28

Nezu took a sip of his tea as he went over the final preparations for Endeavor's coming press conference. He wasn't so much concerned about the details of the conference itself, as Endeavor and his PR team could handle that. It was the aftermath and the many ripples that would result from it that had Nezu's attention.

Endeavor coming clean was as much a calculated attack on the HPSC as it was a man confessing his sins to the public. The revelation that the No. 2 Hero was abusing his family was not going to sit well with the public whose protection was his responsibility, and much of that resulting outrage could be focused and redirected to the so called "public safety" commission that had a hand in covering it up. He would need Toshinori to be present for that, though, which was why he was waiting so fervently for his return from I-Island. If anyone could successfully navigate and redirect the public's anger and mistrust from being projected at pro heroes at large to just the bureaucracy that governed them, it was All Might.

His attention was diverted to his phone when he received a call from Aizawa. That was strange. What reason would the man have to call him at such an hour during their training camp? He took another sip of his tea before answering the phone.

"Aizawa, it's good to hear from you," he chirped with a smile that anyone in the room with him would instantly be wary of. "I trust you have a reason to call at such an ungodly hour."

Nezu sat and listened to Aizawa speak, and his smile slowly faded. Soon, the cup of tea fell out of his slackened paws and spilled all over his desk. By the time Aizawa finished speaking, Nezu was legitimately snarling. He didn't bother hanging up the phone before unleashing a vicious, animalistic screech that reverberated throughout the entire building. He swiped the cup off of the desk, and it shattered against the wall as the chimera left his seat in a frothing fury. His fur was standing up and his absurdly sharp teeth that he usually did his best to hide were bared.

It was time to kill All For One. If the rest of the League of Villains were to perish in the crossfire… well, accidents happened in their line of work. He briefly calmed himself from his feral rage, summoning the composure necessary to reach for the phone and make another call. When the man he sought answered the phone, Nezu did not mince words.

"All Might, you have 6 hours to get your ass back to Japan."

"…But, the flight is 8 hours, sir."

"Then you'd better get moving."

"I- uh- w-whats the emergency, sir?"

"The League of Villains attacked our training camp. Young Izuku was captured."

There was a brief, incredibly tense silence on the line, and then Nezu heard what sounded like a puff accompanying a furious growl.

"Understood."

Nezu hung up and slammed the phone to his desk. This was not good; it was not good at all. He took a deep breath and furiously ran through what he knew of the situation so he could determine how to proceed.

His students weren't unharmed but were all mostly safe with the exception of Mineta, who was apparently in critical condition. There were two villains apprehended and one villain dead, burned to ashes. That left two possible culprits, and while he wouldn't necessarily put it past Todoroki to kill if absolutely necessary, the fire was apparently black and hotter than anything anyone had ever encountered.

No, this was not good; it was not good at all.

Another villain death was not what that boy needed, neither for his mental health nor his public image. Detractors would smell blood in the water and go into a frenzy to pick him apart. The Commission themselves might even try to take a pound of flesh. He needed to do damage control, and quickly.

Even more pressingly, he needed to find Izuku. If All For One got his hands on Izuku's quirk…

He also still needed to inform Inko of what happened.

For the first time in his life, Nezu wished that the humans who had experimented on him had simply killed him before he could escape.

To say that Shota Aizawa was having a bad night would be like saying Earth was round or that taxation was theft. His students had been attacked on his watch, and having several other pro heroes on scene didn't help the outcome at all. It was a targeted, focused attack from the villains that was infinitely better planned than the USJ assault. These villains knew what they were doing, and they succeeded in their goal: Midoriya was taken, and so was Ragdoll. There was no guarantee that Ragdoll was even still alive given the amount of blood that was left at her last known location.

More than anything else, his students were put in danger. They were training to be heroes, and he was hard on them to strengthen their resolve and prepare them for the horrors of the profession when they finally went pro, but that didn't mean they were ready to be exposed to those horrors so soon. They were heroes-in-training, but they were still just kids. Just like he was when Oboro was killed-

No, there was no use ruminating over another failure of his. He already had this one to deal with. He sighed and leaned on the wall of the camp's main building while the students who weren't en route to the hospital gathered and comforted each other.

"Mr. Aizawa?" He heard someone address him, and he took in the tall, roughed up form of Shoji approaching with bandages around one of his appendages.

"Shoji," he acknowledged the boy. "What do you need?"

"Do you know if Mineta will be alright?" he asked, an almost imperceptible tremble in his voice that made the teacher's heart clench.

"It doesn't look good as of right now," Aizawa lowly began after a brief silence. "However, going by your recount of events earlier, Mineta's a fighter. He'll pull through, I'm sure of it."

He truly hoped the boy did.

That eased the tension in Shoji's shoulders, if only a little bit. The boy looked as if he wanted to say something but didn't quite know how to phrase it, so Aizawa let him gather his likely tumultuous thoughts.

"There was something that Mineta said," Shoji finally spoke, his volume now lower than it was previously. "I didn't want to bring it up in front of everyone else in case others were listening, but I need to tell you about it."

"What is it?" Aizawa questioned, now a bit on edge.

Shoji grew an eye from one of his unharmed limbs and looked around to ensure that no one was eavesdropping before he spoke. "He said that Ojiro was a spy."

Aizawa's brain stalled at those words. He literally could not process what he had just heard for several seconds, and when he finally did, his eyes narrowed dangerously into slits.

"Excuse me?" Aizawa finally responded in a low growl that demanded answers.

"When I asked him about his injuries, that's what he said. I didn't get a chance to press about it. I wish I had. He was dead set on rescuing Midoriya, so our focus was elsewhere," Shoji morosely explained.

Aizawa sighed and calmed himself. "No, you did good. Mineta will pull through, and we will find Midoriya; I will promise you that. Thank you for letting me know, I'll handle it from here."

Shoji nodded and Aizawa placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Everything will be fine. Go back to the others. You all need each other now more than ever."

When the boy departed and returned to his classmates, Aizawa groaned. As if things couldn't get any more complicated. Ojiro was among those who were sent to the hospital, so he couldn't pull him and interrogate him on the spot, which was probably for the best given his mood. He'd have to make another call to Nezu, but he was very hesitant to call the animal again after that earlier display.

Then, there was the matter of Kota. The young boy was safely back in Mandalay's care, but he was clearly traumatized. Apparently, the battle between Midoriya and Muscular (why did it have to be HIM of all people?) was so intense that it spurred a quirk awakening for his student that allowed him to absolutely pummel the villain into the ground. That was frightening enough on its own, but what made it even more distressing was his description of events after Muscular had seemingly gone down the first time.

