Izuku had failed.
One for All hadn’t been enough. Nothing had been enough . No matter how fast he flew, how hard he punched, how many tendrils of Blackwhip he shot out of every point in his failing body… All for One had remained standing.
And now it’s all over. With broken bones and exhausted muscles, he laid in the middle of the ruined city, his mission failed, as the 200-year-old monster stood over him, his suit looking like it had never even been scratched.
Izuku couldn’t move. His energy was all used up. The only thing left that he was capable of doing was crying, staring up into the sky and wondering why, even with One for All, why was he still so powerless when it really mattered?
He flinched, or at least his body attempted to flinch, as All for One waved his hand towards him. He shut his eyes, expecting death to come a second later, as it had for so many of his fellow heroes that day.
He let out a whimper as he was picked up, seemingly telekinetically, and his limbs were left to hang, the shattered bones and ripped muscles screaming out in pain. A second later though, they were lifted as well, the pain lessening.
His vision was flashing in and out of an inky black void, as he struggled to stay conscious. But after floating for a few moments, Izuku saw All for One standing there with his helmet off, the man’s pristine, slicked-back white hair another taunt to Izuku’s ineptitude in this fight.
Izuku hissed as he was softly placed on the floor, the soft feeling of floating disappearing. He and All for One stared at each other for a moment, before All for One reached down and placed his hand on Izuku’s chest.
Izuku scrunched his eyes up, expecting to never open them again, when suddenly… everything stopped. There was no more pain to be felt, no more agony from his ruined body. Opening his eyes, he was shocked to see |Rewind|’s effect ending, and his limbs returning to the way they were before their fight.
But even with his limbs fixed, meaning there was no more pain, something was wrong. He tried to attack All for One, scream at him, tear Eri’s Quirk out of him and return it to his precious little girl… but Izuku still couldn’t move. What was All for One doing?
All for One just smiled as he sat down next to the immobilised boy, creating a wall from the ground with |Overhaul|, and sitting Izuku up, leaning him against it. “It’s alright, Izuku Midoriya. You will not die today.”
Izuku shivered at the sound of the man’s voice, how smooth it was now that the damage to his vocal cords from his fight with All Might had been fixed. Izuku closed his eyes, breathing deeply. “I’m not afraid of you.”
All for One just nodded silently, smiling. “You did well. You fought with intelligence and cunning, more so than I have ever seen from any of my opponents. If I had any other Quirks within myself at this moment you just might have won. Probably not, but stranger things, you know?”
He shook his head. “I’m very proud of you, my boy. To go from a weak, quirkless little thing, to the beast that I fought today. I’ve been aware that you had One for All even before you ran away to America, but you have impressed me with how you used it, Midoriya.”
Izuku couldn’t lift his arms to wipe the tears out of his eyes. “What do you want? One for All? I refuse to give it up. I’d rather it die with me than fall into your hands. All Might trusted me with this, I refuse to let him down”
All for One shook his head. “And you did beautifully! You fulfilled your promise to that old fool. You fought with everything you had, I can tell. I know that when you finally collapsed from exhaustion, there was nothing else you could have possibly done.”
He smiled, ruffling Izuku’s hair. “I’m so proud to have fought someone with the ability to put their absolute all into a fight, into doing what they thought was right. I have so much respect for you, my boy.”
He wrapped an arm around Izuku’s shoulder, ignoring the flinch in response from the boy. “But enough of that. You’ve been through so much pain, my boy, and while a lot of it is my fault, and I apologise for that, a lot of it isn’t.”
“It was so cruel of them to make it your responsibility to fight me. You could never have defeated me. That’s just the truth of it. Even One for All is no matter to me anymore, I don’t need it. I see now that I never truly did.”
Izuku was openly crying now, trying to get his body away from All for One. He succeeded slightly, his body floating upwards, out of the reach of the monster in human skin. All for One just laughed.
“Even now, immobilised from the neck down, you fight me. Gods above, I feel as if I could break out into song. I have longed for an opponent such as yourself for such a very long time, my boy, and you have not disappointed.”
He shook his head, dragging Izuku back to the ground with the telekinesis he used earlier, and bind his feet to the floor with |Overhaul|. He patted Izuku on the head again, a sad look on his face.
“No, my boy, it is not you who have disappointed me. It is those cowards, frauds hiding back at UA, and at the godforsaken Hero Association that have disappointed me.”
He stood up, wiping some concrete dust off of his suit pants as he did, and straightened his tie, turning back to Izuku. “I want you to know that none of this is your fault, Izuku Midoriya. It is the fault of your elders, and them alone.”
He leaned down and cupped Izuku’s cheek. “I cannot restore your ability to move just yet, but I promise that I will. You do not deserve to be paralysed for life. After I have dealt with Nezu and his pesky band of allies hiding in UA, I will return to you and restore your movement. You have my word.”
Izuku cried, shaking his head, trying to open his mouth, to scream out at All for One, to do something to get the man to stay away from his friends, his family. But there was nothing he could do.
His body was unresponsive, and his voice had been silenced somehow. Blackwhip’s tendrils flopped without strength when he created them, and he was stuck to the ground, meaning Float couldn’t help him either.
None of the other Quirks inside One for All were working as they should. Izuku was powerless to stop the man as he rose into the air, flying towards UA, which was visible from his position against the wall.
All he could do was cry as the seconds ticked past, the sounds of distant combat reaching him eventually as All for One reached UA. He almost held out hope that the teachers could stop him.
Because if anyone could, it was surely them, right? They were UA teachers.
Aizawa had thrown himself in the path of the first Nomu without hesitation and successfully fought his way through a horde of villains. Nezu was the smartest creature on earth, surely he had a plan for if this ever occurred?
Surely when Izuku opened his eyes, he would see the people he had learned to idolise and love like a family standing over the defeated body of All for One, there to rescue him.
But he knew that he was deluding himself. He knew that they would fall, just like the heroes that Izuku had tried to save here had. Just like Yagi had days earlier, no matter what the doctors tried to do.
And as the main building of UA exploded into chunks of concrete and metal and glass, courtesy of |Overhaul|, Izuku knew it was over. He knew it was all gone.
He cried. And cried. Cursing his useless body and the man who had made it so. He cried because he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand that All for One would get away with this…
And he couldn’t stand that he was the only one who had survived to see it happen.
Thanks for reading! Here's the post that inspired this One-Shot:
