Bakugo stood motionless for a long time. The last spark faded from his hands, and his arms dropped to his sides with weight. Nothing remained of the burning anger he'd carried all the way to this place, only a heavy emptiness filling his chest.
Midoriya approached carefully, hesitant to break this new silence. "Kacchan..."
Bakugo didn't answer at first. He walked slowly toward a shattered concrete block and sat down on it, resting his elbows on his knees, pressing his hands together in front of his face.
"Get out of here, Deku." He finally said it in a tired voice, stripped of its usual edge. "I don't want to talk right now."
Midoriya hesitated for a moment, but his feet refused to walk away.
From among the rubble surrounding the field, a tall, thin shadow moved with heavy slowness, gradually revealing familiar features.
Bakugo and Midoriya froze in place at the same instant.
"All Might..." Midoriya whispered in a shaking voice, his eyes widening in disbelief. "How long have you been here?"
All Might stopped a short distance from them, his thin face carrying a deep exhaustion neither of them had ever seen on him before. This wasn't his usual figure, full of vitality and confident smiles. He looked closer to the shadow of a man drained by a long, heavy night, one that had absorbed the last of whatever strength remained in him.
"Long enough to hear most of what was said." He answered in a calm voice, and sat slowly on a broken concrete block near them, as though standing itself had become a burden for his thin frame.
He raised his head and looked directly at Bakugo, his eyes carrying a rare seriousness.
"Your observations are precise, young Bakugo." He began speaking in a heavy tone. "Everything you mentioned about Zoro is entirely correct. The exceptional attention, the targeting at the camp, that aura you felt tonight just a moment ago. None of it came from your imagination."
Bakugo's eyes bulged, and he swallowed hard, caught between a strange relief at having his suspicions confirmed and an anxiety deeper than anything he'd felt before.
"But the complete answer runs far deeper than you can imagine." All Might continued, looking at a distant point in the darkness as though summoning a memory stretching across centuries. "Deeper than this entire world as we know it."
He fell silent for a moment, then began again, his voice carrying a strange gravity.
"A long time ago, before Quirks appeared in this world, there was another kind of power that ancient warriors and swordsmen possessed. A power not granted at birth, not inherited through blood, but forged purely through will, through years of discipline and determination. They called it Haki."
"With the emergence of Quirks, that power began fading, bit by bit." All Might continued. "The will that used to be forged through training got replaced by abilities handed out with barely any effort at all. And right in the middle of that decline, one man emerged and began building his own empire over the ruins of that old world."
All Might's eyes narrowed, his tone shifting to carry an old bitterness.
"All For One. Many tried to stop him in that era, including some who still carried remnants of that old will in their blood. But none of them could ever defeat him."
He paused briefly, weighing his next words with careful precision.
"Among them was a man named Shimotsuki Kozaburo."
Midoriya trembled slightly at hearing that name, and tried to hide his unease at already knowing it beforehand.
"Shimotsuki inherited the remnants of that will from his ancestors, and tried to revive it once more to face All For One himself." All Might continued. "But the circumstances of that time, difficulties none of us today could ever fully imagine the scale of, stood in his way. Shimotsuki failed in his final attempt. And that exact moment, the moment of his failure, was the very same moment when the power of One For All first began forming in this world."
Midoriya's eyes widened even further this time, as he connected the threads in his mind.
"Shimotsuki failed, and he never got another chance to try again." All Might continued in a heavier voice. "That ancient will vanished entirely after that, leaving no meaningful trace left in this world. Quirks became absolute rule, and in that exact chaos, All For One grew more tyrannical and more powerful than he'd ever been before."
All Might looked at his own palm, closing it slowly, as though remembering the weight of a flame no longer between his fingers.
"The flame of One For All kept passing from one holder to another across generations, generation after generation, until it finally reached me. And in the end, I passed it on, in turn, to Midoriya."
All Might's gaze drifted slowly toward the darkened window of the dorm, where Zoro had disappeared moments earlier.
"And now, after decades since that ancient will completely vanished from this world, it has reappeared. In Roronoa Zoro."
He fell silent for a moment, as though the words themselves weighed on him.
"I don't know how that happened, and I don't have a scientific explanation for it. But I believe, and perhaps this belief of mine is the closest thing to the truth, that Zoro was born to revive that power, and that ancient era we all thought had folded away forever. He carries a will that cannot be stolen, cannot be shattered, cannot even be understood through the logic of Quirks we know."
He raised his head and looked directly at Bakugo this time.
"Something All For One considered completely gone, something time had long since passed over. But specifically through Zoro, that power has been brought back to life again, without any warning at all."
Bakugo trembled without realizing it, feeling the weight of the words settle into his chest like a stone.
"That's why All For One targeted him directly, as a primary objective, at that camp." All Might continued in a firm tone. "Because that man, despite everything he shows of calm and confidence, carries a deep anxiety inside him that never shows on his face. He believed, for all these years, that all he needed to worry about was me, and the flame of One For All, and who would be my next heir."
He paused briefly, then continued in a heavier voice.
"But something he never once accounted for suddenly appeared in front of him again. Something he thought had been buried for centuries."
Midoriya lowered his head, absorbing the scale of what he was hearing without a word.
"The flame of One For All is no longer the only threat worrying All For One." All Might said in a low, heavy voice. "What Zoro carries inside him has become another threat, no less dangerous, perhaps even more so. Something he cannot steal, cannot control, cannot even explain with any logic he understands."
