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One.
As a rule, All For One spared no ceremony in destroying anyone that presumed to defy him, but his brother was an exception. Lingering boyhood fondness banked his wrath before it ever truly festered. He’d offered this handicap and still his brother cried injustice, raging against his every word, big and small.
Then the unimaginable had come to pass and there was no brother to seek.
One less life shouldn’t have intruded even the slightest on All For One’s conscience, but Yoichi always did have a knack for being meddlesome.
And for being as obstinate as him.
The path was dark, but One For All’s light still burned.
All For One eagerly gave chase once more.
Two.
A shadow cast over the long line of his brother’s successors. Heaping in every corner, stretching, enfolding.
Three.
One false start after another. His brother would come to his senses in time.
Four.
Perhaps he’d overestimated him.
All For One’s lips twisted in humored contempt as he watched his brother’s latest puppet navigate through his traps. Surprisingly agile considering his size and his reflexes were nothing to sneeze at, but the ability to sense danger was redundant in the grand scheme of things.
At its core, the world wasn’t safe.
All For One had surrendered his name and human decency when he realized he would go to great lengths to protect everything precious to him. So long as his brother lived through One For All, this game of theirs would continue. Because All For One would not stop seeking him. He would never stop. Not until his brother was in his possession once more. There was no one more qualified to look after him.
Sensing him, Hikage Shinomori held him in a steady, watchful stare before running off.
All For One’s mind lurched like he was in a half-remembered dream. How much of his brother was impressed upon his puppets? Where did One For All begin and end?
Why hadn’t he thought to call out before?
Somewhere, under the resentment and longing and malice, there was a scrap of hope.
All For One reached out.
Five.
His hand was snagged and he experienced a sudden sense of vertigo as the world tilted beneath his feet. Blackwhip wound around his middle and suspended him in the air like a snared rabbit. How unsightly—but the illusion of weakness was necessary. His brother’s puppet would never listen otherwise.
“Gotcha!” Daigoro Banjo swung down from his perch with a grin. “All that crap about knowing better than me… don’t make me laugh!”
“Woe is me. However will I break free?” All For One waited, but Lariat continued to stand there, hands on his hips, marveling at a job well done. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What do you intend to do?”
Lariat stared.
“Let me offer a suggestion. First, come closer.”
Lariat didn’t budge.
“What, you don’t trust me?” All For One asked innocently. “You have me in a compromising position. Do I look like I can use my Quirk?” He half-heartedly tugged at the tendrils pinning his hands to his lower back, testing their strength and making a show of his supposed helplessness. In all likelihood, this puppet didn’t have a full measure of his power yet.
Lariat huffed, but he cautiously approached him.
Score one for lack of guile. “I have a proposition for you.”
Lariat frowned deeply, not that the expression made any noticeable difference to his face. “Why the hell should I listen to a word you say?”
“Your concerns are not unwarranted,” All For One said smoothly. “But you mistake my intentions. They come from a place of love. Surely you as a hero can understand that. What you possess is greater than the sum of its parts. That Quirk is an engine of change.”
“And you want to steal it.”
“One For All is yours to hold.” Not to keep. “But do you want that Quirk to only serve as a weapon? I can help you find a way to make that Quirk serve the greater good.”
Lariat’s brow furrowed. He suddenly grabbed both ends of Blackwhip securing All For One in place and walked backwards until the tendrils stretched all the way to the mouth of the alley and constricted All For One’s rib cage. “Is that what you said to the guy before me?” he asked darkly. All For One’s smile crimped. “You ain’t as clever as you think.”
As Blackwhip pitched him across the city, All For One seethed.
Six.
Perhaps his emotions got the better of him.
Just a bit.
All For One stared at the long stretch of devastation before him with the sort of understated disappointment he commonly reserved for unruly subordinates.
What a nuisance.
The scent of brine and industrial waste accosted All For One’s nose. Picking through the rubble, he activated every Sensor Quirk in his arsenal in search of the body as bitterness seethed and turned his stomach. This side of town was inhabited by the detritus of society and his brother’s puppet sought to hide in its underbelly with his successor after she accidentally revealed herself. For all the good that did. Was it arrogance or desperation that compelled the puppet to attack All For One from the shadows? Either one tested All For One’s patience but none more so than hearing his brother’s words fall from those lips.
All For One waded through the wreckage and turned aside debris with simple flicks of his hands. If he tarried, would it be enough time to transfer the Quirk to the girl? Would the puppet simply take that Quirk to his grave? All For One increased his pace. The puppet needed to survive just long enough to preserve One For All. That was all that mattered.
Generations of death and ruin were entirely preventable and there was no one to blame but his brother. What grand speech did his brother string his puppets along with? What made his lies any more compelling than All For One’s? Each puppet had spat on All For One’s generosity, but still, he extended an open hand. Ungrateful, every last one of them.
