The wind howling across the rooftop was the only sound Izuku Midoriya could hear. It whipped at his middle-school uniform, tearing at his messy green hair, and biting into his skin with the chill of impending twilight. But the cold of the wind was nothing compared to the absolute, freezing void that had just opened up within his chest.
Before him stood the towering, skeletal figure of Toshinori Yagi. The Symbol of Peace. All Might. The man who, mere moments ago, had been a mountain of muscle and radiant sunshine, now reduced to a hollow, blood-coughing specter of a hero.
"Pros are always risking their lives," the gaunt man said, his voice stripped of all its trademark bravado. He leaned against the rooftop railing, his sunken blue eyes looking away from the trembling boy. "Some villains just can't be beaten without powers. So, can you be a hero? Not without a Quirk."
Izuku’s breath hitched. The words didn’t just hit him; they passed through him like a physical blade, severing the strings that had kept him upright for fourteen years. He had spent his entire life enduring the mockery, the explosive burns on his shoulders, the cruel laughter of his peers, and the pitying, sorrowful gazes of his mother. He had endured it all for this one, desperate hope. If only All Might, the greatest hero in the world, could tell him it was possible, then all the suffering would have been worth it.
"I see..." Izuku whispered. The syllables felt like ash in his mouth.
"If you want to help people, there are other ways," All Might continued, unaware or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge the catastrophic damage he had just inflicted on a child's soul. "You can become a police officer. They get mocked because villains are delivered to their doorstep, but it is a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, boy. But you have to consider what's realistic."
All Might turned, walked toward the stairwell door, and vanished, leaving Izuku completely alone on the rooftop.
Izuku didn't cry. For the first time in his life, the tears simply wouldn't come. The well was dry. His iconic, oversized red shoes felt like lead weights anchoring him to the concrete. He looked down at his trembling hands. These were the hands that had feverishly scribbled notes on thousands of hero fights. These were the hands that had reached out to Katsuki Bakugo when he fell in the river all those years ago.
Quirkless. Deku. Defenseless Izuku.
He slowly turned toward the edge of the roof. He looked down at the sheer drop to the alleyway below. Earlier that day, Kacchan had told him to take a swan dive off the roof and pray for a Quirk in his next life. Izuku stared down at the concrete pavement. The drop was intoxicatingly simple. A few seconds of wind, a sudden stop, and the pain would be gone. The relentless, crushing weight of a society that deemed him biologically inferior would simply vanish.
He placed a hand on the railing. He hoisted one foot up.
Then, a deafening BOOM echoed through the city, shaking the very foundations of the building.
Izuku flinched, falling backward onto the rough rooftop. He scrambled to his knees, looking toward the shopping district. A massive pillar of black smoke was rising into the orange sky. Sirens began to wail in the distance.
Normally, his legs would have already been moving. His notebook would have been out. He would be sprinting toward the danger, eager to analyze, eager to watch the heroes save the day.
Izuku slowly stood up. He walked down the stairs of the building, his movements mechanical, like a puppet with tangled strings. He reached the street level and merged with the crowd of citizens murmuring about a villain attack. He let the current of people push him along, his eyes glued to the pavement.
Eventually, the crowd thickened, pressing up against a police barricade. Izuku found himself at the front line, staring down an alleyway engulfed in flames.
It was the Sludge Villain. The same monster that had nearly suffocated him under the bridge.
The villain had grown massive, feeding on the destruction, tearing through the street. Pro Heroes—Death Arms, Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady, Backdraft—were standing around, useless. They were waiting for someone with a suitable Quirk.
And in the center of the slime, struggling for his life, was Katsuki Bakugo.
Izuku saw the terror in Kacchan’s red eyes. He saw the way the slime was forcing its way down his childhood friend's throat.
His body twitched. A deep, instinctual part of Izuku Midoriya screamed at him to run forward. To throw his backpack. To claw at the slime. To be a hero. He shifted his weight forward, his foot crossing the police tape.
“So, can you be a hero? Not without a Quirk.”
All Might’s hollow voice echoed in his skull.
“You have to consider what’s realistic.”
Izuku froze. He looked at his own frail, trembling hands. He had no Quirk. He had no strength. If he ran in there, he wouldn't save Kacchan. He would just be a hostage. He would just be in the way. He would be exactly what everyone said he was: useless. A Deku.
Izuku stepped back.
He took another step back, bumping into a civilian. He didn't apologize. He just kept walking backwards, his eyes locked on Bakugo's desperate, suffocating face. He watched as the Pro Heroes did nothing. He watched as the system he had worshipped his entire life stood by and watched a teenager choke to death.
He turned his back on the flames.
Izuku Midoriya ran.
He didn't run toward the danger. He ran away. He ran through the pristine streets of the shopping district, away from the sirens, away from the flashing lights, away from the setting sun. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs threatened to give out.
The pristine glass storefronts gave way to cracked pavement. The cheerful billboards faded into flickering, broken streetlights. He wandered deeper and deeper into the derelict industrial wards of Musutafu, a place abandoned by the heroes who only patrolled areas where the cameras could see them.
The sky finally broke, unleashing a torrential downpour. The freezing rain soaked through his uniform, plastering his green hair to his forehead. He stumbled into a trash-filled alley between two massive, rusting warehouses and collapsed against a brick wall.
He pulled his knees to his chest and buried his face in his arms.
I didn't save him. I didn't even try.
The realization was a poison in his veins. All Might was right. He wasn't a hero. He was a coward. A weak, pathetic, Quirkless coward. The world was right to mock him. He deserved every burn, every insult, every shove.
"Such a profound, beautiful despair."
The voice did not come from a person. It seemed to emanate from the shadows themselves—deep, resonant, and thrumming with an ancient, terrifying power.
Izuku’s head snapped up. Through the sheet of rain, a figure emerged from the gloom of the alley. He was exceptionally tall, wearing a tailored black suit that seemed entirely out of place in the slums. His face was entirely smooth from the nose up, a horrific expanse of scar tissue where eyes and hair should have been.
Izuku tried to scramble back, but he was already pressed against the wall. His danger sense—a rudimentary human instinct—was screaming at him that the man standing before him was death incarnate.
"W-Who are you?" Izuku stammered, his voice cracking.
The man paused, tilting his head slightly, as if listening to a frequency Izuku couldn't hear. "I am a listener. And right now, I hear the sound of a boy whose entire universe has just collapsed. I smell the ash of a burned dream."
The man stepped closer. The rain seemed to deflect off an invisible barrier around him, keeping his suit immaculate.
"Izuku Midoriya," the man said, the name rolling off his tongue with chilling familiarity. "Fourteen years old. Diagnosed Quirkless at age four. Bullied. Ostracized. Betrayed by the very society you worshipped. And today... today you met your idol, didn't you? You met the Symbol of Peace."
Izuku’s eyes widened in sheer terror. "How... how do you know that?"
"Because I know everything that happens in the shadows of this rotten world," the man replied smoothly, crouching down so his eyeless face was level with Izuku's. "I know that he looked at a boy with a heart full of courage and told him he was worthless. I know that he left you to die on that roof. And I know that you just watched your oldest tormentor nearly choke to death, and for the first time in your life, you realized the truth."
"The... the truth?" Izuku whispered.
"That heroes are a lie," the man said softly. "They are hypocrites wrapped in colorful spandex, parading in front of cameras while children like you rot in the dark. They preach equality, yet they allowed you to be treated as a subhuman for a genetic roll of the dice."
Izuku wanted to argue. He wanted to defend All Might, to defend the heroes, but his throat was choked with the ashes of his shattered beliefs. Every word the man spoke resonated with the agonizing, bleeding wound in his chest.
"You are empty, Izuku Midoriya. They have scooped out your soul and left you with nothing," the man reached out a large, pale hand. "But nature abhors a vacuum. Where there is emptiness, something new must rush in to fill it. I can give you what they denied you."
"A... a Quirk?" Izuku breathed, staring at the outstretched hand.
"Power," the man corrected. "True power. Not the flashy, pathetic parlor tricks of the heroes. I offer you the power to tear this hypocritical society down to its foundations. The power to ensure that no one will ever look down on you again. The power to make them all choke on their laughter."
