Chapter 57: Kamino
Summary: Canon? What's that? Is it tasty?
Warning: Chapters 55-58 were all published back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!
Chapter 57: Kamino
Izumi was doing her best to pretend she was enjoying the party.
It should have been easy. For reasons supposedly known only to them, the UA staff had allowed the First Year Groups to hold a celebratory party, including catering and mad DJ skills provided by Lunch Rush and Present Mic respectively. It wasn't even that unreasonable, really. While UA wasn't exactly known for partying…they also weren't known for having thirty-nine First Years living in the Dorms. Nor was it at all normal for all thirty-nine of those First Year students to pass their Provisional License Exams all in a single go. The fact that such a thing had occurred made it obvious there would be a party, and the UA staff had presented the officially hosted chance as, supposedly, a way to make sure said party didn't get out of hand. Particularly with twitchy JSDF forces still lingering just outside UA's walls.
It was reasonable, really.
Most of the students, all but two in fact, hadn't had any reason to question it.
It was also a lie.
Izumi, Momo, and 2B were the only trio among the students who were aware of that little detail. Which, in turn, was because they were the only three who had been kept abreast of the news about the League of Villains. Even most of the heroes involved were completely unaware that the trio were aware. But, given both Izumi and Momo being potential targets, not to mention 2B's involvement on the cyberwarfare side, Nedzu had kept them updated. He'd informed them about the stealth raid that had quietly captured Giran, and about the deep investigation and tracking of shipments gathered from Nighteye's work on the two medical companies he'd found. About the time-limited data the operations had gathered on two major locations in Kamino ward. One, they expected to be a Nomu depot. The other, possibly a lair for All for One and certainly the primary hub for Shigaraki and his immediate subordinates. About the dual raids planned to hit those sites in…37 minutes.
All of that privileged information meant that Izumi and Momo knew this party was serving something of a different purpose than the rest of the students knew. Oh, it was serving its stated purpose well enough, letting the students celebrate the win they'd gotten in all of them passing the provisional exams. But it was also putting both UA Groups most likely to be targeted for retaliation under the direct observation of multiple heroes, at the heart of UA's security. It wasn't an accident that the room they had been offered for the party was in the Heroics Building itself, after all.
It was nerve wracking to be the only ones aware…and there was more than just the one reason. It was a secondary reason, known to none but the trio, that saw Momo casually step out of the crowd to give Izumi a hug. That hug covered the subtle transfer of pure QE from a spark of One for All, right under the noses of every student and professor present. An extra level to this charade that no one else was aware of. Not even Nedzu. A level that was straining Izumi's ability to act normally, as tiredness was weighing on her just as much as anxiety. She was using all of that energy for something, after all.
Still, despite the pressure, Izumi let Momo drag her back into the party. The best defense right now was to seem as present and into the partying as others expected, given that she was a known introvert. With Momo's help, she could fake it long enough, she hoped.
... ...
It was thirty-five minutes later that 2B noted the sudden spike of operational chatter on the Kamino area HSN network. Even as administrators, they couldn't tap into the assault team's feeds without explicit permission. A safety feature of the system that they didn't regret, even now. They could monitor usage levels in specific areas of the network, however, and 2B had been doing so all along, knowing that a sudden large usage spike in Kamino would indicate that the operation was being activated. With a signal to Momo, Izumi got busy hijacking the wall displays in the room, tapping into the news feeds. She didn't link them quite yet, but she prepped them, knowing that there was a good chance the media was going to be right on top of so many high-level heroes abruptly appearing and launching was looked to be a major raid.
Izumi herself, of course, had plenty of eyes on the situation from other sources. Local security cameras were laughably easy to access with a cyberwarfare suite as good as hers, even if she was doing it all herself. 2B was…busy. One of the feeds of information she was getting, from a skyscraper that had a view of both sites, was much more detailed than the others. It was a good half kilometer from the bar, and almost two from the warehouse. But, by happenstance and luck, the third level down from the penthouse had a direct line of sight on both locations. The much higher-quality feed coming from said skyscraper floor wasn't, of course, not at all accidental, and Izumi watched it intently even as she did her best not to show she was doing just that.
