Ota Ward. 4:35 PM.
The industrial sector was a landscape of gray dust and tar. The air was thick with aerosolized concrete and overheated transformers.
The sky above was a bruised purple haze.
In the center of this structural rot, All For One hovered. He remained vertical, his black oxfords suspended six inches above the churned earth.
He was in his biological prime. His face was a mask of cold, aristocratic symmetrical perfection.
The muscle density under his suit was visible, shifting like cables with every minute breath.
All For One exerted a physical weight that made the atmospheric pressure within the crater double every second.
Across the crater stood Hero X.
He did not adjust his stance to compensate for the pressure. He stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. The fabric of his white suit remained uncreased, resisting the winds generated by the battle.
His golden glasses caught the orange light of the sun, hiding his eyes.
All For One's eyes widened behind his mask. For a fraction of a second, his composure fractured.
He looked at the perfectly restored buildings behind Hero X, then at the ground beneath his own feet.
"HAHAHAHA!"
All For One laughed.
It was a deep sound that vibrated the remaining glass shards in the nearby warehouses.
"Incredible," All For One said.
His voice was projected through a sound-manipulation quirk, making it vibrate within the inner ear. "I have observed you through the lenses of others for months. I have analyzed every frame of your interference in Hosu and Musutafu. But the reality is exquisite. You aren't just manipulating quirks, X. You are rewriting the ledger of the world itself."
CLICK
CLICK
He adjusted his cufflinks with slow, deliberate precision. His fingers were steady.
"I came here to break a Symbol," All For One continued, his gaze locking onto the golden reflections in Hero X's glasses.
"I came to show Toshinori that his era is a house of cards. I didn't expect to find something else. It's been decades since I felt this specific greed.
I want you. I want the power. I want the silence you bring to the battlefield."
"..."
Hero X said nothing.
He did not blink. He raised his left arm with a mechanical, unhurried motion and looked at his watch. 16:36 PM.
The silence that followed was absolute.
"SPRINGLIKE LIMBS. KINETIC BOOSTER X4. STRENGTH ENHANCER X3. IMPACT RECOIL. FRICTIONAL HEAT. RADIO WAVE GENERATION!"
All For One shouted the combination.
CRACK. CRICK. CRACK
The bone structure in his right arm cracked audibly.
The limb reorganized, expanding to triple its original volume.
Black, corded veins coiled around the muscle like pressurized hydraulic hoses. Red electricity arced between his fingers. He ignited the air around his fist, creating a localized firestorm.
BOOM.
"Come on!"
All For One launched.
The ground beneath his takeoff point vaporized into a fine white powder. He broke the sound barrier in the first microsecond, creating a sonic cone that shattered every reinforced concrete pylon in a fifty-meter radius.
SWIISH
He reached Hero X in 0.001 seconds.
The massive, glowing fist was a blur of absolute movement, aimed directly at the center of Hero X's head.
SNAP.
The sound was a dry, clinical pop.
The red electricity vanished. The firestorm died. The kinetic energy in All For One's arm was deleted.
His fist stopped exactly one inch from Hero X's golden glasses. There was no resistance, no shield of energy, and no recoil. The force was simply gone—stripped from the universe.
All For One's eyes flared with shock.
He was suspended in mid-air, his momentum zeroed out.
He tried to trigger a backup quirk—"AIR CANNON"—to blow himself away from the contact point, but his fingers would not move.
Hero X moved.
This was not a dash. It was a frame-by-frame relocation. One moment he was standing still; the next, he occupied the space inside All For One's reach.
THUD.
Hero X delivered a palm strike to the center of All For One's chest.
The sound was internal—the muffled, wet sound of internal organs being displaced.
All For One's lungs collapsed. The air was driven from his body in a single, silent gasp.
WHAM.
A left-hand strike caught All For One in the liver.
WHAM.
A right-hand elbow smashed into the side of All For One's temple, snapping his head to the side with a sickening crack of the neck vertebrae.
WHAM.
