire all froze in mid-air, stripped of their momentum by a force that treated the laws of physics like a suggestion.
Hero X appeared in the center of the crater. He looked bored.
His eyes, cold and analytical, scanned the two legends as if he were looking at a pair of malfunctioning appliances.
All Might blinked, his fist frozen inches away from a black energy blast.
All For One's eyes widened, his "Search" quirk returning a terrifying "Null" result.
For the first time in a century, the Symbol of Evil couldn't detect the presence of the man standing right in front of him.
Without a word, Hero X moved.
It wasn't a heroic dash; it was the calculated, effortless step of a man walking to a terminal to fix a bug.
WHAM.
WHAM.
Hero X delivered two simultaneous punches.
The movement was a blur of absolute efficiency.
The first caught All Might squarely in the jaw, snapping the Symbol of Peace's head back and sending him tumbling three hundred meters across the concrete, skipping like a stone until he slammed into the sea wall.
The second caught All For One in the stomach, folding the Symbol of Evil in half and launching him through a reinforced steel warehouse wall.
Hero X adjusted his suit. He looked at the two bewildered legends as they struggled to stand in the rubble.
"Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a quiet spot for fishing on this coast?" Hero X's voice was flat, devoid of any emotional resonance. It sounded like a recorded announcement.
"I was three miles out on the bay, and your 'ideological debate' is vibrating the water so loudly the fish have migrated to the deep sea."
He stepped toward them, the ground under his boots glowing with a cold, white light that stabilized the soil and stopped the liquefaction process instantly.
"Your primitive struggle has exceeded the noise threshold of this era," Hero X continued, his gaze looking down on them with authority.
"Your existence is causing a resonance failure in the local crust. This sector is currently under my observation. I have no interest in your 'Symbols' or your 'Evil.' I simply want the silence back."
He looked at his watch. 16:40 PM. Twenty minutes until the bonus hit.
"I am officially declaring this nonsense to stop" Hero X commanded. "Vacate the premises, or I will be force to put you down. I have twenty minutes of my afternoon left, and I do not intend to spend it watching you two break things."
"It's for the greater good"
-----
High above, Hideki's camera captured everything, his hands shaking with a manic, obsessive fervor.
"KUWAHAHA... This is it.. the main character always appears last"
This was the shot he had lived for since the Ashita ruins—the "Third Power" rendering the world's greatest conflict irrelevant.
Everyone watched through his lens in a state of collective heart-stop as the broadcast bypassed every HPSC blackout.
It was cold, efficient, and terrifyingly absolute, putting the entire era on notice.
All Might and All For One looked at the man in the white suit, recognizing again the "Hero X" that had haunted the media for years.
For the first time in their storied lives, the two symbols were united by a single, paralyzing realization.
They weren't just being stopped; they were being dismissed by a power that looked down on them with nothing but boredom.
~~~~~
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(9 Advanced Chapters)