AN: There were. . . issues.
Most of them have been solved.
Sorry for the late update. The epilogue will be up tomorrow.
"Life is a bittersweet tale.
For the majority, it starts modestly, climaxes with hardship, and ends in obscurity, with only the slightest of reprieves.
Yet... Isn't it the contrast between Heaven and Hell that makes it so beautiful?
The Bitter is necessary to appreciate the Sweet, child."
-Unknown
"So this is how it is. . ."
He stared down the man before him, a monster if he didn't know dehumanization when he saw it, with a simply unnameable emotion bubbling in his gut. Something of a cross between rage, dread, excitement, and disgust? Whatever it may be didn't particularly matter; he had been waiting months for this chance.
A chance to kill the man before him, to rip and tear his guts asunder with nothing but his bare hands. To torture him until not even a spark of spirit was left in him. To, quite simply, kill him in the most painful way possible. Maybe himself soon after.
"It seems I've been sold out. And to the Devil, no less. I've seen what you've made of my family, murderer. What you did to my wife. . ." Itoku trailed off, nearly snarling.
No, he certainly wouldn't dehumanize the man before him; he couldn't savor the feeling otherwise. Yuganda Itoku was a human, a human who killed his mother, and he would take great joy in killing him in turn.
"I won't deny that. I am a murderer. But, Yuganda. . . You should have left the sleeping dogs asleep. Not only your wife, but your father, your mother, your grandmother, I killed them all. And now I'll kill you too. You should have never touched my mother."
The last few words out with a near hiss, but he kept his fragile composure going strong. He wasn't sure why, but he knew somewhere that it would be him who lost if the man's pointed words pierced his guard.
"How hypocritical, boy. I merely acted in response to your own murder. If you never killed my wife, I would have never killed your mother in recompense," Itoku replied.
The green-haired boy merely blinked, a feeling akin to a switch being flipped leaving him to stand there without regard for what would otherwise be a poisonous statement; being compared to his mother's killer and finding not a single way to retort would have surely hurt him, even if he knew it himself.
Deku was aware of himself enough to recognize that.
No, instead, Deku smiled for the first time in two months.
It was an uncanny smile, the thing that he held within his lips; one of abject amusement, detached yet hilarious all the same. The smile of a hypocrite content in fallacy.
"So?"
Silence.
". . .What? That. What on earth are you saying-"
"It's true that I'm doing exactly what you do. What you have done. Unfortunately, Yuganda, I don't give a fuck. I truly don't. You killed my mother and for that, I will kill you as well. Nothing more, nothing less."
The man stood there, seemingly shocked still in place, before laughing.
"I don't know what I expected from a murderer. So be it. You will try to kill me and I will try to kill you. Does that sound good to you, boy?"
"Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way."
"Ieyasu. Why are you here?"
"Why the hell should I not be here, Zero?"
The black-haired beauty retorted in turn. Honestly, the dolt should have known better than to try and take everything on all by his lonesome again; there was a reason that she was here, after all. She wasn't the type to show if her presence just made everything worse.
She was of the pragmatic sort like that.
The fact that she had made an appearance, that she even knew of this in the first place, spoke plenty enough for her ability. The thing that Zero was about to take on was something known only to the highest of authorities and even then, not all of them knew.
It was a bold and incredibly risky plan, after all.
Trying to get some headway with the conservatives was nothing but a pipe dream. One that they did not put any stake in, but one that did not matter nonetheless. Their plan would work just fine with a select few twisting things in their favor and the rest blissfully in the dark.
Yet, Ieyasu was still aware of it. Aware too late to make a difference, of course, but aware all the same.
"Ieyasu... You know what I'm about to face, yes? I don't want you to get hurt."
"I know that you're going to kill yourself facing him, yes. You were always far too stubborn. I've told you that I'm okay countless times. Doing this for me regardless... Zero, to put it bluntly, you're doing the opposite of helping me."
She paused, before speaking onwards, quiet like a mouse.
"If you die, it might as well be the death of me as well."
Zero sighed, leaning in as he cupped her cheek gently.