She saw All Might hitting the bar from one direction, with Gran Torino and Kamui Woods following in through the hole he created for an entrance. Edgeshot and Miruko, shockingly playing well with others for once, hit the building from the front entrance at the same time. Though, as the building's own security was on a closed circuit, Izumi lost sight of them as they bust it, Endeavor the only hero remaining with the police outside. The same wasn't true for site two, the warehouse, where Mt. Lady completely smashed open the side of the building, giving Best Jeanist, Gang Orca, and Ryukyu a straight shot inside. Burnin, along with several other high-level sidekicks from various agencies, were holding the perimeter of that attack. The reason why so many had been deployed there, while only Endeavor was on overwatch at the bar, became immediately obvious as a half-dozen Nomu burst out of tanks and engaged the heroes.
The firepower discrepancy at the fight Izumi could actually watch was clear from the moment of engagement. The heroes had not been fucking around with this raid, having brought enough heavies that the Nomu were going down fast. She could only assume the same was true for the bar, given that All Might was there. It looked like this was going to-
Izumi gasped as a new figure appeared right behind Gang Orca. Between one eyeblink and the next, the heroes at the warehouse site were all launched brutally away into nearby buildings. The blast leveled the warehouse and damaged everything else nearby, with only Ryukyu and Best Jeanist's own lighting-quick reactions saving the heroes from instant death as they absorb the bulk of the attack thrown their way. A bare instant later, at the other site, Nomu begin pouring out of the bar, fighting the heroes there. Churning bubbles of black sludge appeared at the warehouse site, spitting out Shigaraki, Kurogiri, and several of the villains from the mass raids, including Muscular and the unknown fire villain that caused them so much trouble. Hovering over them was a large, mutilated form wearing medical gear. The same figure that had launched the initial blast wave…and who Izumi instantly realized must be All for One.
Back at the party, most of both Groups, and all of the heroes were looking at her as Izumi jolted upright and gasped. Before they can ask, she almost violently forced all the wall displays to show the News Feeds from arriving news helicopters, pointing the rest of the students to the walls.
"Hero raid on the League. Things just went bad. Nomus and the Super Villian that was suspected of backing the League."
Izumi's voice was clipped and she completely ignored the questions flying at her as she concentrated on her link to 2B. Not…yet. Not if this was going to work. 2B was calm, waiting patiently…from the building Izumi had been watching everything from. A near one-hundred-percent replica of 2B's original body summoned and feeding sensor data back to Izumi. Momo appeared next to her, subtly feeding her another burst of pure Quirk Energy. This was one of the few major remaining secrets about Izumi's power. One she'd very carefully refrained from ever telling anyone but Momo and her mother. The cost to summon items or a copy of 2B? It was a single, static cost, followed by a steady draw afterward to keep the summons real. The secret? That link didn't give a single, solitary fuck about how far away 2B and the items got from Izumi after they were summoned. A detail she'd gone to considerable lengths to conceal, by pretending there was roughly a single kilometer of range limit between her and any Pod or weapons summons. Right now, it was giving her a view of the fight via that full-body 2B summons. If they were lucky…it might just become more than that.
Pretending to watch via the wall screens with everyone else, Izumi instead looked through the far superior optics of 2B's replica. A summons that Izumi was only managing to support for this length of time via frequent infusions of One for All sparks from Momo. She watched as a half-frantic All Might arrived at the warehouse just in time to shield the downed heroes there from being annihilated by All for One. Ryukyu had been the only one in fighting shape after the blast, and she'd barely sufficed to keep the Super Villian busy for the thirty seconds it had taken All Might to cover the distance from the bar to the warehouse. Endeavor, Miruko and Edgeshot were hammering the Nomus at the bar, with Gran Torino following after All Might…and now All Might was exchanging vicious hammer blows with All for One.
