United States of...Japan? Part II

When the students finally arrived at the rescue training facility, they were greeted at the entrance by a person wearing a space-themed costume. "Good afternoon, everyone!" said the voice of a woman, as she waved to the assembled students. "My name is Hirōki Anakuro, but you know me better by my hero name: Thirteen!" This was met with gasps of excitement from the majority of the class, but none more so than Izuku and Ochako, who were staring at the hero with awe. Turning around, Thirteen walked through the entrance, motioning for everyone to follow. "Please, let's get started."

"Hold on a minute, Thirteen," Shōta said, as he walked up to her with his hands in his pockets. "Have you seen All Might anywhere? He was supposed to get here before my class did."

"Ah, well, about that," she began. "It turns out he's running late. Said he got caught up taking care of small crimes."

"Hm," Shōta grunted. "That's disappointing, but as long as he shows up before the end of class, then we should be fine." All Might was being completely irrational. Surely the man knew there were other heroes who were perfectly capable of taking care of petty criminals? But then again, this was the same man who wrote an entire televised speech on how society had strayed from recognizing the qualities of a 'true hero'.

Turning around, he moved to walk back and address his class to get a move on, but suddenly paused when he heard the sound of a faint whoosh above him, and looked up to see something yellow increasingly closing in on his position.

"I AM HERE!" boomed the number one hero, as he pierced through the sky and landed just ahead of the students near the USJ's entrance, and struck a strongman pose to add to his grandiose entrance.

Shōta resisted the urge to facepalm at the man's theatricalism. This didn't seem like something he was going to get used to anytime soon. "It's about damn time," he muttered to himself, before turning to Anakuro. "We should get started."

"Right," Anakuro nodded, before turning to the class and raising her hand to examine it. "As many of you already know, my Quirk, 'Black Hole', is what allows me to perform highly-efficient rescue operations, by way of sucking up debris and turning it to dust. However, many people seem to forget that I can use it for just about anything, including people." She took a moment to look at several students' surprised expressions, before continuing.

"For many villains, killing or causing destruction can be just as easy as breathing, but saving people and doing the right thing? It's significantly harder. Now - I forgot what it was called, but I'm sure all of you have experienced a sudden impulse to do something violent, such as 'what if I jumped to my death' or 'what if I used my Quirk on this small child?'"

Anakuro paused in her speech to take a good look at everyone's reactions, taking note of how many were visibly uncomfortable with what she had told them. When one of the students raised his hand, she pointed to him. "Yes?"

"There is a term for that in French," the boy replied. "L'appel du vide - the call of the void."

Anakuro nodded. "Exactly. What's your name?"

"Aoyama Yūga, professeure," the boy replied.

"Thank you, Aoyama-kun," she said, before turning her attention back to the rest of the class. "The 'call of the void' is something everyone experiences, so don't worry about suddenly thinking that you're becoming evil. I can even say without a doubt that All Might has been subject to it before. However, it's how you respond to that impulse that truly matters. If there's one thing I want to stick in your heads, it's to be careful about how you go about saving someone, because all it takes is a single moment of giving in to that impulse, that temptation, before you've done something irreversible or unforgivable."

When Anakuro finally looked back to the class after admittedly becoming a bit passionate in her speech, she found them continuing to stand in solemn silence as they took in her words, with Toshinori and Shōta silently watching. Before the silence could get a chance to settle for too long, she bowed to the students. "Thank you for listening."

She was once again met with silence, until a single person could be heard clapping, causing everyone to turn and stare at a blond boy with a black, lightning-shaped streak in his hair. "...What?" he asked, as he slowed down his clapping to a stop. "It was a good speech."

Anakuro chuckled at Denki's words. "Now then, everyone - we really should get going." When she turned back around to continue walking, however, all of the facility's lights shut off, causing her to pause mid-stride and look up to the ceiling in confusion. Almost immediately after, she noticed something moving out of the corner of her eye, and looked to the fountain at the center of the plaza to see something small and black swirling in front of it, and was very quickly growing with size. She watched the swirling mass in confusion, before taking a step back as she saw a strange figure covered in hands walk out of it, along with numerous others.

"Oh, did it already start, like in the entrance exam?" Eijirō asked.

