Chapter 15 - All for None

{15} - Izumi Midoriya: All for None

Izumi took a breath, and she let her mask form over her face. "Light 'em up!" 

She clicked the trigger she'd been holding, and suddenly Tokyo shook as dozens of explosions rang through Tokyo all at once. For a moment, the sky changed to orange with the sudden burst of light.

More than that, gas filled into the streets. Green and toxic, anything that dared breathe it in would find their Quirk suddenly missing. 

If all went well, then only streets where Smith-sensei was should be unharmed, though not for long. He would need to fight. To kill. She just hoped he could endure.

But he'd promised, and so she would try and believe.

She flew through the cloud of gas, her Suit's mask easily protecting her from it. Not that it would've done anything—it didn't work against her System, and any toxic byproduct would've been destroyed by the Extremis in her blood.

She flew at blistering speeds, waiting for her Skill's signal. Her nanites waited at her beckoning, ready to fly off as thousands of tiny missiles to deliver the concentrated strain of the drug—Paradise—into All for One. She would have one chance. One chance to catch the Villain off-guard and destroy as many Quirks as she could-

All for One has teleported to the surface. Is searching for why he lost connection to most of his pawns. Is building a massive storm to wash away the toxic clouds.

Do it now!

She did. Her suit glimmered like stars for a brief moment, before thousands of miniature missiles shot from her suit. They flew forward, swift and silent, aimed at the few opened gaps in his clothes.

And then she heard him scream.

It was a visceral sound. Of pain. Of fear. The spikes of power her suit had been detecting abruptly vanished. The cloud of Quirk-destroying drugs still covered a massive area in Tokyo.

Soon enough she found him. Standing in an open field, screaming as he tried and failed to call for his most powerful Quirks. As she approached, he detected her from kilometers away. And though he had no eyes, she could see his body tense in anger. It seemed he'd made the connection.

"YOU!" He screamed.

"Me." She said back, and then she let her mask fall away. Just to rub it in further. "How does it feel, old man?" She grinned at his obvious anger. "Need some more medicine?"

He grit his teeth, but he soon smiled. "Do you think you've stopped me?" He asked. Lightning suddenly burst around him. The air warped from the heat. "I have thousands of Quirks to pull from, witch! I will never be powerless-"

"Uhuh, sure." She mockingly checked her arm. "Should be kicking right-"

The lightning around him suddenly vanished. All for One screamed as his resistance to the heat suddenly disappeared.

"-now." She finished. She grinned. "I'm not so shallow, Shigaraki." 

Here's the thing; she never did find a way to enhance Overhaul's drugs. It could only destroy one Quirk at a time. 

Because biology. Quirks were a product of specific mutant genomic sequences, transcribed and copied all across all cells. The original drug was a scalpel, using Eri's Quirk to 'rewind' these mutations back to normal. 

So she improvised. She was fine with it being able to only attack one Quirk at a time. That just meant she had to fire thousands of individual injections, each targeted at the different Quirks All for One had stored in his DNA library.

And she also made a mutant of Extremis capable of self-replicating and expressing this drug. Just to be sure.

"I'm no All Might." She said. "I'm not holding back."

The moment she said so, she fired a beam of plasma at him. He blurred away, but she continued to fire at him. Her Arc Reactor burnt with mind-blowing amounts of power, and she held nothing back as she sent forth beam after beam, each blasting through concrete like it was nothing.

Eventually, exactly twenty seconds later, All for One stopped blurring. One of her beams smashed into his chest, and he screamed as he crashed into the ground.

And then she clicked her tongue. She'd blown a hole through his suit, but his body remained unharmed. A layer of scales had grown over his heart.

She kept attacking. She fired beams, and rained down missiles fired from her Suit's back. The area was quickly covered in explosions and ash. All for One remained stationary, resisting her firepower with seemingly no effort.

Twenty seconds later, All for One flew out from the cloud of ash. His skin was no longer covered in scales.

He flew straight towards her, screaming as his right arm mutated into a giant aberration. Her eyes widened for a moment, but she quickly spun and blasted down, avoiding his punch by just inches. A deadly blast of air pressure fired just over her head.