Izuku stared into the abyss of the man's scarred face. He knew, with absolute certainty, that taking this hand meant the death of Izuku Midoriya. It meant crossing a line from which he could never return.
He thought of All Might’s deflated, apathetic face. He thought of Bakugo’s explosive, cruel sneer. He thought of his mother, constantly apologizing for his very existence.
He was tired of being weak. He was tired of hurting.
Izuku reached out his small, trembling hand, and placed it in the grip of All For One.
"I don't care anymore," Izuku whispered, his green eyes dulling, the light within them extinguishing forever. "Do whatever you want with me."
All For One’s lips curled into a terrifying smile. "Excellent."
The transition from the cold, rainy alleyway to the blinding, sterile lights of the laboratory was a blur to Izuku. He was vaguely aware of being carried, of heavy steel doors hissing open, of the sharp, acrid smell of antiseptic and formaldehyde.
When his vision finally cleared, he found himself strapped to a cold, metal operating table. Thick leather cuffs secured his wrists, ankles, and neck. The room was vast, filled with towering glass cylindrical tanks bathed in a sickly green light. Inside the tanks floated monstrous, braindead abominations—humanoid creatures with exposed brains and bulging, unnatural muscles.
"Ah, Master! The specimen has arrived!"
A short, rotund man with bushy facial hair and thick goggles scurried into Izuku's field of vision. He wore a stained lab coat and rubbed his hands together with a manic, disturbing glee.
"Dr. Garaki," All For One’s voice echoed from a speaker in the ceiling. "Is the integration matrix prepared?"
"Yes, yes! The 'Project: Force' singularity is perfectly synthesized," Dr. Garaki cackled, wheeling a metal cart toward Izuku. On the cart sat a glowing, pulsating vat of dark, crimson fluid, hooked up to dozens of thick, intimidating syringes.
"What... what is that?" Izuku asked, his voice barely a rasp. Panic, raw and primal, began to claw at his chest. He pulled against the restraints, but they were unyielding.
Garaki leaned over Izuku, his goggles magnifying his manic eyes. "You see, little boy, my Master possesses many Quirks. But some Quirks are too... volatile to be held in a single human body. They clash. They destroy the host. But what if we took four distinct, overwhelmingly powerful Quirks and genetically fused them into a single, cohesive package? A synthetic Quirk singularity!"
Garaki tapped the vat of crimson fluid. "We call it 'The Force.' It contains a hyper-kinetic emitter for telekinesis, a bio-electrical generation core for lightning, a neural-acceleration node for precognition, and a telepathic wave emitter for mind manipulation. Separately, they are powerful. Together? They are godhood."
Garaki’s smile faded into a grimace of clinical fascination. "The problem, however, is the host. We tried to give this to Nomu. They exploded. The sheer neurological strain requires a living, conscious, highly analytical brain to regulate the output. It requires a vessel. And you, my Quirkless little friend, are a perfectly empty vessel."
"Begin the procedure, Doctor," All For One commanded. "And do not use anesthetics. I want him to feel every ounce of the power entering his body. Pain is the greatest catalyst for hatred, and hatred is what will fuel this power."
"No... wait, please—!" Izuku screamed, thrashing against the table.
Garaki ignored him. He grabbed the largest syringe, filled it with the boiling crimson fluid, and plunged the six-inch needle directly into Izuku’s sternum.
The pain was not something Izuku could comprehend. It was not a burn, or a cut, or a break. It was as if a dying star had been injected into his heart.
The crimson fluid surged through his veins, acting as a violently invasive mutagen. Izuku’s back arched so violently his spine popped. A scream of pure, unadulterated agony ripped from his throat, echoing off the laboratory walls.
"Yes! The integration is holding!" Garaki shouted over the boy's screams, rapidly injecting more syringes into Izuku’s arms, legs, and neck.
Inside Izuku’s body, war had broken out. The genetic material of the Quirks violently rewrote his DNA. His neural pathways were forcibly ripped apart and stitched back together at a thousand times their normal capacity to accommodate the precognitive and telepathic nodes.
Then came the physical manifestations.
The bio-electricity awakened first. Izuku’s skin began to blister and char from the inside out. Crackling, violent red lightning erupted from his pores, arcing wildly across the metal table, short-circuiting monitors, and shattering the glass beakers on the nearby carts.
"Doctor! The electrical output is destroying his cellular structure!" a robotic medical assistant warned.
"Ignore it! Keep the vitals stable manually! Administer cellular regeneration boosters!" Garaki yelled, frantically typing on a console as the red lightning whipped around him.
The hyper-telekinesis triggered next in a violent, uncontrollable localized singularity. The gravity in the room inverted. Tools, medical trays, and heavy machinery were suddenly ripped into the air, swirling around the operating table like a hurricane.
But Izuku was bearing the brunt of it. His frail, unconditioned body could not withstand the telekinetic pressure he was emitting.
CRACK.
Izuku’s left arm twisted unnaturally as his own telekinetic force snapped the humerus bone in two.
He didn't even have the breath to scream anymore. Blood poured from his nose, his eyes, and his ears as his brain desperately tried to process the sensory overload. He was being torn apart from the inside. His muscles were tearing, his bones were fracturing under the invisible weight of his own power, and his skin was burning into blackened char from the relentless red lightning.
Make it stop. Please, make it stop.
His mind retreated. The boy who loved heroes, the boy who muttered about Quirks, the boy who smiled and took the abuse... that boy curled up in the deepest, darkest corner of his fracturing mind and died.
In his place, born in the crucible of unimaginable, burning agony, a void opened up. A swirling, chaotic mass of pure, unfiltered hatred. Hatred for All Might. Hatred for Bakugo. Hatred for the Doctor. Hatred for the pain.
The red lightning surrounding the table suddenly surged, expanding outward in a massive shockwave of kinetic and electrical energy. The shockwave blew Dr. Garaki off his feet, shattered the reinforced glass of the Nomu tanks, and cratered the steel floor beneath the table.
Then, silence.
The telekinetic storm dropped. The debris crashed to the floor.
On the ruined operating table lay the mangled, charred remains of Izuku Midoriya. His body was a horrific canvas of severe electrical burns, his limbs twisted from compound fractures, his ribcage crushed inward. He was barely recognizable as human.
Garaki groaned, picking himself up from the floor. He rushed to the monitors, wiping blood from his forehead.
"Master..." Garaki breathed, his eyes wide. "The Quirks... they successfully integrated. The singularity holds. But..."
"But what, Doctor?" All For One’s voice remained calm.
"The boy's body is destroyed. His skeleton is pulverized. His lungs are collapsing. His nervous system is burned out from the bio-electricity. He is dying. Even with regeneration Quirks, the raw output of 'The Force' will continuously tear his mortal flesh apart faster than it can heal. He cannot survive."
"He will survive, Doctor. I did not bring him here to die," All For One said coldly. "Initiate the Stalker Protocol. Encase him."
Garaki hesitated for only a second before a mad grin split his face. "Yes, Master. The cybernetics. The life-support rig."
The next few hours were a different kind of torture, though Izuku’s mind was too shattered to process it as pain. It was a cold, mechanical violation.
Automated surgical arms descended from the ceiling. They cut away the ruined, charred flesh of his arms and legs, replacing shattered joints with heavy, reinforced titanium pistons and servos. They bolted metal plates directly into his collarbones and spine to stabilize his shattered skeletal structure.
To regulate the uncontrollable bio-electricity, they drove thick, conductive neural-plugs into the base of his skull and along his spinal cord, routing the energy into a massive, heavy battery pack grafted onto his back.
His lungs, useless and collapsing, were bypassed. They sliced open his throat and chest, inserting a mechanized respiratory system.
Finally came the armor.
They clad his broken, modified body in heavy, dark, asymmetrical plating. It was brutalist and jagged, a mix of tarnished dark metals and synthetic leathers. His left arm was heavily armored with a customized gauntlet, while his right arm, wrapped in bandages, featured a three-clawed gauntlet designed to channel the red lightning.