"There's no guarantee that I'll die, Ieyasu. No. I won't allow myself to. I wouldn't ever dream of making you live through that. But I can't-! I can't allow that bastard to get away with taking your quirk, Ieyasu. Not with your illness. I can't forgive it."
"Zero..."
It was Ieyasu's turn to sigh.
"Fine then. You always have been a stubborn bastard; it's foolish of me to think that this will change now. But if you die. . ."
Her eyes were that of ice.
"I'll drag you from the underworld and kill the both of us together."
Zero smiled.
"Naturally. Now, get away from here before it gets nasty. You have more power as a tactical commander of the gang than staying here mindlessly."
Ieyasu pouted slightly, but slowly withdrew from the scene, but not before saying:
"Be grateful. A lesser woman would have slapped you for your selfishness."
"Yes, yes, I'm very grateful. Now get out of here, Su-Su."
"Why, you-!"
They stood before each other, a bare few yards apart, both seemingly waiting for some unspoken signal to mark the end of the other. Said signal was unacknowledged, but both of them knew that the other would pick it up regardless.
And so they did, charging forth in an instance as the sickening song of a gunshot echoed out, only to be met with the equally ferocious roar of lightning and thunder. With a scowl on his face, Itoku floundered with the gun in his hand, reaching forth to send another bullet Deku's way, only to curse as it was deflected yet again.
Scowl deepening, the gun in his hand let out a torrent of bullets in quick succession to drive off the green-haired boy before he could get close. He couldn't get the big guns thanks to the officials on his side betraying him, but even without that, he had to try and by some time. Some time to think, time to get out of this situation, or he was dead.
Itoku was no fool, after all; despite being an officer, his hand-to-hand skills weren't anything to write home about. As with most people-
He threw the empty gun to the side with a hiss of irritation.
-he only had his quirk to thank for his position in the force. Obviously, there was a fair bit of skill involved, but certainly not hand-to-hand.
Something that Deku had in spades, according to the Sports' Festival, anyway. Something of an open secret nowadays amid officials.
"Damn it all-!"
Itoku panted as he felt a tooth roll around in his mouth, the irony tang of blood on his tongue even while his cheek throbbed from the mean right hook, painfully disoriented as he haplessly scrambled away from the blow.
He silently amended 'good at martial arts' to 'great at martial arts'.
Gritting his remaining teeth, he lunged forward, a wicked left hook scrapping past the green-haired boy as he roared in retaliation. He may not be that skilled, but goddammit, he was durable at the very least-
His fist only hit his clothing..?
"That's all? If so, I'm going to get started now."
That... wasn't the extent of his ability.
Well. Fuck.
His nerves screamed alight, craning and groaning against the impact, a cruel knuckle sandwich right to the nose that made it crack. A glancing blow to the lips, enough to bruise them pink; a poke to the eyes, blackening them like a panda; a pull of the hair, strand by strand so he would feel it until his scalp was nothing more than a bloody scab. His stomach twisted and heaved as that fist drove itself down time and time again, relentless and bloodthirsty and-
Oh god, it was going to kill him.
He was going to be punched to death and he couldn't do a fucking thing-
"aHHGHHHUUGH-! Fuck-! No, no, please don't, don't-!"
He screamed as a shoe stamped through his third leg.
"You son of a bitch-!"
The green-haired boy's breath hitched, and the grounding proceeded with even more intensity, force-multiplying as everything burst in a wave of blood and gore with a pop.
Itoku couldn't even scream.
"You made her suffer just as much, if not more, you bastard. Now pay for it."
All for One hummed under his breathe as he stretched out his limbs languidly, the fresh scent of a new day wafting under his nose. Tartusas had been clean, admittedly, but the stench of the cold that lingered in his bones didn't offer much for his more olfactory senses.
A true shame, seeing as he had lost his natural eyesight already; smell was one of the few natural pleasures he had left to his body.
'Natural' being the keyword. He had plenty of quirks in his arsenal that supplemented his rather lacking sense and allowed him to see plenty without it. And see plenty did he. The delectable sight of his successor finally living up to his true potential, the look of cold murder within him, sprinkled with casual cruelty and boundless hatred...