"I have to admit, Young Kirishima, I'm not entirely sure," Toshinori replied, before turning to Anakuro. "Was this what you had planned, Hirōki-san?" It seemed rather unconventional, and he couldn't recall reading about anyone with a warp Quirk in the lesson plan he had read the day before (and to be honest, he was getting a bad feeling about this), but if it was meant to mirror the abruptness of the entrance exam practical and real-life disasters, then he supposed it was fine.

"I don't-" Anakuro began, before she was interrupted by Shōta, who had already put on his goggles.

"No, this was never in the lesson plan. We're being attacked by Villains."

Toshinori's trademark smile immediately descended into a frown, as he walked up to the edge of the stairs to assess the situation. "I see." As he watched the mass of Villains slowly grow larger and larger as more of them poured out of the portal, he saw a hulking figure come out and stand next to the man that was covered in hands.

'Good God, what the hell is that?' After getting a closer look at the figure's jet-black skin, exposed brain, and beak-like mouth, he wondered if what he was looking at was even genetically human. As far as he was aware, no mutation Quirk could allow someone to live with their brain on full display like that, which had to mean that something else was at play here.

To be honest, it looked more...undead, than anything. An eerie reminder that stirred up a memory from another lifetime.

"Thirteen, protect the students! All Might, with me!"

"Understood!" Anakuro replied, as she turned back around to tell the students to run towards the entrance, leaving Toshinori and Shōta to neutralize and round up the Villains.

---

As they rushed down the flight of stairs to engage the intruders, Toshinori looked around for the nearest group of them, before leaping high into the air with his fist raised. "Carolina...SMASH!" As his fist made contact with the ground (making sure to keep his output of One For All below twenty-five percent), the resulting shockwave blew away and subsequently knocked out any and all Villains in his immediate vicinity.

It shouldn't be too difficult to handle the threat, he supposed. Maybe. Hopefully. Number One Hero or not, there was always a chance for something to go wrong.

"I say, we make quite the team, Eraserhead!" Toshinori called out, as he grabbed two Villains' heads and bonked them together.

Shōta grunted in response as he twisted to dodge an attack from behind, throwing a round kick to the attacker's face. "I'll take care of the grunts," he called out. "You take care of the leader and the big one."

Toshinori nodded, raising a fist to the side of his head as he heard someone rush towards him, only to feel a face make contact with it, knocking out his unseen opponent. He turned around to look at the crumpled body on the floor with slight amusement, before turning his attention and making his way towards who was most undoubtedly the ringleaders of the attack. "I'm going to give you this one chance to stand down and turn yourselves in." As he stood there staring them down, he kept his body tensed up, in order to keep himself ready for any sudden movements from the monstrous beast to the man's left.

"All Might..." the, uh, handy-man rasped out. "We've come to kill you."

Toshinori snorted in response as he raised an eyebrow. "Many have claimed that and have obviously failed."

The Villain let out a low laugh. "Well not me, exactly, but him?" He gestured with his thumb towards the figure beside him. "He's been engineered to match you at full power. We call him...Nōmu. He'll be your executioner." The beast standing next to him remained still as if waiting for a command, but kept its eyes trained on Toshinori.

'Engineered...?'

Finding himself beginning to grow cautious, his grin dipped ever so slightly. "Well I don't know if you've heard," he began. "But I've been getting back into shape recently, so I don't think any executing will be happening anytime soon."

Ignoring him, the Villain turned to the shadowy figure on his left side. "Kurogiri, you know what to do." With a nod, the Villain now known as Kurogiri immediately created a portal and stepped through it, leaving Toshinori with one less opponent.

A tense silence passed between them before he spoke up. "Oh? Should I be expecting your surrender soon?"

"Nah, just the kids' corpses."

Toshinori bristled at the other man's words. "And just what do you mean by that?" As if on cue, his ears were met by the sound of several screams coming from behind him, and turned around to see the top of the stairs covered in a cloud of smoke, and he realized just where Kurogiri had been sent.

'Shit, the students!' Toshinori immediately turned around and crouched down to leap towards the stairs. Hopefully, if he was fast enough, then maybe he would be able to-

"Nōmu, kill." The sound of an inhuman roar pierced through the air, and Toshinori only had a split second to roll out of the way and avoid the Nōmu's fist, and was now forced to defend himself against the monstrous beast.

The Nōmu snarled as it locked eyes with him, before letting out another roar and barreling towards him. Toshinori looked at it with a determined expression, before doing the same, raising his fist and pumping more of One For All into his upper body.

'Young Midoriya...Young Bakugō...everyone! Good luck...'