He stayed silent for a long moment, before continuing in a voice barely audible.
"And that is precisely why I sacrificed every last bit of power I had that night at Kamino. It wasn't just about saving a student, Bakugo. It was about pulling that boy out of the hands of a tyrant who understood exactly what he had, before he could turn him into a weapon in his own hand, or erase him from existence forever."
Bakugo's lips trembled, and his foot stepped back involuntarily. All the anger he'd carried all night began transforming into something else, something heavier and more confusing than ever before.
"So... I wasn't the only reason he got kidnapped." Bakugo murmured in a shaky voice, as though talking more to himself than to either of them. "He was the real target from the very beginning. And you, you sacrificed everything you had for him."
All Might nodded slowly, without softening the impact of the truth on his student.
"That's why I told you from the start that the guilt you're carrying is built on an incomplete piece of the truth." He added in a gentler tone this time. "You're not the reason for everything, young Bakugo. You were part of a night far too big for one person to carry alone."
Midoriya looked at All Might with a quiet worry. This moment wasn't about uncovering a new secret for him, since he'd known part of this truth for a while now. But watching Bakugo receive it for the first time, with all this weight, made something tighten in his chest.
Bakugo stayed silent for a long time, his eyes fixed on the ground, his mind reordering every event he'd lived through, from the night of the camp to this exact moment.
All Might rose very slowly, a faint groan slipping from his lips from the weight of his exhausted body.
"It's late, and you both need rest." He finally said it, looking at them with a warm, paternal look despite the exhaustion showing clearly on him. "What you heard tonight stays between the two of you and me. I'm not asking you to keep it quiet to protect my secret. I'm asking to protect Zoro himself, who doesn't yet know the scale of what he carries."
Midoriya's eyes suddenly bulged at that last sentence, but he didn't comment.
Bakugo nodded without a word, in what looked like the first genuine acceptance from him since the start of the night.
All Might walked slowly away from them, his thin figure gradually fading into the darkness of the night, leaving behind a hanging question Midoriya didn't dare voice out loud: what did All Might mean by Zoro "not yet knowing" the scale of what he carries?
A cold morning sun rose over UA Academy after a long, heavy night, its clarity carrying no visible trace of what had happened under the cover of darkness. Students returned to their normal routine, but in the eyes of only three of them, a weight showed that hadn't escaped anyone paying attention.
After breakfast, as students headed toward class with heavy steps, Aizawa blocked Bakugo and Midoriya's path at the entrance of the main building, his yellow sleeping bag wrapped around his body as usual.
"You two. Come with me." He said it in his usual dry voice, with no preamble.
Bakugo and Midoriya exchanged a quiet, nervous look before following their teacher to an empty room near the entrance.
Aizawa closed the door behind him, leaned his back against it, and looked at them with red eyes weighed down by a permanent exhaustion that never left them.
"The security cameras at the dorm entrance recorded both of you leaving after midnight." He said it directly, with no preamble or hints. "They also recorded Zoro leaving, and coming back a few minutes after you did."
Bakugo swallowed hard and tried to find some words of defense, but Aizawa raised his hand to cut him off before he could even start.
"I don't want excuses." He added in a tone that accepted no argument.
Midoriya looked at Aizawa hesitantly, not entirely certain how much his teacher already knew.
"All Might told me some of the details this morning." Aizawa continued, as though he'd read Midoriya's silent question. "Not everything. But enough for me to understand that last night wasn't just some ordinary student squabble between two people who enjoy trouble."
He looked directly at Bakugo.
"You two leaving after midnight, without permission, violates the academy's rules explicitly, with no ambiguity about it. This isn't up for discussion, and it never will be, regardless of the reasons."
He paused briefly, examining their tired faces with a scrutinizing look.
"But, since this didn't escalate into an actual fight between you two, and since what happened seems connected to exceptional circumstances outside the ordinary." He exhaled heavily, as though the words themselves were draining some rare reserve of energy in him. "I'll settle for a written report added to your files, and one full week of extra training after classes end. Nothing more than that."
Aizawa pointed a finger between them.
"Next time, if you two have something you want to say to each other, say it in broad daylight, under direct supervision, not in some abandoned field at midnight. I won't be this lenient twice."
Aizawa turned toward the door and put his hand on the handle, but paused for a moment without looking back.
"By the way." He added in an almost passing tone. "I spoke with Zoro this morning too, before I came to find you two."
He opened the door, then added before stepping out completely: "I won't tell you what he said."
Aizawa left, leaving behind a silence weighed down with new questions, exactly the way Zoro had done the night before.
Bakugo and Midoriya stayed alone in the empty room for a long stretch of seconds, neither of them saying a word.
Bakugo walked out first, and Midoriya followed silently, and they walked side by side toward class. The silence between them this time wasn't charged with their usual hostility. It was closer to a fragile truce, one not built through words, but through the weight of what they'd both heard together that long night.
At the classroom door, Bakugo stopped for a moment and looked at Midoriya from the corner of his eye, without turning his head fully.
"Deku." He said it in a low voice, closer to a whisper than his usual tone. "I don't want an apology from you. And I don't want pity."
He opened the classroom door and walked in without waiting for a response.
Midoriya stood at the door for a moment, looking up at the clear morning sky above UA Academy, where the sun tried to break through a thin layer of gray clouds.
"I won't stop moving forward, Kacchan." He whispered to himself, clenching his fist with renewed resolve. "Not anymore."
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