The man had risen from defeat as if he were a zombie (maybe under the influence of a secondary quirk, or potentially trigger?), upon which Kota said that he grabbed the boy by the neck and jerked, and then he felt nothing. He didn't see anything, either. It was just a black void according to him. Then, it was over as quickly as it began, and he felt fine, but Midoriya was bleeding and badly burned.

However, it was Midoriya's final words that stuck with Kota: "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Kota didn't know what that meant and was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened, but he wasn't likely to any time soon. Those words, though…

Aizawa did not want to think about the implications of that statement, nor would that statement ever see the light of day for Midoriya's sake if he had his way. It only made finding him an even higher priority than it already was.

A few days had passed since the attack at the training camp, and many of the students who were sent to a nearby hospital were still admitted. One of those students was the unconscious, heavily bandaged Mineta hooked up to machines to assist with his breathing. The boy needed emergency surgery to address his collapsed lung and broken arm as well as the blood loss. He was currently stable, fortunately, but he would likely remain in the hospital for some time. That was enough to ease Shoji's mind significantly, and he spent much of his time sitting by Mineta's bedside when he could.

Admittedly, he didn't think much of the boy when they met and still hadn't up to that point. He was smart and crafty, but he was also an unashamed lecher, which may have put his craftiness in a less ideal light now that he thought about it. He'd agree that Midoriya phrased it the best in their little talk; he knew that he shouldn't have eavesdropped, but his curiosity got the better of him. He was pleasantly surprised with what he heard, but he opted to wait and let the boy's action speak for him.

Well, they certainly did a few nights later.

He'd generally call himself a decent judge of character, so he was happy to be proven wrong in this instance. He'd also say he was a rather forgiving person; having a heavy mutation like his, he sorta had to be, otherwise he'd run the risk of succumbing to hatred and losing himself.

He was glad that he had classmates and friends to depend on and make his life worth living. It may have been a bit melodramatic, but it was nice to confirm that he wasn't alone any longer after many of the darker moments he had experienced in his life before UA. And yes, he very much considered Mineta a friend. He didn't see that changing any time soon.

1-A had been through quite a lot already, but this event (should everyone make it out alright) would likely solidify a bond that would take something rather earth-shattering to dismantle… such as the possibility of one of them being a traitor.

He would keep a few pairs of eyes on Ojiro.

In the room across the hall was nothing but chaos. Setsuna Tokage was doing her very best to calm down the raging monster before her, and it was taking all of her strength to mollify said raging monster when she came across a clip of some dime a dozen talking head badmouthing their friend. For context, the news about the attack on training camp spread and quickly garnered a ton of media attention. If that was the end of it, Setsuna would have been grateful.

However, life wasn't so gracious; the real issue was that Izuku Midoriya had been kidnapped, and that, too, garnered a ton of media attention. For whatever reason, a lot of people had quite a bit to say about the situation beyond the optics of a hero student being kidnapped by villains. It was so odd that pundits had so many takes about her friend specifically in reference to being around villains, both positive and negative. She knew he was somewhat famous, but the way his fucking kidnapping was becoming sensationalized to all hell seriously bothered her.

Yui Kodai, on the other hand, was handling the situation significantly worse. Setsuna, fortunately or not, was knocked unconscious by Mustard's gas attack, so she was indisposed for the whole situation. Yui, on the other hand, was able to get a gas mask from Yaoyorozu and stayed conscious for the whole ordeal. However, she didn't truly think that she made use of the advantage. The girl did everything she could to find and protect her unconscious classmates, but, unlike Kendo, Tetsutetsu, and Awase, she didn't see any direct combat.

Someone who undoubtedly did see direct combat, however, was Izuku. She knew he had once she saw the brilliant beacon of colorful fire shining above the camp. In that moment, gazing at the display of the boy's quirk and vaguely feeling some of the power radiating from it, she knew that he was trying to call out to and reassure each and every one of the students on the forest floor. She could feel him telling her and everyone else that everything was going to be okay.

But it wasn't okay. People were hurt, Izuku was gone, and some people were laying the blame on both UA for not protecting its students and Izuku for being a "villain sympathizer", whatever the fuck that meant. The fact that one of her friends was kidnapped by villains who were trying to kill them and then some pompous asshole with a shitty toupee could get on live TV to blatantly spout lies about him nearly made Yui punch through the hospital room's TV. Just because he wanted to help people who society left behind didn't make him a goddamn villain sympathizer!

Setsuna agreed and didn't exactly blame her for her outburst, but destroying the TV was a bill they didn't need.

"I can't stomach this," Yui growled, the sight of the scowl on her normally stoic face so alien to her green-haired friend. "Izuku is out there somewhere probably being tortured or worse, and here we are sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for something to happen. I refuse to do that again."

She knew it was irrational, as keeping her classmates safe was every bit as heroic as fighting the villains directly, but she couldn't help but get down on herself for not doing more. Maybe she could have assisted Kendo and Tetsutetsu against the villain spreading the gas, taking him down more quickly and giving more time to potentially prevent Izuku's capture. She didn't even know he was their target, but she still should have been able to do something right?

…Right?

The way Yui began to shake was starting to alarm Setsuna. She quickly closed the distance and wrapped the girl in a hug. It was clear that the weight of the situation was hitting the normally unflappable girl hard, and it was drawing out an expressive side of her that she wouldn't normally display so openly. Adjacently, this might have been the most Setsuna had ever heard Yui speak in one sitting. It was almost unsettling.

"We have to do something," Yui spoke when she had begun to calm down. "We have to find him. We have to rescue him. I'm going to rescue him."

Setsuna pulled away and locked gazes with her friend. The resolve brimming in her cerulean eyes met the incredulity and worry in Setsuna's dark green pair.

"Yui… this is insane," Setsuna stressed. "Have you actually thought about this?"

"I'm going with or without you, Setsuna," Yui firmly declared.

Izuku was her first friend at UA. Making friends was always difficult for her due to her generally reserved nature and rather stoic disposition; people were either intimidated, put off, or just stared at her for whatever reason. Izuku, meanwhile, readily accepted her with all of her eccentricities, and it didn't even take very many words from either party to forge a swift and strong bond. She'd forever appreciate him for that, and she wouldn't see him in danger if there was anything at all that she could do about it.

"I know, and I'm in, make no mistake," Setsuna assured. "I just need to know that you've thought about this for longer than 30 seconds."

"Would it matter if I had? My decision wouldn't have changed."

"I figured," Setsuna sighed. "Still, a plan is necessary if we want to have a hope in hell of finding him. Where would we even begin to look?"

