The Dimension of Zero-Latency. Day 1.
There was no up. There was no down. There was only the Flatness.
WHIZZ.
WHOOSH.
WHIZZ.
All For One was not falling through air; he was falling through a conceptual lack of existence.
To his own perception, he was no longer a three-dimensional biological entity.
He was a smear of ink.
A collection of X and Y coordinates without a Z-axis.
He tried to scream, but sound required volume, and he had none.
He tried to activate a quirk—Warp Gate, Air Walk, Muscle Augmentation—but the commands died in his brain stem.
Quirks were biological.
They relied on proteins, on DNA, on the expansion of cells. Here, there was no biology.
There was only geometry.
He was a drawing of a god, trapped on an infinite sheet of white paper.
-----
Day 3.
The silence was louder than any explosion he had ever caused.
WHOOSH
It was a white noise that scoured the inside of his skull.
For a hundred years, the man named Shigaraki had been the harbinger of humanity's chaos.
He had stolen power, gifted it, and manipulated the currents of history.
He defined himself by his Weight—the pressure he exerted on the world.
Here, he had no weight.
He was a variable that had been deleted from the equation.
For the first time in a century, the Demon Lord felt the cold, jagged edge of absolute powerlessness.
All For One remembered the white suit. He remembered the Snap. It wasn't a fight. It wasn't a duel between symbols.
It was a Correction.
"I am not a rival to him," his mind whispered in the void.
-----
Day 7.
WHOOSH-WHIZZ
The terror had burned itself out, leaving behind something colder.
Something crystalline.
All For One stopped trying to fight the fall. He stopped trying to claw his way back to the 3D world.
Instead, he let himself drift. He analyzed the sensation of nothingness.
If raw power could be deleted so easily, then raw power was useless.
"All Might..." his internal voice echoed, devoid of its usual malice. "We were amateur fighting in a sandbox. We thought our muscles and our smiles mattered. But there is a ceiling above the sky. And someone is sitting on it."
The brawler died in that white void.
A reborn All For One emerged.
-----
Ota Ward Containment Zone. Day 7 Post-Collision.
14:00 PM.
The crater was a scar on the face of Tokyo.
The HPSC had erected a massive, opaque containment dome over the site where Hero X and All For One had vanished.
It was a "Class S" quarantine zone, darker and more heavily guarded than Tartarus.
CLOMP. CLOMP. CLOMP. CLOMP
Twelve squads of elite tactical units patrolled the perimeter, armed with anti-quirk rounds, suppression foam, and experimental sonic dampeners.
Sir Nighteye stood in the command tent, his eyes glued to the thermal monitors.
The sensors in the pit were silent. There was no heat. No movement.
Just the bedrock that had been pulverized by a battle the world wasn't allowed to understand.
"Atmospheric pressure is stable," a technician said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "It's been a week, Sir. If he was coming back... surely he would have warped in by now. Should we signal All Might? He's clearing the debris in Kanagawa; he could be here in ten minutes."
"No," Nighteye snapped, his voice tight and brittle. "If Toshinori comes here, the press follows. The President wants this contained. This is an investigation, not a photo op. Besides... my Foresight sees nothing. There might be nothing to fight."
He adjusted his glasses, but his fingers left a smudge on the lens. "I saw the future die in this pit seven days ago. Do not relax. The silence is not peace. It is holding its breath."
Outside the perimeter, perched on the construction crane 800 meters away, a long-range lens was fixed on the dome.
Hideki Sato adjusted the focus ring. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles that spoke of three days without sleep. He was using his Camera-Eye quirk combined with the latest camera in the market.
He looked less like a reporter and more like a soldier in a trench.
"Boss, the battery is at 4%," Nagi whispered, clutching a backup drive to his chest. "The HPSC jammers are getting stronger. If they triangulate us, we go to prison for life. We need to leave."
"We don't leave," Hideki hissed. He didn't look away from the viewfinder. "The silence is the story, Nagi. The HPSC is terrified of an empty hole. That means something is going to fill it. And when it does, the world needs to see it raw. No edits. No censors."
Then
POP.
