Chapter 227 - 226: Reveal

CRACK.

A heavy shock of static electricity whipped through the dark alleyway.

The air pressure dropped completely. The brick walls groaned.

MEOW.

A stray cat standing near a rusted dumpster screeched and bolted down the street.

VWOOSH.

A sphere of blue and purple light tore open the air. It lasted for a fraction of a second.

THUD.

A tall man in a black tactical suit dropped heavily onto the wet pavement. He landed hard on his hands and knees.

He gasped loudly, sucking in the damp, garbage-smelling air.

"Ahgg..." All For One groaned.

His vision spun wildly. His inner ear felt like it was trapped inside a centrifuge. A violent wave of nausea hit his stomach.

He gripped his chest with his right hand. His lungs felt like they were filled with wet cement.

For three seconds he stayed on his knees, staring at the puddles on the ground.

"So this is the side effect," All For One muttered out loud, his voice was uncomfortable. "I should be able to get hsed to if a few more times."

HUFF-PUFF.

He took another slow, heavy breath.

BZZZT.

The quirks inside his cloned body reacted. His multiple regeneration factors activated simultaneously.

The nausea vanished instantly.

His vision snapped back into perfect focus. The heavy feeling n his chest disappeared.

All For One stood up slowly. He used another quirk to clean the dirty water from the knee of his suit.

TAP. TAP.

He touched the heavy mechanical dial on his belt, making sure it was completely intact.

He turned and walked toward the end of the alleyway.

Clone All For One stepped out onto the main sidewalk. The night air was cool.

He looked around. It didn't take a genius to see the difference.

The streetlights overhead buzzed with a dull, yellow halogen glow instead of the crisp LED lights he was used to.

The cars driving past the intersection were boxy, older models with loud engines.

"This is 11 years ago..," All For One said quietly.

He leaned against the brick wall and watched the street.

Two salarymen walked past the alley. They wore cheap suits and carried briefcases.

"I have to take it back to the store tomorrow," the first man complained, tapping the thick, bulky flip-phone in his hand. "The battery dies in three hours. It's ridiculous."

"Just buy a regular phone," the second man laughed. "You don't need internet in your pocket anyway. Did you see the news today? All Might stopped that derailed train in Chiba. I am glad he finally moved back from America."

All For One listened to them walk away. He smirked behind his mask.

He looked across the street. A closed electronics store had a display television running in the window.

All For One crossed the empty street and stood in front of the glass.

He looked at the ticker running across the bottom of the news broadcast and read the date.

"Seven days before the Great Musutafu Fire."

The screen cut to footage of All Might standing on top of a crushed train car, flexing for the cameras.

All For One watched his old enemy.

He didn't feel a thing.

"I will take care of you next" All For One told the screen. "Let's do what we were supposed to do in this time."

He stepped away from the window.

"... Hmm, I could gather my subordinates in the past. But, there is also another me in this timeline."

Musutafu was a massive city.

He needed eyes everywhere

Eleven years ago, he was still hiding in his underground laboratory and thinking about the One For All quirk.

"... Hehe... I am basically a god compared to him," All For One chuckled softly. "He won't even see me coming."

He closed his eyes. He imagined his old base.

'Should still be the same.'

All For one opened his eyes and use a warping quirk.

WHIR. WHIR. WHIR.

...

Clone All For One stepped out of the warping gate.

The dark portal closed behind him silently.

He stood in the shadows of the hallway. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic and stale coffee.

He looked at the heavy steel security door at the end of the hall.

'Good to be back,' Clone All For One thought, a reminiscent expression pulling at his face. 'I actually thought this base was secure back then.'

He raised his hand.

CRACK.

The heavy locking mechanisms inside the steel door simply vanished. The thick metal panels slid open smoothly.

He walked into the main laboratory.

The room was quiet, lit only by the pale blue glow of massive computer monitors.

There he was.

Past All For One sat in a high-backed leather chair, his back to the door. He was typing slowly on a keyboard, reviewing his plans on the screen.

Clone All For One stopped walking. He stood ten feet away. He stared at the back of his own head.

'...I'm really so weak in the past' Clone All For One realized.

A strange mix of pity and disgust washed over him.

'I need to put him to sleep,' Clone All For One thought, raising his right hand. 'But if I hit him too hard... his neck will snap like a dry twig.'

He closed his eyes for a split second. He activated exactly one hundred and fifty quirks.

Kinetic dampeners, impact absorption, hyper-speed, and muscle control flowed directly into his palm.

He compressed the energy until his hand felt as heavy as lead, but as soft as a pillow.

SWISH.

He crossed the ten feet in a microsecond.

He swung the side of his hand directly into the back of his past self's neck.

THUD.