"Awase said that he assisted Yaoyorozu in putting a tracker on the creature the villains brought with them," Yui responded, and Setsuna picked up on where she was going. "We can start there."

"You really think she'd help?" Setsuna asked.

"It's worth a shot," Yui shrugged.

The green head nodded and gave her friend a serious look. "We can't tell anyone in our class about this. Itsuka would strangle us with her big ass hands"

"We'd probably deserve it. Still doesn't change my decision."

"Doing stupid things for the right reasons, eh?"

"What the hell is it with you green heads and never letting me live that down?"

"This means you're going to have Yaoyorozu make another receiver for you, doesn't it?" Iida asked the trio of Ochako, Bakugo, and Shoto in front of him while the rest of 1-A (minus a few: Toru and Jiro were still unconscious, and Ojiro and Aoyama were MIA) watched on in tense silence. Funnily enough, they were in Yaoyorozu's room, and she was awake and watching the interaction in silence, as well.

"What if it does?" Shoto asked.

"Did Hosu mean nothing to you?" Iida followed up with a growl.

"Did it mean nothing to you?" Shoto calmly challenged back.

Iida clenched his teeth and tightened his fists. "We should listen to what All Might said and leave this to the professionals! This isn't the time for us to get involved and potentially make things worse!"

"Fuck that!" Bakugo growled, stepping forward to stare Iida down. "I HAD him. He was in my grasp and all we had to do was run, and we still lost him. I'm not giving up that fucking easily!"

"We were in there lair, Iida," Ochako pleaded while motioning with her hands. "We were this close to rescuing him. We can't just give up when we know where he is possibly being held."

"But-" Iida began, but Ochako cut him off with fire in her eyes.

"I am not standing by while my best friend is rotting in the hands of villains. I refuse! He'd do the same for us!"

"He has done the same for us," Shoto added, twisting the knife even further into Iida. "Besides, the villains who attacked the camp were trying to kill some of us, but they took Midoriya alive. What we don't know is what they want with him and how long they'll let him live."

That unsettling thread sparked a back and forth between various members of 1-A that ultimately went in circles and only served to frustrate Bakugo even more than anyone thought possible.

"Listen," Tsu spoke up, cutting through the squabbling and gaining the attention of the room. "We're all shocked that Izuku was taken from us, but we have to be rational about this. It doesn't matter how noble our intentions are, we couldn't call ourselves heroes if we went out and intentionally broke the law to try to find the bad guys. We'd be vigilantes at best."

The room went silent at that. No one could refute the point, and it was definitely something important to consider.

"I'm fine with that," Shoto said rather frankly.

…Or maybe not.

"So am I," Kirishima added, getting surprised looks from several of his classmates, Mina and Bakugo especially. "Look, all I know is that my friends were in danger at camp, and I stood by and did nothing. Our class rep would fall on his sword for each one of us in this room without a second thought. If I didn't do the same for him when it was in my power despite what the law says, how could I call myself a man?"

"For whatever it's worth, Midoriya's mother was with All Might and the detective when I made the receiver for them," Yaoyorozu chose to speak up, gaining everyone's attention.

"How was she?" surprisingly, it was Bakugo that asked in a subdued tone that took most of the class aback.

"She's… frightening," she answered with a shudder. "She was very kind to me and was absurdly supportive when I tried to apologize to her for not having more than just a simple tracker to help the search, but she seemed ready to burn the world down to find her son. I see where he gets it from."

"Sensei is scary when she wants to be," Ochako muttered, and even Bakugo couldn't help but internally agree.

"My point is that I wouldn't put it past her to hunt Midoriya's kidnappers down and dismantle them herself to get her son back," she continued, and everyone was paying rapt attention. "However, she shouldn't have to come out of retirement to do that. Aren't we the next generation of pro heroes? Shouldn't it be our job to handle these situations and not rely on our predecessors?"

The room again went silent as her words sank in, and after a brief pause, Yaoyorozu continued. "Even All Might has been slowing down recently. He tries to hide it, but it's obvious to anyone that pays attention. All Might isn't going to be around forever, and at some point, the next generation will have to pick up the slack in his absence. That's why, even if it's vigilantism, I'll make another receiver and join you in rescuing Midoriya."

Bakugo's feral grin finally showed itself, and it was joined by a toothy grin from Kirishima and a grateful smile from Ochako.

"Besides, had it been anyone else in this room in his position, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Midoriya would have already left," Yaoyorozu finished as she created the newest receiver.

"Anyone else joining us?" Shoto asked the room, and they all were surprised when the door to the hospital room slid open.

"We're in," said an entering Setsuna Tokage with Yui Kodai following in step. Setsuna's head was floating and pressing up against the door before it returned to her neck, indicating that she was eavesdropping on the impromptu meeting.

Naturally, many in 1-A were very confused at the surprise guests as well as their declaration of wanting to join the search effort.

"Excuse me, but what business do you have with Midoriya?" Iida asked the two new arrivals.

"Midoriya's fucking rad," Setsuna bluntly replied. "If you're all planning to save him, we'll be joining you. Makes things easier."

"If they're in, then I'm in, too," Kaminari stated.

"Same here," Mina added. "Let's go rescue our Rainbow Comet."

"Count me in," Shoji quickly spoke up.

"Dark Shadow and I are joining the hunt, as well," Tokoyami added.

"I'll go, ribbit," Tsu stated, catching Ochako's attention.

"Tsu?" she asked, the real question going unspoken.

"I just wanted to be sure that we were all on the same page about it being vigilantism," she explained. "I was going to tag along regardless. Izuku's my friend, and I still owe him for the USJ."

Ochako nodded with a smile, then she turned to the remaining person in her group of close friends. "Iida?"

Iida sighed with his head down before meeting Ochako's gaze. "I will go, if only to ensure that everyone remains safe and unharmed as we rescue our friend."

Just like that, the dominoes fell, and everyone in the room was in agreement to search for their captured classmate and friend. Even the usually silent and diffident Koda was on board with rescuing him, moved by the vice rep's impassioned plea to grow into the shoes All Might would eventually leave behind.

The 16 students were in agreement. They would move that night.

Izuku had been floating listlessly for the duration of his time in the void. He was aware, but he couldn't move much for whatever reason. He could merely gaze around at the blue fire below him bringing the only color to the blank darkness of the realm he had been inhabiting. He could piece together where he was and why he was there, but it was different than the last time he entered Matatabi's domain when his blue flames manifested for the first time.

Back then, he was on solid ground with the other vestiges and merely navigated around the blue flames. This time, the ground was blanketed with them, and if he wasn't already becoming used to the chill of death whenever the blue flames sprouted, he'd be shivering.