It wasn't an explosion. It was the sound of a wet bubble bursting underwater.
Inside the dome, in the dead center of the crater, a single black dot appeared in the air. It had no depth. It looked like a dead pixel in the visual rendering of the world.
The tactical squads froze.
"EYES ON THE TARGET"
"I REPEAT WE HAVE EYES ON THE TARGET!"
The dot expanded. It didn't grow outward; it simply consumed the space around it, folding the light into a singularity.
PLOP.
A body hit the stone floor.
The man fell on his back.
His suit was gone, erased by the dimension of flat planes. He was naked from the waist up, his pale skin marked with strange, geometric bruises that looked like ink stains.
HUFF-PUFF. HUFF-PUFF
He gasped—a desperate, rattling inhalation that sounded like a vacuum seal breaking.
The air of Earth rushed into his lungs. It tasted of dust and acrid. It tasted of volume.
CRICK. CRACK. CRACK.
All For One pushed himself up. His arms shook. His spine cracked as it remembered how to support weight.
"Unit 1! Open fire! Suppression Pattern Alpha!" Nighteye's voice screamed over the comms, cracking with panic.
Rat-tat-tat-tat, Brrrrt
Pew-pew
Bang, Boom, Blam
The HPSC guards didn't hesitate. A hail of suppression bullets and capture nets rained down into the pit.
All For One didn't yell.
He didn't summon a massive, theatrical quirk combo.
He didn't laugh.
He simply raised a hand.
"Air Cannon."
He didn't aim. He didn't put effort into it. He just... dismissed them.
SWOOOOSH
The air inside the dome compressed into a solid, invisible wall and expanded outward at mach speed.
CRUNCH.
The HPSC dome shattered like cheap glass. The steel supports groaned and twisted, flying outward like shrapnel.
"UGHH"
"MY HAND!"
"HELP!"
The tactical squads were blown backward, their armor crumpling against the concrete barricades.
It wasn't a fight. It was a man swatting a fly because the buzzing was inefficient.
Dust billowed up, masking the crater.
Silence returned.
TIP-TAP. TIP-TAP
Then, footsteps.
All For One walked out of the dust cloud. He had picked up a discarded tactical coat from a fallen captain and draped it over his shoulders.
It hung loosely on him.
He looked up at the crane in the distance. He knew the camera was there. He could feel the electronic gaze of the lens.
All For One smiled.
It wasn't the manic grin of a villain who wants to destroy. It was the warm, terrifying smile of a savior who has come to burn the church down.
"People of the Earth," he said.
His voice wasn't amplified by a quirk, yet the acoustics of the crater carried it.
Hideki Sato's directional microphone picked it up with crystal clarity. The feed went live to every screen in Japan.
"You do not know my name. To the heroes, I am a nightmare. To the history books, I am a ghost. But today, I am simply a Survivor."
He spread his arms, the coat flapping in the wind.
"You have been sleeping. You built your society on the backs of Symbols. You let All Might smile for you so you wouldn't have to look at the darkness. You let the Hero Commission decide what is 'Good' and what is 'Evil' based on a rulebook they wrote in blood."
He pointed a finger at the camera.
"I have seen the Truth. I have fallen through the cracks of your reality. And I tell you this: The ceiling you look up to is painted. The heroes you worship are actors on a stage. And the stage is rotting."
The wind picked up, whipping the dust around his legs.
"To the abandoned," he continued, his voice dropping to a hypnotic register. "To those who were cast out because your quirks were too ugly, too dangerous, or too strange. To those who were told they didn't fit the mold... come to me."
His eyes gleamed with a chilling intelligence.
"I do not offer you chaos. I offer you a seat at the table. I offer you a new world where the rules are written by those who have the strength to hold the pen. My name is All For One. And I am officially announcing the formation of the League of Villains."
He turned and walked into the shadows of the ruined industrial sector.
Nighteye scrambled out of the command tent, his gun drawn, but the thermal signature was already fading.
"He's gone," Nighteye whispered, dropping his arm. "It's really bad. He's... recruiting."
-----
Izu Peninsula. High-End Coastal Resort.