The exact millisecond their skin made contact, a violent, terrifying sensation flooded Clone All For One's brain.

"Ughh!" Clone All For One gasped, stumbling back half a step.

It wasn't pain. It was hunger.

A primal, dark instinct screamed in his head. A rush of pure potential washed over his body. His fingers twitched. The urge was suddenly overwhelming.

'Kill him,' the instinct whispered loudly in his mind.

Past All For One slumped forward instantly. His head hit the keyboard with a clatter.

THUD.

"...What's going on??"

HUFF-PUFF. HUFF-PUFF.

Clone All For One stood completely still. He breathed heavily, staring at his own trembling hand.

He felt the heavy temptation pulling at his gut, begging him to kill his past self.

He slowly lowered his arm.

Clone All For One tried forcing the dark urge down. "No... I still don't know what will happen to my main body if I accidentally killed my past self..."

"But... What was just now?"

"..."

"..."

"Nevermind lets stick to the plan..."

He looked down at the unconscious man on the desk.

Clone All For One activated New Order. "You will remain asleep until twelve hours after I completely leave this timeline. You will wake up believing you simply fell asleep at your desk."

He grabbed his past self by the collar of his suit.

He activated a spatial pocket and a high-tier camouflage quirk.

He dropped the body into the space beneath the floorboards. The concrete sealed up seamlessly, hiding the man completely.

Clone All For One pulled the leather chair back. He sat down.

He looked at the computer monitor and closed the genetic files.

He opened the secure communications channel and typed in the frequency for Dr. Garaki's private lab.

BEEP.

The screen flickered to life. Dr. Garaki's face appeared. He was holding a large medical syringe, looking exhausted.

"Master?" Garaki asked, blinking at the screen. "I am just finishing the new batch of quirks. Do you need—"

"..."

Garaki stopped talking. He squinted at the camera.

He leaned closer to his monitor. He looked at Clone All For One's posture.

"Master..." Garaki swallowed hard, his voice dropping to a nervous whisper. "You look different. Did something happen?"

Clone All For One leaned back in the leather chair. He let out a deep, genuinely confident laugh.

"I just did something good, Doctor," Clone All For One answered smoothly, resting his hands on the desk. "Everything finally clicked into place."

Garaki's eyes widened behind his round goggles.

A huge, crooked smile spread across his face.

Garaki cheered loudly, dropping the syringe onto his metal desk. "That is incredible news!.."

"Drop your current experiments," Clone All For One ordered, his tone shifting back to absolute authority. "I need the entire scouting network mobilized right now."

Garaki grabbed a notepad and a pen. "Everyone? Kurogiri, Gigantomachia, and the newer ones Number 6 and Queen Bee?"

"Yes," Clone All For One confirmed. "Send them to the Musutafu industrial sector. They need to set up a perimeter on the rooftops by the end of the week."

Garaki stopped writing. He looked at the screen with a confused expression.

"Musutafu?" Garaki asked, tapping his pen. "We don't have any targets or operations in that city. What are we looking for?"

Clone All For One didn't say, his red eyes narrowing slightly. "Just do it Doctor... Tell them to watch the streets. Do not engage it under any circumstances. Just watch."

Garaki bowed his head deeply.

"I will relay the orders right now, Master," Garaki promised.

CLICK.

The screen went black.

Clone All For One sat alone in the quiet laboratory. Now, he just had to wait for the fire.

...

Location: Musutafu - Industrial Perimeter

Time: Seven Days Later

The night was completely silent.

Clone All For One floated three thousand feet above the city.

He looked down at the dark grid of streets and buildings.

He looked at the digital timer on his wrist.

2:29 AM.

"Any second now," Clone All For One muttered to himself.

BOOM.

The industrial sector erupted.

A massive pillar of purple and orange flames shot straight into the night sky.

The shockwave rippled through the air, hitting Clone All For One's chest like a physical punch.

Down below, the city instantly devolved into chaos.

Car alarms blared. Sirens wailed from every direction.

The loud, terrified screams of civilians echoed up from the streets as the chemical fire spread aggressively through the blocks.

Clone All For One activated the telepathic link.

"Report," Clone All For One ordered.

[Master, the fire is spreading faster than expected,] Kurogiri's voice echoed in his head. [All Might has touched down in the commercial district. He is clearing the main priority zones now.]

"Ignore All Might," Clone All For One snapped back. "Keep your eyes on the low-priority residential blocks. Look for a guy with white hair. Do not miss it."

Clone All For One activated a telescopic vision quirk. He zoomed his sight down into the Ashita district.

He watched the civilians running through the narrow alleyways.

He scanned the crowds, looking for the pristine white suit and shock-white hair of Hero X.

He didn't see him.

Instead, he saw a teenager.