The surgical arms hovered over his face. Izuku’s green eyes were dull, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. They were no longer the bright, hopeful eyes of a child. The irises had begun to bleed into a toxic, sickly yellow, rimmed with the red vessels of burst capillaries—the physical manifestation of a body saturated in dark, volatile power.
A helmet descended. It was a terrifying visage, resembling a skeletal metallic skull with a harsh, angular design. The faceplate featured a jagged, T-shaped visor of dark crimson glass, and a pronounced, grill-like respiratory unit that covered the mouth and jaw.
Clank.
The helmet locked into place over Izuku’s head. Air-tight seals engaged with a hiss.
Inside the helmet, Izuku was plunged into absolute darkness for a fraction of a second. Then, a crimson Heads-Up Display flickered to life, projecting targeting reticles, biological readouts, and environmental data directly into his optic nerves.
Then came the sound.
Hoo-pah... Hoo-pah...
It was a deep, mechanical, rhythmic breathing. A synthetic lung forcing oxygen into a dead body. It was the only sound in the laboratory, loud and oppressive.
All For One stepped out from the shadows, approaching the vertical operating table as it slowly tilted upward, bringing the armored cyborg to a standing position.
The restraints unlocked. The heavy metal clamps fell to the floor.
The figure did not fall. He stood towering, the heavy boots of the armor grinding against the steel floor. Red bio-electricity danced passively across the metal plating, humming like an angry hornet's nest.
"Can you hear me?" All For One asked.
Inside the helmet, a voice responded. It was no longer the soft, stuttering voice of a teenager. It was modulated, deep, metallic, and devoid of any human emotion. It was the voice of a weapon.
"I hear you, Master," the cyborg replied.
"How do you feel?"
The cyborg raised his right hand. He clenched his fist. The air around the fist rippled, and a nearby metal surgical cart was instantly crushed into a compact ball of scrap iron by invisible telekinetic force. He opened his hand, and violent tendrils of red lightning shot from his fingertips, incinerating the scrap metal into slag.
"I feel... cold. I feel... hate."
"Good," All For One smiled, placing a hand on the cold, spiked pauldron of the armor. "The boy you were was weak. He was a dreamer in a world that murders dreamers. He is dead. I have rebuilt you into the ultimate reality. You are my wrath made manifest. You are the shadow that will consume the light."
All For One reached into his coat and produced two cylindrical, metallic hilts. He held them out.
The cyborg reached out and took them, holding them in a reverse grip. With a sickening, electrical snap, twin blades of pure, highly-concentrated red bio-plasma ignited from the emitters. The sheer heat of the blades caused the air in the laboratory to waver.
"What is your name?" All For One asked.
The cyborg stared down at the crackling red blades. He searched the archives of his mind. He found memories of a green-haired boy, of a crying mother, of a laughing blonde boy, of a smiling muscular hero.
He took those memories, wrapped them in the suffocating dark energy of the Force, and crushed them into dust.
The crimson visor looked up, meeting the nonexistent eyes of All For One.
Hoo-pah... Hoo-pah...
"I have no name," the mechanical voice vibrated through the room. "I am your weapon."
"Indeed," All For One declared, turning toward the heavy steel doors of the laboratory. "From this day until the end of your days, you are a ghost to the world. You are the blade in the dark. You are Starkiller."
Starkiller deactivated the crimson blades, hooking the hilts onto his utility belt. He fell to one knee, bowing his heavy, helmeted head.
"Yes, Master."
In the depths of the Musutafu slums, beneath the pouring rain and the ignorant gaze of a society obsessed with false heroes, Izuku Midoriya was buried alive inside a tomb of cybernetic steel and endless rage. And from that tomb, the most terrifying force the world had ever known took its first, mechanical breath.
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
The rhythmic, mechanized breathing was the only constant in a world defined by its impermanence. It was the metronome to which the darkness danced.
Three years.
To a normal teenager, three years was a lifetime. It was the transition from childhood to young adulthood. It was the time for high school crushes, for grueling hero licensing exams, for making memories under the cherry blossoms, for discovering who they were meant to be.
But the entity known as Starkiller did not experience time. He only experienced the space between targets.
He knelt in the center of a pitch-black, soundproof containment cell deep beneath the earth in one of Dr. Garaki’s hidden facilities. The temperature in the room was kept near freezing to counteract the immense, radiating heat of the bio-electrical furnace that served as his core. He wore no clothes, only the heavy, brutalist Sith Stalker armor grafted directly into his flesh and bone.
His eyes were closed beneath the crimson visor of his skull-like helmet. He was meditating. Or rather, he was enduring the perpetual storm inside his own mind.
The Quirk singularity known as "The Force" was not a passive ability. It was a ravenous, living entity synthesized from the stolen DNA of four distinct, hyper-powerful Quirks. Without his constant, iron-willed subjugation, the power would tear his rebuilt body apart. His precognitive neural nodes constantly fired off phantom warnings—danger from the left, danger from the past, danger from a future that hadn't happened yet. His hyper-telekinetic emitter threatened to crush his own organs if he didn't constantly vent the kinetic energy outward into a localized stasis field.
He was an engine running perpetually at the redline. The only way to keep the engine from exploding was to focus on a single, stabilizing emotion: Hatred.
He hated the cold. He hated the pain of the titanium pins in his spine. He hated the synthetic taste of the nutrient paste pumped into his stomach. But most of all, he hated the memories that still, occasionally, tried to claw their way up from the graveyard of his subconscious.
A flash of green hair. A woman’s gentle smile. A notebook filled with childish scribbles. A hollow, gaunt man telling him he was worthless.
Whenever those phantoms appeared, Starkiller would flex his metal-plated fingers, channeling his bio-electricity until the physical pain short-circuited his brain, burning the memories to ash. He was not a boy. He was not a victim. He was Lord Starkiller, the Master’s Blade.
A sharp chime echoed in his helmet’s comms unit, breaking the silence.
“Starkiller. Ascend to the audience chamber.”
The voice of All For One was smooth, cultured, and devoid of the manic energy that characterized his other underlings. Starkiller opened his eyes. The crimson Heads-Up Display illuminated his vision, casting the dark room in blood-red schematics. Diagnostics ran down the side of his vision: Power output at 87%. Cybernetic integrity at 100%. Bio-electrical reserves stable.
He stood. The servos in his heavy boots whirred, grinding against the durasteel floor. He attached the two heavy, cylindrical hilts of his bio-plasma blades to his magnetic belt.
He walked out of the cell, moving down a long, dimly lit corridor. As he walked, he passed a massive, reinforced glass observation window. On the other side, in a sunken lounge area, a young man with pale blue hair covered in disembodied hands was viciously scratching his neck while screaming at a video game screen. Beside him stood a man made entirely of swirling purple mist.
Tomura Shigaraki and Kurogiri. The League of Villains.
Starkiller paused, his hidden gaze locking onto Shigaraki. His precognitive danger sense flared, but it wasn't a warning of immediate death; it was a warning of profound, chaotic annoyance. Shigaraki was a child throwing a tantrum. He lacked discipline. He lacked focus.
All For One kept Starkiller entirely hidden from Shigaraki. The League of Villains was the public face of the underworld, the flashy distraction meant to draw the ire of the Pro Heroes. Shigaraki was the noisy hammer. Starkiller was the invisible scalpel. The League believed they were All For One's chosen successors. They had no idea that a monster born of a far darker design lived in the shadows beneath their feet.
Starkiller broke his gaze and continued down the corridor, entering a private turbolift that shot upward.
The doors hissed open to reveal All For One’s private sanctum. It was a sterile, spacious room lined with medical equipment and monitors, connected to a life-support chair where the overlord of the underworld resided. Dr. Garaki was nowhere to be seen, likely busy tending to his mindless Nomu.
"Approach, my apprentice," All For One said, not turning from the bank of monitors he was observing.
Starkiller stepped forward, the heavy thud, thud, thud of his boots echoing ominously. He stopped a respectful distance away and dropped to one knee, bowing his helmeted head.
"What is thy bidding, Master?" The synthesized, metallic voice rumbled from the vocabulator of his mask.
"Rise." All For One turned his chair. His featureless, scarred face was as unreadable as ever, but Starkiller could sense the twisted amusement radiating from the man in the Force. "You have served me well over these past three years. You have eliminated the Yakuza remnants who refused to bow. You have silenced the politicians who grew too greedy. You have been a flawless instrument of my will."
