"Wait," Fujiwara gasped, her face filled with disbelief "That... that's not a pro. That's ..." The face appearing on live television was young. Unmistakably young. Meaning this was a teenager. Fujiwara Sae's voice was trembling as she spoke into her headset, her eyes fixed on the high-definition monitor.
"We... we have a visual. The unknown combatant who's appeared on national television so far —is... A teenager." The camera zoomed in displaying the live footage. The silence that swept across Japan right after was almost simultaneous.
From the neon-drenched screens of Shibuya Crossing to the flickering monitors in 24-hour convenience stores in Hokkaido, the image was the same. A boy, barely sixteen, stood amidst the cooling slag of a vaporized earth. That same boy had seemingly just shielded the Symbol Of Peace. The cognitive dissonance was somewhat staggering. In Shinjuku, hundreds of commuters stood like statues. A salaryman dropped his umbrella into a puddle, the splashing sound the only noise for three city blocks. "Is that... a kid? ... Fighting alongside All Might?" Someone asked. "It's gotten this bad?"
"I mean ... I just thought .." "... This can't be happening."
"Here I thought we were saved." "Saved? We've lost a lot of pros already. Even All Might's like this. He looks like a skeleton."
"Well, looks like I might not have to go to work today."
The confusion was thick in the air. Two weeks of trauma—the Yamanote Line, the rising crime rates, the fear of the League—adding tonight's series of events had left the public psyche frayed. The absence of All Might only seemed to make things worse, yet when he actually showed up ... Things weren't getting any better. It was no surprise that they were looking for a savior. If Even All Might couldn't win this, then surely he could do it with some help, right?
However, whatever hope had been building up was quickly shattered by this scene. A child on a battlefield? Had Japan sunk so low? "No way ... What next?"
"Is All Might really gonna lose?"
"That can't be. He's always been able to win before right? Surely he can do it again right? I mean, sure he looks a little different now but he's still the same All Might."
"Yeah. Maybe this is one of the enemy's quirks or something. All Might just needs some time to recharge or ... Maybe for whatever quirk the villain's used to wear off."
"But .. wasn't this guy's power the ability to take away the quirks of others? Is it possible that ..."
The speculations grew worse. As for the kid on the screen, with the current state of events, and two weeks passing, no one recognized him. For a minute or two that is.
"This .. hold on. I'm just getting word on the identity of the young man with All Might on the battlefield. His name is .... Akutami Yuta ..." Fujiwara uttered the information supplied from headquarters.
"Sixteen year old first year attending U.A High school and currently ... deceased?"
Her voice played through all of Japan as she relayed the news, voice clearly stunned at the last line. No surprise, she wasn't the only one.
"Hold on .. what?" "Deceased? As in dead? .... There's no way that's right. Right?"
The general disbelief wasn't unanimous though.
In the Heights Alliance common room, the pindrop silence was shared by everyone, eyes wide with disbelief at the sight before them. Midoriya's breath hitched. Uraraka's hands flew to her mouth. "Akutami," Iida's pupils narrows to pinpricks. "No way," Kirishima whispered, leaning so close to the screen his forehead touched the glass. "He's alive?"
"I... I have to correct that,"
Fujiwara Sae stammered, her voice echoing through the silent streets of Japan. She pressed her earpiece hard against her skull, her eyes scanning the updated dossier flashing on her monitor.
"The individual is indeed Akutami Yuta. He was a student of U.A. High School's Hero Course. But the records... they haven't been updated because, until six minutes ago, he was officially listed as one of the victims of the Yamanote Line Tragedy."
The name of the incident struck the nation at once. The 716, just two weeks prior had made massive headlines alongside the involvement of a U.A student. The memory of the 716 missing passengers surged back into public memory.
"This .."
"U.A? Isn't that the Hosu kid? He's alive?"
Meanwhile, feeling the burns disappear instantly, Yuta felt the heated air brushing against his exposed skin. 'Sigh!' His face remained expressionless at the sight of his destroyed upper torso.
'How am I not surprised.'
"Well, well," a distorted voice chuckled came from above, drawing his attention. All For One's voice carried across the wasteland that used to be eastern Tokyo, distorted by his ruined mask. He stood fifty meters away, his suit torn and bloodied. The greater portion of his upper body from the shoulder upwards had been charred black, and a deep gash ran along his left cheek, deep enough to see bone.
It was no exaggeration to say that half his face had been burned. "How interesting. It's not everyday your mind clears up after a near death experience." All For one uttered.
"Young... Akutami..." Toshinori rasped, blood seeping at the corner of his mouth. "Get out... you have to... go..."
"After this?" All For One interrupted, his left hand tracing the burnt areas. "I'm afraid I can't allow that All Might. I did almost die just now. It would be unfair if I didn't have an in depth talk with the one responsible, wouldn't it?"
His sightless gazelocked on Yuta. "Oh, I remember you. You're the child Tomura got rid of weeks ago, aren't you?"
Yuta's hands dropped to his sides. "You know of me."
"How could I not? Your story has been quite... entertaining to observe." All For One chuckled—a deep, gentlemanly sound completely at odds with the nightmare of his exposed face. "Saving an abused girl from a powerful Quirk user. Taking second in the Sports Festival. Thwarting Tomura's Nomu in Hosu... And surviving being dropped in an ocean."