A knee drove into his solar plexus, folding the Symbol of Evil in half.
WHAM.
A clinical hook to the jaw sent a spray of blood and a molar flying into the gray dust.
Hero X moved with the efficiency of a machine.
He was hitting All For One in the "frames" between the villain's heartbeat. Every strike was calculated to bypass natural defensive reflexes.
All For One was hit six times before his brain could register the first pain signal.
"AIR CANNON! MULTI—"
SNAP.
The air cannon flickered and died before the pressure could leave All For One's palm.
Hero X reached out and grabbed All For One's throat. His grip was cold and absolute, like a steel vise. He spun the villain 180 degrees in mid-air. Hero X drove his elbow into the center of All For One's spine.
CRACK.
The sound echoed off the warehouse walls.
"UGHH"
All For One's back arched, his body going rigid. Hero X didn't let go. He transitioned into a high-speed rotation.
He delivered a flurry of punches—fifteen strikes in under two seconds—to All For One's torso and ribs.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.
All For One was a ragdoll.
Every time he tried to trigger a defensive quirk like "Impact Recoil" or "Hypertrophy," Hero X Snapped.
The energy was deleted. The biological command was nullified.
Hero X gripped All For One's collar. He threw the villain upward with a casual flick of his wrist.
WHOOSH
All For One ascended like a rocket, his body tumbling through the bruised sky. As he reached the apex of the throw, Hero X appeared above him.
WHAM.
A downward kick to the shoulder. The force was vertical. All For One hit the bedrock with the velocity of a meteor.
CRACK-BOOM.
The stone split into a starburst pattern, a fifty-meter crater forming instantly.
All For One was buried three feet into the pulverized granite. The dust settled around him like a shroud.
ACK- HAUGHK- AUCKH
He coughed, a thick spray of crimson hitting the gray dust. He scrambled to his knees, his hands shaking, his breathing a jagged, wet rasp.
All For One's suit was in tatters, the fabric stained with his own blood. He looked up, his mask shattered, his eyes searching for the man who had just treated him like a safety violation.
Hero X descended.
He didn't fly; the ground simply rose to meet his feet as the crater "Updated" its elevation.
He stood on the edge of the pit, looking down at the man who had ruled Japan from the shadows for a century.
"You have six minutes left on this site," Hero X said. The voice was flat.
All For One forced himself to stand. His legs buckled, but he used a "Kinetic Anchor" to lock his bones into place.
He wiped the blood from his mouth, his expression shifting from scholarly delight to a cold, predatory fury.
"You think this is over?" All For One hissed, his voice a distorted growl. "I have thousands of quirks. I have combinations you cannot conceive!"
"AIR CANNON. KINETIC BOOSTER X10. WARP GATE. SPRINGLIKE LIMBS. SPEAR-LIKE BONES!"
All For One unleashed a desperation combo. A wall of compressed air rushed forward.
Simultaneously, he opened a dozen Warp Gates around Hero X's feet.
Hero X stepped forward. He didn't dodge. He walked into the center of the storm.
SNAP.
The shockwave of the Air Cannon turned into a light breeze.
The Warp Gates collapsed into gray static, their spatial coordinates deleted.
Hero X was in front of him again. He grabbed All For One by the face, his fingers digging into the jawline. He slammed the Symbol of Evil's head back into the bedrock.
CRUNCH.
The stone shattered further. Hero X delivered a clinical, short-range hook to the liver, followed by a straight jab to the throat. He was moving in 24 frames per second.
WHAM. WHAM.
All For One tried to grab Hero X's arm. He wanted to steal the quirk. His fingers touched the white fabric of the sleeve.
"Found you," All For One grinned, blood coating his teeth. "I have you—"
SNAP.
All For One's fingers went numb. The "All For One" quirk itself hit a firewall. He couldn't "see" the power. He couldn't "sense" the mechanism.
Hero X delivered a spinning back-kick to the ribs.
SNAP.
The sound of the impact was followed by the deletion of the kinetic energy.