"I exist only to serve."
"Indeed. But today, the parameters of your existence must expand. You are no longer hunting mere criminals or corrupt officials. Today, you hunt a Hero."
All For One pressed a button, and a holographic image materialized in the center of the room. It displayed a tall, lean man with severe, sharp features, wearing a tailored grey suit and adjusting a pair of rectangular glasses.
"Mirai Sasaki," All For One introduced. "Hero name: Sir Nighteye. He is currently running one of the most successful intelligence-gathering Hero Agencies in the country."
Starkiller analyzed the hologram. His HUD instantly downloaded public records. Quirk: Foresight. Capable of seeing the future of a target by making eye contact and touching them. Former sidekick to All Might.
At the mention of All Might, a spike of red electricity crackled across Starkiller’s armored gauntlet. The bio-electrical core in his chest hummed louder.
"Ah, I feel your anger," All For One chuckled softly. "Yes, he was the sidekick to the Symbol of Peace. But that is not why he must die. Sir Nighteye is entirely too intelligent for his own good. While the rest of Hero Society blindly believes the narrative that I was crippled and driven into hiding by All Might five years ago, Nighteye has never stopped digging."
All For One leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Over the last six months, Nighteye has begun tracking the shell companies I use to fund Dr. Garaki’s Nomu research. He is getting dangerously close to uncovering the truth of my survival, and more importantly, the location of the Kamino Ward facilities. He operates largely outside the public eye, relying on meticulous investigation rather than flashy brawls."
"You want him silenced," Starkiller stated, his tone flat, betraying none of the violent anticipation boiling within him.
"I want him eradicated," All For One corrected, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "The League of Villains is not equipped for this. If I send Shigaraki, it will be a chaotic bloodbath that draws the attention of every Top 10 Pro Hero in the nation. It will alert All Might. We are not ready for that confrontation yet. This requires surgical, absolute annihilation. No witnesses. No surviving evidence."
"His Quirk allows him to see the future," Starkiller noted analytically. "He will know I am coming."
"Foresight is a powerful tool," All For One agreed. "He reads the microscopic, physiological tells of his opponents and calculates the mathematical probability of their next moves, projecting it as a vision. But he has never faced a creature like you, Starkiller. He has never faced a Quirk Singularity. You are not bound by the physical laws of this world anymore. Show him that his visions are nothing but fragile glass before the storm."
Starkiller stood, his hand resting on the hilt of his bio-plasma blade. "He will be dead before sunrise."
"Do not fail me, Starkiller. Return only when his mind is extinguished."
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
Starkiller turned on his heel, his dark cape sweeping behind him, and left the chamber. The hunt had begun.
Miles away, in the bustling metropolis of Tokyo, the rain was coming down in sheets, washing the neon-lit streets in a kaleidoscope of blurred colors. High above the city, on the top floor of a sleek, unassuming office building, Sir Nighteye stood by his floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the sprawling urban landscape.
The office was impeccably clean, decorated with an absurd amount of rare All Might merchandise. Posters, limited edition figurines, and framed replicas of the hero’s costumes adorned the walls. It was a shrine to a man Nighteye still deeply respected, even if their paths had tragically diverged.
But tonight, the comforting smile of All Might on the posters did nothing to ease the icy knot of dread tightening in Mirai Sasaki’s stomach.
He had not slept in three days. His desk was covered in meticulously organized files, red string connecting photographs of shell corporations, missing persons reports, and anomalous shipments of medical-grade containment vats.
It’s him, Nighteye thought, adjusting his glasses. The phantom. The boogeyman. All For One.
Toshinori believed the monster was dead, or at least permanently incapacitated from their horrific clash five years ago. But Nighteye’s investigations proved otherwise. The underworld was reorganizing. Someone was funding massive, illegal genetic research. And a new, terrifyingly efficient assassin had been leaving a trail of impossible corpses across the criminal underworld—corpses crushed by invisible forces, burned by an energy source the police forensics couldn't identify.
Nighteye rubbed his temples. A severe migraine was beginning to pulse behind his eyes.
"Sir?"
Nighteye turned to see his sidekick, Bubble Girl (Kaoruko Awata), standing in the doorway. She looked exhausted, holding a fresh cup of coffee. Behind her, his other sidekick, Centipeder (Juzo Moashi), was organizing files at a secondary desk.
"You should go home, Sir," Bubble Girl said gently, setting the coffee on his desk. "It’s past 2:00 AM. The investigation will still be here tomorrow. You’re pushing yourself too hard."
"Evil does not sleep, Awata-san," Nighteye replied, his voice taut with anxiety. "And I fear... I fear we have kicked a hornet's nest. The financial trails leading to the Kamino ward were too lightly guarded. It was a trap. Or a tripwire. And I triggered it."
Centipeder looked up, his insectoid features betraying concern. "Do you believe we are in danger, Sir Nighteye? The security systems in this building are state-of-the-art. We have reinforced blast doors, motion sensors, and direct lines to the Hero Public Safety Commission."
Nighteye shook his head slowly. "You cannot build a wall high enough to keep out a ghost, Juzo."
Suddenly, the lights in the office flickered.
Then, they died completely.
The hum of the city outside seemed to vanish, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic drumming of rain against the thick glass window. The emergency backup lights did not engage. The entire skyscraper had just been plunged into absolute darkness.
"Power outage?" Bubble Girl asked, her voice trembling slightly as she reached to activate the flashlight on her phone.
"No," Nighteye said, his voice dropping to a grave whisper. He could feel it. A pressure in the air. A sudden, suffocating weight that made the hair on his arms stand up. It felt as if all the oxygen in the room had just been replaced by static electricity and raw malice.
Downstairs, on the ground floor lobby of the agency.
Four heavily armed private security guards stood near the reception desk, their flashlights cutting through the gloom. The reinforced, steel-shuttered front doors of the building were locked down tight.
"Control, this is Lobby One, we have a total grid failure," the head guard spoke into his radio. Static hissed back at him. "Comms are jammed. Someone is jamming the signals."
Outside, the rain poured down onto the street. From the shadows of the alleyway across the street, a figure emerged.
He was a hulking silhouette of jagged metal and dark leather. A tattered black half-cape clung to his left shoulder, whipping violently in the wind. The only light emanating from him was the piercing, malevolent crimson glow of his T-shaped visor.
Starkiller did not sneak. He did not look for a side entrance or a ventilation shaft. He simply walked toward the main entrance, his heavy boots splashing in the puddles.
Inside the lobby, a guard pointed his flashlight toward the thick, bulletproof glass of the main doors. "Hey! Who is that? Stop right there!"
Starkiller reached the doors. He didn't even break his stride. He simply raised his left hand, his metal fingers splayed open.
CRUNCH.
The hyper-telekinetic emitter in his Quirk Singularity flared to life. The invisible wave of kinetic energy hit the front of the building like a runaway freight train.
The bulletproof glass didn't shatter; it instantly vaporized into fine dust. The reinforced steel shutters buckled inward, screaming against their moorings before being violently ripped from the concrete walls. The massive blast doors imploded, flying inward like shrapnel from a bomb.
The shockwave blasted into the lobby, throwing the four guards through the air like ragdolls. They smashed against the marble reception desk and the far walls, their bones snapping upon impact.
Starkiller stepped through the ruined threshold, his mechanical breathing loud in the sudden silence of the destroyed lobby.
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
One of the guards, bleeding profusely from his head, groaned and reached for his assault rifle. He brought the barrel up, his finger pulling the trigger in a panic.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
A burst of armor-piercing rounds flew toward Starkiller's chest.
Starkiller didn't dodge. He simply raised his armored palm. The bullets stopped dead in mid-air, inches from his face, suspended in an invisible kinetic stasis field. The guard stared in absolute, uncomprehending horror.
With a flick of his wrist, Starkiller redirected the kinetic energy. The bullets shot backward with twice their original velocity, shredding the guard's vest and pinning him to the marble floor.
Starkiller didn't look at the body. His HUD tracked a heat signature. He looked up at the ceiling. The sixty-eighth floor.