"Hello again," the unfortunately familiar voice of the feline Shinigami rang in his ears. Izuku couldn't physically see Matatabi anywhere around him despite hearing their voice.

"You won't see me this time," the reaper answered as if it already knew what he was thinking. "I do. I can hear your thoughts, remember?"

Oh, right. Izuku didn't have privacy anywhere.

"Exactly," Matatabi confirmed, and Izuku could just hear the cheshire grin without even having to see it. "To address your earlier concerns, this is the same realm that you visited previously. I can transform my domain as I please. I just found it fitting if you felt as if you were floating in Limbo given the circumstances of your presence."

So… an actual death god was screwing with him for shits and giggles?

"In so many words, yes."

Fantastic. He just wanted to know if he had swapped his life for Kota's and be done with this interaction already.

"Oh, no, you don't get off that easily. Unfortunately, the young one's soul had only freshly arrived here when you used my fire, so you didn't reach too far to retrieve it. That means I don't get to torture and feast upon your essence just yet, but your time will come, rest assured. It just means that you're stuck with me even longer before I get to have my fun."

Absolutely marvelous. This was precisely the splendid wake-up call he needed after that equally wondrous brush with Muscular-

Oh, right, Muscular…

"Yes, Muscular, indeed," Matatabi cackled. "I really should thank you for delivering me another soul in such bombastic fashion. You really have a flair for the dramatic."

Fuck you.

"You can attempt to rationalize it however you want, but you cannot hide the truth from me. Killing the Sludge Villain may have been a genuine accident, but there was nothing accidental about Muscular."

Stop it!

"You wanted him to suffer. You wanted him to burn."

Please, stop!

"You let the rage and hatred that you keep running away from consume you to get vengeance for the boy, and it felt good."

Izuku wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. Matatabi wasn't the slightest bit wrong, and that was the worst part. He wanted out of this false Limbo and away from this torture by any means. If Izuku could kill himself right then for no other reason than to free himself of Limbo and get this time spent with Matatabi over with more quickly, he would do so without a second thought. He had no idea how long he had been there and had no desire whatsoever to stay any longer.

"Based on your filthy, mortal concept of time, you've been out for a few days. As I said previously, restoring a life will put you down for a period of time and leave you at the mercy of your foes. As for when you can leave, well, you can do so at any time. I'm not holding you hostage here, after all."

…What?

"You have always been free to go. It was merely a matter of waking up."

The boy needed no further prompting.

Izuku awoke with a start just in time to be smacked across the face by a man standing over him. The hand was warm… and largely purple? No, his skin was just profoundly burned and held together with staples. The man had black hair and piercing, turquoise eyes that were entirely too familiar for Izuku to be comfortable with.

"Well, look at that, Sleeping Beauty's finally joined us," the man called out, his tone drier than the Sahara.

"Good, maybe you'll finally stop slapping him to get him to wake up," another voice responded, and Izuku recognized this one. Just as he figured, Tomura Shigaraki stepped into view, appearing beside the other man.

It was then that Izuku finally took a look around. He was in a bar with 9 others, and manning the bar was the Warp Gate villain from the USJ. Looking past him, he saw a man in a black, full-body costume and another man wearing a mask, top hat, and trench coat that he did not recognize.

The others in the room, however, he did recognize. The two villains that showed up and attacked the Pussycats were present (the gecko-man in the Stain cosplay was practically frothing at the sight of him for some reason), and so was the blonde girl that followed and attacked him in the alley that one night. The way her eyes lit up when she saw he was awake startled him, and he wasn't prepared for her to shove her way past everyone to appear at his side and hug him through his restraints.

Oh, right, he was restrained to a chair, and he apparently had heavy duty quirk-suppressant cuffs on. That was fantastic.

"Down, Toga," Tomura commanded, and she whined.

"I don't wanna," she petulantly denied. A faint part of her felt so safe in his presence, and she didn't even know why, but her currently addled mind chalked it up to loving how cute he looked all bloody. As such, she snuggled up to him even closer.

The action caused some friction in the bandages that were apparently covering his arms (seriously, what the fuck happened to him in the time he was out?), and a bit of blood began to bleed through. Toga stilled at the sight, and her pupils dilated. Before Tomura could snatch her off of him, she swiped her thumb over the blood and shoved it into her mouth, seemingly entering a state of bliss while she sucked her thumb.

'Well, her addiction clearly hasn't gotten any better,' Izuku thought to himself. 'I hope her mental state hasn't also degraded…'

When Tomura finally pried Toga away, Izuku looked down at the bandages that were not only on his arms but also on his face. He no doubt had serious burns underneath, but he couldn't ascertain why the League would seek to patch him up. Looking past his condition, he refocused on being restrained to a chair and and the quirk-suppressant cuffs he was trapped in. He internally sighed; he could probably overload these and escape them if he really tried, but the amount of energy it would take to do so versus the amount that he had wouldn't make the attempt worth it.

That was the funny thing about quirk-suppressant cuffs. The name was literal, as they only suppressed the wearer's ability to use their quirk efficiently rather than nullifying it entirely. Technology just hadn't yet gotten to the point where a person's quirk factor could be substantially pacified without the aid of a suitable meta quirk. They, predictably, worked much better on emitters and transformation quirks than on mutations, as it was hard to dull innate strength without even more heavy restraints or tranquilizers.

It's why they were typically only used during transport of criminals and why Tartarus forewent using them on prisoners entirely in favor of much more efficient methods of dissuading quirk use, though he didn't know exactly what those measures were. Nezu didn't have that information, unfortunately.

He idly wondered where whoever sold it to them on the black market even scored them, and it also finally occurred to him that Nezu had a pair. Why the hell did he just casually have a pair of those to use for Izuku's initial training/schooling?

He was slapped (literally) out of his musings by the burned man who was shooting him an annoyed glare.

"Quit your fucking muttering," he growled. "It's annoying."

Izuku met the man's turquoise glare with a tired glare of his own before spitting in the man's face, rousing a bout of scandalized laughter from a few in the bar. Izuku may have been sitting in the belly of the beast, but that certainly did not mean he would be food.

Dabi, surprisingly, didn't retaliate. In fact, he just smirked. "Should've expected that. I guess even the 'Beacon in the Darkness' has his limits. Muscular's absence is proof enough of that."

And just like that, Izuku's mood got even worse. From attempting to rescue Kota from Muscular and watching the boy die in front of him to being driven mad by a death god for days on end about his descent into blood-for-blood justice, Izuku was just so physically and mentally exhausted. He did not have the patience, the will, or the desire to deal with some patchwork dickhead needling him, but the lessons he learned in his time with Ms. Joke came back to him. She told him in no uncertain terms that some people would go out of their way to get under his skin and make him compromise his principles just for the moral victory.