Thrusters on her left leg kicked into gear. She spun at nearly Mach 5, and smashed her heel into All for One's face. His mask was easily breached, revealing All for One's faceless head as her foot smashed into his cheek. She heard his jaw bones crack as she sent him flying away.

He managed to slow himself soon enough. But before he could fly back to her, his mutated right arm suddenly returned to their original size. His lips further twisted in a rage-filled scowl.

She grinned and flipped him off.

This continued for what felt like hours. She fought him in the air, facing off against Quirk after Quirk. He'd eventually lose that Quirk, and suddenly she'd be fighting off a completely different element of attack.

-Absolute Insight- did its best, filling her head with his plans seconds before he could execute them. But her Agility just wasn't high enough, and she occasionally found herself blasted away. Her Suit protected her from harm, but each hit she took destroyed a concerning number of nanites.

But eventually, it happened. A punch of hers sent him flying away, and instead of charging back at her, he wobbled in the air. Then, she heard him scream in anger as he began falling back to the ground, before crashing amidst the destroyed ruins below them.

She didn't need -Absolute Insight- to know what'd happened. All for One had finally lost the last Quirk he had capable of giving him flight. He was now stuck to the ground.

But he wasn't deterred. Again, his right arm mutated into a giant aberration, pulsing and writhing like a mass of worms. A massive concentration of light gathered over his palm, bright enough that it almost felt like she was staring at a second sun. He aimed it at her, intent on firing before twenty seconds could pass.

Sadly, he was minutes too late.

All for One screamed as his right arm was blasted to shreds, the combination of Quirks he'd used to bolster it rendered meaningless by a bright beam of plasma that shot from the ground. The aberration fell to the ground, and he looked down to see a gun-shaped object aimed at the sky, bright silver and made from nanites.

She smashed his foot down onto it. The nanites broke under the burst of static electricity.

"How ruthless." He rasped. A smile stretched across his faceless head, revealed through his cracked mask. "It really is unfortunate that you remain as you are."

"Maybe I could've been a Villain." She admitted, leveling a palm towards his face. The repulsor glowed a bright blue. Her Arc Reactor hummed with power. "But that's a me from a different world."

"Perhaps." All for One said. Winds surged around him, dark and cackling with lightning. 

Izumi smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "Another Quirk." The nanites on her fingers morphed into syringes. "I guess the old man needs another dosage."

The air exploded behind her as she flew down. He snapped his fingers, and a purple forcefield suddenly formed around him. She smashed her fist into it, but the thing only rippled. She sent down an array of missiles. The explosions did nothing against it.

He watched her with a grim smile, and then screamed as a syringe suddenly shot from the ground and into his neck. The last dosage of Paradise she had was injected into his bloodstream, and the forcefield fizzled away. 

She made use of the chance. Thrusters on her elbow lit to life, and her fist smashed into his head at nearly Mach 10.

But he didn't move. He felt no recoil—an effect of another Quirk he pulled up. She quickly flew into the sky before he could get his fingers on her. And as she spun to a stop, she grinned again. "Even Decay?" She asked. "So you took Tomura's Quirk away as well." She winked. "Too bad you used it. It'll be gone soon."

He snarled as he smashed his foot into the ground. The dirt exploded, leaving him standing in a meter-wide crater unharmed.

She smiled. He was probably trying to destroy any nanites in the ground. He wouldn't find any. That nanite syringe that'd stabbed into him was made from the missiles she fired at his forcefield, using the distraction to burrow under his forcefield and inject what little Paradise she had left.

But she knew now. All for One had just used Decay, a Quirk he once gave to his 'protege'. It was evidence that he was getting desperate—that he was now pulling from Quirks he didn't want his Paradise to destroy.

She took a breath. She could feel it. There was a thrumming in her heart.

The [End] was near.

All for One gave her no more pleasantries. He screamed, pained and maddened, as he raised his palm at her. Black and red veins ran across his arm as space itself began warping. The fabric of space-time bent, and the world was alight in a kaleidoscope of colors.