He walked toward the elevator banks. The doors were shut, the power dead. Starkiller ignited his right bio-plasma blade. The crimson beam of concentrated energy hissed to life, illuminating the lobby in a hellish red glow. He plunged the blade directly into the steel elevator doors. The metal instantly turned white-hot and melted like butter. He slashed downward, kicking the molten doors inward.
He stepped into the empty elevator shaft. Looking up at the dizzying height, he crouched, channeling the hyper-kinetic emitter into the servos of his legs. With a deafening boom that cracked the concrete foundation, Starkiller launched himself straight up the shaft.
He rocketed upward, the wind roaring past his helmet. Fifty floors. Sixty floors. Sixty-seven.
He engaged his telekinetic brakes, stopping perfectly in mid-air, hovering before the heavy steel doors of the top floor. He reached out with both hands, seized the doors with his invisible grip, and ripped them completely off their hinges, tossing them down the miles-long drop of the shaft.
He stepped out onto the plush carpet of the Nighteye Agency's executive floor.
The corridor was lined with offices, but his precognitive danger sense, acting as a radar, pinpointed three distinct consciousnesses at the end of the hall.
"Intruder!"
At the far end of the hallway stood Centipeder. The sidekick's long, segmented insectoid arms whipped out, stretching down the corridor to bind the intruder.
Starkiller didn't slow his pace. As the centipede-like limbs rushed toward him, attempting to wrap around his torso, he spun his crimson blade in a blindingly fast, figure-eight arc. The hyper-heated plasma sliced cleanly through Centipeder's extended limbs.
A horrific shriek echoed down the hall as Centipeder recoiled, dark blood spraying from the cauterized stumps of his arms.
Before Centipeder could recover, Starkiller extended his right, clawed gauntlet. He didn't use telekinesis this time. He reached into the bio-electrical furnace of his core and unleashed the lightning.
A torrent of jagged, red electricity erupted from his fingertips. It arced down the hallway, striking Centipeder directly in the chest. The sidekick’s body seized violently, his skeleton flashing visibly through his skin as millions of volts of corrupted, hateful energy surged through his nervous system.
The lightning cooked him from the inside out. Centipeder dropped to the floor, smoking and lifeless.
"Juzo!" Bubble Girl screamed from the doorway of Nighteye’s office. She rushed into the hallway, her face pale with terror, holding her hands out to unleash her Odor Bubbles to incapacitate the attacker.
Starkiller’s HUD flashed. Target acquired. Threat level: Minimal.
He didn't even use his blade or his lightning. As Bubble Girl lunged forward, Starkiller simply clenched his left fist.
The invisible grip of his telekinesis seized her entirely. Her forward momentum stopped instantly. She gasped, suspended in mid-air, an invisible hand wrapped around her throat, choking off her scream.
Starkiller raised his fist higher, lifting her toward the ceiling. He looked at her struggling form with absolute apathy. She was an obstacle. An insect in the way of his objective.
With a brutal, downward swipe of his arm, he slammed her into the floor. The kinetic impact shattered the concrete beneath the carpet. He didn't let go. He dragged her telekinetically across the floor, smashing her through a heavy oak desk, then launched her violently through the reinforced glass window of an adjacent office. She crumpled into a heap of broken glass and splintered wood, unmoving.
Starkiller stepped over Centipeder’s smoldering corpse and arrived at the double doors of the main office.
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
He pushed the doors open.
Standing in the center of the room, surrounded by the mocking, smiling faces of All Might posters, was Sir Nighteye. The hero had removed his suit jacket. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were full of his signature Hyper-Density Seals—stamps weighing five kilograms each, ready to be thrown as lethal projectiles.
Nighteye’s eyes were wide, taking in the horrific visage of the cybernetic demon that had just slaughtered his agency in less than three minutes.
"Who are you?" Nighteye demanded, his voice steady despite the sheer terror radiating from him. "Are you All For One’s new lapdog?"
Starkiller said nothing. He ignited his second plasma blade. The twin crimson sabers crackled, casting intersecting shadows across the room. He dropped into an aggressive, crouched stance, holding the blades in a reverse grip behind his back.
"Very well," Nighteye said, his eyes narrowing. "If you will not speak, I will read your future and take the answers myself."
Nighteye activated his Quirk. His eyes glowed with a brilliant, intense light. He locked onto Starkiller, attempting to trigger Foresight.
To Mirai Sasaki, Foresight was like looking through a reel of film. He could see the micro-twitches of muscles, the shift in balance, the trajectory of a strike, all played out seconds before they happened. It had allowed him to fight villains with overwhelming physical power by simply not being where they struck.
But as Nighteye looked into Starkiller’s future, his mind was hit with the equivalent of a psychological flashbang.
He didn't see a clear path. He saw a hurricane.
Because Starkiller possessed precognition through his Danger Sense, his movements were not dictated by conscious thought or physical telegraphing; they were dictated by the Force guiding his reflexes on a microsecond level. Furthermore, the chaotic, hateful energy of his bio-electricity and telekinesis warped the space around him.
Nighteye gasped, staggering backward, clutching his head. The "film reel" of the future was on fire. He saw Starkiller attack from the left, but simultaneously saw him attack from the right, while simultaneously seeing himself crushed by invisible gravity. It was a kaleidoscope of death. There was no linear timeline. There was only the Dark Side.
"What... what are you?!" Nighteye breathed, his analytical mind completely breaking down under the paradox of the Quirk Singularity. "Your future... it's just blood! It’s all just blood and static!"
Starkiller didn't answer. He lunged.
Driven by the explosive power of his cybernetic legs and a burst of telekinetic speed, Starkiller crossed the thirty-foot office in a fraction of a second. He was a blur of black metal and red plasma.
Nighteye, operating purely on decades of combat instinct rather than his useless Quirk, threw four Hyper-Density Seals in a rapid spread aimed at Starkiller’s center of mass.
Starkiller didn't even attempt to dodge. He didn't need to. He swung his left plasma blade in a blindingly fast horizontal arc, vaporizing the five-kilogram solid metal stamps in mid-air. With his right hand, he thrust his second blade straight for Nighteye’s chest.
Nighteye twisted his body, the searing heat of the blade singing the fabric of his shirt as it barely missed his heart. He countered, attempting a sweeping kick to Starkiller's heavily armored knee.
The hero’s shin connected with solid titanium. Nighteye grunted in pain, feeling the bone in his leg fracture.
Starkiller didn't flinch. He spun, bringing his left elbow around in a devastating strike aimed at Nighteye’s temple.
Nighteye desperately threw his arms up to block, crossing his wrists. The cybernetic elbow slammed into his guard with the force of a wrecking ball. The impact shattered both of Nighteye’s forearms instantly. He was thrown backward, crashing violently into his own desk, shattering it into splinters.
Nighteye collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath, his broken arms hanging uselessly at his sides. His glasses had flown off, shattering on the carpet. He looked up, his vision swimming, as the terrifying juggernaut slowly walked toward him.
The hero was utterly outmatched. This was not a fight. It was an execution.
"You..." Nighteye coughed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "You think... killing me... will stop the truth? All For One... is a cancer. He will be found. The Symbol of Peace... will return to finish the job."
Starkiller stopped standing over the broken hero. At the mention of the Symbol of Peace, the crimson visor seemed to glow brighter. The temperature in the room plummeted, while simultaneously, the scent of ozone grew suffocating.
Starkiller raised his left hand.
Nighteye was suddenly yanked upward by his throat, hoisted three feet into the air by invisible telekinetic force. He clawed weakly at his neck with his broken hands, his legs kicking in the air as his windpipe was slowly, methodically crushed.
"The Symbol of Peace is a lie," the deep, metallic voice vibrated from the mask, filled with such profound, ancient hatred that it made Nighteye’s blood run cold. "He is a hypocrite who smiles while the weak are ground into dust. He saves those who are convenient. He abandons those who are not."
Nighteye, suffocating, looked directly into the crimson visor. Driven by a desperate, dying curiosity, he pushed his Quirk to its absolute, brain-hemorrhaging limit. He bypassed the static of the future. He didn't look forward. He looked inward. He looked into the soul of the monster choking him.
