Chapter 40: The End of an Era.

Rep two hundred and sixteen.

Manga's arms shook. His chest pressed into the carpet, held there by gravity that was four times heavier than the world outside his bedroom door. The Zusshiri hung in the air above his desk. The burns across his chest and left shoulder were still there, pink and tight under the bandages, but he couldn't feel them. The Sappari he'd used an hour ago had stripped the pain, the fatigue, and the lingering ache from every muscle in his body, leaving him clear and fresh and ready to work.

His mom hated that he was training. She'd spent two days trying to get him to rest. He'd spent two days explaining that rest wasn't going to make him stronger than God. They'd reached a compromise: he could train in his room if he promised to eat everything she cooked and let her change his bandages twice a day.

He was on his third set.

Two hundred and seventeen. Two hundred and eighteen.

His phone buzzed on the desk. He ignored it. Setsuna had been texting all morning. Something about a news broadcast. He'd read it after the set.

Two hundred and nineteen.

The phone buzzed again. And again. And again. Five messages in ten seconds. That wasn't normal love spam. That was different.

He held the push-up position with one arm and reached for the phone.

Setsuna: TURN ON THE TV 

Setsuna: MANGA 

Setsuna: TURN ON THE TV RIGHT NOW 

Setsuna: ALL MIGHT 

Setsuna: SOMETHING IS HAPPENING IN KAMINO

He dropped the push-up.

"MOM! TURN ON THE NEWS!"

"I'M WATCHING IT!" Her voice came from the living room with worry.

He crossed his bedroom door and his body went light as paper. He took the stairs three at a time and nearly overshot the landing.

The television showed a city on fire.

Kamino Ward, the text at the bottom of the screen said: The operation to recover the abducted hero Ragdoll and raid the League of Villains’ hideout, and behind the words was footage from a helicopter that was shaking so hard the camera could barely hold focus. Buildings were collapsed. Streets were cratered. Dust and smoke filled the frame in every direction.

And in the middle of it, two figures were fighting.

One of them was All Might.

The other one... Manga didn't know. A man in a suit, a mask covering a face that looked like it had been damaged beyond repair long ago. He moved just as fast and just as strong as All Might. A flick of his fingers produced black tendrils that caught All Might mid-charge and hurled him through concrete.

"What the heck is happening..." Manga said.

His mom didn't answer. She was standing in front of the television with both hands over her mouth.

The camera shook. All Might blocked a blast meant for a civilian trapped under rubble. The shockwave hit him full-force and his body changed.

The muscle vanished. The height. The width. The presence. All of it deflated like a balloon losing its air, and what was left standing in the crater was a skeleton in a costume. Thin. Gaunt. Sunken eyes. Blood at the corner of his mouth.

The entire nation went silent.

The text at the bottom of the screen stuttered. The commentator's voice broke.

"Is that... All Might?"

Manga stared.

That was All Might. That skinny, bleeding, broken man standing in the rubble with his fists still up was the Symbol of Peace. The number one hero in the world. The man who never lost. The man whose smile was supposed to mean everything was going to be okay.

He looked like he was dying.

The masked man spoke. Manga couldn't hear the words, but whatever he said made All Might's face crumble. For a moment, the longest moment of Manga's life, All Might stopped.

Then the crowd started cheering.

It began small. A woman on the street. A man behind a barricade. A child being held by a firefighter. Then louder. A thousand voices, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, all of them rising from every corner of the country through every phone and every speaker and every open window because the broadcast was on every channel and the whole world was watching.

"Win."

"You can do it."

"Don't give up."

"ALL MIGHT!"

All Might's right arm changed. Just the arm. The muscle returned, swelling from the shoulder to the fist, the costume stretching over it. The rest of his body stayed thin and broken and bleeding, but that one arm was the arm that had saved the world a hundred times.

He smiled.

The Symbol of Peace charged.

The masked villain charged.

They met in the center of Kamino Ward, and for a single frame the helicopter camera caught both fists at the point of contact, light and darkness, and then the shockwave hit and the camera went to static for three full seconds.

When the image came back, the villain was in a crater. All Might was standing over him. His right arm hung limp and broken and his body was the skeleton again, thin and bleeding and barely upright, but he was standing.

He raised his left fist.

Pointed at the camera.

The nation erupted with tears and joy.

Manga's mother was crying. Her hands were still over her mouth, tears running down her wrists.

Manga was not crying.

All Might was probably done as the #1 hero and the current Symbol of Peace.

The strongest man in the world had used everything he had, every last spark, and now he had nothing left. The throne at the top of heroism wasn't occupied anymore. The Symbol of Peace was a title without a holder.

Being number one wasn't enough.

