"Cover view"
"Yoichi! You have to run!"
My lungs were burning so badly I felt like they were about to tear apart.
I was Shigaraki Yoichi’s personal doctor, and Kudo’s colleague.
And right now, I was being chased by a monster called All For One.
"Kudo, Tenma. It’s already too late."
Even while Yoichi was gasping for breath,
he spoke with astonishing calm.
"...So Kudo, pass One For All on."
With his pale hand trembling,
he plucked out a few strands of his own hair and held them out to Kudo.
Kudo took them, his face set with determination.
It was the look of someone who had truly made up his mind.
We were all about to die at the hands of All For One,
and he was talking about One For All. What a ridiculous joke.
"Don’t be absurd!!"
Boom!
The concrete wall shattered, and a deafening explosion rang out.
Dust and debris flew in every direction.
Yoichi’s body, which had been there a moment ago, was gone.
Only a red smear of blood and a few strands of hair drifting through the air remained.
"Damn it...!"
My voice cracked.
I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
I shouted at Kudo.
"Kudo! Run! At this rate, we’ll all die!"
"...I’m sorry."
"If you’re sorry, then run already!"
Kudo turned and fled after hearing my desperate cry.
I had a wife and daughter. Why had I gotten tangled up in this insane mess?
Just as regret began to surge up, I pulled out the emergency bomb I had hidden in my pocket.
"Die!!"
Bang. Crunch.
Red blood splattered. My vision went dark.
The sensation of having my eyeball burst was always disgusting.
My fingers exploded, and I could feel the emptiness where my hand had been.
The blown-off fingers writhed back into place with a nauseating sound.
Regeneration.
I had that strange superpower, or Quirk, or whatever it was.
Trusting it, I sent Kudo away.
My eye returned. I wiped the blood from around it.
"Did we get him...?"
Crack.
As if answering me, a sharp bone spear pierced my stomach.
"Agh!"
A bone spike extending from All For One’s shoulder lifted me up as if I were hanging from it.
Even as I screamed, All For One’s chilling eyes never once looked at me.
He only stared at the bloodstain he had made.
"...Yoichi."
Even through the agony, I was stunned.
He killed him himself, so why was he acting so wistful?
"You... did this!! You killed your own brother!
What do you think a human life is worth?"
Rage surged through me. As a doctor, as Yoichi’s friend,
and as a human being.
Even with death looming over me,
my stubbornness would not let me beg for my life.
"...Mine. It’s mine. It has nothing to do with the likes of you."
For the first time, a crack appeared in All For One’s expression.
Despite his terrifying appearance, the way he clenched his teeth made him look like a child whose toy had been taken away.
The wound through his body was already twitching as it tried to regenerate.
If I could just hold out with regeneration, maybe I’d find a chance.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, All For One reached out.
The regeneration stopped.
Did he just erase my Quirk?
"Everything is mine. Your Quirk too. I’ll make good use of it."
So this was how it ended. I had prepared myself for something like this.
"Your wife’s Quirk, hidden in Okinawa.
And your beloved daughter’s Quirk too."
"What?"
How did he know?
Kudo had said it was a safe hideout.
No. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
If I had known this would happen, I never would have helped those people.
I didn’t care about myself, but my daughter, Yuri, was another matter.
"Don’t—"
The word came out like a plea, but
All For One’s bone spike drove into my neck.
The taste of blood spread through my throat and mouth.
Even when I tried to speak, only a wheezing breath escaped.
With my eyes closing, I barely managed to see All For One again.
The wistful look was gone. He was grinning, teeth bared.
Just before my eyes shut completely, I saw the bone spike rise toward my head.
Crunch. And that was how I died.
---
"Haa... haa..."
I was Kudo’s comrade, a successor of One For All.
I had no Quirk, but I still tried to resist with nothing more than a gun.
I was someone who always had to run from All For One,
but I believed that someday I’d land one good hit on him.
And yet.
The surroundings were already hell.
My comrades lay scattered on the ground as corpses with half their bodies blown apart.
The stench of blood hung thick in the air, from the bodies and from my own.
Kudo was struggling helplessly as All For One strangled him with one hand.
All For One wasn’t laughing, nor was he angry.
He simply wept and wept with a grotesquely blank face.
It was a disgusting expression.
Clenching my teeth, I gripped my pistol.
Even if I died, I had to do what I could until the end.
Bang! The bullet pierced All For One’s temple dead on.
His expression didn’t even twitch.
The place where the bullet lodged regenerated in an instant with a sickening sound, and the bullet was pushed out and dropped.
A bitter laugh escaped me.
Kudo turned to look at me, eyes wide.
Even with death right in front of me, he was still looking at me like he was worried about his comrade.
All For One still didn’t look at me.
Instead, dozens of sharp bone spikes rose at once from behind him.
The moment they surged toward me,
I knew it instinctively.
I was dead.
---
I was the strategist for the fifth successor of One For All, Lariot.
My Quirk, which manifested information as a status window, was stolen by All For One,
and I was killed by one of All For One’s subordinates with a gun.
---
I was a friend of Gaen, the sixth successor of One For All,
and the teacher of Shimura Nana.