The kid wore a torn convenience store vest. His skin was completely coated in a thick layer of black, oily soot.

A cheap industrial respirator covered his mouth and nose.

Clone All For One watched the kid grab an old man and drag him down a rusted fire escape. The building behind them groaned and collapsed.

The kid stumbled into the alleyway and dropped to his knees. He pulled the respirator down and vomited a mixture of bile and black ash onto the pavement.

Clone All For One sneered behind his mask.

'This kid is much better than all other pros out there..,' Clone All For One thought, completely dismissing the boy. 'But an idiot playing hero in a disaster zone and didn't even used his quirk. Hmm... He should probably die in this disaster.'

[Master,] Garaki's voice came through the link. [I have visual on a civilian doing rescue work in the perimeter. He has no registered quirk signature. Should we intervene?]

"Leave him," Clone All For One replied sharply. "He is irrelevant background noise. Keep looking for the target."

Clone All For One kept his eyes on the streets.

He watched the soot-covered kid stand back up. The kid ran toward a collapsing construction site.

A ten-ton concrete pillar leaned dangerously over a group of elderly civilians and children.

The thick power lines holding the pillar snapped one by one.

The kid grabbed a bent crowbar. He tried to pry a wheelchair loose from the rubble.

He failed.

The final cable snapped. The massive concrete pillar fell directly toward the crowd.

Clone All For One watched, expecting the group to be crushed.

"...Anytime now"

Down on the street, the kid dropped the crowbar.

He flicked his wrist.

SNAP.

A sharp, crystalline noise echoed all the way up to the clouds.

"..."

"..."

Clone All For One froze.

That sound. He knew that sound.

He watched the space around the kid distort completely.

The black soot vanished. The torn vest disappeared.

A pristine, glowing white suit replaced the rags.

The kid's hair turned shock-white, billowing in an invisible wind.

The orange flames flattened. The thick black smoke turned into jagged ink lines.

The entire 3D world rendered into a hyper-vibrant 2D canvas.

The falling concrete pillar froze mid-air.

Clone All For One's jaw dropped.

"No..." Clone All For One eyes went wide. "That struggling, pathetic kid... is Hero X?"

[What is this?!] Garaki screamed over the telepathic link, his voice cracking with pure excitement. [My monitors are glitching! The physical laws of the sector just broke! Master, what kind of quirk is this?! We need to capture him! He would make a perfect new vessel for you!]

"Quiet!" Clone All For One yelled back, cutting the link off completely.

He watched Hero X work.

SNAP.

Hero X touched the frozen pillar. He snapped his fingers again.

SNAP.

The pillar moved ten feet to the left and landed safely in a vacant lot.

SNAP.

Hero X grabbed the civilians and pulled them through the 2D plane.

SNAP.

He moved through the streets, snapping his fingers.

He deleted the falling debris. He turned burst water pipes into harmless blue ink.

Hero X reached the center of the intersection. He raised his hands and snapped twice.

SNAP. SNAP.

The entire fire across the district sucked into a tiny black ball of ink above his head. Hero X threw the ball into the upper atmosphere.

The 2D filter vanished. The world returned to normal. The fire was completely gone.

Clone All For One analyzed the sequence.

He remembered the present-day Hero X stopping a global tectonic earthquake with a single stomp.

He remembered the god-like entity altering disaster effortlessly.

This version of Hero X just struggled to clear a single city block.

THUMP. THUMP.

"He isn't a god yet," Clone All For One realized, his heart hammering in his chest. "He is at his absolute weakest right now."

Down below, the white suit faded. The white hair turned back into a matted mess of ash.

Kaito stumbled away from the crowd and collapsed into a dark alleyway, completely drained.

'This is the moment,' Clone All For One decided. 'I must end him right now.'

Clone All For One dropped his arms.

CRACKLE-CRICKLE.

CRACKLE-CRICKLE.

He charged 500 quirks in his right arm, aiming directly at the exhausted kid's back.

Down in the alley, Kaito stopped leaning against the wall.

He suddenly stood straight up. He locked his arms out to his sides in a perfect T-pose.

WOOOSH.

Clone All For One kept falling, preparing to fire the blast.

SWIISH-SWOOOSH.

Then, the air shattered.

A terrifying, suffocating pressure erupted from Kaito's body.

"What's going on?!"

Clone All For One felt the power level spike. It didn't just jump.

It climbed at an impossible, violent speed.

It doubled. It quadrupled. It multiplied by a factor of thousands in a single second.

The heavy, crushing aura hit Clone All For One in the chest. It was the exact same god-tier pressure from the present day.

Clone All For One stopped mid-air. Pure panic flooded his brain. His survival instincts completely overrode his logic.

He aborted the attack immediately. He activated his spatial warping quirk.