The vision hit Nighteye like a physical blow.
He didn't see a demon. He didn't see an ancient villain.
He saw a middle school uniform. He saw messy green hair. He saw a notebook filled with heroic analysis. He saw a boy, crying on a rooftop, being told he was worthless by the very man Nighteye idolized. He saw the agonizing, grotesque surgery. He saw the boy's mind shatter under the weight of unimaginable torture.
Nighteye’s eyes widened in absolute, soul-crushing horror.
"Midoriya..." Nighteye choked out, the name a bloody rasp. "You... you were... a child. Toshinori... what did he do?"
Starkiller froze.
The name. Midoriya.
A violent spasm wracked Starkiller’s body. The red lightning around his gauntlets flickered, turning briefly erratic. A sharp, piercing pain stabbed through his skull, a migraine so severe it momentarily disrupted his telekinetic grip.
For a fraction of a second, the mechanical breathing hitched. Beneath the mask, a boy screamed in the dark. A memory flashed: All Might on the roof. “It’s not bad to dream, boy. But you have to consider what’s realistic.”
The hesitation lasted for one, single heartbeat.
Then, the void swallowed the boy once more. The hatred surged back, hotter and more violent than before. How dare this man speak that dead name? How dare he look into his past?
"Midoriya is dead," Starkiller roared, the synthesized voice distorting with raw fury.
He unleashed his full, terrifying power.
He thrust his right hand forward. A massive, sustained torrent of concentrated red Force Lightning erupted from his clawed gauntlet.
The lightning struck Sir Nighteye point-blank in the chest. The sheer concussive force of the electrical blast threw the hero backward, crashing him through the All Might shrine on the wall.
The lightning did not stop. Starkiller poured every ounce of his rage, his pain, his betrayal into the blast. The red electricity consumed Nighteye entirely. The hero’s agonizing screams were drowned out by the deafening crackle of the bio-electrical storm. The posters of All Might caught fire. The action figures melted into plastic slag. The entire wall blackened and crumbled.
For ten agonizing seconds, Starkiller held the torrent.
When he finally lowered his hand, the room was filled with thick, choking smoke. The localized stasis field had torn the office apart. Papers fluttered through the air like ash.
Where Sir Mirai Sasaki had been pinned against the wall, there was nothing left but a charred, smoking, unrecognizable husk embedded in the scorched concrete. The brilliant, analytical mind of Sir Nighteye was extinguished forever.
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
Starkiller stood amid the burning ruins of the office. His cybernetic chest heaved, his internal cooling fans whirring loudly to vent the massive heat generated by the attack.
He looked at the destroyed wall. An All Might poster, half-burned, fluttered to the floor near his heavy boots. The smiling face of the hero looked up at him.
Starkiller raised his boot and stomped on the poster, grinding the smiling face into the ash and broken glass.
His HUD flickered. Target eliminated. Mission parameters achieved.
He reached up to his comms unit. "The target is dead, Master. He will not trouble you again."
“Excellent work, my apprentice,” All For One’s voice crackled through the earpiece, thick with satisfaction. “Leave no evidence behind. Return to base.”
Starkiller deactivated his plasma blades. He turned and walked out of the ruined office. He stepped over the bodies of the sidekicks, his heavy footsteps devoid of any urgency or remorse.
He walked back to the shattered elevator shaft and dropped into the abyss, plummeting sixty-eight floors in absolute darkness. He engaged his telekinetic thrusters just before hitting the bottom, landing gracefully in the devastated lobby.
He walked out into the pouring rain. The sirens were just beginning to wail in the distance. The police were coming. The heroes were coming. But they would find nothing but a slaughterhouse, a puzzle with missing pieces they could never comprehend.
Starkiller pulled the tattered black hood of his cape over his helmet. He melted into the shadows of the alleyway, moving like a phantom through the weeping city.
He was the Master's Blade. And his edge had never been sharper.
Hoo-pah… Hoo-pah…
The rhythmic, mechanical rasp of Starkiller’s respirator echoed through the cavernous, dimly lit staging area of the League of Villains' hidden bar in Kamino Ward. He stood perfectly still in the darkest corner of the room, a looming monolith of dark steel, scarred leather, and coiled malice.
Across the room, Tomura Shigaraki was violently scratching his neck, pacing back and forth in front of Kurogiri’s swirling purple mist.
"It’s a perfect plan, Kurogiri," Shigaraki muttered, his voice raspy and unhinged. "We have the schedule. The Symbol of Peace is teaching Rescue Training today at the Unforeseen Simulation Joint. We warp in, we deploy the Anti-Symbol of Peace, and we crush the final boss. Game over."
Shigaraki gestured to the hulking, brain-exposed monstrosity standing dormant near the bar. The USJ Nomu. A creature engineered for absolute shock absorption and hyper-regeneration.
"I still do not understand why he has to come," Shigaraki sneered, pointing a pale, decaying finger at Starkiller in the shadows. "This is my party. My raid. I don’t need Sensei’s pet cyborg getting in the way of my Nomu."
A monitor on the wall crackled to life. The audio-only transmission of All For One filled the room, smooth and imperious.
"Tomura. The Nomu is your sword. But Starkiller is my insurance," All For One’s voice echoed. "You have never faced All Might in battle. You do not comprehend the sheer magnitude of his power. Starkiller is not there to follow your orders. He is there to test his own capabilities against the apex of hero society. If your Nomu fails, he will intervene. Consider him an... independent variable."
Shigaraki hissed, scratching his neck so hard blood began to well under his fingernails. "Fine. But if he gets in my way, I’ll dust him."
In the corner, the crimson T-shaped visor of Starkiller’s helmet flared brightly for a fraction of a second. A low, menacing hum of red bio-electricity danced across his clawed right gauntlet. He did not speak. Shigaraki was an insect. If the man-child attempted to decay him, Starkiller would sever his hands before the nerve signals could even reach Shigaraki's rotting brain.
"Starkiller," All For One’s voice shifted, addressing the cyborg directly. "Your primary objective is data collection. I want to see how the Force singularity responds to One For All. Do not kill All Might today. We are not prepared for the societal fallout just yet. Break him. Humiliate him. But leave him breathing. As for the students and the teachers... do as you please."
"It will be done, Master," Starkiller replied, his metallic, synthesized voice vibrating the floorboards.
Kurogiri expanded his mist, creating a massive, swirling vortex of dark purple warp-gate. "The coordinates are set. Destination: USJ."
Shigaraki smiled, a twisted, horrifying expression hidden beneath the severed hand on his face. "Let’s go kill a god."
The army of low-level street thugs surged into the portal. Shigaraki and the Nomu followed. Finally, Starkiller stepped forward. The heavy thud, clank of his cybernetic boots was the last sound in the bar before he vanished into the void.
Space bent and snapped back into place.
Starkiller stepped out of the portal onto the central plaza of the Unforeseen Simulation Joint. The air was warm, smelling of chlorine from the nearby shipwreck zone and ozone from the mountain zone. The massive glass dome above let in the bright afternoon sunlight—a light that Starkiller despised.
He stood at the back of the villainous horde, his dark cloak billowing slightly from the ambient air currents. His HUD instantly mapped the colossal facility. Threat assessment protocols engaged.
High above, near the entrance, stood Class 1-A, alongside Pro Heroes Thirteen and Eraserhead.
Starkiller’s enhanced optics zoomed in on the teenagers. They were wearing colorful, pristine, utterly ridiculous costumes. Capes, masks, bright boots. They looked like action figures.
A profound, sickening wave of disgust rolled through Starkiller’s mind, fueling the bio-electrical furnace in his chest.
Look at them, the dark voice in his mind sneered. Pampered children. They play at being heroes. They train in controlled environments, wrapped in safety nets and praise. They have never known the dark. They have never known true pain. They are the beneficiaries of a corrupt genetic lottery, parading around like saviors.
His targeting reticle swept across the students. A boy with engines in his legs. A girl with a pink spacesuit. A boy with half-white, half-red hair.
Then, the reticle locked onto a boy with spiky ash-blonde hair, wearing gauntlets shaped like massive grenades.
Katsuki Bakugo.
