The darkness was viscous yet, at the same time, serene.
Deep underground, in a place where only the low, rhythmic hum of an artificial ventilation system filled the silence, All For One inhaled deeply through the tubes of his respirator. His vision had been stolen, yet his remaining senses continued to expand his world.
The flow of the air, the subtle vibrations of dust, and … the unmistakable scent of blood and frustration coming from beyond the door.
"Welcome back, Tomura."
His voice, laced with mechanical static, carried a paternal kindness—the dignified calm of a Dark Lord welcoming back his defeated foster son.
"Fuck! FUCK!!! That piece of trash cheat character!!!"
As soon as the warp gate swung open, a torrent of coarse profanity burst forth.
Shigaraki Tomura stumbled, collapsing onto the floor while his bloodied hands clawed at the ground. His outburst mingled the whining of a child with the lethal intent of a predator.
"Calm yourself, Tomura."
All For One rasped through the respirator’s tubes.
"You’ve returned. But judging by the atmosphere… it seems your picnic wasn’t very pleasant."
"Pleasant? PLEASANT?!"
Tomura shrieked with a metallic rasp.
"Picnic, my ass! The Nomu that the teacher provided got taken down! And that bastard All Might was cheating the whole time!"
He raged violently; the sound of his nails scraping harshly against his neck echoed irritably. Even as flesh was torn and blood seeped, he appeared numb to the pain.
Yet, All For One’s attention was not on the defeat itself.
He had keenly observed Tomura’s emotional state. The fury that had been simmering on the verge of explosion suddenly dissipated as if snipped in mid-flow.
'Ho?'
All For One raised an eyebrow behind his blindfold.
If it were the usual Tomura, this rage might have burned for days—breaking objects, lashing out at subordinates, cursing his own impotence. But now, his breathing steadied with remarkable speed. It wasn’t that his anger had cooled; he was merely channeling it onward.
It was growth.
The defeat was no poison gnawing at him but fertilizer strengthening him.
"Have you calmed down, Tomura?"
"……Yeah, Teacher."
Shigaraki halted the frantic scratching at his neck and, sprawled on the floor, lifted his gaze toward the ceiling. His bloodshot eyes no longer radiated only madness; a cold, analytical reason had taken its place.
"Tell me about your experience. How was the Nomu, and how did the students fare?"
All For One inquired gently. Although he had already gathered some details through his connection to the Doctor’s monitors, he needed to hear it directly from Tomura—it would aid in reviewing the match.
"The Nomu was impeccable, but the matchup was terrible. All Might? He’s nothing more than a pile of bugs."
Shigaraki spat bitterly, then after a pause added with a peculiar nuance,
"But that wasn’t the real problem."
"Another problem?"
"There was a monster who pierced right through Kurogiri’s Quirk."
All For One’s finger drummed on the armrest of his wheelchair.
"Kurogiri?"
He turned his head toward the black mist standing nearby. Though its main form was shielded by armor, its presence was far more disordered than usual—a clear sign of injury.
All For One remarked in surprise,
"You’re injured. And quite deeply—especially for someone without a physical body… Was it All Might who struck you?"
"…No, it wasn’t."
Kurogiri reported, his tone subdued by shame.
"It was a student. I was taken down by a single, peculiar student."
"A student?"
"He read the coordinates of my Warp Gate. No, to be precise… in that infinitesimal gap when I attempted to activate my Quirk—when my physical form was exposed for less than 0.1 seconds—he struck with pinpoint accuracy, suppressing me completely."
All For One’s finger tapped-tapped against the armrest once more.
"He read the coordinates and identified my physical form? That wasn’t a matter of simple intuition or luck, was it?"
"No. It wasn’t luck at all."
Kurogiri stated firmly,
"That brat… he knew. He understood the entire mechanism—me dispersing the mist, calculating the coordinates to bridge space, and that brief moment of physical exposure. As if he were studying the very blueprints of my Quirk, he struck my vital point with absolute precision."
All For One fell silent.
In the darkness, his mental circuits whirled rapidly.
Spatial-type Quirks—especially Warp Gates like Kurogiri’s—are rare and potent. One can’t simply counter them by knowing the theory.
To read the omen of activation and then physically exploit that brief lapse?
It was a feat beyond mere quick reflexes.
Even for someone who had plundered and bestowed countless Quirks over decades—no, over a century—identifying the vulnerability in a never-before-seen Quirk so flawlessly as to neutralize it on the first move was no small wonder.
The term “combat sense” seemed woefully inadequate. This was a capacity bordering on true precognition or omniscience.
"That… should be impossible."
All For One murmured softly.
