The cliff face exploded, scattering shards of rock in every direction.
As the shockwave swept across the area and dust billowed up, Kota lost his footing and was flung away.
When he opened his eyes after squeezing them shut, the forest came into view.
There was none of the sense of freedom that came with floating in the air.
Instead, fear and anxiety from having nothing to stand on swallowed the child whole.
"U-uaaah!"
Kota's body began to fall in accordance with the laws of nature.
In the slow flow of time, when the child realized death was closing in as his body sank helplessly, he squeezed his eyes shut again.
Then, with a jolt, time stopped.
No, the falling body stopped.
"Sorry! I blasted you away!"
Midoriya had half his body hanging out over the cliff and was biting down on Kota's clothes to pull him up.
It was an unstable position, but he somehow managed to haul the boy back to safety.
Kota, still sitting there, turned around to look at him and flinched.
"Th-thank..."
Midoriya's clothes were torn to pieces, and his arm was horribly mangled, swollen darkly and grotesquely.
The bloodstains scattered across his upper body in patches looked even more painful.
At that sight, the childish stubbornness that had once rejected Heroes and Quirks had no choice but to give way.
"Why..."
"Let's get to the facility. It's not far from he..."
Seeing the questioning look in Kota's eyes, Midoriya did what needed to be done right away.
In a place that had become a battlefield where nothing could be trusted, he needed somewhere safe.
And as far as Midoriya knew, the safest place was the facility where many students and teachers were waiting.
So he tried to take Kota there.
If not for the ominous tremor that seized him.
"No way... no way, right? That was 100 percent. It was All Might's power."
From the spot where the Villain had been slammed down, a grotesque mass of muscle fibers writhed together.
The bundle of muscle, each strand alive and moving, slowly shrank and vanished.
What emerged from within was that same Villain.
The man smiled cruelly and said, "Heh. That was a telephone punch. And besides, not bad, Midoriya."
"D-don't come any closer!"
"Nope. I'm coming. All the way."
Midoriya staggered back in alarm.
The man mocked him as he approached slowly.
"No, think. Think about what to do. First, buy time!"
"What do you want? What is the League of Villains even after?"
"How would I know? I just want to run wild. As long as I can go all out with my Quirk, I don't care about anything else. Remember? What I was doing just now was play. I told you, didn't I? Let's play. I fucking said it! I'm done with that. The playtime is over. You're really strong, aren't you?"
Spouting nonsense, the man kept closing the distance step by step.
He pulled a blood-red prosthetic eye from his pocket and fitted it in, then let a sharp glint fill his gaze.
"From here on out, I'm going with my serious eyes."
"Kota-kun, hold on. Hurry."
Midoriya immediately dropped low and offered his back to Kota.
Fortunately, the man's attack came flying in at the same moment Midoriya leaped.
The Villain's strike slammed into the ground and cut off part of the cliff.
He realized the man's words had been true.
"This is nothing like before. The power, the speed. He was really trying to kill people like it was a game!"
He felt ashamed for having thought, even for a moment, that the man was similar to Kirishima.
Kirishima clearly enjoyed fighting, but that did not mean he enjoyed killing.
What he enjoyed was the exchange of technique at the highest level, the instant when offense and defense crossed paths.
His nature, like an embodiment of pure combat, would never stoop to toying with the weak.
But what about this man?
He had been foolish to think he enjoyed battle.
What he enjoyed was not combat, but violence exerted one-sidedly.
He only delighted in watching the weak get crushed, suffer, and die.
He was only showing off his own power, intoxicated by strength.
The moment Midoriya understood the man's true nature, the Villain charged at him again.
Midoriya barely managed to kick off the wall and dodge, rolling across the ground.
Fortunately, perhaps because he couldn't properly control his power, the man slammed his own body into the cliff instead.
"Ah, shit! I hit too hard."
"If I can just get to the facility, Aizawa-sensei will be there. If I ask him to erase the guy's Quirk! No. Don't panic. Can I even make it to the facility without getting caught? I'm already exhausted from training. And now I'm supposed to cross the forest with my back exposed to the enemy?"
With his life on the line, Midoriya's brain burned through sugar like mad and went into overdrive.
But no plan would work.
Either the power gap made it impossible, or it was something a Hero couldn't do.
There was only one way. One and only one.
"Fight and win here, right now! That's the only way! Midoriya Izuku! You can save him! Remember where you started!"
"Stay back, Kota-kun. And when I clash with him, run straight to the facility at full speed."
Midoriya got to his feet and said it as calmly as he could manage.
Kota shuddered at what those words meant.
"When you clash? Don't tell me you're... No way! Let's run together! Your attacks didn't even work! And your arm is broken too!"
Even if he was young and weak, someone who threw his life away was not weak.
He could not be weak.
The sword forged by resolve in a death struggle was the sharpest sword of all, blooming from life and perfected in death.
Either he died, or the other man died.
Or both of them died.
An irresistible momentum poured out from Midoriya's back.
The person who had once been curled up after getting kicked in the groin at their first meeting, or the friendly, somewhat clumsy boy who had offered him curry, was nowhere to be seen.
There was only a warrior, radiating the will to see things through as if standing on the shoulders of a giant.
"It's okay."
The man pulled his arm free from the cliff wall and wrapped his whole body in muscle.
He took a deep breath in and let it out.
The cool night air rushed into his lungs, delivering a surge of oxygen before flowing back out.