He gestured to the wasteland around them. "And this ... In all honesty, I never thought you would be alive. An entire train warped to the ocean, and yet you—the main target—survived. You might be even more tenacious than Toshinori. It just goes to show how stubborn the embers of heroism are."
'He's been observing me since overhaul?' Yuta frowned as the villain tilted his head. "I have to admit, I find your growth... frightening. Two months ago, you were a footnote in UA. And yet, weeks later I watch the footage from Hosu and I see a child neutralizing A-rank threats with a piece of sewage infrastructure. I see you now, and you are flying and manipulating structures that was far a oven your quirk classification."
All for one dropped his hand. "I almost wonder if you are an experiment of mine that escaped without my knowledge. So I ask, what exactly are you?"
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ALL FOR ONE'S POV
'Fascinating.' All For One's analytical mind worked through the data even as he spoke.
'Two months. From a General Studies failure to this. The statistical improbability alone is staggering.'
He catalogued the observations: Enhanced strength—far beyond his quirk classification.
Healing—on par with a regeneration quirk
Flight—impossible with his registered quirk.
Earth manipulation—a seemingly entirely separate ability. Though can be explained.
Object Manipulation —That projectile attack with infused kinetic acceleration reaching Mach speeds.
'Either his quirk has been grossly misclassified, or...'
The alternative was more interesting.
'Or he's undergone fundamental biological changes. Evolution through stress. Adaptation through survival.'
It was a pattern All For One recognized intimately. He'd spent decades forcing quirk evolution in his Nomu, pushing human biology past its breaking points to see what emerged.
'But natural evolution at this speed? Without external intervention?'
His scientific curiosity warred with his pragmatism.
'If I could study him, dissect the mechanism...'
But no.
The boy was too dangerous to preserve.
'Tomura's instincts were correct. This one needs to die. Now. Before he becomes another Toshinori.'
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"Like you said. A near death experience really clears the mind."
Yuta met the sightless gaze without flinching. If there was one thing he could ever agree with, it would be this sentence. During his week in Manila, moving through streets he didn't know in a language he didn't speak with a body that felt fundamentally different from the one he had gone into the Pacific Ocean with, he had done what any reasonable transmigrator would do when handed a period of unsupervised chaos with no teachers and no oversight and no one watching.
He had tested everything. As for the results?
Yuta thoroughly experienced what it meant to be a shonen protagonist upon testing his abilities in that timeframe. For starters, his Earth Style Jutsu was no longer earth style Jutsu.
Earth style was simple in principle. You took chakra, shaped it into the earth attribute, and used it to create or move earth. Previously, he had needed to know the general direction of chakra flow through pathways while moulding earth attribute chakra to perform Ninjutsu. Upon the first attempt, his quirk control made sure he could perform the same thing again without needing any hand seals, effectively becoming seal less Jutsu.
But the first step of discovery couldn't be bypassed.
That however, changed upon the realization that his quirk .... Specifically the external effect on external objects had grown much stronger.
The night after the King Kinetic incident, when he had pressed his palm into a concrete floor in the back of a guesthouse and pushed chakra into it without any particular expectation. By injecting his chakra into the earth, he discovered not only had the range increased, he could practically skip the whole discovery process and make the earth do whatever he wanted it to.
It was not earth style jutsu in the traditional sense. It was his quirk, which had always functioned by extending his enhanced control outward into external objects, fused with earth release chakra, the combination producing something that worked like a Kekkei Genkai he had not been born with and had not trained for and had simply arrived at because his awakened quirk was strong enough now to skip the tutorial entirely.
That alongside flight, were two of the three things he'd learned in the space of one week.
"As for what I am," he ran a hand through his red hair "Is someone who's tired of being targeted by people like you."All For One laughed in response.
"I see. What a shame, then." His expression shifted, amusement fading away.
"Unfortunately, your story ends here."
Yuta blinked. "Who decided that?" All For One tilted his head, the gesture almost curious.
"How interesting you are. As I've said, your growth rate is astonishing even for me. Since you're my dear apprentice's failed endeavor, you have certainly suffered a great deal at his hands. It would be troublesome if you became an obstacle later on—just like Toshinori was to me on my path to power."
He raised one hand. Air began to distort around his palm, dark red lightning crackling between his fingers.
"I would hate for Tomura to have an eternal rival later on due to my negligence. So I, as his master, will do him a favor and eliminate a future scourge to his path before it can grow any further."
The lightning intensified, compressing into a sphere of destructive force. "Fear not, though. Your quirk will serve a greater purpose on Tomura's path to power." All Might stepped forward, right arm bulging with yellow electricity, steam erupting from his skeletal frame.
"I won't... let you..."
All For One's smile widened behind his ruined mask. "Goodbye, Toshinori!"
The red flashes of dark lightning compressed to the extreme, multiple quirks layering over each other—Air Cannon, Kinetic Booster times four, Spring-Like Limbs, Strength Enhancement times three—
CRACK. All For One's arm erupted. However ... It wasn't from the release of his quirks.
Blood exploded from his shoulder, his elbow, his wrist as the concentrated quirks tore through muscle and bone. The compressed attack detonated in his hand, blowing his fingers apart in a spray of gore.
SQUELCH!
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