---

As the students of Class 1-A ran back towards the facility's entrance, they were stopped by a shadow suddenly springing forth from the ground in front of them, and was now looming over them imperiously. "Greetings," Kurogiri began. "We are the League of Villains, and our mission objective is to kill All Might, the Symbol of Peace. And now, you shall-"

He was cut off by Izuku jumping forward and throwing a Gold Experience-infused punch without hesitation, along with Eijirō and Katsuki immediately following up for good measure.

"Maybe you should think before you speak!" Eijirō yelled, a grin forming on his face. When the smoke had cleared from Katsuki's blast, the three boys were shocked to see Kurogiri still standing, and that their attacks had done absolutely nothing to harm him.

"It seems that you will indeed prove to be troublesome. No matter." With that, the man began to grow in size, before shooting out multiple wisps of black smoke towards the class, eventually surrounding them in a black, spherical cloud. "My own objective is to ensure you are unable to assist him, and to make your deaths easier to carry out. Now, begone!"

Using his hand to guard his face from the aggressive wind inside the sphere, Izuku realized that Kurogiri was going to separate them using his Quirk, and immediately summoned Gold Experience, commanding it to repeatedly punch the ground. "MUDAMUDAMUDA!" Almost instantly, a large tree immediately began to sprout from the ground, with thick branches spreading throughout all directions inside the cloud at an impressive speed.

"Everyone...grab on!" Izuku yelled, as he tightly wrapped his hands around the nearest branch. The students who managed to hear him immediately began frantically grabbing on wherever they could (which prompted the rest of the class who saw them to do the same), and Izuku tried to hold on even tighter when he felt the ground below him disappear.

This battle continued on for a few more moments, before it was ultimately proved useless when he felt the branch become detached, and opened his eyes to be met with the sight of nothing but open air, now plummeting into the body of water below him.

---

"Tch," Shōta grunted, as he dodged a kick from a woman with brown pigtails, before going on the offensive and using his capture scarf to pull her in close and slamming her into the ground. This repeated for the next few Villains, as he used his Quirk and superior combat skill to overpower them.

One would think that he would be helpless against those with mutation-type Quirks, but those who did were quickly shown that it was quite the opposite. What he didn't know, however, was that more of them ceased their attack, and were either waiting at the back of the crowd, or hiding behind cover, waiting for the right moment to strike.

When he heard the screams of his class coming from the top floor, he reacted by turning his head towards their location, but forced himself to ignore it in favor of the immediate danger in front of him. Left and right, he took down as many of the Villains as he could, until he could no longer resist the overwhelming feeling of dryness in his eyes, and was forced to finally blink.

That single moment of weakness was all that was needed to break his defense.

He tried to dodge the next attack, but he must have failed to erase their Quirk, because he suddenly found himself slipping to the ground after his next step, and then the Villain began hammering him with punches, and was then joined by two others, who were then joined by even more, until Shōta was completely surrounded by Villains who were beating on him mercilessly, and was unable to do anything but curl up in a fetal position and protect his head and stomach.

---

Toshinori grit his teeth as his fists once again connected with the Nōmu's. The punches he did manage to get in didn't seem to have an effect, as something would travel up its arms and disappear when it reached its shoulders every time. If this stalemate kept on for too long, then something was bound to go wrong, whether it be the Villain deciding to team up with the Nōmu, or (God forbid) if one of the students were to end up incapacitated. The likelihood of backup from the other U.A. faculty and other heroes didn't seem too high at the moment, either, unless someone (most like young Iida) was able to escape.

He needed to try something different; while this beast was able to match him in terms of pure strength and power, there were other ways to defeat an opponent.

With an idea in mind, Toshinori dodged the Nōmu's next punch, and quickly maneuvered to get behind it with the intention to grab it into a chokehold, but as he moved, he suddenly saw a group of Villains all huddled up together, and appeared to be surrounding something.

His eyes widened as he realized what was happening. 'Aizawa-kun...?'

His attention on his colleague was broken by the Nōmu immediately whipping around and throwing another punch, causing Toshinori to barely dodge it in time, irritated at his plan having failed. As he moved to try it again, he was overcome with a sudden epiphany, and almost cursed himself from the hindsight of how quickly this fight would have gone, had he just kept the thought of the Nōmu possibly being undead at the front of his head, which meant that there was one more option.

He needed to end this. Now.