SWISH.

Clone All For One vanished from the sky, fleeing the city in a blind panic.

Down in the alleyway, Kaito dropped his arms. He stood in the dirt, looking at his hands.

He flexed his fingers. He felt a ridiculous, surging amount of power rushing through his veins. The exhaustion was completely gone.

He felt like he could punch a hole through the moon.

He frowned.

"What's going on?"

He felt a sharp, heavy killing intent aimed directly at his back just a second ago. Someone was watching him.

He grabbed the air and pulled.

FWOOSH.

He teleported directly into the sky. He hovered exactly where Clone All For One had been floating seconds earlier.

Kaito looked down at the city. He looked at the rooftops.

He didn't see anyone. The airspace was completely empty.

"Was I just imagining things?" Kaito muttered to himself.

He rubbed the back of his neck. He felt incredibly nervous.

If someone saw his real face, his normal life was ruined. After all he illegally used a quirk in public.

He had no idea why his body suddenly felt like a nuclear reactor, but he didn't want to stick around to find out.

"...I'm still getting stronger. And it's still climbing up."

...

FWOOSH.

THUD.

Clone All For One hit the concrete floor hard. The dark portal closed behind him.

He gripped the edge of the metal desk. His chest heaved up and down.

"How did he do that?" Clone All For One muttered.

Step. Step. Step.

He paced across the empty laboratory. "His power multiplied by thousands in one second. It makes no sense.... Well Hero X doesn't make sense but he was clearly so weak at first."

BEEP.

The computer monitor on the desk beeped. A secure message box popped up on the screen.

Clone All For One stopped pacing. He leaned over the keyboard and opened the file.

Garaki's voice played through the speakers.

[Master, we lost visual on the anomaly,] Garaki reported over the audio file. [He vanished from the alleyway. We managed to pull the street camera footage before the fire melted the perimeter wires. We ran the facial recognition before he transformed. The match is attached below.]

Clone All For One clicked the attachment.

An ID photo loaded onto the screen. It showed a teenager with neat black hair and a bored expression.

Clone All For One read the text below the picture.

Name: Kaito Arisaka.

Age: 15.

Occupation: Hardware Store Clerk / FamilyMart Cashier.

Clone All For One stared at the screen. The air in the room felt heavy. He stopped breathing for a second.

"..."

"Kaito Arisaka," Clone All For One whispered.

His mind raced. He knew that name. Everyone in the present day knew that name.

Kaito Arisaka was the Golden Manager. The billionaire founder of Arisaka Consulting. The man who might owned the entire hero industry.

Clone All For One stepped back from the desk.

He finally understood.

He remembered Star and Stripe. Her New Order quirk overpowered him completely during their fight last time.

He remembered All Might, the Symbol of Peace, suddenly awakening the true power of One For All and be able to use the past quirks of previous users.

He remembered the news reports over the years. Every single pro hero the Golden Manager contracted Endeavor, Salaam, Captain Celebrity suddenly got ridiculously strong.

Their agencies evolved after his contract. It wasn't just in Japan. It was happening all over the world.

"..."

He stared at the teenager's face on the screen.

"He must be using his quirk on them," Clone All For One declared, completely believing his own assumption. "He changed their biology during those business contracts. The man running the hero society and Hero X are the exact same person."

Then.

The danger-sense quirks in his body suddenly triggered.

The hairs on his arms stood up.

Past Hero X was tracking him.

"He is coming here," Clone All For One realized.

He reached down to his waist. He grabbed the mechanical dial on his heavy belt and twisted it hard to the right.

HUMMMM.

HUMMMM.

He needed to bring this information back. Killing Hero X this time is a failure but he also got some good informations.

FLASH.

A blinding white light filled the laboratory. Clone All For One vanished from the room.

SNAP.

The sharp noise echoed through the room the exact microsecond the white light faded.

The air shattered in the center of the laboratory.

Hero X stepped out.

He wore his pristine white suit. His white hair moved slightly in the air. His white eyes glowed.

He looked around the empty room. He looked annoyed.

"Got away again?!"

Kaito knew someone was just standing here. He sensed the residual energy.

Then.

"Hmm?"

He pointed a white-gloved finger at the floorboards.

SNAP.

The concrete peeled back like paper. It revealed a hidden spatial pocket.

Kaito looked down into the hole.

He saw a man in a black suit sleeping peacefully. The man had a regular face. But it was very distinctive.

"..."

Kaito stared at the body.

"..."

He recognized the iconic villain from the anime instantly.

"All For One?" Kaito muttered out loud, his voice full of genuine confusion.

He looked around the empty laboratory again. He looked back down at the hole.

"Why is the final boss taking a nap under the floor and where is that guy?"

...

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