Oh dear, it made him break out in goosebumps.
He had even killed Shigaraki! No, no, tortured him— a man who the Deku before wouldn't have been able to touch, because in the end, it wasn't him who ended his dear old mom. 'Don't shoot the messenger,' as they say. Yet he hadn't the slightest hesitation as he went about exacting cruel and ruthless justice. Yes, yes, he could see it now. The actions of the past, the way his subordinates (his! He had truly made them his own, so much better than Shigaraki had ever done) killed Itoku's remaining blood family. . .
And Deku hadn't cared in the slightest.
Truly, it almost made him swoon.
"...Master, if I may, are you not upset with Shigaraki's death? A lot of resources were invested into him," The swirling mist beside the Symbol of Evil spoke out, hesitantly.
"Why should I, Kurogiri? I've gained such a fine pawn in turn! No, I've received a successor. His brilliance can no longer be restricted to a mere chess metaphor. Power, ruthlessness, ego, intelligence. . . He had all that before, certainly, if a little selective in his maneuverings."
All for One laughed like a man that had never laughed in his life.
"Hell, he even worked together with All Might to kill me for some ill-begotten notion!"
He threw his arms out, straight and wide, as if he could embrace the city whole in its entirety.
"But now! Now! He has finally gotten a taste for selfishness, Kurogiri! To feel anger for oneself, rage, and kill and destroy for the sake of yourself. To consider yourself worth more than the rest. Finally, he has become what he struggled so hard against this whole time: evil."
The old and crippled god let his arms fall loosely back to his side as the last word rang out, a smile still ever-present on his face as he willed his existence to resurface in another space. It wouldn't do if he didn't greet his protege properly.
After all, while he had made such amazing progress, he was lacking a little something to truly follow in his own footsteps. The boy was Evil, but he wasn't the Symbol of Evil. The Symbol of Evil, after all, meant that every action that will ever be committed was Evil.
And for all of Deku's brilliance, he was young. Impressionable. All Might's dastardly influence, Society's influence, still influenced the boy, yelling at him right from wrong. He had done well alienating himself from some of its brainwashing, but it was undeniable, understandable even, that a great deal of it remained seared into his fragile psyche.
It was All for One's duty to help him along in his path, a duty he would take with glee.
"You're awfully quiet there. Cat got your tongue?"
Blackened magenta stared down expressionlessly into baby blue eyes, even as they spasmed erratically; no matter where they sought to escape from the truth of the situation they found themselves in, like a bloodhound, those hauntingly hollow eyes followed.
And wasn't it a situation that would be good to escape from; upon examination, one would find the owner of those baby blue eyes in a state most would call worse than death. Peeled nails, amputated fingers, and gouged-out appendages were the least of the man's injuries.
He had more blood covering him than skin, more bone than flesh.
It was a miracle in of itself that the 'man' was still alive.
Yet, the man laughed a cold, grisly laugh in spite of it all, even as his ribs rattled and his right lung was deadly still.
"I'm. . . surprised you haven't. . . taken it yourself, you. . . sadistic bastard," More blood escaped from his lips. "Or maybe you like hearing me. . . scream. What a nice. . . hobby."
The green-haired boy with dead eyes laughed as well.
"More than a hobby, I just make exceptions. You have the 'honor' of receiving the most I've ever given, Yuganda Itoku."
"Ha. Honor. What a. . . farce."
Silence engulfed the rooftop whole as snow silently began to fall over the area; lazy spirals of ice twirled aimlessly in the wind before it sunk into the earth. But no matter how white the snow was, the crimson of blood simply stained it over red. Red, red, red, red, red...
(He should have learned by now that it was inescapable.)
Still, the red haunted him ever so. It taunted him as it sunk into the snow, denying purity and engulfing everything whole without care. The knife in his hand swayed and shook, twitching erratically as it sang a tale of sorrow that his eyes could no longer sing and wail.
He had completed his goal.
He had vanquished Yuganda Itoku.
Now, he had nothing left.
"Well, would you look at that? How hilarious. My murderer wants nothing more than to be murdered himself in his grief," Itoku began to cough, his near impossible moment of clear speech destroyed with blood-wet coughs. "We're more alike than. . . I thought. . ."