All For One was launched horizontally, skipping across the tar until he smashed through the reinforced steel wall of a warehouse.
BANG. BOOM. CRASH.
The silence returned to Ota Ward.
"Hnn" Hero X adjusted his golden glasses.
-----
The transition was instantaneous. One second, the global audience was watching the "War of the Century."
All Might was bloodied, his golden aura flickering as he traded world-ending blows with a Villain Boss.
The sound through the speakers was a constant roar of explosions and shouted ideals.
Pro Heroes like Endeavor and Ryukyu were miles away, held back by AFO's tactical decoys, their faces masks of frustration as they watched the Symbol of Peace struggle alone.
Then, the white suit appeared. The noise on the feed didn't just stop; it was gone.
--
Nighteye stood paralyzed before the central monitor.
His glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose, but he didn't push them up. He was watching his "Foresight" die.
For years, he had operated under the absolute certainty of his visions—a dark, predetermined path for Toshinori.
Now, the screen showed Hero X delivering a frame-perfect elbow to AFO's spine. It was a movement that didn't exist in the future Nighteye had seen.
"The Singularity Batch 0-9," Nighteye whispered, his voice cracking. He remembered the incident. This man had annihilated a localized catastrophe and vanished.
He grabbed the edge of the steel console until the metal groaned and buckled. "He isn't just interfering. He's re-calculating the future."
"Deploy the arrest teams for Hideki Sato now! If the public realizes the HPSC cannot track or contain this man, the entire social contract is void. I specifically banned any media from going there. How did he even get any information. Also overhaul the communication tower. Why is it still sending any signals?"
---
In the quiet of his office, the Principal of UA sat with a cup of tea frozen halfway to his lips. His black eyes reflected the high-definition glow of the monitor.
Nezu's hyper-intelligence was already running millions of simulations, trying to find the "Quirk" behind the "Snap." Every simulation returned a fatal error.
"How fascinating," Nezu murmured, though his fur was standing on end.
"I've thought a lot and even disturbed a civilian life" He set the tea down, his hand trembling slightly.
"He's just impossible. It seems that quirk singularity is already happening. They blend, mutate, and evolve, becoming more complex and powerful over time. This natural evolution causes quirks to eventually outpace the human body's capacity to control them, leading to a potential, uncontrollable "Doomsday" scenario. And this X".
"For the first time in my life, I am looking at a mind that doesn't care about the 'Why.' Only the 'Is'."
---
Keigo Takami sat on the edge of a rooftop, his red wings tucked tight against his back.
He was watching the feed on a handheld device. His "Fierce Wings" were sensitive to the vibrations of the world, and even from this distance, he felt the shift.
He watched Hero X move with a speed that made his own feathers look like they were drifting in slow motion.
"Are you seeing this?" Hawks muttered into his comms, though he knew his handlers were too busy panicking.
He watched the clinical way Hero X dismantled AFO's "Apocalypse Drive" with a single snap of his fingers.
"He's not flying. He's just... already there. I've spent my life trying to be the fastest, but that guy? It seems I need more training."
---
Rumi Usagiyama had stopped her rescue. She stood in front of the huge monitor on the building, sweat dripping from her chin, her rabbit ears pinned back in absolute focus.
As a brawler who lived for the "fist-to-fist" exchange, she recognized the sheer, terrifying mastery of Hero X's combos.
"No wasted movement," she rasped, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She watched the palm strike to AFO's chest. "He's hitting the organs directly. He's not even using his full weight. He's just... placing his strikes where the universe says they should be."
She slammed a fist into the palm of her hand, a mix of predatory excitement and deep, instinctive fear. "I want to fight him. No—I want to know how a human can be that good."
-----
Ryukyu stood atop a skyscraper on the perimeter of the Ota Ward, her dragon form slowly receding.
She had been fighting off AFO's high-end subordinates, but she had stopped mid-swing to watch the broadcast on a giant billboard.
She saw All Might—the man she looked up to—standing in the rubble, looking like a background sketch.