A sharp, agonizing spike of static erupted in Starkiller’s skull. His cybernetic respiratory unit hitched.
“Take a swan dive off the roof!”
“Defenseless Izuku!”
“Deku!”
The memories tried to claw their way to the surface like drowning rats. Starkiller clenched his fists. He channeled the migraine, the pain, the ghost of a boy he used to be, and fed it directly into the Force. The red lightning around his gauntlet spiked violently, arcing into the ground and scorching the concrete. He crushed the memories into oblivion. The boy named Deku was dead. There was only the Master’s Blade.
"Eraserhead," Shigaraki murmured, looking up at the hero diving into the fray. "And Thirteen. According to the schedule, All Might should be here. Where is he? Did he tire himself out doing good deeds?"
Eraserhead plunged into the crowd of thugs. The underground hero was a blur of motion, his capture scarf whipping out to bind, slam, and incapacitate the villains with ruthless efficiency. He moved like a predatory dancer, erasing Quirks and breaking bones.
"Fools," Starkiller muttered mechanically. The street thugs were undisciplined fodder. They were getting in the way.
"Hey, metal-head!" one of the villains yelled at Starkiller, stepping back from Eraserhead's onslaught. "Do something! Blast him!"
Starkiller didn't even look at the thug. He simply raised his left hand. A localized pulse of telekinetic energy violently shoved the thug forward, throwing him directly into Eraserhead's path as a fleshy distraction.
Eraserhead easily incapacitated the thrown thug, but the brief moment of distraction allowed him to lock eyes with the towering, armored figure standing at the edge of the plaza.
Aizawa Shota felt a chill run down his spine. The villains he was fighting were small-timers. But the cyborg... the cyborg felt like a black hole. There was no killing intent radiating from him, only a cold, mechanical emptiness that was infinitely more terrifying.
Aizawa's eyes flashed red. His hair stood on end. He activated Erasure, locking onto the cyborg, preparing to nullify whatever catastrophic emitter Quirk was housed inside that suit.
Inside the helmet, Starkiller’s HUD flashed a bright, angry yellow.
WARNING: QUIRK SINGULARITY SUPPRESSED. NEURAL CONNECTION TO 'THE FORCE' SEVERED. BIO-ELECTRICITY OFFLINE. HYPER-TELEKINESIS OFFLINE.
Starkiller felt the sudden, shocking absence of his power. The perpetual storm of kinetic and electrical energy within him vanished, leaving only the cold, heavy reality of his cybernetics.
He looked at Eraserhead. The hero was glaring at him, keeping his Quirk active.
He can erase Quirks, Starkiller analyzed in a microsecond. A formidable ability against those who rely on their genetics as a crutch.
Starkiller reached down to his magnetic belt. But I am not just a Quirk.
With a metallic clack, he unhooked the twin cylindrical hilts. He held them in a reverse grip. His thumbs hit the ignition switches.
SNAP-HISS.
Two blades of blinding, super-heated crimson bio-plasma erupted from the emitters. The sheer heat distorted the air around them. The plasma blades were not a Quirk; they were Dr. Garaki’s terrifying technological genius, powered by the battery pack on his back.
Eraserhead’s eyes widened slightly. Weapons?
Starkiller lunged.
Even without his telekinetic speed enhancements, the titanium pistons and servos in Starkiller’s cybernetic legs propelled him forward with the speed of a fired artillery shell. The heavy boots cracked the pavement as he crossed the distance in a heartbeat.
Aizawa barely had time to react. He threw his capture scarf forward, aiming to bind the cyborg’s arms.
Starkiller didn't dodge. He swung his right blade in a vicious, upward arc. The super-heated plasma effortlessly sheared through the carbon-fiber-alloy of the capture scarf, reducing the severed ends to molten ash.
Aizawa’s eyes widened in genuine shock. Nothing cut that scarf.
Before the hero could retreat, Starkiller was upon him. The cyborg fought with a brutal, hyper-aggressive martial art style (Form V: Shien/Djem So), relying on the overwhelming physical strength of his cybernetics and the lethal nature of his blades.
He unleashed a flurry of heavy, sweeping strikes. Aizawa backpedaled frantically, pulling out his combat knife to parry. The steel knife met the crimson plasma blade for a fraction of a second before the blade melted straight through it.
Starkiller spun, bringing his heavy metal elbow around. Aizawa ducked under the blow, the wind from the strike ruffling his hair. The hero threw a desperate, sweeping kick at Starkiller’s knee.
It was like kicking a steel girder. Aizawa grunted in pain.
Starkiller capitalized instantly. He deactivated his left plasma blade, grabbed Aizawa by the collar of his jumpsuit with his heavy metal gauntlet, and hoisted the hero off the ground.
Aizawa blinked.
The moment his eyes closed, the suppression on Starkiller’s Quirk Singularity lifted.
The Force flooded back into Starkiller’s system like a breaking dam. The red bio-electricity instantly exploded from his gauntlet, surging directly into Aizawa’s body.
Aizawa convulsed violently in Starkiller’s grip, screaming as millions of volts of corrupted energy cooked his nervous system. Starkiller then engaged his hyper-telekinesis, creating a concentrated blast of kinetic energy directly into Aizawa's chest.
The underground hero was launched backward like a cannonball. He skipped across the concrete of the plaza, crashing violently into the stone steps near the fountain, leaving a trail of blood.
"Eraserhead!"
The scream came from the entrance. Several students, including Midoriya's former classmates, watched in absolute horror as their homeroom teacher was dismantled in less than thirty seconds.
Starkiller stood over the broken hero. He raised his plasma blade, ready to sever Aizawa's head and end the annoyance permanently.
SMASH!
The heavy steel doors at the entrance of the USJ were suddenly blown completely off their hinges. A massive cloud of dust plumed into the air.
The entire facility fell dead silent. Even Shigaraki paused his scratching.
Through the dust, a towering figure stepped forward. He wasn't wearing his usual bright smile. His face was cast in deep, furious shadows.
"It's fine now!" All Might's voice boomed, completely devoid of its usual warmth. It was a roar of pure, unadulterated anger that shook the glass dome. "I AM HERE!"
Starkiller stopped. He slowly lowered his plasma blade, leaving the unconscious, bleeding Aizawa on the ground. He turned his helmeted head toward the entrance.
The Symbol of Peace.
A sound emitted from Starkiller’s vocabulator. It wasn't a word. It was a low, mechanical growl, heavily distorted by static. The bio-electrical furnace in his chest roared to life. The crimson lightning around his armor began to arc wildly, striking the ground, the fountain, the nearby villains.
He is here. The hypocrite. The liar. The man who killed my soul.
All Might didn't waste a second. In a blur of unimaginable speed, he descended the stairs, grabbed Aizawa's broken body, and moved him out of harm's way, simultaneously knocking out half a dozen thugs on his way down.
All Might stood in the center of the plaza, his muscular form radiating raw, kinetic pressure. He locked eyes with Shigaraki, and then his gaze shifted to the hulking, armored cyborg crackling with red lightning.
"I don't know who you villains are," All Might declared, his fists clenched. "But you will not touch my students!"
Shigaraki laughed maniacally. "Nomu! Kill him!"
The brain-exposed monster screeched, launching itself at All Might.
All Might met the charge. The two behemoths clashed in the center of the plaza. The shockwave of their fists colliding created a localized hurricane, blowing the remaining thugs into the water zone and forcing the students at the entrance to brace themselves against the railing.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
All Might and the Nomu traded blows at speeds the human eye couldn't track.
Starkiller watched for exactly three seconds. The Nomu was strong, yes. It was absorbing One For All’s kinetic impacts. But it was mindless. It was a blunt instrument.
“Starkiller is not there to follow your orders. He is there to test his own capabilities against the apex of hero society.”
Starkiller stepped forward.
He didn't run. He raised both of his hands, his metal fingers curling like claws.
He reached into the absolute depths of the Force, drawing on every ounce of his hatred, his pain, and his agonizing physical torture. He visualized the kinetic energy of the entire USJ facility.
"What is he doing?" Mineta shrieked from the shipwreck zone, clinging to a piece of debris alongside Tsuyu.
Starkiller threw his arms upward.