While helping Nana escape, I fought All For One with [Armor].
In my final moment, I saw a strange [status window] appear before All For One’s eyes.
And then I died.
---
I was Shimura Kotaro, the son of Shimura Nana.
My son had turned my family and our dog into dust.
I panicked and brought a pair of garden shears down on Tenko.
What had I done?
I tried to grab Tenko and stop him.
If I acted now, I could still stop him.
Then a nauseating sensation hit me, and my head swam.
Instinctively, I knew it.
I had no Quirk.
But I had just gained one.
I couldn’t tell whether it was survival instinct or the shock of losing my family.
All I knew for sure was that if I touched Tenko now, he would turn to dust.
I couldn’t touch him.
Tenko was already hurt because of me. I couldn’t hurt him any more.
"Stop, Tenko!"
Tenko didn’t stop. He rushed at me.
"Die!"
With my son’s murderous intent and tear-choked final scream, his hand touched me.
My body collapsed in an instant.
I wanted to scream, but my mouth had already crumbled into dust and vanished.
---
I was an ordinary kid with no Quirk. My name was Kuroo.
No, come to think of it, I wasn’t ordinary.
I was an orphan and Quirkless.
At twenty-four, I worked at a small company.
For a job with a client, I had to take a route I didn’t usually use.
After walking for a while, a ruined house caught my eye.
My feet stopped.
"Was this place destroyed by a collapse? Where did Tenko go?"
Wait, who was Tenko?
Why do I remember how this house collapsed?
At that moment, countless scenes flooded through me like a flash of life before death.
It was too much information for my brain to process all at once.
One scene ended with someone dying, then another followed, and another after that.
I was.
A doctor, a resistance fighter, a strategist, a teacher, and a son.
I was Yuri’s father, and the father of Tenko and Hana.
I remembered everything.
Even the failures, when I had done nothing but get dragged around by friends, comrades, superiors, and my mother.
The moment those memories came rushing back, [Armor] sprouted from my hand.
The wound on the back of my hand, from falling yesterday, healed rapidly.
I remembered how to fire a gun so that it would kill someone.
The strap of the briefcase I was holding crumbled and snapped.
As I bent down to gather the scattered papers, I stopped.
One sheet remained on my palm.
I slowly looked down at it,
then turned it to dust.
"This isn’t what matters."
Then the status window appeared. It had returned. The Quirk of my third life.
---
[Quirk]
Regeneration / ??? / Status Window / Armor / Collapse /
---
(Quirk awakening due to mental change. Quirk Replication acquired.)
[Quirk Replication]
Can create clones that replicate a target’s Quirk by consuming their hair.
The clones cannot separate from the body.
(From now on, all Quirks will be activated through Quirk Replication.)
---
The sensations of [Armor] and [Collapse] vanished from my hand.
It felt like I could switch them on and off like a light.
The final Quirk still couldn’t be identified by the status window.
It didn’t matter.
This was it.
This time, I wouldn’t be dragged around by anyone.
"I’ll kill All For One."
I would take back everything he had stolen from me, from us, with my own hands.
I still remembered every other life too,
but the grief of failing to protect my child rang deepest in my heart.
"Yuri. I’ll make sure I do it."
I quit my job.
For revenge, I needed money and as many Quirks to replicate as possible.
Next time, my memories might not stay intact.
I had to finish this in this life.
[Collapse] was useful. I made money by disposing of industrial waste without leaving a trace, in an environmentally friendly way.
It was illegal in a world that strictly prohibited unauthorized Quirk use, but I didn’t care.
I also kept taking contract work to deal with vicious Villains and yakuza.
I still didn’t have many Quirks worth eating.
Too many useless ones only got in the way.
Still, the ones I had gained, [Silence] and [Seal], looked usable.
When the work was done, I would [Collapse] the bodies without leaving a trace.
They were trash from society anyway. I felt no guilt.
"My next target is Overhaul. Real name: Kai Chisaki."
He was the boss of the Shie Hassaikai.
I’d heard he had a Quirk that could [Reassemble] anything.
It was an upgraded version of [Collapse] and [Regeneration].
I was definitely taking it.
I’d have to buy information from that guy, Giran.
In a dark back alley where no one passed by,
I handed Giran the bundle of cash we had agreed on in advance.
"That’s still not enough, you know~
The young boss is pretty picky about who he takes in."
Giran chuckled, fiddling with the bundle of bills.
All brokers were like this.
"Cut the crap. I don’t have time for games."
"Got it! Just kidding. You’ve got a nastier personality than that League of Villains guy."
Smiling, Giran held out a cleaner’s outfit to me.
"I’ll lend you this for free.
If you call yourself a ‘special waste disposal worker,’ even that picky bastard will take you in."
Taking the clothes, I asked as always,
"What about information on All For One?"
"Aw, you’re asking that again?
That man probably doesn’t even know his own family."
"If you’re lying, I’ll kill you first."
I said it like a threat, but Giran’s eyes made it clear he really didn’t know.
I’d gotten everything I could.
It was time to move.
To kill All For One,
I would kill Overhaul first.
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