2:05 PM.
Shhh... shhh..., lap, lap, swish.
The ocean view was objectively perfect. The water was a brilliant turquoise, and the white sand stretched for miles, shimmering under the sun.
Kaito Arisaka sat on a private balcony, wearing a white hotel robe that cost more than his monthly rent. It felt scratchy.
The fabric was a high-thread-count cotton, but the detergent they used was slightly too alkaline, leaving a residue that irritated the skin on his neck.
He frowned at his tea.
"Sloppy," Kaito muttered.
He picked up the cup. It was 68 degrees Celsius. He preferred 72 degrees.
The ceramic was also slightly uneven at the rim, creating a tactile annoyance every time he took a sip.
Behind him, inside the luxury suite, the television was blaring.
"BREAKING NEWS: THE MYSTERY VILLAIN SPEAKS! SELF-PROCLAIMED 'ALL FOR ONE' DECLARES WAR ON SOCIETY!"
Kimiko dropped her sun hat. Her hands flew to her mouth, her face losing all color. "Oh my god... Kaito! Look! That monster... he's alive!
He killed those guards like they were nothing!"
[A/n: Kimiko was the store manager]
Saki put down her newspaper. She adjusted her reading glasses, her expression grave. "My goodness. They really can't keep a lid on anything these days, can they? That man... he speaks like a politician now."
Kaito didn't turn around. He swirled his tea.
"Kaito! Are you listening?" Kimiko shouted, pointing at the screen where AFO was declaring the end of the Hero Society. "He's talking about a League! We need to go back! We need to... I don't know, buy canned food!"
"I hear it," Kaito said. He took a sip. "But the ice cream machine in the lobby is making a rhythmic clanking sound. Can you hear it? It's vibrating at a frequency that travels through the floorboards. It's... grating."
Kimiko stared at him, her mouth agape. "The world is ending. The Symbol of Evil just declared war on reality. And you're complaining about the ice cream machine?"
"If the compressor belt snaps, the Freon will leak," Kaito said, looking at the ocean with dead, fish-like eyes. "Then the ice cream melts. The guests will complain. The staff will be stressed. The service efficiency will drop by 40%. That is a tragedy, Kimiko-san. That man on TV is a problem for All Might, to the government and that Hero X. The melted rocky road is a problem for me because I planned to have eat it at 3:00 PM."
He sighed. He slumped his shoulders.
He had paid for this vacation with the "Lottery Winnings" (a ticket he had edited into existence three days ago) specifically to get away from the noise of the city. He wanted silence. He wanted a breeze.
Instead, he got a revolution on TV and a broken compressor belt three floors down.
SNAP.
The sound was silent, only he could hear it.
Down in the lobby, three floors below, the massive industrial ice cream machine shuddered.
The loose rubber belt fused back together. The motor realigned its molecular structure. The vibration dampers renewed themselves. The humming became perfectly, beautifully silent.
Simultaneously, the tea in Kaito's cup rippled. The molecules vibrated, heating instantly to exactly 72 degrees Celsius. The ceramic rim smoothed itself out.
Kaito took another sip.
"Better," he whispered.
He finally turned to look at the TV. Hideki Sato's face was plastered on the screen. The banner read: SATO PRESS: THE EXCLUSIVE WITNESS.
Hideki was shouting into the camera, his hair wild, his eyes burning with the fervor of a man who knows he has scooped God.
"The HPSC tried to hide this! They tried to tell you the threat was contained! But we saw it! We saw the emptiness! Sato Press will not rest until we find the Truth!"
Kaito felt a headache forming behind his eyes. It was a dull throb, right in the center of his forehead.
"That reporter," Kaito muttered, rubbing his temples. "He is going to be a problem. He captures things in 4K that should remain in the dark. I don't recall anyone or characters in the original canon timeline about this guy."
"What was that, dear?" Saki asked, looking up.
"Nothing, Grandma," Kaito said. He stood up and walked to the railing.
He looked at his hands. They looked like normal hands. No glowing veins. No shaking.
Just the hands of a 20-year-old worker.
But he could feel the shift in the air.