He couldn't let this asshole have that victory over him. He wouldn't give in to his anger again.

"What, nothing to say?" Dabi continued his attempts to rile Izuku up. "Am I too far in the darkness to receive a 'helping hand'? Am I too broken and soiled to sing Kumbaya with? Muscular was, apparently, and I'm willing to bet that most others in this room with blood on their hands are, too."

Izuku continued to meet the man's glare head-on, not backing down for a moment. The silence that followed was exceedingly tense, tense enough for Tomura to nearly decide to step in. He didn't get the chance, though.

"Those eyes look very familiar," Izuku finally spoke, catching Dabi and the others off guard with the random deviation, but the way Dabi's eyes narrowed dangerously told Izuku that he successfully struck a nerve and snatched the upper hand of the interaction.

"Your skin is really burned, and your hands are smoking, so I gather you have some sort of fire quirk, but your body can't handle it," Izuku observed with a mocking tone. "Really makes you wonder…"

Blue fire ignited in Dabi's palms, and Tomura finally stepped in before things could escalate. "Enough. You've had your fun, Dabi. We have actual business to get to."

Turquoise and green remained in their glare-off for another 10 seconds. Then, Dabi scoffed and walked away, taking a seat on the far end of the bar. Tomura sighed and pulled up a chair, placing it directly in front of Izuku and sitting down to look him in the eye.

Nothing was said for another long moment. The other occupants of the room remained silent in the meantime, most of them curious as to the significance of this end goal for their leader. He gave them the boy as the target for their invasion of the camp, but he never actually explained why he wanted the boy so badly.

"I told you not to take too long with your decision, cousin," Tomura said to him.

Almost everyone's eyes widened at that revelation. Even Kurogiri's menacingly shaped patches of yellow widened, as he was completely unaware of this bit of information.

Unseen, All For One was also listening, and he was particularly unsettled. He never gave Tomura that information, and the fact that he had it and was actively using it was concerning. It would make his plans for the young boy more bothersome.

Back at the bar, the only person who's eyes did not increase in size was Izuku, and Tomura picked up on that.

"You don't seem all that surprised," Tomura commented.

"I had a hunch," Izuku admitted. "A while back, I learned that I even had an uncle in the first place. Apparently, he died in a quirk-related mishap, as did the rest of his family. They were all reduced to dust. It happened about 15 years ago, and you look to be about in your early 20s or so; that would be in line with a possible quirk manifestation."

Tomura smirked and chuckled dryly. "Figured you were a smart kid."

Izuku shrugged. "It was pretty improbable, but it wasn't totally impossible, so I didn't rule it out. I had other matters occupying my mind, though."

"Like the offer, I hope," Tomura addressed again.

Izuku stared at the beady, red eyes of Tomura through his pale, disheveled hair. "Did you offer me a place in the League of Villains just because we're related?"

That caused another wave of surprise to overcome the bar's occupants, and a range of reactions resulted therein. Spinner just about beamed at the idea of getting to pick the brain of one of Stain's own chosen ones. Toga was also beaming, as she could have him around all the time to share her love with and put her out of her misery. Dabi was already reconsidering if the League could truly help him see his ambitions become a reality, but he opted to remain silent and keep watching the situation develop.

The others in the room had less of a stake in the revelation, as Twice and Mr. Compress weren't too invested in Izuku one way or the other. Magne, however, kept a close eye on him, as any teenager capable of fighting and killing someone like Muscular was inherently a threat. If he wasn't explicitly on their side (and, as a hero brat, he wouldn't be), it would be better for everyone in the long run if he was just dead.

While the rest of the League had their own individual thoughts on the situation, Tomura leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

"I won't lie and say that it didn't play a part," Tomura hummed. "There was a lot more to it, though. When I hunted you down at the mall, I didn't know if at the end of that conversation whether I was going to kill you or not. When I found out that you were related to them… to me… and the fact that you want to be a hero like her…"

The sheer venom he laced those words with could even be tasted by All For One through the screen.

"I needed to know if you were like all the others," Tomura finally ground out. "I needed to know if you were a waste like all those other heroes propping up this broken society."

Tomura's dark smirk returned. "And you weren't. You're different. You see the world for what it is rather than what's most comfortable for you to accept, and you actually want to fix it in your own way, just like the rest of us here. That conviction of yours to save those lost in the darkness that have been abandoned by our superhuman society might actually be worth something. It just might be worth preserving."

"You're serious about this," Izuku said after a lengthy pause, almost asking for final confirmation.

"As a heart attack," Tomura nodded. "And before you say that you want to be a hero, I'll remind you that you don't need to be a hero to help people. You certainly don't need to be a hero to help the people who really need it the most. Hell, you may not even come into contact with those people at all if you're a hero."

"You really want me to join you," Izuku observed.

"I just don't like seeing wasted potential in a world that could use so much more of it," Tomura replied with a shrug. "If that means I have to steer my cousin away from heroics, sue me."

"Um," interrupted a somewhat nervous Spinner. He was just as blindsided at the reveal of them being cousins as everyone else, and he didn't really want to intrude on his friend's first meeting with a long-lost family member, but he felt that he had something to contribute with the direction the conversation was going.

"What is it, Spinner?" Tomura asked, mildly annoyed at the interruption of his sales pitch.

"He's a true hero, one of the only real ones out there. In a world populated by filth masquerading as paragons, he and Endeavor's son were directly acknowledged by Stain," Spinner spoke a little louder now.

Dabi's scowl darkened even further at the mention of Endeavor and his bastard of a golden child.

"What's your point?" Tomura asked.

"Well, wouldn't it be better if he stayed in the hero system and drained the swamp from the inside? Wouldn't that make for a better system if people like him were leading the charge?" Spinner proposed.

"What makes you think draining the swamp would even be feasible without massive systemic change or a complete societal upheaval? It's why we're all here in the first place," Tomura responded.

"What the hell even makes him a true hero?" Dabi spat. He had more than enough of this absurd fellating of the dime a dozen hero brat. "He's just a reskin of the same trash we always see, just with more convincing lip service. He spouts that idealistic nonsense about reaching out to the downtrodden and being a source of light for those lost in the darkness, yet he's not above killing those who bask in the darkness when it's convenient, or does Mr. Compress have to remind you all of the pile of ashes and muscle fibers he found the brat unconscious beside?"

Mr. Compress shuddered at the reminder of the grisly scene he happened upon moments before a child struck him below the belt. Spinner gritted his teeth, but he couldn't refute the point.

"He does raise a valid point," Tomura remarked after turning back to Izuku. "This is the second instance of you killing someone when facing the League. It's a bit incongruent with your mission statement."