All Might had been number one. He'd been the greatest hero who ever lived. And it still wasn't enough. He'd still been hiding a broken body behind his smile. He'd still been running on fumes for who knew how long. He'd still needed the whole country to scream his name just to throw one last punch.

Number one in Japan wasn’t the finish line anymore.

It was too small.

If the strongest hero in one country could fall this hard, then one country's strongest hero was never going to be enough to keep the world safe. The ceiling needed to be higher. The reach needed to be wider. The man who surpassed God couldn't just stand on top of Japan and call it done.

Number one in the world. That was the goal now. A hero so strong, so far beyond the peak, that no villain on earth could force him to use his last breath on a single punch.

His bubble shifted. 

#1 in Japan was simply the first step. #1 in the world would be the second step. And the last step… #1 in the cosmos. As a man who surpassed God.

…

The fallout was immediate.

U.A. held a press conference the next day. Principal Nezu, Aizawa, and Vlad King stood before a wall of cameras and microphones and apologized for the training camp attack, for the injuries, for the failure to protect their students. The reporters were not kind. The public was not satisfied. The hero society that had been built on the foundation of All Might's smile was showing its cracks, and the press smelled blood.

Nezu announced the dorm system three days later.

All students of the hero course would live on campus. Full-time. Behind walls designed to withstand villain assaults, monitored by faculty around the clock. It was the only play that kept U.A. open and parents from pulling their children out of the school entirely.

Which meant someone had to visit every family and ask permission.

For Class 1-B, that someone was Vlad King and Principal Nezu.

…

The Fukidashi household was first.

Vlad King filled the doorway. Nezu sat on his shoulder. Manga's mother stood across from them with her arms crossed and an expression that could have curdled milk.

"Fukidashi-san," Vlad King began. "Thank you for..."

"My son came home with burns across his chest, a fractured hand, and a throat so damaged he couldn't speak for two days. He’d spent two days arguing with her through his bubble." Hana Fukidashi's voice was very calm. "He was supposed to be at a summer training camp. Under your supervision. Safe."

Vlad King did not flinch. He was too professional for that. But the guilt was visible. However he did not avert his eyes.

"You're right. We failed. I failed. As their homeroom teacher, the safety of those students was my responsibility, and I wasn't able to protect them. I won't make excuses."

"Good. Because I don't want excuses." She looked at Nezu. "I want to know why I should send my only son back to a school that let villains attack and injure children at their leisure."

Nezu spoke with the patience of someone who had answered this question before and expected to answer it many more times before the week was over. He explained the dorm system. The reinforced buildings. The security protocols. The faculty presence. The fact that U.A.'s campus was, by every measurable standard, the most defensible location in Japan short of Tartarus.

Hana listened. She didn't interrupt. When Nezu finished, she looked at her son.

Manga was leaning against the kitchen doorframe with his arms crossed. His bubble displayed a calm, steady expression.

"I'm going, Mom."

"I know you are." Her voice cracked, just barely. "That's what scares me."

She turned back to Vlad King. Walked up to him. She was a small woman. She barely reached his chest. She looked up at him the way a person looks up at a mountain they intend to move.

"Promise me something."

"Anything."

"If my son gets hurt again under your watch, you will personally come to this house and explain to me why. I don’t want a letter or a phone call. You. At my door. Looking me in the eye."

Vlad King looked down at her. A woman half his size with a resolve twice his.

"I promise."

She nodded. Turned to Manga. Pointed at him.

"And you. You call me every single day."

“Uhh, I’ll try, but no promises, Mom.”

Her face fell. Just a little. Just enough.

Manga caught it. His bubble flashed a bead of sweat beside a crooked, sheepish grin.

“...Every day,” he said. “Promise.”

She hugged him hard enough that the burns under his bandages pulled tight. He didn’t say a word about it. She didn’t let go for a long time. Then she let go and went back to the kitchen and started making tea for their guests because that was what you did when people were in your house, even if those people had let your son get hurt by a villain.

The Tokage household was a different atmosphere entirely.

The house was large. A manicured garden. A car in the driveway that cost more than most people's apartments.

Tokage Haruto answered the door in a pressed shirt and slacks, his dark hair combed back, his green eyes sharp and appraising. He shook Vlad King's hand with a firm grip.

"Principal Nezu. Kan-sensei. Please, come in."

The living room had real art on the walls.

Tokage Mirai appeared from the kitchen carrying a tray of tea. She was tall, green-haired, and grinning with a mouth full of sharp teeth that made it immediately obvious where Setsuna got everything from.

"So," Mirai said, setting the tray down and dropping into the seat beside her husband with zero ceremony. "You're here to ask if our daughter can live at school, you said?"

"We are." Nezu nodded.

Haruto leaned forward. "Walk me through the security infrastructure."

Nezu walked him through it. In detail. Haruto asked follow-up questions about defenses. He was thorough. He was polite.