Neither was holding back, All for One quickly portaled his allies away via a forced activation of Kurogiri's Quirk. Ryukyu had finally managed to get her full transformation in place and was grimacing as she hunched over her colleagues, acting as a living bulwark between the shredding power of the wind off those blows and the rest of the heroes and sidekicks present. Her claws were dug into the concreate, barely managing to hold against the second-hand assault, gamely doing everything she could to shield the others even as tears began to appear in her scaled-armored hide.
All Might went down as a blow to his injured side opened his guard. But he forced All for One off him before he could finish the job. The fight stilled as the two exchanged furious words, something All for One said causing All Might to cry out in denial and rage…but it was a mistake. All for One's last mistake, as he held still, completely focused on All Might and the emotional agony he'd caused the man who'd nearly killed him.
He held still, distracted for just one instant too long as 2B pulled a trigger.
A hypervelocity railgun round, from a tripod mounted gun far heavier than the one Momo had used on their testing day, ripped across the two kilometers of distance at over 6,500 meters per second. Far faster than the best railguns man had managed to make, this gun was heavily upgraded with YoRHa technology, and the distracted All for One simply didn't have the time to react. He started to twitch, sensing its approach with a Quirk even at the insane speed it was moving. But he'd been too focused. Too much of his attention on All Might and the other heroes. And his senses, as a whole, were just too crippled from his previous wounds. He had barely 300 milliseconds from 2B's pull of the trigger to react…and it wasn't enough. His already-mutilated head simply exploded in a fountain of gore. A bare half second later, a second round ripped right through his chest before the body could even fall.
Both 2B and the railgun vanished in an unseen, untraceable stream of data as the corpse of perhaps the greatest Super Villian to ever live fell at All Might's uncomprehending feet…
... ... ...
(A/Ns): YES All for One is dead. I want to be very clear about that. He's not coming back. No sudden reversals, no come backs, no resurrections. He's kicked the bucket, bought the farm, shuffled off the mortal coil. He's not shaking this one off. As far as I'm concerned Gran Torino stole the body, burned it, then made sure some of the ashes were buried on each of the seven continents. That doesn't mean his influence is fully gone, since his Quirk is still with Doctor Giraki. Which means the vestige isn't 100% gone. But the original All for One is toast and won't be coming back.
As for how he died? That railgun is more the sort of thing you'd find mounted on a spaceship or naval cruiser, power wise. Only made man-portable by what amounts to magic (YoRHa Maso technology). It absolutely had the ability to hurt him...if he didn't get the chance to pull up the right set of Quirks. Which is why 2B/Izumi didn't fire right from the start. They patiently waited until he was 90% distracted. Add in his crippled senses and there's simply no way he noticed it in time to pull up the right Quirks to block or survive the shot. No more brain, no more heart. No more All for One.
As for the Fact that Izumi/2B were willing to take the shot? I hope I've established this by now, but Izumi is NOT Izuku. She's significantly more pragmatic and realistic than he was. When she hears that there's a Super Villain that her idol actively tried to kill, not capture, because he was that dangerous? Then finds out that Villain is likely to come for her girlfriend/lover? You better believe assassination is on the table. Doubly so since she's been more thoroughly exposed to the dangers of the world. There is no chance. Literally NO chance. That multiple someone's haven't tried to kidnap Momo in the past. Momo's quirk is the single most broke Quirk in the history of Quirks. Fuck All for One, One for All, and New Order all three. Momo can turn McDonald's cheeseburgers into Nuclear Weapons and put them in trashcans at random. Not to mention having access to infinite wealth. If she were a Villain, she'd make All for One look like a sad, sorry joke. Every single government, terrorist group, and villain organization on the planet would want Momo either theirs or dead. As far as I'm concerned, the only way she made it to adulthood was her parents having VERY good security. Including, most probably, some active wet works teams used to eliminate threats to their daughter.
That isn't to say that Izumi won't have some mixed feelings and a bit of trauma from premeditated cold-blooded assassination. That will be dealt with (Hint: There's a reason I put a person with that experience near her. Double Hint: Lady Nagant).
His death isn't going to change the next few Arcs that much, by the by. Remember, he was stuck in Tartarus for a while. All for One is technically irrelevant for the next few arcs one way or another, even in canon.