Of course, Izuku knew the elephant in the room would have to be addressed at some point, and it appeared Dabi would be the most insistent about it. The bastard was really working his last nerve.

Whatever. If they wanted an honest answer, they'd get just that. He was just too tired to carefully mince words anymore.

"If you're hemming and hawing around asking if I regret killing him, I don't."

The frankness of the admission took them all aback; none of them were expecting him to just come right out and say it.

"Not very heroic of you," Tomura remarked, though it was difficult to tell if he was even truly bothered by the loss of Muscular in the first place.

Izuku chuckled, but it was sardonic at best and lacked any mirth. "Yeah, well, I'm not a paragon, Tomura, and I never claimed or wanted to be one. I'm not All Might. I'm not a Symbol of Peace or a harbinger of righteous justice. I just want to help people. A 5 year old's life was in danger, and I did anything and everything to protect him."

He didn't add that he had actually failed to protect Kota and had only reduced Muscular to ash after the fact. It didn't matter anymore.

"Understandable," Tomura mused. "Still, you have to be aware that not everyone wants to be helped, and not everyone can be saved. Hell, if redemption even truly exists, there are many who are so far beyond it that they are practically in another galaxy."

"The least I can do is try to understand them, then," Izuku shrugged.

"Cold comfort before killing them off?"

"It shouldn't have to come to that."

"And yet, here we are."

Izuku gritted his teeth, and a lengthy exhale escaped his nostrils. "Indeed, here we are."

Tomura sighed. "Well, Stain was at least right about one thing: you're not a fake, even if the reality of our society is already beating you down. Your realism is why you're worth keeping around."

Izuku only offered the man a noncommittal grunt in return.

"That's enough, Tomura," came a voice from the monitor in the room with them, and Tomura's entire body went rigid. "Our time may be limited. Kurogiri, bring the boy to me."

Izuku was confused at the new voice. He wasn't familiar with it, and it didn't sound like it came from any of the 8 people in the room-

Wait, weren't there 9 others in the room with him? Why had he only been keeping track of 8 the whole time?

It was then that he finally noticed the figure that had been silently sitting and observing in a rather inconspicuous booth. Green eyes landed on a curtain of red hair and met an assessing pair of violet. Izuku's blood ran cold, and the man sent him a small, eerie smile. The man from the mall was a member of the League the whole time. Not only that, but he was also presumably the one who killed Mr. Abraham and stole Professor Shield's invention. Did this mean that the League was in possession of the device?

More importantly, he wasn't the one who spoke. If none of the 9 people in the room were the one who addressed Tomura, then that left only one possibility…

While Izuku was internally navigating the storm surge of thoughts, Tomura went silent upon All For One's order, and Kurogiri looked towards the young man in genuine concern. He had tried his best to stay out of the man's clearly festering resentment for their sensei and benefactor, and it generally accomplished the job of not stirring the pot. However, Kurogiri could just feel it in his non-bones that All For One interrupting a conversation that Tomura had clearly been looking forward to having with the hero student would not end positively.

"No," Tomura growled out, and Kurogiri took a few preemptive steps back merely as a precaution. "My cousin and I are having great conversation, and we were not finished. He's not going anywhere."

To most of the room's occupants, there was a brief but pregnant silence after Tomura's blatant disobedience against whoever was speaking through the screen. The silence was not at all brief to Kurogiri. It was an eternity standing on pins and needles while waiting on the inevitable suffocating aura of their sensei to take root.

"I said that's enough, Tomura," All For One insisted with a measure of authority entering his tone to leave no further debate.

"And I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing, Sensei. He's staying right here."

The sheer audacity from his intended successor would have been commendable to the centuries-old supervillain were it not hindering his acquisition of One For All. Izuku suddenly began spewing a thick, black liquid from his mouth that soon overtook him and the chair he was strapped in entirely before completely vanishing. Ordering Kurogiri to send him the boy was merely a formality, as he was going to take him with or without Tomura's consent. The seething coming from the young man told him that he still knew more than anyone what the pecking order was.

"Remember your place, Tomura Shigaraki, lest I see fit to remind you of it personally."

The chair was deposited back to the ground with a clank, and Izuku quickly looked around to familiarize himself with his surroundings. He wished he hadn't, as one of the first things he saw was a series of tubs with exposed brains poking out of them that he recognized to be Nomu. Laying on a gurney beside the tubs was a discarded woman with long, green hair in who he instantly recognized to be Ragdoll.

Turning his gaze to the other person in the room with him brought him face to face with the one man Nezu had explicitly warned him about. It was the man who All Might had devoted his life to destroying. It was the man who drove his grandmother to give up her children for their safety, pretty much setting the events of his and Tomura's lives into motion in the first place.

In front of him stood All For One in a well-tailored suit and an intricate mask that had several tubes at the base appearing to act as a respirator. He looked every bit as imposing as Izuku imagined in his dreams of avenging his family.

"Izuku Midoriya, or shall I say Izuku Shimura?" The man began with an unseen smile. "In any event, I've been waiting quite some time to meet you in person, and I'm glad we could finally have this moment together."

"I can't exactly say the feeling is mutual," Izuku spat.

"Oh, I imagine it wouldn't be. All Might had undoubtedly informed you of me when he realized his failure. I'm sure he assumed for the longest time that he succeeded in killing me, too, didn't he?"

"…I guess? Why ask me and not him?"

"You're the newest wielder, of course. Why wouldn't he inform you of me?"

Oh, so that's what this was about. Fucking stellar. Izuku released the most long-suffering sigh he had ever experienced and leveled the man before him with the driest stare he could muster. Right now, he was positively over everything and couldn't summon the will to entertain the supervillain's superfluous machinations.

Unbeknownst to either of them, the audio from the room was still on, so the rest of the League back at the bar was hearing everything.

"You genuinely believe I possess One For All?" Izuku asked in a tone reminiscent of dipping saltine crackers in gravel.

"Oh, there's no need to hide it from me," the man assured with a chuckle. "I will admit that your attempts to lead people off your trail by publicly denying your desire to be the Symbol of Peace was rather inspired. I doubt the blonde oaf came up with something like that. It's so-"

"Dude, please just hurry this along," Izuku interrupted, taking the man aback. "I'm really not in the mood to listen to a longwinded monologue, and I know that's exactly where this is headed."

All For One was genuinely surprised at the audacity of the boy. The Shimura blood must have been feeling feisty today. No matter, he'd still have his fun and break the boy, though the way he was so dismissive of him was truthfully irritating. He was the Symbol of Evil, damn it! He commanded fear and subservience from everyone, bar none. Maybe if this brat knew exactly the embodiment of evil he was in the presence of, he'd shape up.