He could feel power burning fiercely deep inside his body.
The little boy who had once asked why he fought was now standing on the ground in the position of the boy who had been asked that question.
If there was no path, then instead of turning back, he would make one by going forward.
Running away and abandoning Kota would greatly improve his chances of survival.
But there was no way a Hero could preserve his life like that.
Midoriya had never once wanted to live that way, and he never would.
He would not even think about a path that had never existed in the first place. Instead, no matter what it was, he would break through it and keep moving forward.
"Midoriyaaa!"
"One Hundred Percent Detroit Smash!"
The man, his whole body wrapped in muscle and transformed into a round mass of flesh, charged.
Midoriya gathered every ounce of power he could and slammed into him head-on.
If he dodged here, Kota behind him would die.
A guy who couldn't control his power, and had no intention of controlling it, was going to change the trajectory of his attack for the sake of a child?
Not a chance.
In the end, he had to crush the man head-on.
"Shit! Why are you doing that? Hah! You're weaker than before!"
"I-I'm... fine. I'm fineee! I won't let you go any farther back from here! Run!"
"You bastard! This is the best, isn't it!"
The muscle that made up the man expanded even further.
As Midoriya was gradually pushed back, his waist began to bend.
"Shut uuuup!"
He roared and tried to force more power out, but no sudden surge came like in a shonen manga.
In the end, he was driven into the ground, nearly pinned flat.
He managed to hold on by preventing himself from being completely overpowered, but it was getting harder by the second.
As Midoriya sensed death closing in, his mother's face came to mind.
The mother who had smiled and played All Might's videos for him over and over when he begged as a child.
The mother who had cried and apologized when his lack of a Quirk was revealed.
The mother who had been happy when he lied and said he had awakened a Quirk.
The mother who had leaped for joy when he passed the U.A. entrance exam, and the mother who had been heartbroken every time he came home injured.
He had wanted to make her happier than anyone else, but this was as far as he got.
"I'm sorry. Mom, I'm sorry! Kirishima! All Might! All Might!"
The moment Midoriya's heart began to break, the moment the word surrender brushed past his mind, a stream of water soaked the man.
Startled by the sudden chill, the man lifted his head.
"Water?"
"Don't!"
It was not the last desperate struggle of a frightened herbivore.
It was an attack meant to protect the Hero who had bled for him.
The child reached out toward the Quirk he had resented and denied for so long, all for his sake.
Though the Quirk factor that had slept for so long had grown dull and weak, it did not ignore its owner's plea.
That was what became the stream of water that soaked the man.
It was a pathetic attack that couldn't even be called powerful, but it was the finest attack in the world.
The insignificant strike drew the man's attention, and the high, thin voice pulled Midoriya's fading consciousness back.
"Kota-kun?"
"Let's do it later. Okay? I'll definitely kill you later. Wait for me."
The man, speaking cheerfully to Kota, sensed something was wrong.
His own body was slowly being pushed back.
"As if I'd let you... kill me!"
A leg wrapped in crackling green lightning forced the man back through that tiny opening.
Midoriya recalled what Kirishima had once told him.
"It varies from person to person, but roughly speaking, leg strength is about three times arm strength. So why doesn't everyone just use kicks?"
"Uh, because it's hard?"
"Correct! But that also means if you can do it, legs are better in a strength contest."
As he drove the man back with power far beyond before, the man shouted in surprise.
"Wait. Didn't your power get stronger?"
"You saw it!"
"One For All. Ten Thousand Percent Mississippi Smash!"
At last, Midoriya forced the man back completely and got to his feet, drawing his leg in for a moment.
His left foot came down and punched through the solid bedrock beneath him.
At the same time, his waist twisted and his other leg surged toward the man like a storm.
Under the overwhelming force, the muscles that had protected the man like armor finally gave way.
When the foot that had cut through the forest of muscle finally slammed into the man's face, Midoriya knew victory was his.
Blasted away and smashed into the cliff by the powerful blow, the man finally lost consciousness and collapsed for good.
But Midoriya himself staggered and looked ready to fall as well.
Watching that, Kota sank down onto the ground.
"Why..."
Why he would go that far, why he would fight for someone who only ever got angry and threw tantrums.
In the confusion, he remembered something Mandalay had once told him.
"Kota. Your mom and dad, Water Hose, left you behind, yes. But because of that, there are definitely lives that were saved! Someday, you'll meet someone and understand."
"You don't know anything. You know nothing!"
The words he forced out were nothing more than stubbornness.
At the same time, they were proof that he had admitted defeat.
"Why... would you go that far?"
"To save you, even if it costs my life! To you, he is..."
"My, my Hero."
The child, kneeling with tears streaming down his face, had no choice but to accept it.
The blood running from the top of his head, the arm bent at an impossible angle, and even the legs trembling violently beneath him.
The short boy who was howling at the sky as if he might collapse at any moment had entered his heart.
That person was his Hero.
And then, the chest that had always seemed to blaze with fire and storm strangely grew calm.
Instead, in another sense, his heart began to pound and seethe.
Was it truly such a noble thing to give your life for someone else?
Had his mother and father, whom he had thought had abandoned him, done something just as brilliant as the man before him?
His resentment and anger melted away into endless tears.
He was proud to be the son of his mother and father.
"I, too, someday..."
In the night of battle, light came down into the child's heart.
The light that descended in the darkest hour gave birth to a new light.
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