"SMASH!" Pouring as much of One For All as he could into his next punch, Toshinori was able to knock the Nōmu a good distance away, which gave him a precious few moments to do what he needed.

'Now's my chance!' Toshinori thought, as he quickly dropped into a stance. 'Please, Aizawa-kun...just hold on for a bit longer!' Closing his eyes, he began to slowly breathe in through his mouth in a particular manner. The first time, nothing happened, but as he repeated the process again and again, a soft, orange aura began to surround him, moving akin to that of a ripple in a pool of water. As he opened his eyes, he felt his body and his Quirk become amplified, but was also beginning to feel a small amount of strain throughout his body, though not as painful as when he only had three hours to maintain his muscular form.

He needed to act fast.

As the Nōmu got back up and was quickly closing in on his location, Toshinori met the beast's movement with his own, his speed having been increased to a level that would have made Sorahiko proud, raising his fists and unloading all of his strength and power into his attack.

"Sunlight Yellow...OVERDRIVE!"

At first, the Nōmu's fists were able to tank the flurry of punches, but as Toshinori maintained his attack, whatever was keeping its body able to absorb and disperse the kinetic energy was eventually exhausted altogether, and the creature's arms were now beginning to glow a bright red-orange, but Toshinori wasn't done yet. While it was slow-acting, it was having the desired effect, and eventually, the Nōmu's entire body was now glowing from the combination of One For All and his original power, before finally liquifying and making a puddle on the ground.

Toshinori panted as he released his hold on his re-awakened power, as he could no longer maintain it due to the strain from the lack of use, before setting his sights on the shocked Villains in front of him. "My executioner, you said?" he said in a half-growl.

---

Tomura Shigaraki stared in shock at how easily his master's creation was able to be defeated so easily after that power-up All Might did. "You...you cheater," he hissed, feeling himself beginning to seethe with rage."HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO KILL THE NŌMU SO QUICKLY?!" He moved to rush towards the man with the intention of using his Quirk to do what the Nōmu couldn't when he was stopped by his name being said.

"Shigaraki Tomura," Kurogiri began. "We must make our retreat."

Tomura's breathing started to increase as his face began to get itchier and itchier. As much he wanted to kill All Might right then and there, he knew that their chances were now nonexistent after the loss of their most valuable party member. "The brats," he began. "Were you able to do what you needed?"

"Yes, but I am unsure as to how they would fare against the recruits." Those freaks don't matter, anymore. This entire operation was a bust.

Tomura clenched his fist as he felt the overwhelming urge to wrap his hands around the neck of the hero standing ahead of him, but had to refrain out of the prospect of being imprisoned in Tartarus or worse. "Fine," he sighed out, and Kurogiri created a warp gate for him to walk through. He began to step through it, but not before looking back towards All Might with a look of unyielding rage. "I don't know how you got your cheats, but nothing will stop me from killing you." With that, he stepped through the warp gate, and the leaders of the USJ invasion were able to escape unharmed.

---

At seeing the Nōmu killed and their leader abandoning them, a large amount of the Villains became demoralized and subsequently surrendered, but not before several more of them were knocked out from having taken part in beating on Shōta and rushing at Toshinori in a last-ditch effort.

Toshinori had brought his battered and nearly-unconscious colleague up the stairs, where he was met with the sight of Ochako, Mina, Rikidō Satō, Hanta Sero, and Mezō Shōji, and the girls sitting beside a badly-damaged Anakuro. Toshinori gently set Shōta down and told everyone to keep an eye on him, before setting off to find the rest of his students. Thankfully, however, it seemed that all of them were able to return on their own and relatively unharmed, and Toshinori let out a sigh of relief.

Several minutes later, Tenya had returned with a majority of the U.A. faculty in tow.

---

Nezu hummed as he took a sip of his tea. "I was led to believe that all of the Stone Masks had been confiscated along with the Stand Arrows." The information Toshinori had relayed to him had raised quite a few questions as to how exactly whoever had been behind the attack was able to acquire something that should have been long forgotten by the criminal underground, but considering the man's age, it was more inevitability, rather than probability.

In the two hundred years that had passed since the defeat of the Pillar Men by Joseph Joestar, the Speedwagon Foundation had made it a priority to allocate as many resources as it could to the seizure and study of the Stone Masks, along with the Stand Arrows that Joseph's grandson Jōtarō Kūjō had been tasked with retrieving. The only Arrow that the Foundation couldn't get to, belonged to Neapolitan mafia leader Giorno Giovanna, though the database records stated that he was someone that could be trusted with it.