"The weight of the atmosphere changed," she whispered to her sidekicks. She looked at her claws, then at the screen where Hero X was holding AFO by the throat. "We were all prepared to die for a victory that would take hours. This man just finished it quickly. He didn't even mess up his suit."
---
Inko Midoriya had her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from speaking.
Next to her, eight-year-old Izuku hadn't moved. He was on his knees, his "Hero Analysis for the Future" notebook open to a blank page. He didn't write anything. He couldn't.
Everything he knew about "Plus Ultra"—about pushing past limits through spirit and will—was being contradicted. He knows Hero X years ago. How he saved the people from fire. He's the definition of impossible. He idolize Soot Hero because of his grit as a quirkless man who saved people.
But this..
Hero X wasn't pushing past limits; he was acting as if the limits didn't exist.
Izuku's eyes reflected the "Snap," and for the first time, he didn't look at All Might. He looked at the "X."
---
Enji Todoroki stood in a wasteland of his own making, surrounded by charred villains.
He looked up at the hovering news helicopter. He saw the feed.
He watched Hero X deliver a spinning back-kick that ignored AFO's "Impact Recoil."
Endeavor's flames, usually a roaring inferno of ambition and rage, flickered and died down to a dull ember.
"What is that?" Endeavor growled, his voice a hollow husk. He had spent decades burning himself alive to surpass All Might.
Now, he was watching a man who made All Might look like an amateur. The "Number One" spot he had sacrificed his family for suddenly felt like a children's toy.
The gap wasn't a mountain anymore. It was the distance between a candle and the sun.
---
Kimiko placed her hands on his bulging belly, her eyes fixed on the small, flickering TV. She saw the "Snap."
She saw the way the man in white adjusted his glasses after slamming the most feared villain in history into the ground.
A memory surfaced when he was saved by this man years ago in the highway incident of a certain villain.
She can't remember or even recognize his face. And now he appears once again. As an enigmatic individual.
"I haven't even said thank you yet"
---
"HAHAHAHA"
Rikiya Yotsubashi was no longer sitting. He was standing on the table, his face twisted in a manic, joyful grin. He watched Hero X delete the Warp Gates.
"Do you see it?" he screamed at his silent directors. "The HPSC spent decades building a cage of laws! All Might spent decades building a cage of 'Peace'! And here comes a man who simply deletes the bars! This is the ultimate liberation! He doesn't ask for permission to exist! He just is!"
---
Chizome Akaguro watched the digital billboard from the shadows of a rain-slicked alley.
He saw Hero X look at his watch. He saw the total lack of "Heroic Performance."
There was no speech about justice. There was no smile for the cameras. There was only the "Correction."
Stendhal sheathed his blade with a slow, reverent click. He bowed his head toward the screen.
"A True Hero doesn't need a Symbol," He rasped into the darkness. "He only needs the Truth. You are the only one worthy."
The world had shifted. The battle between Light and Dark had been interrupted by the Absolute.
------
All For One scrambled out of the crater, his suit reduced to scorched rags.
HUFF. PUFF.
He forced himself to stand, his body refusing to buckle, but his internal senses were screaming.
All For One attempted to trigger the physical expansion of his muscle fibers, but the command was met with a nothing.
The automatic recoil he usually relied on to shrug off physical impact remained dormant.
For the first time since his first era, the Symbol of Evil felt a primal, cold terror.
"Who are you?" All For One roared, his voice cracked and jagged. "I have stolen the powers of thousands! I have lived through the birth of every ability in this era! Why can't I sense your power? There is nothing there!"
TAP. TIP-TAP.
Hero X stepped forward.
He did not answer. He did not look at All For One's face; his gaze was fixed on the specific fibers of the villain's collar, calculating a point of leverage.
"AIR CANNON. KINETIC BOOSTER X10. WARP GATE. SPRINGLIKE LIMBS!"
All For One unleashed a desperation combo.
CRICKLE. CRACKLE
He fired a shockwave of compressed air intended to level the Ota Ward.
