Chapter Text
Too slow.
Katsuki was too fucking slow. Too weak. It happened so fast.
Deku saw it first. Like he seems to have heard that prick first from what he said. He was always on edge. Made sense he saw it first. Saw it coming. The debris coming from All Might and All For One’s fight. They thought they were safe. Deku knew that was bullshit.
Deku was smiling when he threw them out the way. Serenely too. Katsuki would almost call it zen as he tumbled away. Deku had to know. Had to. And he was fucking smiling like a moron. Smiling while the world ended. And Katsuki couldn’t do shit, too taken aback like the fucking idiot he was to lunge forward and grab the idiot and pull him with them.
But he didn’t. He didn't.
Then the rubble came down and Deku was fucking gone. Buried. Disappeared in an instant in a mountain of fuck knows what shit. Rebar and concrete and glass that rained down from fuck knows where. From All For One’s pressure blasts probably. Katsuki didn’t fucking know where it came from, but All Might agreed with him later on. That fucking prick All For One dropping those things where ever the fuck he felt like.
Dropping the ruin directly on them.
That wasn’t the worst part though. Not the realisation of what happened, or the cloud of concrete dust and glass or the screams or blood or the carpet of bodies or that Katsuki couldn’t feel one of his arms.
No, it was the fucking miasma that Katsuki had only just escaped from. The one that followed them here.
It was the air thickening into fully fledged hysteria as All For One stepped out of thin air to the base of the mountain of rubble, a fist clenched. Completely indifferent to the screams, to the misery, to the fact that All Might was moments away from coming to smash his face in again. The disregard… It was the careful footsteps and positioning…
Katsuki couldn’t do anything, struggling to breathe, when a moment later a blast sheared through the rubble as though it were made of fucking paper. It was all he could to hold onto the ground that recoil shot through, when an undisturbed All For One’s probing tentacles rushed the resulting destruction as the second set batted away obstructions deeper within.
Then they retracted and there was Deku wrapped in them. At least Katsuki thought it was Deku, the mop of green hair tinted red with blood and shredded clothing made him nearly unrecognisable by the impact. But Deku had been standing there when it hit… but why the fuck was All For One there? All For One should have been after All Might?
But no, that was definitely All For One… who lifted Deku into his arms, showing Deku’s unblinking staring features and subsequently ran a hand down them. With Deku’s eyes closed, All For One vanished.
There was no sign of the warp that caught Katsuki having caught Deku. None of the black goo... As if… as if it didn’t need to…
It happened so fast.
And Katsuki couldn’t do anything.
Toshinori hadn’t thought anything of the blast All For One had used as a partial deflection. Not until All For One had literally vanished a split second later, leaving the League of Villains gaping at empty air.
“Sensei!” Shigaraki called pathetically and Toshinori would have gone over and punted him into a free standing sign if he didn’t have more important things to worry about. Namely wherever the hell All For One had gone.
“Where the hell is he?” Toshinori demanded from Gran Torino
“He must have warped!” Gran Torino coughed.
“All Might! He’s near the train station!” Someone called and Toshinori prepared to leap.
“You get the rest of the League!” Toshinori called as he bounded up into the air, feeling One For All strain as he did so. He was already running on fumes… but for All For One to bail so suddenly. What had happened? Was he too reaching his limit?
Whatever he was expecting on arrival… it wasn’t this…
All For One was nowhere to be seen. Not him directly, nor his aura of menace. The train station had been obliterated. All For One’s line of destruction through the city ending at its natural destination. Bodies littered the street, some moaning, some unmoving, but all maimed by his disregard for human life.
Then, Toshinori froze at the sight of three familiar faces standing at the base of a particularly large pile of uplifted material.
“Young Bakugou?”
“Stop, Bakugou! It’s too late! You’re just going to injure yourself! Stop!” Young Ida and Kirishima were holding a screaming Bakugou back from a mess of rubble that appeared as though wind had sheared it clean through. But… where is… young Midoriya?
“Buddy, we understand. Just let me do it, with my Quirk, I don’t have to worry about-” Kirishima tried to interject, pulling at him as Toshinori marched forwards. “Maybe he’s still-“
“-Shut the fuck up. He’s fucking gone. What don’t you understand about that? He. IS. GONE! HE ISN’T COMING BACK! THE WARP DIDN’T ACTIVATE ON HIM!” Bakugou screamed at them, piercing the ambient moans. No…
“Kids! Where’s young Midoriya?” Toshinori urged as he sprinted to them and watched them freeze. All For One could wait.
Young Bakugou was shaking violently as he spun to face Toshinori. “Deku’s gone,” young Bakugou heaved and All Might’s stomach dropped into his feet. No. “That fucking bastard dropped a fucking building on us and Deku… Deku shoved us out the way and…” Young Bakugou’s voice terminated with a strangled sob. “He’s gone.”
“He’s gone,” echoed numbly and endlessly through Toshinori’s head without making an impact. “What…” Toshinori struggled to hold his voice together. “Where is he now?”
“That… masked prick took his body. Took him from that rubble. That's how I knew he was dead. The warp didn’t work on him,” young Bakugou whispered in a broken voice as Toshinori drew him into a bone crushing hug and the boy wailed into his arms, while Kirishima and Ida blankly stood staring on, as if the rest of the world had stopped existing.
It had cost One For All, but All For One had already cost him so much more and there wasn’t even going to be a body to bury for it.