When Quirks had begun to spread throughout the world in 2020, the Foundation's highest-ranking officials had opted to add it to the study of the Stone Mask and Stands, and created the Research of Supernatural Phenomena Division, which one Jōshirō Kūjō was now the head of.

"That's what I thought, too," the man replied. "But there's always something that ends up slipping through the cracks, even with our extensive resources."

"Still though," Nezu began. "This revelation is... quite concerning, to say the least. When you factor in something that has the power to grant immortality, it becomes rather obvious that All For One is still alive and is responsible for the creation of this...Nōmu." At that, silence befell the group as they processed the information.

"Good grief," Jōshirō said, as he pulled his hat down. "You had one job, Toshinori."

"That's impossible," Toshinori replied with a low voice, before raising it. "I know I killed him when we fought. There's no possible way he's the one behind this!" While he would concede that it was more likely a subordinate who wanted to carry on his plans, the very thought of him having failed to kill the man who terrorized the world and killed the woman he thought of as his mother, and becoming stronger, at that...

He clenched his fist. Even if Young Midoriya had been able to restore his organs, his ability to use One For All was still less than that of when he fought (and killed) the bastard, not to mention that he was very rusty when it came to his control over the Ripple.

The world did not need another Vampire that could wield an extra power; it had already seen enough when Dio had tried to use his abilities and Stand to take it over.

Jōshirō, however, just stared back at him with an unconvinced expression. "Well, did you confirm the kill?"

"I'm telling you, Jōshirō-kun, I felt his skull cave in. The chances of that bastard having survived are-"

"Did you, or did you not see the body and confirm he's dead?"

"..."

Jōshirō sighed as he pulled out his phone to briefly look at it, before placing it back in his pocket. "If he really is back," he began. "Then we'll need to figure out where the League of Villains' base of operations is located. I'll also need to warn Harumi and Fumikage about the potential danger."

Nezu nodded in approval. "Do what you think is best, as long as you don't tell too many people, Kūjō-kun."

"Of course," Jōshirō replied, before continuing. "But there's also another thing: I don't know if either of you were aware, but my nephew's told me that there's a strong chance of Midoriya Izuku possessing a Stand."

---

"Damn it, damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!" the voice of who could only be Tomura yelled from the screen. "All Might was supposed to be the juggernaut that ours would have surpassed, not the tactical nuke!" The sound of something colliding with wood (most likely his fists) was then heard in the background.

The man known as Norisuke Shigaraki - known to those who knew about his existence as All For One - quietly sighed as he protégé's words. "I take it the mission was a failure, Tomura?"

The sound of heavy panting could be heard from the boy as he calmed down from his tantrum. "Yes...Sensei...I've failed you..."

"It's all right," Norisuke said with a soothing tone. "As long as you and Kurogiri were able to escape relatively unharmed, then we can at least build up from where we did wrong." The Nōmu provided a good portion of the raw strength and power, so the loss had to have been something around that regard. "Now, what exactly went wrong with the Nōmu?"

"All Might..." Tomura quietly replied.

Ah. Well of course it had to have been him. "How exactly was All Might able to defeat it?"

"It really looked like it was going well at first, but then he just started glowing, and then the Nōmu just fucking melted like ice cream!"

"I...I see..." This revelation...complicated things, to say the least. He knew that a rematch between them was inevitable, but if All Might still had access to that, of all things, then...

That meant that he was healed to the point where he either received new organs, or was able to channel his original power. A power that was able to single-handedly decimate the Nōmu, even after Garaki had spent hours experimenting with the Stone Mask he had found almost half-a-century prior to remove that accursed weakness to sunlight, but it seemed that he failed to account for increased concentrations of it. A pity he still required the man's skills, otherwise he would have already had the man killed for overlooking such a simple concept.

But no matter. This loss would prove to be unimportant in the long run, and this particular Nōmu was only a test run, after all. There were still more to come, and they would be far, far superior to that of the one he sent with Tomura.

All For One chuckled as he suddenly recalled a particular memory, and reminisced on the similar feeling he felt when he discovered he could steal other Quirks and make them his own, to the one when he first used one of the Stone Mask to become a Vampire, all those years ago.

Oh, if only he still had The World, then his operations would have been exponentially easier.

"I look forward to our next meeting...JoJo."