Blackened magenta blanketed by wide, unseeing white swerved shakily at the noise.
Deku had thought the man had died of blood loss, but clearly, he hadn't.
"I'll be going first. Thanks, kid. I'll get to see Jihi now."
And then he was gone.
"You. . . I never thought I would see you so soon, Zero. Didn't you learn from the last time that you tried to go against me? When I beat you so hard you could only go home, beaten like a dog? You haven't learned anything from that? Or do you believe that you can do something because I hired you for a few odd jobs and now you have the measures necessary to kill me?"
Zero only grinned in response.
All for One frowned in visible irritation.
"Cease this farce, and let me through. I have more valuable things to spend my time on."
"Oh? Would that happen to be Deku?" Zero smirked at All for One's sudden, almost imperceptible change in perception. "Don't look so surprised; I was his sensei, after all. It's only expected that I help the kid out when he needs it. The fact that it's you. . . just works out!"
A shadow charged out with a sudden burst of speed, owed in part thanks to the wind underneath her feet but denying some credit to the carefully cultivated legs that she had would be disingenuous, to say the least, for she charged with a speed that had no mortal equal.
But faced with a God?
That was a tighter match-up.
"Do you think this pet of yours is enough to face ME-!"
The bullet, charged with homing and amplifying runes, burst forth with terrifying, God-like wraith, unsurpassed in its speed and unquenchable in its bloodthirst. And at its very core, terrifying in its denial.
For this bullet. . . could sever quirks themselves.
And it hit, alongside the equally hard-hitting yet deathly soft 'Lucky' that punctuated the shot.
"Oh? Quirk erasing bullets? You are smarter than you appear and more resourceful than I dare dream, but do you possibly think that you get rid of the quirk that matters?! As long as I have my Immortality, you will never be a threat to me, Zero-..."
"I think you took the 'every action is Evil incarnate' memo a little too literally, Dear Symbol of Evil," The girl swung the gun by the trigger almost lazily, a shit-eating grin on her face as Zero began to talk. "Because you just narrated your own downfall. How painfully cliche. . ."
His face started eating shit too, as he grinned wide enough to swallow the world whole.
"Not that I'm complaining. Shall we begin, then?"
All for One broke away in a panicked tumble, desperately seeking to get away, but-
"100. 99. 98. 97. 96. 95. 94. 93. 92. 91. 90-"
-he could not escape the sound.
Deku looked up from his trance at the sound of gunfire.
"Has that begun as well..?"
He knew that Zero would be fine. They had multiple contingency plans available and ready, with none other than his own super (in)famous evil organization at his back. All of whom had support quirks with a few rare exceptions because Zero's quirk, Countdown, was simply that powerful.
It was hard to fight against Death itself, after all, when the last number rang out.
No matter who it was, as long as they didn't have immortality itself, would fall as soon as 'Zero' left his lips.
Something which All for One was hopefully rid of by the Quirk Erasing Bullets and one girl's (Tamako, if he remembered correctly) 'Lucky' quirk. It was the solution to one of the major issues that Deku and the rest had come up with; getting rid of the most essential quirks that All for One had.
If they got rid of a simple 'Cleaning' quirk with their limited number of bullets, that'd be nothing but an absolute waste, after all. And without a certainty to get rid of Immortality, or even All for One itself, this plan of theirs was nothing but a flop from the beginning.
But just as soon as it had been brought up, it had been solved.
What was a better option than a literal fate-changing divine intervention type quirk?
The 'Deku Gang' (name pending) had no idea where the hell Zero had found these members, but damn if they weren't envious.
But it was good that they had her.
Without Tamako's presence, they never would have dared to let All for One free of Tartarus in the first place. Yes; let All for One free. Convincing a few of the radicals to follow through with the deed had been hell in of itself, but the warmongers wanted the ticking time bomb in their prison dead more than they wanted to resist the Deku Gang's (name liable to change) agenda.