"Perhaps All Might in his prime could achieve it, but even he would rely solely on raw reflexes and speed, not dismantle it with such calculated precision. Even for me, that is a minute gap discernible only through the combined use of several sensory Quirks."
This was the realm of extrasensory perception—a feat unattainable without an insight akin to wisdom that reads the flow of space, an insight that pure visual information could never provide.
And yet—a mere high school student? And not with a specialized sensing Quirk, but with a physical strike?
"That’s why it’s so good."
An extremely cold, and thereby even more alien, voice interjected. It was Shigaraki. Before anyone could register, he had risen unsteadily and shuffled over to drink water from a refrigerator.
"Because it’s impossible, because he’s a monster—I want him."
"Ho?"
"I’m going to draw him in as an ally. In any game, party balance is vital, right? You need at least one overpowered cheat character on your side. That kid doesn’t belong in a rotten game of playing hero."
Shigaraki wiped his mouth and grinned—a smile both chilling and innocent, like a child who has discovered a treasured toy.
"Next is you… That’s what I told him. I won’t ever forget."
All For One mulled over those words.
Ally. Party.
Those words, uttered by Shigaraki, stirred a dusty album from the depths of All For One’s memory.
If it had been merely that Shigaraki felt the need for an ally, perhaps it would have ended there.
But the absurdity of that existence evoked the memory of a certain man.
All For One asked,
"What does the boy look like? What’s his name?"
"He has eyes that are damn arrogant. Rotten, disdainful eyes that seem to be weary of everything—as if he already knows it all. An audacious little brat in a tacky tuxedo. His name is Marumine Tori."
All For One rifled through his internal library of memories.
Countless names, innumerable Quirks, endless faces flashed by.
Yet the name Marumine Tori was absent.
"It’s a name I’ve never heard before."
Still, All For One did not immediately dismiss the possibility he had entertained.
A name can always be changed.
What mattered was the essence.
Those eyes Shigaraki described—the arrogance that seemed to have grown tired of everything yet managed to pierce through it all.
And the fragment of a monster, fully formed even before reaching the age of five.
In a secluded corner of his memory, a strange fragment he had long sealed away surfaced.
Eleven years ago.
His laboratory.
In that place thick with the scent of chemicals and the clamor of machinery, an unlikely little visitor had arrived.
A tiny brat, barely five years old.
A child who offered no name.
A monster who simply introduced himself as a “person searching for his ego,” armed with a precociousness that chilled the bone.
All For One remembered that child. No—he could not forget him.
After over a century of witnessing countless geniuses, villains, and heroes, none had ever sent pure shivers through him like that little one.
'Mister, your theory here is wrong. You didn’t account for the load on the Quirk Factors.'
With a lollipop clenched in his mouth, that indifferent voice had once pointed out the flaws in the Quirk transplant surgery that was All For One’s masterpiece.
'If you just mix them, everything explodes. You must expand the vessel first—make it as sturdy as a giant.'
The Quirk Singularity.
The doomsday theory proclaiming that all Quirks grow ever stronger and more complex over generations until they reach an uncontrollable state.
That brat was living proof—the culmination of that very theory.
Eyes that seemed to have grasped all of the world’s principles by the age of five.
The arrogance to regard every living thing—everyone, even All For One himself—as nothing more than an intriguing object of observation, or a toy of equals.
For the first time in his long existence, All For One shuddered.
And, strangely, that shudder soon transformed into fascination and even affection.
The disdainful way he viewed other living beings, as if they were nothing more than piles of trash.
The boredom of finding every aspect of the world trivial.
It resonated deeply with the solitude All For One had long endured.
They forged a strange bond—a friendship, or rather, more like a mutually corrupting alliance.
Five years.
The five years spent together were the most joyous and intellectually invigorating period in All For One’s life.
The boy’s ideas were truly on another level.
The theories he proposed and established were decades ahead of contemporary science.
From the First: Gigantomachia Theory, through the Second and Third, to the Fourth: Artificial Human Nomu Production Theory.
There wasn’t a field his touch hadn’t transformed.
In fact, almost all the technology All For One now possessed—once little more than vague hypotheses or heaps of failed experiments—was perfected once the boy had laid his hands on it.
It had to be so. The boy was born from the answer itself: the Quirk Singularity.
Though it’s hard to find answers in failure, when you already know what the answer should be, even failure can be enlightening.
The boy lacked a moral compass. No—human ethics were as trivial to him as the rules governing ants.
For him, only efficiency, fun, and self-preservation mattered.
That was why All For One loved him—because he saw himself in that child.
Had it not been for his own circumstances, All For One would have spent eternity by his side, remaking the world. With the boy, even the world itself seemed too small a stage.
But their parting came without warning.
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