'Shizuoka is going to be a mess,' Kaito thought, his internal monologue tired and pragmatic. 'Now that the "League" is officially 5 years ahead of the plot, the HPSC is going to triple the patrols in every major city. Musutafu is basically All Might's backyard. That means sirens at 2 AM, random ID checks at the train station and noise.'
"Is this what you call a butterfly effect? Now that I think about it. All For One and Almight weren't injured. At this time, in the original canon they lost a face and a stomach. But now, they're still at their prime. The world is going to be chaotic for sure"
Sigh
Kaito leaned against the railing, watching a seagull steal a french fry from a tourist.
'I don't need a fortress. I need a dead zone. A place where the pro heroes are too lazy to go and the villains are too low-rent to cause real damage. A place where the rent is cheap enough that a guy with a temp job doesn't look suspicious.'
He pulled out his phone. He opened a real estate app.
Kaito scrolled past the high-end condos in Tokyo. He scrolled past the suburbs. He found a listing in a district called Naruhata.
Listing: 1DK Apartment. 25,000 Yen/Month. Note: Thin walls. No pets. Near the train station. High incident rate of petty quirk usage.
Naruhata. It was a dump.
It was famous for absolutely nothing except cheap rent, minor street crime, and being a place where "failed" heroes went to retire.
"Grandma," Kaito called out.
"Yes, Kaito?"
"I think we should move," he said, tapping the screen. "I found a place with... excellent ventilation."
"But we just renovated the shop," Kimiko said, still watching the news. "And the customers..."
"The market is volatile," Kaito lied smoothly. "I have a feeling property taxes in Shizuoka are about to skyrocket due to the new security measures. We should liquidate and relocate to somewhere quieter. Somewhere... boring and safe"
He looked back at the ocean.
All For One was back. The world was screaming. Heroes were mobilizing.
Kaito Arisaka just wanted a quiet apartment where the neighbors didn't scream and the appliances didn't rattle.
He picked up a 10-yen coin from the table. It was warm from the sun.
"Heads, we move. Tails, we move faster."
He flipped it.
The coin spun in the air, glinting against the blue sky. It landed on the table with a clink.
Heads.
"Pack your bags," Kaito said, finishing his tea.
"Vacation is over. We have a train to catch."
"And also please notify your boyfriend Kimiko-san"
-----
2:20 PM.
Tomura Shigaraki scratched his neck. His skin was raw, flaking off in dry patches.
He watched the broadcast on a cracked tablet.
"Sensei..." he rasped.
Beside him, Kurogiri cleaned a glass. "He has returned, Shigaraki Tomura. But... he seems different."
"He's quiet," Shigaraki said. He stopped scratching. "He used to be loud. He used to laugh like a boss. Now... now he looks like he's planning a funeral."
Shigaraki looked at the screen, at the eyes of his master.
"He's scared," Shigaraki realized, a chill running down his spine. "Something scared Sensei. Something made him realize he isn't the King."
Shigaraki clenched his fist, and the edge of the table crumbled to dust.
"Good," Shigaraki grinned, a twisted expression. "If the King is scared, that means the game just got harder. And I love hard mode."
-----
Naruhata District. Apartment 202.
14:30 PM.
Koichi Haimawari was putting on his sneakers.
"Hey, Pop! Did you see the news?" he yelled through the thin wall.
"Yeah!" Pop★Step's voice came back, muffled by the cheap drywall. "The scary guy is back! Does that mean we have to patrol tonight?"
"It means we definitely have to patrol," Koichi said, tightening his laces. "The thugs are gonna be riled up. That speech... it was like a call to arms for every creep in the city."
He stood up and tried to do a practice slide across his tatami mats.
SQUEAK.
The rubber soles made a high-pitched, agonizing noise against the floor.
SQUEAK. SQUEAK.
"I really need to figure out a better way to do this," Koichi muttered, wincing at the sound. "The neighbors are gonna kill me."
He looked at the empty apartment next door—Unit 203.
"At least the guy next door moved out last week," Koichi said. "Hopefully, the new guy is hard of hearing."
~~~~~
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