All for One made everyone nervous; so nervous, in fact, that they weren't happy to have faith in their 'impenetrable' prison's defenses like they normally would. Alongside the fact that All Might was only growing weaker and weaker as his young successor Mirio adapted to the powerful quirk like water to a sponge but not fast enough, never fast enough-
Well.
They wanted All for One dealt with. Permentally.
Deku knew exactly how All for One would react to anything and everything they would do, courtesy of having peered into the man's soul itself. At this point, he knew All for One better than he knew himself, and with it, came the knowledge of his quirks as well.
(For souls are equal, more than any man, female, race, ethnicity, or religion could ever be, and dealings within its realm were held to the same standard as well. He understood All for One.
. . .There was a reason he went into a panic attack immediately after the fact.)
And Deku was going to win because while he was forced to understand, All for One just wanted to break. Him, specifically. He understood, but he didn't apply that understanding for anything more than destruction. He had a one-track mind in that way, an obsession, almost.
He was rigid in his standards, in his pride from warping society's morality, and for that, he would fall.
. . .If he didn't fall first, that is.
The bloody knife in his hand, the one he had used to torture Yuganda Itoku to death, was seemingly impossible to put down. Even as his (tired, so tired, why can't we go to sleep yet?) logical mind fought against it, the emptiness within him hit harder than expected.
He knew, logically, that what he was doing wasn't constructive at all.
Revenge wouldn't heal anything, needless to say himself, and by the end of it, he'd be a hollow shell. He knew that. He knew that, but he was just so goddamn angry that he did it anyway.
Yet.
Yet!
Emptiness clawed at his insides like a swarm of hornets, chewing out his heart-whole and all, then his lungs, then his intestines, then everything else. He felt sick. A rotting sensation in his nonexistent stomach only surpassed by the time he rushed to his dead mother.
He was nothing, Gray wasn't responding, and what was he supposed to do, this was too much, he didn't want to break the unspoken promise he had made with her, but it was just so hard as he felt himself suffocating inside and out-
What was he supposed to do?
"30. 29. 28. 27. 26. 25. 24. 23-"
"Damn it, damn it, damn it ALL!"
He knew that he couldn't directly fight and kill Zero, seeing as they had that 'Lucky' girl that directly rendered his most essential quirks useless with the sheer, absurd power of luck; if the bullets got rid of All for One itself, he wouldn't even be able to cry before dying. He had simply lived too long. Without the little trinket Longetivty quirk that he had stolen, he would be dead.
With All for One gone, that would be gone too.
The bullet, under additional reinforcement and runic technique, was already stronger than his speed quirks, if only barely. That only left getting out of range from the quirk itself.
He buried himself in the ground, gone underwater, and even tried to maim his ears entirely, yet the 'sound' continued to follow him like it was. . . homing. . . in on him . . .
His mind raced. He knew that Zero's quirk wasn't transmitted through anything; that was why it wasn't restricted by lacking eardrums or anything of that nature, but in turn, there was a sharp cap on the distance that it could travel.
He glared at the little minion by Zero's side, a moment's analysis providing all the information he needed. A meaningless quirk in any other situation, yet one that proved fatal for him now.
A fucking DJ quirk.
Capable of boosting any form of speech, song, music, even a fucking lecture, and making sure that every person could hear it, mythical magic death countdown that didn't travel through the air or not. Hell, even disabilities were a moot point. All because everyone deserved to hear songs equally.
No matter where he fled, he would never escape the countdown.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it ALL!"
Which led him to his current situation.
He had no choice but to go big or go home. . .
So he would go big.
Deku was broken out of his stupor, thankfully enough, by the speeding bullet known as All for One, unthankfully. Gray's. . . Gray-ness was still disturbingly unresponsive, but the portion of her that was just sheer destructive might sprung forth with all the wraith of Zeus' thunderbolts.
Lightning crackled as a wall of pure electricity formed in a split second, unmatched in its blinding intensity, and crippling, electric heat. Gray had grown to be undeniably powerful, both tactically and destructively. To the point that even All for One, as weakened as he was, had to treat it with a modicum of caution.
It didn't stop his voice from booming past the lightning, even as his death ticked closer and closer.
"If I am killed, Gray will die as well!"