"Were you interested in comics as a young boy?" the supervillain asked, blatantly ignoring his request for brevity.

"Oh my shit, you're really going ahead with this," the teen muttered in defeat.

"When I was a young boy, my little brother and I adored the Captain Hero series," he continued, skipping past the teen's comment. "However, he loved reading about the heroic escapades of the titular character, whereas I was a much more refined individual who found greater interest in his foil, the Demon King. He was a substantially more engaging character."

"If your plan this whole time was to fucking bore me to death, I swear to God-"

"As I was saying," All For One heatedly silenced the interruption, "the Demon King's appeal was much greater than that of the infallible Gary Stu that was Captain Hero. Unfortunately, I could only stomach reading up to Volume 3 before the utterly clichéd resolutions between 'Hero' and 'Villain' were too contrived and binary to look past. It was clear that nuance wasn't the author's strong suit."

"Neither is brevity yours," Izuku muttered before he was stabbed in the leg by a black tendril with red, cracked lines cascading over it. He looked up to the man and saw him recall the tendril back to his finger, and he could feel the man glaring at him through the mask, despite the man not actually having any eyes to glare with. Izuku had to fight off a smirk at the thought that he was getting under the man's skin.

"After that point," All For One curtly continued when it became clear that the boy wouldn't interrupt him again for the moment, "I made it my duty to become a true demon king in my own right and bring about a proper world of pain and suffering for the masses. And wouldn't you know it, it was the Dawn of Quirks at the time, and I developed the perfect ability to accomplish that dream."

All For One grinned under the mask as he recounted his rise to power, capitalizing on the chaos caused by the emergence of superpowers by stealing a wealth of powerful abilities and then unifying thousands under his command via taking and gifting quirks to those who felt burdened by them and those who desperately wanted them, respectively. He gleefully spun the yarn of his destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives purely because he could without a hint of regret, and he even saw fit to emphasize how even with his vast empire's stranglehold over Japan, it just wasn't complete without the vaunted quirk of his own creation that rested with his foolishly misguided brother.

All the while, Izuku was growing increasingly agitated. In every thought or dream he had of finally meeting All For One and destroying him for the pain he caused Grandma Nana and so many others, he imagined he'd be pouring with uncontrollable fury and using every ounce of his power to annihilate the scourge standing before him.

Right now, though, with the very man literally in front of him, he just felt annoyed. All For One's presence did nothing but annoy him. Maybe it was the absurdly stupid origin story, maybe it was how grandiose he was trying to make himself seem, or maybe it was just the utterly fucking longwinded monologue Izuku specifically wanted to avoid. Whatever the case, Izuku was well past his breaking point with everything he had experienced in the last few days.

"Are you even paying attention, you disrespectful little shit?!" All For One actually shouted at him, drawing him out of his deeply frustrated musings.

"Not even kind of," Izuku readily admitted, and he was grabbed and ripped out of his bindings by the apoplectic supervillain.

The man roughly tossed the teen across the large room, sending him crashing and skidding along the concrete before impacting the tubs containing the Nomu. He bit back the pain and defiantly sat up, and his eyes landed on the form of Ragdoll. Quickly, he shuffled over and inspected the hero, and he was relieved to see movement in her chest, indicating that she was still breathing.

"You always were a mouthy miscreant, Yoichi," All For One darkly intoned as he stalked closer to Izuku. "The time spent in isolation was for your benefit. It was supposed to fix you. Alas, I suppose your will is almost as strong as mine after all this time."

'…What the hell is he waffling about now?' Izuku thought in total confusion before his brain finally broke, and he slumped. "No, I'm done with this. I'm well and truly over all of this. This is not worth anyone's time."

"Excuse me?" All For One paused his advance and asked. He could have sworn he heard someone try to imply that the All For One wasn't worth someone's time. The glare he received from the teen was the picture of pure exhaustion given form.

"Your whole origin was that you read comics as a kid and empathized with the villain," the teen began in a tone bereft of any real energy. "So, in essence, you're just one amongst a sea of people on message boards, I guess? We live in a society? I don't really know what you want me to say to that."

Before All For One could even begin to retort, Izuku stood up and pressed on. "In fact, the only real difference between you and a shitposter on 2channel is that you actually have the power to make your shitposts a reality. I mean, when they decide to listen to their intrusive thoughts, they just end up dipping their chicken nuggets in warm milk, so I guess you've got them beat in that regard."

"I am the goddamn Symbol of Evil, boy-"

"I mean, sure, but what does that really mean in the grand scheme?" Izuku swiftly interrupted. "By your own admission, you had an entire empire of cronies in the underworld at your beck and call, and yet, you still spent nearly two centuries chasing after a quirk you could never have and killing those who did have it purely because they had it. It wouldn't have mattered to you if they actually opposed you or not; they simply had what you couldn't, and that just wouldn't stand."

Izuku fixed the man with the most bored glare he had ever received since Yoichi, derisive green eyes and all. "Congratulations, you're a generational hater, I guess. That's not particularly world-shattering or even that novel of a motive for a supposed supervillain. Hell, the entire premise of your villainy was literally already done in a comic, down to referring to yourself as a demon lord or whatever the hell it was."

All For One felt Hypertrophy begin to take form in his right arm in preparation to ring the boy's neck. He would not be talked down to by some upstart child, least of all a descendant of fucking Nana Shimura. What made it even more infuriating was that he could swear the image of Yoichi was being superimposed over the boy

Izuku, however, was not finished. "From where I'm standing, you're an old man desperately clinging to times long past whose most heinous crime he's ever been guilty of is dick riding without a license."

Back at the bar, several jaws were on the floor. The League had been listening the entire time, because All For One had apparently neglected to cut his end of the audio.

Shocked did not even begin to cover the collective reaction to Izuku's casual dismissal of and vicious dressing down of the greatest supervillain this side of the planet had ever seen. None were more astonished than Tomura and Kurogiri, who could not fathom the idea of their sensei behaving like a petulant child at points in the conversation and then being treated like one with complete prejudice.

"Ya know…" Toga was the one to pick her jaw up from the floor first. "I think Izuku let Dabi off easy."

"Very," Twice agreed, and Dabi merely huffed and returned to the drink Kurogiri made him sometime after Izuku was warped away.

"How the hell does that kid find pants that fit with balls that big?" Magne asked incredulously, voicing the thoughts of most others in the room.

"That… that origin story was… so incredibly underwhelming," Spinner muttered, and Tomura silently agreed.