The hyper-kinetic emitter went into overdrive. The ground beneath All Might and the Nomu violently ruptured. Hundreds of tons of concrete, reinforced steel, and earth were ripped upward by an invisible, god-like gravity.
All Might, caught mid-punch, was suddenly thrown completely off balance as the ground he was standing on launched fifty feet into the air. The Nomu shrieked as it was suspended in the anti-gravity field.
Starkiller didn't stop there. He swept his arms forward.
The massive chunks of concrete, some the size of small houses, were hurled directly at All Might with the speed of railgun projectiles.
"Texas... SMASH!" All Might roared, punching the air. The sheer wind pressure generated by his fist blew the incoming boulders into dust.
But as the dust cleared, Starkiller was already in the air. He had used a telekinetic pulse to launch himself. He was descending directly toward All Might, his twin crimson plasma blades ignited, falling like a mechanical demon from the sky.
All Might crossed his arms, coating them in the dense, concentrated power of One For All to block the strike.
CLASH!
The plasma blades met All Might’s reinforced arms. The impact was apocalyptic. A massive ring of red lightning and golden wind pressure exploded outward, shattering the glass dome of the USJ above them and vaporizing the remaining water in the central fountain.
All Might grunted, his boots skidding backward on the cracked pavement. He looked up, his blue eyes meeting the glowing crimson visor.
"You're strong, villain!" All Might shouted over the roaring wind. "But strength without a righteous heart is just violence!"
Starkiller’s mechanical breathing hitched. The hypocrisy of the statement burned through his mind like acid.
Righteous heart? You left a quirkless boy to die on a roof! You told him he was worthless!
Starkiller didn't speak. He pushed harder. The servos in his cybernetic arms screamed in protest, but the hydraulic pressure was immense. He deactivated his right blade, grabbed All Might’s wrist with his clawed gauntlet, and unleashed a point-blank burst of Force Lightning.
The red electricity surged directly into All Might’s body. For the first time in the fight, the Symbol of Peace yelled in pain. The lightning wasn't just heat; it was a dark, malevolent energy that seemed to attack his very life force, bypassing his muscular durability and shocking his organs.
All Might retaliated, twisting his body and delivering a devastating left hook directly into Starkiller’s armored chest.
CRACK.
The impact of One For All hit the Sith Stalker armor with the force of a meteor. Starkiller was launched backward, flying across the plaza and crashing violently into the artificial mountain zone. He smashed through a sheer rock face, buried under tons of debris.
All Might stood panting, smoke rising from his scorched skin. He turned his attention back to the Nomu, which was already charging him again.
Up at the entrance, Katsuki Bakugo stood near Kirishima and Todoroki. His crimson eyes were wide, his breath shallow.
He hadn't been looking at the Nomu. He had been watching the cyborg.
Bakugo was arrogant, loud, and aggressive. But he was also a combat genius. He analyzed everything. And as he watched the armored monster fight Eraserhead, and then All Might, a sickening, impossible sense of familiarity began to creep into his chest.
It was the stance.
When the cyborg fought Aizawa, he dropped into a low, right-foot-forward crouch before striking. It was sloppy, unrefined, but incredibly specific. It was the exact same nervous combat stance a certain quirkless boy used to take when Bakugo backed him into a corner behind the school.
Then came the mutter.
When the cyborg had launched himself at All Might, Bakugo’s enhanced hearing had caught a sound beneath the roar of the battle. The cyborg’s vocabulator had emitted a rapid, broken string of static. It sounded mechanical, but the cadence... the rapid, unbroken stream of analytical observation.
“...target center of mass heavily guarded... shift weight to left axis... hyper-density muscle fibers... bypass with bio-electrical current...”
Bakugo’s blood ran cold. The sweat on his palms went dry.
"No..." Bakugo whispered, taking a step forward.
"Bakugo? What is it?" Kirishima asked, noticing his classmate's sudden, pale paralysis.
"It can't be," Bakugo muttered, his eyes glued to the collapsed mountain zone. "He... he jumped. He ran away. He's dead."
BOOM!
The mountain zone exploded outward. The massive boulders were telekinetically violently blown apart, revealing Starkiller stepping out of the dust.
His armor was dented. A massive, spider-web fracture marred the left side of his breastplate, revealing sparks and the faint, sickening glow of the crimson fluid pumping through his synthetic veins. But he wasn't slowing down. If anything, the blow had only enraged the Force singularity within him.
The red lightning surrounding him was no longer just arcs; it was a chaotic, localized storm. The air pressure in the USJ dropped dramatically. The remaining water in the shipwreck zone began to levitate upward in hundreds of floating droplets, caught in his ambient anti-gravity field.
Starkiller raised his head. He looked at All Might, who was currently grappling with the Nomu.
Starkiller brought his hands together, interlocking his fingers. He closed his eyes beneath the helmet.
Draw it all in. Compress it. Crush him.
He was initiating a Force Repulse—a localized singularity of kinetic energy meant to level everything within a hundred-yard radius. The energy gathering around him began to warp the light itself, creating a dark, shimmering halo.
All Might, sensing the catastrophic build-up of energy, threw the Nomu aside and turned toward Starkiller. "I won't let you!"
Up at the entrance, Bakugo couldn't hold it in anymore. The way the cyborg held his hands. The specific, desperate way he was channeling the energy. It was the same way he used to grip his notebook when he was terrified but determined.
"DEKU!" Bakugo screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing across the ruined plaza.
The word cut through the air like a gunshot.
Down in the plaza, the localized storm suddenly froze.
The levitating water droplets crashed back into the pool. The warping light snapped back to normal. The massive buildup of kinetic energy abruptly dissipated into the atmosphere with a sharp hiss.
Starkiller froze completely.
The red lightning died.
Inside the helmet, Izuku Midoriya was violently, forcefully dragged to the surface of his own mind.
“Deku!”
“Kacchan...?”
A shockwave of agonizing, blinding pain ripped through Starkiller’s brain. It was a cognitive dissonance of cataclysmic proportions. The Force singularity, suddenly lacking the unified focus of his hatred, rebelled.
Starkiller stumbled forward, his heavy boots scraping the concrete. He reached up, his clawed gauntlets gripping his own helmet. He let out a horrifying, synthesized scream—a sound of tearing metal and a dying animal.
"DEKU!" Bakugo yelled again, his hands sparking with explosions as he prepared to launch himself down the stairs. "IS THAT YOU, YOU DAMN NERD?!"
Starkiller fell to one knee, convulsing. The memories were flooding back. The sludge villain. The suffocating slime. Kacchan’s terrified eyes.
I ran away. I left him to die.
Blood began to leak from the grill of Starkiller's respiratory unit, a dark crimson stain against the metal. He was tearing himself apart from the inside.
"Kurogiri!" Shigaraki yelled, noticing the sudden breakdown of their ultimate weapon and the approach of All Might. "We're done! The Vanguard is falling apart, and that cyborg freak is malfunctioning! Warp us out!"
Kurogiri, having recovered from an earlier clash with Katsuki, expanded his misty form. "Right away, Tomura Shigaraki."
The purple vortex snapped open directly beneath Shigaraki and the Nomu, swallowing them whole.
Simultaneously, a separate, smaller warp gate opened directly beneath the kneeling, convulsing Starkiller.
Before Bakugo could leap off the stairs, before All Might could cross the distance to apprehend him, Starkiller fell backward into the purple void.
His glowing red visor locked onto Bakugo for one final, agonizing second. In that second, Bakugo didn't see a mechanical demon. Through the crackle of static and the distortion of the crimson glass, he saw the yellow, bloodshot, tear-filled eye of his childhood friend.
Then, the portal snapped shut.
The Unforeseen Simulation Joint fell silent, save for the groans of the injured thugs and the heavy, ragged breathing of All Might.
The villains were gone.
Bakugo stood at the top of the stairs, trembling uncontrollably. His hands dropped to his sides. The explosions in his palms died out. He stared at the empty space where the cyborg had just been.
"Midoriya..." Bakugo whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.
The massacre was over. But for Katsuki Bakugo, and for the hollow, metal-encased monster that had once been Izuku Midoriya, the nightmare had only just begun.