Simultaneously, he opened twelve circular portals around Hero X, intending to redirect any forward movement into a closed loop of redirected force.
SNAP.
The shockwave turned into a light breeze that didn't even ruffle Hero X's hair.
The portals collapsed into gray static.
Hero X reached out, gripped All For One by the charred collar of his suit, and Pulled.
The three-dimensional world buckled.
To All Might and the millions watching the high-definition feed, the reality of the industrial sector experienced a total collapse of depth.
The distance of the crater, the volume of the air, and the mass of the surrounding warehouses flattened instantly.
Suddenly, Hero X and All For One were no longer physical beings in the center of the street.
They were vibrant, high-contrast drawings appearing on the side of a half-collapsed brick wall.
ZIP. POP.
Inside the two-dimensional plane, Hero X moved as a flicker of ink.
He flipped the "canvas" of the brick wall, causing the perspective to shift violently.
"What!?"
All For One, now a flat image, tried to fire a beam of energy.
WHOOSH
In this plane, the beam manifested as a jagged line of red paint.
Hero X grabbed the "line" of the beam and folded it in half.
CRACK.
All For One was slammed against the "edge" of the flat surface.
To the onlookers, the two figures flickered from the brick wall to the asphalt of the road, then onto the surface of a nearby truck.
They were fighting across the textures of the world, moving between the stone, metal, and glass as if they were nothing more than ink.
All For One managed to stabilize his flat form. He used his abilities to manipulate the two-dimensional environment, turning the "ink" of the buildings into jagged spears.
SWIISH
He launched them at the white-suited figure moving through the graffiti.
Hero X did not dodge.
SNAP
The spears turned into flat droplets of harmless black ink.
BANG
Hero X delivered a punch. The strike occurred in the flat plane but carried the full weight of physical reality.
All For One was launched across the glass surface of a skyscraper, appearing like a streaking blur of charcoal.
SNAP.
They reappeared in the physical world, three hundred feet in the air.
-----
Thirty meters away, All Might braced himself. His golden aura flared to its maximum intensity.
He saw the opening.
He saw All For One vulnerable in mid-air. He launched himself forward, his fist cocked for a finishing blow.
"X-shonen! Step back!" All Might shouted. "I will end this!"
Hero X did not look at him.
He simply raised his left hand toward the approaching All Might and.
SNAP
An invisible, geometric wall manifested in All Might's path.
It was not a physical barrier; it was a correction of his trajectory.
All Might's momentum was instantly diverted one hundred and eighty degrees. He was pushed back fifty meters, his boots carving deep trenches in the tar as he was forced to a halt.
He was physically barred from entering the zone where the "Update" was occurring.
Hero X turned back to All For One.
He delivered a four-point combo before gravity could even take hold of their falling bodies.
WHAM.
A palm strike to the chin, snapping All For One's head back.
THUD.
A knuckle-strike to the liver.
WHAM.
A knee to the solar plexus.
CRACK.
A downward elbow to the center of the spine.
All For One was punched out of the air and back into the flat surface of the ground.
He landed as an image on the concrete. Hero X landed on top of him, his boots clicking against the asphalt.
He reached into the "ink" of the ground and Pulled All For One back into the three-dimensional world by his throat.
HUFF. PUFF. PUFF.
All For One was gasping.
His lungs were struggling to expand. He looked at Hero X with a shattered expression.
He had attempted every possible combination. He had attempted to steal, to warp, to break the logic of the fight.
Every time he attempted to build momentum, the Snap deleted the timing of his action.
"Who... what are you?" All For One rasped. He reached out with a trembling hand, trying one last time to use his search ability on Hero X's body.
The result was a total absence of data. There was no biological signature. There was no physical blueprint to manipulate. It was as if he were fighting a conceptual law wearing a suit.
"In all my life..." All For One's voice was a hollow whisper. "This is... the most... I cannot find you! There is nothing to take!"
Hero X gripped All For One's throat.