Her breath was stolen from her. -Absolute Insight- went mad, filling her head with mathematical calculations and conjectures regarding the impossibility she was watching.

All for One's most dangerous Quirk—the power to bend. Innocuous at first, until you realize it gave him the power to bend everything. Matter, energy, gravity, space—he could do anything.

He was bending the fabric of space-time, intent on ripping it apart and sending a blast of energy so powerful it would wipe out the entirety of Japan and more. All for One himself would die of course, but that didn't matter anymore.

He would tear the world.

She watched, eyes wide. And then she stuck out her tongue.

All for One's rage momentarily froze, before he screamed in pain. His body began glowing a bright orange, releasing an intense amount of heat into the air. Except All for One had twisted the space around him, and the heat only spun back and burnt against his flesh.

"I said it, didn't I?" She grinned. "All for One; I don't hold back."

She snapped her fingers. The nanites inside All for One's body obeyed. The Extremis stopped expressing Paradise, and instead began burning with heat comparable to an uncovered Arc Reactor. The warped space only made it worse, collecting all that energy into a single area.

Then,

Her mask formed over her face, and she quickly formed a shield with nanites over her entire body as All for One exploded. His skin and flesh exploded from his bones, burning and filling the air with smog. But more than that, reality quickly rushed back in to mend the bent space-time.

And in doing so, it released enough energy to rival that of tens of nuclear bombs. A bright white overwhelmed her vision, and suddenly her ears rang as she was sent flying back. Her Suit cracked in several places, and not even Extremis could completely protect her against the heat.

The world went quiet. And then the shockwave followed.

What buildings and ruins that remained were flattened in an instant. The dirt was dug and flung into the sky, before burning away from the heat. A giant mushroom cloud rose into the sky, blanketing even the sun.

A massive area around the explosion was flattened, but it didn't matter. By then, most of Tokyo had already been evacuated. The horde of Villains and Nomus he sent out had scared everyone off.

As she crashed into the dirt, her nanite Suit broken and her Arc Reactor dysfunctional, Izumi laughed. Because in the end, out of all the Villains that'd appeared today, All for One had the least number of casualties. 

Her bones may be broken. Her Suit might be destroyed. And she might be trapped in an unmoving shell, but it didn't matter. All for One had killed himself, and he took no one with him.

It was All for None.

"…god, that was terrible." She giggled. Her chest flared in pain. 

She took a deep breath. It was done. All for One was dead. Of course, her world hadn't completely escaped destruction—there were millions of ways human stupidity could expedite the destruction of this world.

But at least, for now, her story had reached its [End].

So, wracked with pain, Izumi Midoriya finally let her eyes close.

…

…

…

"You're not actually going to sleep there, are you?"

Izumi slowly blinked. It was a familiar voice, but she couldn't quite turn her head to see who it was. And then her brain caught up, and she blinked again. "Smith-sensei?"

A few more steps sounded, and he came into her view. His red hair covered the blistering sun in the sky, and a soft smile creased his cheeks. "It's me." He reached down and lifted her into his arms. "You did good, Izumi."

She blushed, and desperately wished she could tear off her Suit right then and there. "Really?"

"Really." And then he smirked. "But you could've taken him out sooner, couldn't you? That last explosion was unnecessary."

She huffed. "I-I wanted to see his strongest Quirk, okay?" She looked away. "I mean, bending space? There's no way I can live without seeing that in action!"

He laughed. "Sure, sure." He winked. "Well, did you get what you need from it?"

She grinned. "Yes. My head's filled with so many ideas right now. I feel like I'm about to explode."

He smiled teasingly. "At the cost of destroying most of Tokyo?"

She smiled back. "Well, I'm no Hero, am I?"

He barked out a laugh. "Damn straight." He took a breath, and a soft smile came to his lips as he closed his eyes. "Let's go back to my School, yeah? We can peel you out of the Suit there."

She closed her eyes. "Of course."

She heard a soft ping, and she felt weightlessness take her.

[Transport initiated. Returning to Elysium…]