The words hit him harder than a lightning bolt ever could, as a creeping, worrying suspicion that lurked in the back of his mind was affirmed in the worst of ways. It was exposed as the truth.
No, he could just be desperate enough to bluff, he's done it before-
{. . .It's the truth. My existence is tied closely to All for One. Perhaps if you had a real anchor of something electric in nature within you, but your soul exists without a tie to the phenomena known as 'quirks'. As it is, the only thing sustaining me at present is All for One. If that link is severed-}
"Then you... You'll die. Because of me."
{That's right. I shall cease to exist in this world because of the actions of you and Zero. Something that you can't take back. Zero can't stop it this far into the countdown.}
He felt a little something within himself snap at the words. No. Snap was too tame. Something was ruthlessly twisted and gnawed and pulled at until it was little more than a pile of mush on the floor, squished and battered into a fine paste.
He couldn't, couldn't, couldn't live if she died if he killed her, hadn't fate had enough of making him a plaything? Wasn't this enough already? Wasn't it enough? He had suffered and suffered and made others suffer at his hands, killed and killed and killed some more until he couldn't see his hands as anything other than red.
Nothing was anything more than red, not even the snow, and he couldn't take it anymore-
{You moronic, dramatic, sad fucking idiot!}
Huh?
{Life is... Well. It sucks. Fate doesn't have it out for you more than anyone in particular. Perhaps the tragedy the birthed your circumstance is a harsh one, even for Life, but while you exist as an outlier among a gradient, other outliers exist as well. They have not fallen as far into the depths of madness and rage as you have, Deku. That is nothing but a simple fact.}
That-, That isn't-...
{Let me finish. I don't have much longer before I disappear, even in this plane of accelerated thought; I know as well that I am being unfair to you. You have not led an easy circumstance by any stretch of the imagination. But that is all that it is in the end, Izuku. Circumstance. You had choices the moment you were released from All for One. Choices that could have led to a different result. I share as much fault as you do though, however, in this.}
She paused, suddenly wary and sad, almost.
{I set you on a path of revenge that day. Even if it saved you then, it would have been more merciful to let you die. The kindest thing I can do right now, once more, is to let you die.}
His heart sunk into his chest, painful, as if somehow, that wasn't-
{But I am not kind. Nor have I ever been. You, after all, are not kind to yourself. You cannot forgive yourself. While others dress up their actions with excuses, you take it in full and suffocate for it. While others would rather bend than break, you don't see bending as an option.}
He got the impression that she smiled then, a slim, quaint thing without any sort of happiness, but one that fit nonetheless.
{And in the end, I am nothing more than you. The core of my being is the core of yours; a tainted, false core that, despite it all, desires to save people. A core rotten, yet pure; stubborn yet weak; hypocritical yet genuine. So I curse you to live, Izuku Midoriya. Live long and live hard.}
He felt tears running down his cheeks when he should have forgotten how to cry.
What a horrid curse she gave to him indeed, yet-
{Learn how to fall and stand up again. Learn how to seek brighter horizons, better futures. Learn how to become the best you can possibly be, to take pride in yourself. Learn how to love yourself, learn how to forgive yourself, learn how to be happy. Learn how to be human again.}
-he couldn't have it any other way.
{It will not be easy by any means. Every step forward that you take will feel like two steps backward. Some days will make you feel like you've never taken any steps to begin with, and that every effort you've ever made is a lie. That feeling will break you all over again. But you will not shatter. You will pick up all the pieces again, glue them together, and move on.}
Her voice grew fainter and fainter, yet it was still piercingly clear as if it struck his very soul.
{Because you have been cursed with living. That includes the lows. But it also includes the highs. Remember this, Izuku, if nothing else, and remember this well: life has its bad days, but if you look hard enough, it also has good days. They simply. . . go. . . unnoticed. . .}
"You-... No, this is too soon, you can't leave just yet-!"
The words spilled from his lips like loose sand, but her voice flickered and eventually ceased.
But not before one final message was delivered.
{It was fun, Master~! I'll be leaving first. Sorry I was mean until the end but... Call us even for naming me Gray, kay?}