He lifted the Symbol of Evil off the ground with one hand. He raised his left arm and checked his watch. 4:59:45.
"You're over budget," Hero X said.
Hero X looked into All For One's eyes. There was no heroic anger. There was only the cold, clinical finish of a professional.
"I am inevitable."
SNAP.
SWOOP
The world inverted.
All For One was ejected from the three-dimensional plane entirely.
To All Might and the world, the villain vanished into a point of absolute white light.
Inside the two-dimensional void, All For One was a single dot of ink in an infinite, colorless canvas.
He began to fall.
There was no wind.
There was no sound.
There was no ground.
He fell.
For what felt like a second, then a minute, then an hour. His mind began to stretch. He attempted to activate an ability to warp out, but there was no space to warp to.
He was in a dimension of zero-latency. He was in a free-fall that would last, in his perception, for an entire week of absolute isolation. His century of planning was reduced to a silent descent into nothingness.
-----
Back in Ota Ward, the silence was total.
All Might landed in the center of the restored street.
He was at one hundred percent power. His golden aura flared, turning the puddles of water into steam.
He was braced, his fist cocked for a final strike.
He looked left. He looked right.
The dust was settling.
The warehouse that had been covered in fighting graffiti was now pristine. The brickwork was clean. The asphalt was smooth.
All For One was gone. The atmospheric pressure had returned to normal.
All Might looked at X. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving with the adrenaline of a battle that had been stolen from him.
"Where is he?" All Might asked. His voice was raw. He looked at the man in the white suit. "X-shonen... where did All For One go?"
Hero X adjusted his golden glasses. He looked at a small smudge of soot on his white cuff and flicked it off. He gave a smile.
SNAP.
"He's having the time of his life," Hero X said.
All Might stood in the silence. He felt the weight of his own golden aura. He realized he had not landed a single punch.
-----
5:00 PM.
A notification appeared on Kaito's internal display.
Deposit: 2,500,000 JPY. Sender: Haken Agency.
Hero X stepped behind a wall and disappeared into the shadows.
The industrial district of Ota began to breathe again.
The localized vacuum that had surrounded the crater dissipated, replaced by the sounds of distant sirens and the crackling of cooling stone.
The world had just witnessed the end of an era, not through a heroic sacrifice, but through a terrifyingly efficient removal.
Kaito went down a narrow alleyway. The white suit didn't have a single drop of blood on it. He dismissed the projection clone of himnamd joined the people in the evacuation zone.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small cloth, and wiped the lenses of his glasses.
He didn't feel like a hero. He felt like a man who had finally finished a particularly difficult shift at the warehouse.
The weight of the world's shock was something he left for the news anchors and the panicked officials at the HPSC.
Kaito reached the tents, merging with the crowds of workers who were being evacuated.
He sat among his soot-covered individuals at the assembly point, drinking a bottle of water.
Behind him, the Ota Ward was crawling with Pro Heroes.
They were searching for traces of the Villain who could go toe to toe with the Symbol of Peace.
They were also searching a man in white, for a signature, for a fingerprint, for anything that could explain how the "God" of the underworld had been erased.
They would find nothing.
"Contract 10 complete," he muttered under his breath. "Where would I go now?"
The era of the Symbols was finished.
-----
Hideki Sato was laughing so hard he had to lean against the crane. "DID YOU SEE THE SNAP? WE HAVE IT IN 4K!"
"Hideki-san!" Nagi shouted, pointing at the perimeter. "Nighteye's tactical teams are closing in! They're going to seize the camera!"
Hideki looked into the lens one last time. "Listen to me, Japan! This broadcast is being backed by international servers. If the HPSC touches me, the backup files of their corruption go live. I am the witness of the Third Power. You want to arrest me? Do it on live TV!"
Nighteye reached the site only to find the crowd of civilians and workers surrounding Hideki, forming a human shield.
The world had seen the "God," and they weren't going to let the HPSC take action.
~~~~~
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(9 Advanced Chapters)