Mirai let him finish. Then she looked at Vlad King.

"She's going."

Haruto glanced at his wife.

"She's going, Haruto. She ran into a knife-wielding psychopath at that camp and she's been bouncing off the walls since she got home because she can't wait to get back. You think telling her no is going to work? She's our daughter. She'd split into fifty pieces and fly to the dorm if we tried to keep her here."

Haruto sighed.

"The security measures are more than enough…" he conceded.

"That's my man." Mirai patted his knee. Her sharp-toothed grin was identical to Setsuna's. "Now drink your tea."

From upstairs, they could hear Setsuna's voice: "I TOLD YOU THEY'D SAY YES!"

Tetsutetsu's father answered the door with grease on his hands and an apron over a tank top.

Tetsutetsu Kenji was built like his son would be in twenty years. Huge shoulders, thick neck, forearms like bridge cables. He worked in construction. His late wife's photo hung in the hallway.

He didn't invite them to sit down. Not out of rudeness. He just wasn't a sitting-down kind of man.

“On behalf of U.A., we’d like to apologize for what happened at...” Nezu began.

"You know, he called me from the hospital. First thing he said wasn't 'Dad, I'm hurt.' First thing he said was “Dad, I kicked some villains’ ass!” Kenji chuckled. "So my boy will be fine. Whatever you're doing at that school, keep doing it."

He signed the form on the kitchen counter. Slid it back.

“Take care of my boy.” His eyes went to the photo in the hallway, just for a second. “He’s all I got left of her.” 

"We will." Vlad King promised.

Kenji looked at him. "Yeah," he said. “You’ve done a fine job so far despite what the news says. I’ve never seen that boy happier than he’s been since he enrolled.”

The Monoma household served tea in china cups with gold trim.

Monoma Eiko was elegant. Her dark hair was pinned up. Her posture was perfect. She sat across from Nezu and Vlad King with her hands folded and her expression pleasant but sharp.

Monoma Takashi sat beside her. An academic. Literature professor at a university in the city. Wire-framed glasses. A quiet man.

"We watched the Sports Festival," Eiko said. "Our Neito took fourth place. Two of the three people ahead of him were his own classmates." She smiled. "He called it a victory for the class. I've never heard him so excited."

"He's a talented student. Analytical. Quick-thinking. One of the strongest strategic minds in the class." Vlad King said.

"He's dramatic." Takashi said mildly.

"That too." Vlad King chuckled.

Eiko laughed, a high, rolling cackle that climbed the scale and kept going. It looked like the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Eiko leaned forward with a smile. She signed. Takashi signed beside her.

"Raise him into someone extraordinary," Eiko said. "He’s lacking a bit in the self-esteem department. Help him out with that."

Kamakiri Naomi opened the door in scrubs. 

She was coming off a shift. Or going to one. Her eyes looked tired. She was thin. Single mother. Nurse. Two jobs.

"Come in," she said. She didn't sit either. She leaned against the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago.

Nezu gave the apology and then the dorm pitch. Vlad King stood beside him. The apartment was small. Clean, but small.

She listened without interrupting. When it was done, she took a sip of the cold coffee and didn't grimace.

"Togaru's happier at your school than he's ever been anywhere." She said it simply. No decoration. "He came home from that camp with cuts all over him and the first thing he did was tell me about a fight he won. The fight. The moves. His partner's quirk. How they worked together." She paused. "He's never had that. People who actually want him around besides lowlife delinquents."

She signed the form.

"Don't let anything change that for him."

She went back to her coffee. Vlad King and Nezu showed themselves out.

The Kendo household smelled like floor polish and green tea.

The dojo was attached to the house. Traditional. Shoes came off at the door and every surface had been maintained with decades of discipline. Trophies lined a shelf in the hallway.

Kendo Hayato knelt at a low table in the main room. He was in his fifties with forearms that told the story of forty years of martial arts. His wife, Kendo Saki, sat beside him. Softer. Warmer. The emotional balance to her husband's discipline.

Itsuka knelt behind them. Straight-backed. Hands on her knees. She hadn't said a word since Vlad King and Nezu arrived.

Hayato listened to the proposal. He asked one question.

"Will my daughter continue to grow stronger?"

Vlad King answered without hesitation. "She's already one of the strongest students I've ever taught. At U.A., she'll become something more."

Hayato looked at his daughter. She met his eyes.

Something passed between them. The kind of communication that happened in families where words were earned, not spent.

"A hero who runs from hardship will protect no one," Hayato said. "She stays."

Saki reached under the table and squeezed Itsuka's hand. Itsuka squeezed back.

The form was signed.

…

Fourteen more houses. Fourteen more signatures. By the end of the week, every student in Class 1-B was coming home to U.A.