He paused. Something glowed in the distance. The silhouette of a young woman rose unsteadily from behind a crumbling archway.
One For All’s light still burned. A bright ray of potential adrift in a dark sea of concrete.
Nana Shimura gave him a castigizing stare before floating out of sight.
How amusing that he, the elder, was being told off by this impudent child for lashing out.
All For One laughed softly.
He would exercise restraint next time. A gentle touch.
Seven.
Bloodied and bruised, Nana Shimura gave him a scathing look as she clung tight to the flickering embers of One For All.
Initially, All For One lured her here in order to inspect her student. He long suspected One For All had already been conferred, but it was best to err on the side of caution before taking drastic measures. Hmph. If only Nana Shimura had such prudence. A Quirkless boy! His brother really was terrible at this. There weren’t many better uses for that Quirk than ripping it away from the unqualified—and Toshinori Yagi certainly met expectations.
Economy was always one of All For One’s strengths.
Contrariety, on the other hand, came second nature to his brother and his puppets.
Upon recognition, Nana Shimura’s mouth opened in a slow, horrified gasp before her teeth snapped together into a grim smile. Familiar words fell from her lips and eroded his restraint until it gave way as the very earth did beneath their feet.
Hell broke loose.
“You toy with people!” she shouted over the roar of purple flames. “You break them! Steal from them! You take advantage of them and control them! Do you honestly believe you deserve One For All?”
“Of course.” All For One smiled to himself. “What sort of loving brother wouldn’t do as much?”
“You know nothing of love or sacrifice.” Shimura’s voice was tense with anger but steady as the sun.
“Don’t I? Unlike you, I do not abandon those I love.”
“You call this love?”
All For One gave a careless shrug. “Close enough.”
In the distance, Toshinori Yagi reached for his master even as Gran Torino pulled him farther and farther away. His eyes were heartbroken. And furious. The murderous intent in those deep blue eyes was all the incentive All For One needed to laugh. He extended his hand and struck the island city from the face of the earth in a blinding flash of light.
The boy was welcome to try his luck.
Eight.
Several decades later, All Might’s fury burned brighter than a supernova.
All For One crooned out a low, rumbling laugh as the blond behemoth hunted him through the city. All that time spent training under Nana Shimura, cultivating strength, honing discipline, shaping him to be All For One’s downfall—absolutely wasted. Tapping into All Might’s anger was the easiest thing in the world. There was no need to employ the full force of his power when his words won half the battle already.
Anger, resentment, and despair were worse than useless and All Might demonstrated that with every sloppy maneuver. Still, it was a rare novelty for the prey to turn and charge at him.
Toshinori Yagi needed a firm hand. Across the mouth.
All For One had carefully considered his options in an effort to preserve All Might’s body, but he just couldn’t face the thought of One For All slipping out of his grasp again. Especially when it was within arm’s reach.
All For One would trap him within the confines of his pitiful mortality. Pierce that stalwart form and show the world just how very human their darling hero was beneath the glamour. And so he did. All Might’s howl of pain and outrage rattled his eardrums as he wrenched his arm back, sticky and dark with blood.
“I gave you a fair shake,” All For One said, leaning back to appreciate his handiwork. “That you were incapable of seizing the opportunity is your own shortcoming.”
Blood gurgled up All Might’s throat. He spat directly on All For One’s shirt. “You never play fair,” he snarled.
A memory surfaced. All For One hesitated.
All Might seized his hair and the concrete ground rushed up to meet All For One as he was slammed down face-first again and again, the sounds becoming wetter with each strike. Bones shattered. Flesh tore. Red flooded his vision.
One For All was lost to him.
Nine.
But never for long.
Teeming with Quirks and fragments of life, potent and whipped up to a stormy frenzy, there was nothing else like One For All.
His brother’s puppets had a predisposition. All For One still didn’t care for them. Not one bit. Too much like his brother with all their propelling agency hidden away inside and likely to react to the slightest provocation. He thought he knew where he stood with heroes, but this boy…
Izuku Midoriya lunged at him, snarling like a feral beast as he snapped the black branches of Rivets between his teeth.
Locked inside Tomura as he manipulated him like a puppet, All For One slammed a charred hand against Midoriya’s face with triumphant glee. Reality collapsed into a soundless black vacuum the moment their Quirks collided and soon the world of vestiges was open to him. There could be no hiding anymore.
Straining at his new leash, Tomura resisted the pull but not for long. They were picked up and carried along by the current around that yawning abyss, darkness dragging them down only to eventually spit them out into One For All’s brightly burning core.
Eagerly, All For One bubbled from Tomura’s form to spill out into existence.
It would be a mercy when the end finally came. The universe itself would fail to stamp out his brother’s petty anger. He was still, in so many ways and in so many lifetimes, a child banging against a locked door that All For One would never open. There was no place to run. There were no more puppets to hide in.
The game was at its end.
Yoichi held him in a steady, watchful stare and stood his ground.
Found you.