— flashforward —
*In the future.*
---
Blood sprayed in a wide arc.
My amplified strike sent the maniac stumbling backward, crashing down onto his ass.
And knocked the fake hand prosthetic clean off his twisted face.
Characteristically, Shigaraki didn't try to get back on his feet. Instead, he started muttering, *"This is bad… this is very bad…"* and scrambled toward his "mask" on all fours.
"Lost your favorite right hand?"
I lunged and drove my boot into his stomach, launching him into the air.
There are no stances on a battlefield. No rules. No timeouts. No polite prohibitions against hitting someone when they're down.
On a battlefield, there is only the one who dies and the one who kills.
I came here to fight you. And you picked the wrong role today, Tomura.
Tomura disagreed. He caught my leg, trying to disintegrate me.
Not at my speed. I threw off his grip with a micro-amplification burst and, instead of following through with a kick, brought my boot down on his "mask" and obliterated it — crushed it to fine dust in a single explosive stomp.
Shigaraki… howled. And then began clawing at his own face with his fingernails, forgetting I existed entirely.
That was the moment two of the villain's lackeys jumped me.
A cold thought flashed through my mind: *I don't have time to babysit you two.*
Block left. Kick to the left one's knee — snap it. Duck, let the wide swing pass over my head. Short strike to the groin, amplified — the right one is no longer contributing to the national gene pool. Armored elbow into the left one's teeth, no quirk needed. Shove the right one away…
Catch both arms of Tomura as he hurls himself at me.
We froze, trembling with the strain, his fingers clawing at the air a centimeter from my face while I held his forearms with everything I had. Without the mask now, I could see not only those wild, bloodshot eyes, but his bloodied, contorted face beneath them.
*Just a very young guy*, I thought, and felt an unexpected pang of something like sadness.
The battle raged around us, the whole world crashing and roaring, but we only saw each other.
Which made it all the stranger that my next words came out so clear — so sharp and precise, like the toll of a bell:
"Hey. When All For One put all those hands on you — didn't it even bother you that they're all the same size? Despite the fact that when you killed your sister, she was… what, five? Six? She had small hands, you understand? They're just props."
I had no idea whether any of that was true.
And I didn't know what I expected.
But it wasn't for a single tear to roll down his cheek.
"What… what are you…"
I jerked my head to the side, activating the tiny markers on the buttons of my helmet, folding the visor back fully without using my hands — and released his wrists. Tomura lurched forward, and I took great pleasure in slamming my helmeted forehead directly into his face, re-breaking his nose on impact.
Then I brought my boot down hard onto his foot and ground the bones of it to powder through amplification.
Tomura screamed.
Then we crashed into each other like rugby players, and I preemptively threw him back with another marker burst.
The kid went rolling across the concrete slabs, shedding decorative palms the whole way.
I stepped after him. Another step. And another.
I spoke quietly, keeping the psychological pressure steady:
"Shigaraki, do you seriously think those hands are your family? Preserved in embalming fluid for fifteen years? You destroyed every one of them with your uncontrolled quirk — every person, gone — but somehow every single hand survived? Every last one? Does that not strike you as a little funny? They're fakes. You're being used. They're just messing with your head, you—"
"Shut up… shut up!!!"
"You've got a strange accent, I can't understand a word," I replied, detached, while privately considering whether I could add a new entry to the Plan — item six, sub-clause *ts* — knock out Tomura and throw him in Tartarus. Maybe Nezu could actually do something useful with him?
My opponent finally pushed himself up — only to collapse onto his knees. His pale hair hung across his face, and I was already winding up to knock him out when—
When young Shigaraki let out an incoherent scream and drove his own hands into the ground.