Kusari, meanwhile, was eyeing Tomura curiously. It was looking as if there was already dissent between All For One and his chosen puppet for the League of Villains. He idly wondered if that dissent extended any further to the remnants of All For One's empire that hadn't already been toppled by All Might. Either way, a possible civil war just made getting All For One and his influence off the board before the MLA moved much simpler.

Izuku and All For One stood in silence after the boy finished. All For One hadn't moved a muscle since the final comment, and it didn't even seem like he was mentally present with Izuku at that moment. He couldn't really tell with the man wearing the mask. What he could determine, though, was that the League had been listening to the entire interaction since he could hear the chatter coming from a large monitor in the corner of the large room.

Most of it was positive, he determined. He didn't hear Tomura speak, but the man all but told All For One to fuck off before he was warped away, so he could gather that Tomura was probably sharing their sentiments. That was good. It meant that it was possible to turn Tomura against All For One entirely.

He needed to get out of this situation alive before that could even happen, though.

"You know, I was going to take my time and torture you," All For One began in a blank tone. "I was going to have a little fun with finally regaining my property and let you live in agony for a little while longer before I inevitably killed you."

His next words came out with such venom that a golden lancehead snake would be proud. "However, you have sucked all of the fun out of this, you insolent hobknocker. I'm going to break your mind, take my quirk, and kill you just to get you out of my sight."

Izuku instinctively tried to activate his yellow flames to avoid the flying mountain of a man that smashed into him, but he could feel nothing but a light tug at his quirk due to the heavy duty cuffs still being on him and his already piss poor level of energy. All For One roughly snatched his head into his palm and grinned, and then the world went black for both of them.

All For One found himself in a peculiar void, one very much unlike the void he had caught glimpses of when attempting to reclaim One For All from the previous users. That void was foggy but generally empty. The void he was in currently had no fog, only small, blue fire spattering the ground around him.

The flames didn't burn him upon close investigation; in fact, he felt no warmth at all from them. They were very cold in a way that unsettled him, and he couldn't quite figure out why. How curious.

What was even stranger was the lack of One For All in the void. He couldn't sense it at all; on the outside, he chalked it up to the cuffs sufficiently suppressing it within the boy, but that constraint shouldn't apply when he was inside the quirk itself. What in blazes was going on?

"Nanashi Shigaraki…"

All For One stilled at the utterance of his given name. Absolutely no one was supposed to have that information. It was literally lost to time; he made quite sure of it.

He slowly turned around to see where the smooth, threatening, almost ethereal voice was coming from, and the sight that met him made him feel small in a way that not even Gigantomachia could accomplish. Standing before him was a giant cat emanating an aura that could only be described as concentrated death. The cat's elegant, white robes and red prayer beads immediately clued All For One in on what he was facing, but the absolutely dreadful cheshire grin beaming below the glowing green and yellow slitted eyes confirmed his hunch.

"Shinigami…" All For One breathed out.

"Got it in one," they practically purred. "I'd say you have no idea how long I've been waiting for this day, but you should know perfectly well given you've been dodging death for all that time. It seems your luck finally ran out."

"No, no, you will not erase me!" All For One shakily shouted in protest while attempting to backpedal, but the sapphire flames were bending to the will of the Shinigami and ignited to such an intensity that they towered over him.

"Everyone's time comes eventually," Matatabi darkly chuckled, their toothy grin growing even more malicious.

When they took a step forward, All For One took one back and fell into the towering blue inferno, and he immediately scrambled out of it in hysterics, having been inundated with millennia of the darkest, most obscure horrors in existence within mere seconds.

"There's also the little detail of you acting above your station," Matatabi spoke again, their slitted pupils narrowing even further as they hungrily gazed upon All For One. "Quirks are intrinsically tied to one's soul, so stealing a quirk is tantamount to stealing a soul fragment."

Matatabi could feel the man coming to the realization he was guided to, and if their grin could grow even more threatening, it did. One of their two, flowing tails raised, revealing a massive tanto wrapped within.

"You've amassed quite the collection of quirks in your day, but no one collects souls except for me!"

All For One was frozen in place when the tail holding the tanto swung down and the blade cut right through him, but there was no blood. Instead, All For One felt a plethora of strings within his very being be cut, and an explosion of ghostly figures shot out of him and began pouring into the void. The apparitions were flying out en masse where the massive cat was taking great pleasure devouring them. All For One, feeling himself becoming more and more empty, fought almost helplessly to stop the spillage and retain his quirks, but it was a losing battle. He had to cut his losses and leave.

However, that was proving to be very difficult. The blue flames were beginning to coil themselves around him to prevent him from leaving the Shinigami's clutches, but he fought even harder to sever the connection with the boy's quirk and rip himself away from him.

Only after losing over 80% of his quirks did he finally manage to sever the connection and escape the void.

Back in the physical world, All For One quickly shoved the boy away and put some distance between the two. He could already feel the emptiness within, and a quick diagnostic confirmed it. He was down to less than a fifth of his quirk supply. He felt completely and utterly violated, but even worse than that, he felt positively helpless.

For the last 200 years, All For One could have accurately claimed that he had never known true fear.

Looking at the green-haired boy laying on the ground ahead of him, he could no longer make that claim.

That boy was dangerous. He needed to die, powerful quirk be damned.

Izuku, meanwhile, was on the verge of passing out once again. When All For One forced his way into his quirk, Matatabi took the reigns and overloaded his body with the sapphire flames, effectively zapping him of the dregs of energy he even had left. He could just barely hold on, though, and doing so allowed him to see the disheveled All For One frantically pacing around him as well as hear the commotion coming from the bar through the monitor.

That commotion gained All For One's attention, as well, and the furious shout of, "WHERE IS MY FUCKING SON?!" jolted Izuku with a pseudo-adrenaline shot.

"Mom?!" Izuku called out in the monitor's direction.

"Izuku!/Young Midoriya!" he heard his mother and All Might shout simultaneously.

All For One began to chuckle. This was excellent, he could kill three birds with one stone. His arsenal was dangerously depleted, but he could make do with what he had, and he fortunately still had Warping. This could work.

Just then, the massive boot of Mt. Lady stomped into the building, destroying the monitor and creating an entrance for Best Jeanist, Tiger, and Gang Orca with an army of SWAT behind them to spring in and subdue the Nomus before they could be called upon. All For One had no intentions of letting that happen, however, and he warped the Nomus away while firing a powerful blast of air at the new arrivals with Air Cannon that he was luckily still in possession of.

All For One then turned to Izuku. "Congratulations, young man, you, your mother, and All Might get to die together tonight."

He turned back to the frazzled group of heroes and officers. "Allow me to relieve some anger on this refuse, first."